Sometimes it is hard to know how to forge
ahead.
The news has never been good, but recently it seems increasingly bad.
The grass is still green here, mom.
But it's drowning in rivers of red there.
Dead and brown and gone in other words and
other worlds that are even
still
part of this
one.
What are any of us to do?
How can any of us bear not to bear witness?
And in bearing witness,
How does any of us retain the strength to live as though all is normal when it is so painfully obvious that it is not
so painfully obvious
that this cannot possibly be considered normal
or that if it is considered normal
then it is so painfully obvious that it should not be
that we should not want to be part of a world where this is normal.
So I return again to the question of how
is any of us supposed to forge ahead in a world at war?
Sometimes I take comfort in the idea that this, too, is the human condition.
We are a communal species, but a species that has always been at war with itself.
Nation against nation, tribe against tribe, clan against clan.
The only difference now is the scale.
We have globalized and commercialized war in a way that people 200 years ago would have found incomprehensible.
We have COD-- excuse me,
COMMODIFIED is what I meant
it into video games and movies and bumper stickers of AK-47s and how
how I ask is any of us to press on in a world so on fire that cities are burning and children are lucky if we can pull them from rubble and somehow hope that they, too, will not later seek to wage the destruction they were born into and borne out of.
And yet still,
The grass is green here, mom.
I barely know how we can love this world.
I hope that maybe we can still manage to love inside this broken plane. The myth of a phoenix is a beautiful one. Born of the ashes made from fire in a world that cannot cease
fire.
Always we hope for rebirth.
Somehow we must find a way to love
something or someone or some place.
In a world where the grass is still green..
And hopefully,
maybe,
can be green in otherwheres, too.
Grass does not grow if it is not watered.
And yet
we have poured a monsoon of kerosene on the plains of dead grass in a drought amidst famine.
Recall--god gave Noah the rainbow sign, said no more water, the fire next time!
What recourse do we have other than to love?
Love that which has burned
Love that which is not burned yet and which we hope to protect.
Love one another and hope against hope that this time,
Maybe this time
The grass will grow green there, too.
