A person with physical beauty lacking
insight is like a seashell without pearl.

First, let me make it clear that I believe Jesus was divine. But I also believe every human being on Earth is also divine, and that all creations in the infinite Cosmos are divine as well. Everything is divine, because the Supreme Being made everything, and in so doing, imbued everything with divinity. I have not been a member of an organized religion since I became an adult. I have not read the Bible. The Bible is about love. If it isn't, I don't want to read it;  if it is, then I've already read it. Love is what matters. Chapters and verses are superfluous, and using them are supercilious. So what about Jesus' cheeks? Didn't he say something like if someone hits you in the cheek, then turn your face a bit and let that someone hit you in your other cheek. So what was Jesus' message? His message was about love and loving. Jesus knew that if one acts out his/her pain on another, it is because that person, in all likelihood, had not been loved enough, if at all, during the his/her earliest of years;  consequently, that person was in a chasm of unconscious, unspeakable pain, which ineluctably manifests itself in acts ranging from unkindness to killing. One's behavior can be at the least rough and uncaring and at the worst murderous, if that person was never loved. His/her personhood, on the other hand, is always divine. Jesus was so prescient he understood this for what is was:  a human being acting violently because that human being was in a miasma of unconscious pain for lack of love. So turn your other cheek. It is an act that signals the truth that that interaction, and all similar interactions, are different only by degree, not by kind. The only real antidote to violence is love. But to love, you must first be loved. The Supreme Being knows this. Jesus knew this. And it is way past time for humanity to know this.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

There
be no lack
most be asking for less
by not allowing more

all creation
be claimed
thru resonance of body
in accord with desire

ADMIT IT!
I screamed at my reflection.
YOU'VE BEEN DEAD SINCE THAT DAY
I yelled at the tear stained face.
When he left you died.
The distraction that was keeping you happy,
left.
You have nothing.
Now you're so empty.
So numb that it hurts,
just admit it.

the brain is a filter
severing unhelpful connections
we try to hold the smoke
of rapidly fading memories
yet it passes through our fingertips.

since we worry about what we lack
the loss of memories may create a void
yet that same void can hold
new, tangible memories
ones that help us grow.

The robins have not yet appeared out my window. It is
still too cold. The squirrels, meanwhile, go about their
business year around, finding nuts, even pieces of bread
left by kind people. Animals of all kind are wise, while
we human beings are mostly lost in our illusion of what
constitutes worth. Deer and elk up in the high country
do not miss the chaos we human beings call civilization.
The Civil War, for example, was, by no means, civil.
Nowadays the scholars think that possibly as many as
700,000 men lost their lives over the horror of human
*******. Not for a second would even one rabbit condone
slavery, but our Constitution made it legal. A buffalo, if there
still is one, would never **** with impunity a black 13
year old girl, then sell her for a handsome profit to another
American citizen who happened to be a slave owner
himself. Do you think a worm or an otter would brook
60 lashes to a slave who had the audacity to try to learn
how to read or write? Slavery's child, racism, was never
just in the Deep South. Today, this moral disease permeates
every town and city in our "democracy" from sea to shining
sea. When do you think the robin will reappear? When do
think humanity will become as moral as any raccoon or fox?

TOD HOWARD HAWKS