The Balance

What comes from attention to the rhythms of the wild is refreshingly open ended. We see the genius of Emerson and Thoreau, their knowing that this moment was ours. The universal in an instant. Piles of conscious attention to sift through, the expression of minds in this place over eons. And even there, outside in the nineteenth century, as Thoreau always reminds us, the ancient rivers continued to flow, the mythical adventures persisted afoot. We are living our own Odyssey if we choose. This springing, a bold new adventure. Thick carpet of maple leaves. The oaks still uncurling, still developing. Ash and hickory, yellowed, natal-leafed. The forest I knew only a month ago has disappeared. I look now into a wall of chlorophyl, that magnificent organic device that borrows the outbursts of our closest star and turns them into life. Life! A favorite professor of mine once said that it all comes down to energy, trace those paths and you'll have the story. In Nature, the energy of plants creates the foundation for complex life, biodiversity, elaborate systems reciprocal and flourishing in health, resilient and tenacious over time.

In modern culture. Well, you know where I'm going with this. We've been robbed of the means to independent energy, - or so we think. Our cars, the grids for our televisions and computers, gas lines, sewers. Energy for this system is dominated by a few interests; a group that has grabbed power intentionally. Power rests there. The question one has to ask themselves, or so Thoreau would have it, is am I complicit here? Do I have an option of non-participation? Must a person forever concede their conscience to the whims of commercialism? I'd like to see the resistence that this new machine deserves manifest itself successfully, out of love, for the best of our interests, for the most of us flourishing, living fully, not, as this terrible set of present circumstances has us, bound helplessly to a dying idea that threatens to ruin things for everyone. Direct your eyes to the truth, keep on task. Remember what truly fills your belly, and labor for what truly moves your soul.

Gracias por el aqua, gracias por la terra, gracias por la atmosfera, y la paz por todos.