I’m going to speak, lightly, briefly about the sneak of extinction culture into your living room…we all live in some level of chronic discontent—this has caused a collective trance and the dumbing down of our human nature…millions, billions of hungry ghosts not-yet-dead. Whoa, that’s intense isn’t it? The fire of summer, the lie of Independence Day—watching our democracy crumble (was it ever truly a democracy folks? Can we take a closer look at history?) Anyway, fireworks, over-eating, discarded construction paper flags…this is the stuff of my nightmares…pause, breathe, whoa. What is the cost of this independence? Take a few breaths of this, let the lump of grief or fury, or the blankness of overwhelm, have its place…please. Making way for this discomfort is our way back from the dead.
As humans,we require beauty. We require beauty. Beauty is not a luxury, or it wasn’t. We do now live in a world where not everyone has access to beauty, this is changing us and diminishing our humanness in horrifying ways. The more privilege you have, the more access you have to beauty…look around.
How did we get here?! Here in the US of A maybe it began with dynamiting hills and genociding “other”—people, places things, ideas…railroads, roads, telephone lines, cell towers…our landscapes, our daily sights and sounds are filled with ugliness and so we drink coffee…yes. There is so much BEAUTY in a cup of coffee isn’t there? The sensory experience of smell, taste, depth of color, sound of pour…or we lay down a rug or adorn ourselves…we’ve adorned ourselves and laid down rugs since the beginning of history…more of us and more rugs, more adornment, more boredom, discontent, ugliness that needs to be covered…more, more, more. Boom. Here we are. Covering the cracks in the floorboards…with coffee, ok, and rugs…
We require beauty or we become dangerous, destructive, darkness-makers…but we are light bringers, we are creators of beauty we are protectors of life…check all the holy books…it’s a responsibility not a “right”…seeing, creating, standing for beauty, every day. The beauty within the precious paper cup of good coffee and the beauty under the new rug—please give yourself enough silence, enough precious time, enough connection to that which you hold dear, that the uprising of your nature—that of a protector, a creator, a carer can be your drug of choice…the hungry ghost, well, it’s not you.
