SOMEBODY KNOCKED ON MY DOOR

I guess I understand the attraction of the just saying yes to the fundamentalist’s faith. Just believe in Jesus and all your questions will be answered. No pesky whys. No little earth shaking visitations by the Universe before you’ve even finished your first cup ginger tea. Too bad that not even the universe is strong enough to take the whole six billion on this planet and shake some sense into us all at the same time.

Apologies for the reruns, but two years later I’m still trying to make sense of what happened. And maybe it’s one of those things that you can’t “make sense of.”

A SENSE OF SOMETHING

 

Something totally, freaking, weird happened this morning. And folks that’s the mild description. I was thinking about the journal entry I did last night. The phrase “the whole planet is alive” popped through my mind. That fits, that was the theme of the entry. Then the sentence completed itself. I was not expecting this, I really was not. “The whole planet is alive; and screaming.”  And just for an instant, maybe half an instant, there was this mind-bending sense of “wrongness." A jumble of sounds and images. Continental plates grinding, whole forests falling, winds howling and a feeling of bottomless, endless grief. Sorry, that’s the best I can do with the sledgehammer we call language. I had to get out of the office for a few minutes. I was almost in tears for crying out loud.

 

That’s the best I can do. I don’t think there are words for what I felt in that microsecond. And I haven’t had anything mind altering this morning. Last time I checked oatmeal, applesauce and lemon ginger tea aren’t on any list of controlled substances. I suspect it was the entry itself. If words are mind altering, then I’m altered. While my brain is still doing little (and not so little) summersaults this had to happen for a reason. What the reason is I’m not sure….yet. I tapped into........what or who?

 

And I posted this later in the day because frankly I was still shaking in my boots. I’m not sorry I had the experience but thank heaven the universe doesn’t stop by an rearrange my neurons every day.

A SENSE OF SOMETHING PART 2

 

 I suspect that some of the individuals we call “insane” may be tapping more deeply into this sense of what we’re doing to the earth and ourselves. And they just can’t take the pain. Is this attempt to communicate always there and we’re drowning it out with drugs and objects? Or think it’s the devil tempting us and run screaming to the nearest fundamentalist house of worship. Oh, there’s a devil all right. It’s called fear and we’re choking on it.

 

I’m still a little overwhelmed by what happened this morning and frankly it scares the hell out me. I’m getting an overwhelming sense that the scales are tipping and it’s not in our favor. I’m also convinced that the answers we need won’t be found in the organizations that run the churches, mosques, synagogues, ashrams or political parties. Too many groups are too invested in defining who belongs and who doesn’t. Too worried about what might be happening the bedrooms and not enough about what is happening in the boardrooms. Too tied up in the power games. Too busy screaming that they have all the answers that they can’t even hear the questions. So damned scared that if someone else gets a little “more” of something we’ll end up with “less.” Somehow we have to tap into the individuals that realize that the balance needs to be righted. That if we stick to what really matters, there is enough to go around.

 

We matter simply because we are. Each of us is unique. Each of the over six billion people on this planet is unique. No one is expendable. And I think that’s what scares us. The refugee in Darfur is just as unique in the universe as President Bush. And just as special. What we can’t seem to admit is that the whole universe matters simply because it exists. Too many are chasing things that they believe will make them better somehow. And so many have so little that just surviving takes everything they have. One group can’t make the time to look up and the other group can’t find the extra strength.

 

I know that getting everybody to join hands and sing Kumbayah isn't going to solve the problem. But, I'm not going to give up, I've got too much riding on the outcome of this little thing we call life and so do the rest of us.

 

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We’ve watched most of the candidates, especially the Republicans, fall all over themselves claiming that they’re good little soldiers for the religious and political status quo. John McCain is finding himself trying to convince the likes of Limbaugh, Coulter and Dobson that he’s a “true conservative.” Maybe he should spend a little more time pointing out that these would be emperors don’t have any clothes on. Call them the bullies that they are, or better still ignore them.

The Democrats appear to be splitting on generational lines and the “newsies” are totally hopeless, hapless and helpless. I suspect that if someone poked a microphone in my face and asked me if I was going to vote for senator Clinton because she’s a woman and I’m a woman too: or senator Obama because he’s black and I was black too (I’m not really, but you get the picture) I would be very tempted to stick that mike where the sun doesn’t shine.

We’ve been Fox News and CNN’d to a fare thee well. If the question can’t be answered in one or two words or compressed into a ten second sound bite they don’t want to ask it.