I can pick my poison any day, of the headlines that I might write about.
• The impeached president will remain in office and most likely be re-elected after the pre-decided Congressional trial.
• Coronavirus spreads rapidly and the U.S. declares a public health emergency.
• Britain has officially left the EU.
• U.S. National Parks being destroyed by land sales, mining, and budget cuts.
• The world is completely shook by Kobe Bryant’s accidental death, but don’t blink an eye at the 417 intentional mass shootings that occurred in 2019.
Those headlines just keep bustling through the turnstile, like kids in mouse ears on their way to Disney World.
Most days I choose not to address those headlines here. I figure most of you read the news, see the news, hear the news, and by the time you wind up here, you are looking for something other than the news.
If you’d rather we talk about it here, let me know, because. By god, I DO have an opinion. On all of it.
The only thing about today’s headlines, versus the ones in the past, is that I fear these are ones we may never recover from. I truly believe some of these stories are leaving irreparable damage on our country, our world.
I read a quote this morning by William Whewell, in which he said,
“Every failure is a step to success.”
You see, I think this is true if you are working on inventing a light bulb. But when it comes to the ways of the world, every failure we experience is making us weaker as a society, a government, a home. These failures are systematically destroying our country.
So. There it is.
Okay, so today, I will not be filled with all doom and gloom. Here was another headline from this morning.
“Sarcophagus dedicated to sky god among latest ancient Egypt trove”
Yes, it is true. This happened in Minya, Egypt. Those bands of exploring diggers there, found an underground treasure. A bunch of channels, and tombs, and even a sarcophagus dedicated to the sky god Horus.
You know the sky god, Horus. The falcon-headed guy. Son of Isis. Ruler of all things sky. Even the sun and the moon. But Horus who was the good god who ultimately restored order to the land.
Restored order to the land. And. They found a place where people honored those notions of the power and goodness of nature.
I hope I see a falcon today. Even a hawk would do, I suppose.
Sometimes, that is where we need to go. Away from the headlines, and to a place where there is peace, and goodness, and the ways of the natural world. Where it is as it all should be.
In the past few days, I’ve witnessed something, twice, that I had never seen in my entire life. I knew it happened in theory, but I’d never had the opportunity to see it. Twice.
I saw a squirrel fuss around on the ground, to an fro, standing, scratching his little head, and then scurrying about some more. Finally, he stops, and starts digging with this little hands. Dig, dig. And eventually, he extrudes a nut from the ground, hoisting it triumphantly above his head, like when Rafiki raises Simba above his head in The Lion King.
And then he tucked that nut under his arm and trotted away, a little smile on his furry squirrel face.
I cheered. I jumped up and down, and shouted, “Woot, woot” in the middle of my living room. I yelled, “You go Skippy-man. You go.”
Today I hope I see a falcon.
And today I hope I see a squirrel retrieve another nut.
But not at the the same time. For the sake of the squirrel.
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“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
― Rumi
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“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
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“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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* I know I repeat quotes here. But some bear repeating. From the Bible of my own.
