A Hope To Quicken

energy

 

There’s a quickening of energies around the world.

Like all currencies, energy itself is neutral–it is what’s attached to it and how it is used that qualifies it into positive or not so, into what builds or what destroys, what mends or inflicts more wounding.

The Earth itself still rotates in the same general blinding speed it had for millennia too numerous to grasp. It hurtles through dark space with indescribable abandon, tethered by invisible forces to the star that keeps us all alive.

The overall mechanics of life and gravity hasn’t changed. Our awareness of it may have. Should.

With energies accelerated, we feel the rushed pulse of days, sometimes of mere moments. We sense the rotation of possibility, the immense power that can be harnessed, the twirl of time.

All is moving, quickened by both ignorance and understanding.

What we do with it–with the potential–is up to us.

Do we let slip down the slippery slopes of power-hunger, fear, and divisiveness … or do we harness good to raise our mutual consciousness, our moral compass, our social empathy to the reality that we are and always have been, One?

Do we take the historically familiar roads of vilifying those we do not care to get to know, of quantifying suffering of others as less painful and less necessary to end … Or do we truly recognize that hunger is still hunger, pain is pain, sorrow is more sorrow, that hate and violence beget only more of same? Do we resolve to do differently, not ‘again’ but in new ways?

Life has quickened. Bits of information spin around the globe in speeds now faster than the Earth itself. We are no longer separated by illusion.

Open eyes see clearly now.

We can, should, understand:

All. Is. One.

 

 

For The Daily Post

The Line

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Photo by: A. Barlev

 

They walk the line as morning comes

As new day draws its dawn,

They walk as night approaches close

And sunset sinks alone.

They walk the line of now and then

Of sand and rock, death, growth,

They walk as footsteps mark the soil

And press it deep with hope.

They walk where many walked before

With others not yet born,

They walk in dust of those who passed

Of stories told and torn.

They walk to sew new roads to life

Connections old as time,

They walk a line of young and old

Their hearts as close as mine.

For The Daily Post

The Sounds In The Silence …

 

“Hello darkness,

My old friend,

I’ve come to talk to you again …”

The song plays incessantly in my head, sparked awake by the words of a pre-teen who shared her nighttime worries with me.

She finds it difficult to sleep. Her ears strain to pick up any errant sound: A car’s brakes, a slammed door, people’s voices, steps, a distant bark. She’s afraid they’ve come.

She’s been told she shouldn’t worry. She’s done nothing wrong. Yet there are those who hadn’t, and still had loved ones taken. And she’s not from here. Not really. Not from birth, anyway.

What if the rules change and she’s deemed “returnable”?

What if they keep her away from her parents, send her back to where she’d come from? What if she cannot find the words, if they not let her explain that she is finally, finally, home?

She lies in bed at night. Listening. Making and discarding plans. Fretting in the dark.

Maybe she’ll hide. But where? Someone at school said they sometimes have dogs. She loves dogs. Police dogs — beautiful and focused and proud — never used to scare her. They do now. At their handlers’ command, they can hunt her down. She’s seen it. On TV. In her mind. Now her dreams.

“I listen to the sounds in the silence,” she whispered, eyes bright. “And I wait. Even in my dreams, I listen … and I cry when they come.”

 

 

For The Daily Post

Awake

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                                                                  Atlantic Sunrise: Na’ama Yehuda

 

 

Be awake.

In the world. For the world.

Be aware.

Of the life that unfolds

On pinpoint.

Keep your eyes

Open.

And your heart

Soft.

Wake up all words

Of hope.

Even those

Packed away in tight bundles

And locked.

Be awake

To the air. To the light. To the rain.

As shimmer reflects

And compassion

Remains.

 

 

For The Daily Post

Can You Hear?

Can you hear the hearts that beat

across the mountains, deserts, oceans

hoping for safe harbor,

an anchor

home?

Can you see small fingers gripping

other little hands

bereft of parents,

lost,

alone?

Can you hear the soft breaths

of babies

sleeping

in tired arms

weighted by

desperation,

violence, hate, war?

Can you hear the calls

in dreams

in prayer

for safe passage

for a welcome

to belong?

Can you —

how can you not —

hear,

the urgency

of hope

that hardship snuffed

and yet

still

yearns to grow?

 

refugees-express-co-uk

Photo by express.co.uk

 

 

For the Daily Post

 

Above all, Love.

Breathe now

The light

That dances on the pavement

Filters between branches of bare trees

From winter sky.

Breathe now

Because the truth

Remains

In spite

Of images

Or imaginings

Of misplaced

Amplified

Fear.

Breathe …

Because above all,

Love.

Of life

Of nature

Earth

All babies

Freedom

Oxygen and gravity.

Love of

Heart strings and connection

Of compassion

And

The ties that bind.

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Photo by A.Katz

 

For The Daily Post

The Scent of Home

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Child Refugee – Photo by UNICEF

The scent of home that she no longer has.

The spices, baking, the aromas

Of togetherness

And family

And love.

The scent of grandma,

Gone,

Killed by bombs.

The scent of ugliness

And war.

The scent of mornings

Blurred by smoke.

The scent of sea, now tainted

With the stink of gasoline

And sick

And worry.

The scent of tent

And mud

Hunger

Cold.

The scent of hope

Faint but held

In Baba’s handkerchief —

He said he’ll find them

One day

In Wherever Land.

The scent of fear

In mother’s arms

Trying to filter comfort through her own terror

Devastation. Loss.

The scent of home that she no longer has

Wafting away

In search

Of someone

Who will help

Her

Make a new one.

Pause

pause_-_chocolat

 

Before you lash out in righteousness to put down someone else,

Pause.

Before you cling-wrap your views against dissent or protest,

Pause.

Before you rush to justify hurtful decisions others’ made,

Pause.

Before you call ‘your’ God the only ‘right one,’

Pause.

Before you claim your nationality inherently superior,

Pause.

Before you blind yourself to others’ pain in a show of pseudo-legality,

Pause.

Before you seek to follow those who leave others behind,

Pause.

Before you point out others’ hate as ‘causing’ yours toward them,

Pause.

Before you rate some lives more worthy of respecting or protecting,

Pause.

Before you stand behind those who object injustice by inflicting it,

Pause.

Before you turn your back on instability you’d contributed to but now blame on others,

Pause.

Before you shrug off bullying, rudeness, disrespect, as “saying like it is,”

Pause.

Before you pack away the sway of facts, veracity, science, reality,

Pause.

Remember,

None of the above need be automatic.

None are the only way,

To live with some decisions you have made

Yet elect to look away from

Now that push has come to shove.

You are better than that.

Your soul will recall compassion.

It still remembers how,

If you just pause.