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

Be a Light

be a light

“Can people be like light?” The question comes from a bright-eyed five-year-old (who in my view lights the room wherever she goes …).

“What do you think?” (my almost standard response to children’s questions–lets me know what they already have in mind …)

“I don’t know,” frown, scowl, “that’s why I’m asking YOU!”

(Oops, strategy backfired. Okay, I guess I deserved that)

“Why are you asking?” I am treading carefully here, asking again in a different way, but I am really interested in knowing what the question is about.

“My Nana told me I’m her light,” the girl’s young forehead creases in concentration. “She said, ‘you the light of my life!'”

“Aw … it’s a great expression! And a very sweet thing for her to say. I can totally see why.” Children of her age group often begin to notice that there are some things people say that do not quite make sense: the words don’t add up, and they realize that there has to be another meaning, something else that’s being conveyed by the words but is not the words themselves (e.g. “she has a sharp tongue” or “he has no heart” or “raining cats and dogs” …). Sometimes they can infer the meaning, sometimes they are lost or have some sense they are not sure about. I love it when they ask. “What do you think she meant?”

Girl shoots me a “there she goes again with her Speech Pathologist questions again” look, but she relents. She’s patient with me. “That she loves me?”

“Yep … and what else do you think it can mean that you are the light of her life?” I wait.

Eyebrows up, lips scrunched in thought, “… and … that she’s really happy to have me or happy to see me maybe?”

“Yes! Both. Very much so. Also that you are important to her, and that you bring her joy, and that you make her feel better by simply being you. All of that.”

The child smiles. Beams, more like.

We go on with the session. Suddenly she stops again and asks (it is very often that things percolate a while before another level of query bubbles up to the surface): “Can someone be a light for other people?”

“Do you mean for more than one person?” I want to make sure I understand.

A nod.

“Absolutely. I think you can be a light in many people’s lives.”

Pause, thought, creased forehead. Smile. “Oh, like, if you turn the light on then it is light for everyone?”

My turn to nod. My turn to smile. Super smart cookie, that one.

“Cool!” Eyes wide.  Now that she’s got it, she runs with it. “I wish … I wish I could be a light for every every EVERY ONE in the whole wide world!  A big light that goes all over around! You think I can?”

She may not know it, but I think she already is one …