<Aug./15>
Sometimes I feel as though I’m a fly on the wall
Just a fly on the wall, you understand
Watching this whole…
Crash-of-civilization thing
This … 6th Great Extinction thing
This coming-soon-to-a-town/country/world near you
Near-term extinction thing.
But alas!
While I feel as though to some degree I am
watching from a distance, a bit of a remove
(considering the depth of the denial all around me
so very very few of us able to see/confront/accept the truth
the whole truth & nothing but the truth
so help us, goddess
so very few with whom one may speak the difficult truth)
My arms & legs
head & heart
hands & feet
are in this human thing
this being-a-human-being thing
right up to my eyeballs!
I’m a mother, grandmother
sister
colleague
aunt
friend
In it right up to my eyeballs, I am!
It’s quite a show!
A bit too much drama
We are really in it up to here, now
… as they say
hmmm???
Quotations that spring to mind:
“There is only one courage, and that is the courage to go on dying to the past. Not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it. We all cling to the past, and because we cling to it we become unavailable to the present.” – Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” – G. K. Chesterton
“We tell lies when we are afraid…afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.” – Science fiction author Tad Williams, quoted in Deep Truth – Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Fate, by Gregg Braden
“We are privileged, and the duty of privilege is absolute integrity.” – John O’Donohue, Irish poet, philosopher and former priest
“In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.” – Jean Vanier
“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” – Quote displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. – quoted in Heat – How to Stop the Planet from Burning, by George Monbiot
“You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.” – Flonda Scott Maxwell (from Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, by Anne Wilson Schaef)
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid.” – Audre Lorde, 1934-1992
“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. That’s a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.” – Elizabeth Gilbert (Free Will on Dec. 23/15.)
“Your silence will not protect you.” – Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
“Hoard each joyous moment that comes to you.
No one knows how it will all end.”
Háfiz