28th December 2001 13-10 CET
Lemmings or Gods?
One of life's greatest spiritual challenges is to try and show love,
tolerance, respect even to those who do not show it to others.
If we fail to do this are we not the same?
If we allow anger and hatred to rule our thoughts have we not
also become terrorists? Have we not also become that which
we disliked in the other?
It may well be that humanity will seek to dash headlong, like
lemmings, over the cliff of rationality and lovingness and into
the chasm of self destruction.....hmmm.. but, somehow, I do not
feel so.
"Throughout history there have been tyrants and they seem
to conquer and rule. But history shows they always, always fall.
Remember that when you doubt the way of Love. Always."
As has been seen In America with the proposals by the
Attorney General to change the balance of legality/principle
in respect of courts/trials for terrorists...when we are faced
with horrendous insult and injury to that which we hold
precious, in what way do we preserve the preciousness
by sacrificing it in the name of expediency?
It is in the moment of being 'attacked' that we define ourselves,
our principles, our lovingness. When that which is the basis of
our civilisation comes under gruesome challenge...that is the
moment when we most have the opportunity to place into
this reality those spiritual concepts.
Assaulted by a ceaseless barrage of claim and counter claim,
outrage and horror, it is easy to revert to 'old habits of
warfare'.
It has been well said that the greatest violence is poverty.
In what way, therefore, does the use of resource to wage
war enrich the ordinary people? Rather it performs
'the violence of poverty' against those very persons
it is claimed that war will protect. Ha! What a myth!
What a fairy tale!
Perhaps if we had spent more time, energy and resource
caring for each other, sharing with each other...perhaps
the malaria-like breeding grounds of injustice, inequality,
and deprivation would not have given birth to a plague
of terrorism.
It has also been said that the best form of defence is attack.
I say the best form of attack is compassion! This holds
the highest potential for the realisation of a fair, just and
enriched world. Rather than expending energy destroying,
is it really...really..beyond our capability to expend it in creating?
Is it not clear to all by now...that if we do not share then our
aspirations to justice, equality, freedom are simply dust
blown in a wind of chance?
And what is it I would have us share? Possessions? Hah!
We always do after we are dead, huh? Principles? Hah!
Such sharing has littered history with the bones of the innocent.
Freedom? Hah! Freedom is not a dream nor an idealogy. Freedom
is the song of a loving heart that it cannot resist singing.
There is only one thing we have. Only one thing with which we
come into this life and leave this life. There is only one thing
that holds us in this creativity.......and one thing that holds
us in eternity.....
Only one thing we can claim as our own....and only then when
we give it away......
UNconditional LOVE.
return to website.........................................http://lo.2ya.com
Friday, December 28, 2001
Monday, December 24, 2001
24th December 2001 01-45 am
Absent
The lake just outside, maybe 50 metres from my home, is over
30 kilometres long. Today spasmodic shafts of sunlight
sparkled from the fast forming ice, reflected onto
nearby pine trees and shimmered on the black/white patterned
trunks of the noble Birch trees.
Nature's team of artists have been busy pointilising white
highlights on all the trees and bushes and the carpetting
team have been doing their thing with sublty textured
white over the land itself.
In short...it looks like we are in for one of those good
old yesteryear traditional white Christmases.
I've written and sent the cards cards..still have a few
precious ones to send over email....and followed
my personal tradition of playing Handel's Messiah as
well as some of the Christmas 'tunes' we all like to hear.
I am especially fortunate to possess a cassette of an
incredible Norwegian choir, a boys and mens choir, called
Solvguttene (The Silver Boys) who render some of the very
special Scandinavian Christmas melodies with a purity of sound
and precision of co-ordination that...well, frankly, brings tears
to the eyes.
Outside our home I have, for the past 2 years, erected a 1 metre
diameter 'Christmas Star' composed of Christmas lights.I understand
it is visible from many kilometres away, across and down the lake.
I usually decorate inside with hanging decorations, some of which I
have had for over 30 years. These kind of connect me to my past, to
my life in England and all those incredible Christmases that shower my
memory more thickly than any snowfalls can.
So far, however, I have not been able to find the motivation to
erect the star or install any decorations.
In my small, perhaps insignificant, way I am mindful of a need
to remember all those who will not be able to share this Christmas
with a loved one's presence, someone who has now departed this life.
I especially feel this to be, as it were, highlighted by the events of
September 11th. This first year of the new millenium has been
a unique year for all of mankind. It is a year that we can never forget
and there are many, many, many whose existence and presence
cannot be forgotten.
The unfolding of this tragedy in all it's graphic detail through
the instantaneous media now available to us, has located all
of us into the middle of an enormous tragedy in a way that
perhaps we have never seen or known before.
So, I feel my lights should not go up this year as a token of
a shared grief. My wife and I will probably light some candles
in the snow outside, as we have done previously...though this
time I shall light mine with a greater sense of commemoration.
Christmas is a time for family, for sweet memories of friends
and remembrances of people we have loved...and still love
though they are no longer in our physical presence.
So, my "Christmas lights" will be absent as a token of the 'unseen
presence'. It is a small token. It is a sincere token.
Sometimes it is only when something appears to be absent in our
reality that it is really present in our awareness.
return to website............................................http://lo.2ya.com
Absent
The lake just outside, maybe 50 metres from my home, is over
30 kilometres long. Today spasmodic shafts of sunlight
sparkled from the fast forming ice, reflected onto
nearby pine trees and shimmered on the black/white patterned
trunks of the noble Birch trees.
Nature's team of artists have been busy pointilising white
highlights on all the trees and bushes and the carpetting
team have been doing their thing with sublty textured
white over the land itself.
In short...it looks like we are in for one of those good
old yesteryear traditional white Christmases.
I've written and sent the cards cards..still have a few
precious ones to send over email....and followed
my personal tradition of playing Handel's Messiah as
well as some of the Christmas 'tunes' we all like to hear.
I am especially fortunate to possess a cassette of an
incredible Norwegian choir, a boys and mens choir, called
Solvguttene (The Silver Boys) who render some of the very
special Scandinavian Christmas melodies with a purity of sound
and precision of co-ordination that...well, frankly, brings tears
to the eyes.
Outside our home I have, for the past 2 years, erected a 1 metre
diameter 'Christmas Star' composed of Christmas lights.I understand
it is visible from many kilometres away, across and down the lake.
I usually decorate inside with hanging decorations, some of which I
have had for over 30 years. These kind of connect me to my past, to
my life in England and all those incredible Christmases that shower my
memory more thickly than any snowfalls can.
So far, however, I have not been able to find the motivation to
erect the star or install any decorations.
In my small, perhaps insignificant, way I am mindful of a need
to remember all those who will not be able to share this Christmas
with a loved one's presence, someone who has now departed this life.
I especially feel this to be, as it were, highlighted by the events of
September 11th. This first year of the new millenium has been
a unique year for all of mankind. It is a year that we can never forget
and there are many, many, many whose existence and presence
cannot be forgotten.
The unfolding of this tragedy in all it's graphic detail through
the instantaneous media now available to us, has located all
of us into the middle of an enormous tragedy in a way that
perhaps we have never seen or known before.
So, I feel my lights should not go up this year as a token of
a shared grief. My wife and I will probably light some candles
in the snow outside, as we have done previously...though this
time I shall light mine with a greater sense of commemoration.
Christmas is a time for family, for sweet memories of friends
and remembrances of people we have loved...and still love
though they are no longer in our physical presence.
So, my "Christmas lights" will be absent as a token of the 'unseen
presence'. It is a small token. It is a sincere token.
Sometimes it is only when something appears to be absent in our
reality that it is really present in our awareness.
return to website............................................http://lo.2ya.com
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