Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

A video is being recirculated where a young woman (shaking in her voice) asks if she, as a peaceful Muslim along with a majority of her peers, matter. A committee member, Brigitte Gabriel, shoots her down telling her that throughout history the peaceful majority has been, and it’s implied will always be, irrelevant.

As a Christian and peaceful majority myself, I kind of have a problem with that.

I believe we have been led to feel we are irrelevant, and I believe the media does this, our governments do this, and revisionist history supports this, but it simply isn’t true. There are many people in agreement with me throughout history who thought that was a load too… I’m pretty sure Irena Sendler or Alan Turing didn’t think they were irrelevant or the many number of other folks who saved Jews during World War II?

And let’s not forget Rosa Parks? I’m pretty she wasn’t irrelevant?  Or, the Man in the Red Bandanna, Welles Crowther, pretty sure he didn’t feel irrelevant either on 9-11. Not to mention all the first responders and other regular people helping (dare I say “let’s rolling”) that day who knew how important they are—not were--are.

We are all that important, we just can’t or don’t want to see it. I’m not saying that the threat of NUTJOBS of any and all flavors isn’t real. It is very real, but we must start having real conversations about religion, politics, and humanity; and start thinking for ourselves, rather than following a lesser evil who may be more interested in an agenda rather than your grandkids’ world.

It’s time to stop being distracted and polite, to stop being so self-righteous and “right”, and start listening/living a commandment we were given by a young much-maligned-in-his-time Jewish preacher that was very simply stated: “Love one another as I have loved you.” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t irrelevant either. He isn’t to me; He’s my teacher and Savior. And whether you believe that or not doesn't matter. Love doesn't care.

Hate will never accomplish the kind of world I wish for my daughter and her children and their children.

A history that continues to be recycled where the peaceful majority are made to feel and rendered irrelevant will never accomplish that either. Ends justifying means do not work and often create a bigger mess than we started with (i.e.  Governments  training and arming factions that we turn around and send our sons and daughters to fight a few years later leaving infrastructures in shambles and opening a very real door for a new cycle to being again, each one worse than the last…)

I thank you for reading. I’ve included a link to the video here, and a blogpost that has an ending I wholeheartedly agree with. This is my something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYjiSaV5VoE

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/07/13561/

The poem, Abou Ben Adhem

Bindlestiffs, for Marie

I gave it all Walt Whitman had
to celebrate,
and took myself past the Great Divide:

where the sand looks red
because the sky tells it to
and Mars doesn't seem so foreign

where I ceased to sweat
so I wondered if I was southern anymore
and what that meant?


Almost too late, I met a woman
who burned:
earning her money like a Bedouin
with fainting goats reluctant to herd

she gathered us up anyway
whispering in our ears
fears she had no more
but still relatable to us.

Cautious, we rallied from four corners:
marveling at sandfalls,
and Atlantis being dammed,
or myths of legend peoples turned to stone
with a coyote's moan...

soaked in dust, we'd rode for days
playing musical chairs in-between
while I listened for the needle's pause
and my turn beside the shepherdess...

it came.
then it started again.

Mumford and Sons with an Italian's drawl...
with tales of serendipity's' call from a salt flat shore.
I could no more deny it
than my own southern speak

from my shotgun perspective
with that sun's last peak singing
celebrating all that we had become
in just three days, I wished:

That we were just getting started.

epiphany, for savannah

epiphany

 

there comes a moment in life as a parent

a moment of undiluted, focused clarity

when you see the child watching…

and you know…

you know that child is at once your mirror

and also your sponge….infinite possibility:

 

 

your chance to make a difference in this world

 

and if you’re lucky, you’ve noticed it early

because you’ve been watching her as well?

 

you’ve watched her wonder about lengthening shadows

and the furrows on your brow…

you’ve watched her wander aimlessly with a stick

zig-zagging behind, zen-like in mother-earth

a meditation garden of her own imagination…

you’ve watched her come into her self.

 

and to be completely honest,

there’s a celebration to be had there?

a welcoming home….in letting her unfold

and be who she will…whoever that is,

learning from the zigs and zags in that shifting sand

 

all the while offering her a hand to hold when she needs one?

 

there comes a moment in life as a mother…

a moment when you discover

the child that you’ve delivered…

can also deliver you ~

 

if you’ll let her.

someday, for my dad

someday ~ for my dad

 

days of grace, saving face as the last light fades on someday

in shallowed breath the time that’s left is marshy tide pulling away

subsiding tears ~ perfected fears of due time come to call

we’re all awash in the human cost of shadow's valley in the fall…

 

on someday.  One day I too will find my mirror lacks reflection.

I’ll walk alone the long way home catching memories of inflection:

energy burned in place, captured time and space I’ll revisit in our dreams

time and again we’ll walk hand in hand the foggy nightscapes so serene...

 

of someday.

the new collosus, revisted. . .

 

 for Ms. Agnes, Holocaust survivor

 

they wore stripes…

and stars pinned to chests

swollen with lies they were sold to get them

there...still freshly ringing.

 

tired, hunrgy and huddled

they yearned to breathe once again

a freedom they had known

just days before the death trains came

taking their motherland,

their family,

their identity,

their youth.

 

raining with a poison of generations denied,

numb even among the 7,000 remaining

they had no thing left but a colossal loss

embossed with apathy.

 

they were  like pinpoints on a black shroud.

 

we wear stars . . .

and stripes

swollen, proud chests

endowed and silently believing more than we should

the blurbs we are told to keep us shielded behind borders.

 

like inscriptions on a historical plaque,

we are tired, poor and huddled.

hungry for the ideal of our motherland

our family,

our identity,

our youth,

  

and our freedoms

to know the truth once and for all

in all of our stars and stripes.



Soon there will be no more survivors. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hermeneutics

 as above,

I found this list

of places to look-up

without a stiff neck:

only paused wondering,

shaded eyes looking…

At that!

 

so below…

 

even more-so here: there’s

no fancying flight or Newton’s defying

antics …just being, sometimes

discarded or maybe lost?

my cosmos reflected in a storm’s drain

refraining from judgement

 

as within,

 

Can I do the same?

Within this cosmic realm of daily

Creation in waking and sleeping?

Promising everything?

Expecting nothing….

Whether I deserve it or not?

 

so without…

 

the mirror finds me:

deflated,

elated

with my naked words

whispered with a reader’s inflection

transcending  mortal immortality.