Lichen Heart in the Woods Out Back
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love is the residence of true power.
Power, love, truth, harmony, curiosity and more have been ever present in my dance with Life this week. Opening Hafiz book of poetry The Gift last night, this message landed in my heart and travelled with me in the realms of deep sleep.
Why Aren’t We Screaming Drunks?
Hafiz
The sun once glimpsed God’s true nature
And has never been the same.
Thus that radiant sphere
Constantly pours its energy
Upon this earth
As does He* from behind
The Veil.
With a wonderful God like that
Why isn’t everyone a screaming drunk?
Hafiz’s guess is this:
Any thought that you are better or less
Than another man**
Quickly
Breaks the wine
Glass.
*or she; **or woman or other being in any form
Hafiz words of warning about the dangers of comparison rang deeply true, having earlier ‘received’ a message that bubbled from within: “You must get beyond this patriarchal paradigm of right/wrong, power over thinking and choosing in order to call forth and co-create the new and ancient paradigm of care – the rebirth and restoration of matriarchal ways of being and doing.”
The message, not new, resonated with me in some new way, like an old fire being rekindled. The Truth of Oneness feels alive within me in this time of so much dissonance around the world.
I felt this Truth on an early morning walk, as I was deeply aware of the harmony IN Nature and present to my long-standing desire to live my life in harmony WITH Her. I see this Truth in the seeming small acts of kindness and care in community, choices that loom large in pointing the way forward and co-creating what can be. I see it in the ways of Nature – mothers birthing, feeding, caring, teaching their young. Families of elephants, flocks of birds, schools of fish. Families of trees and plants in the forest and grasses on the plains.
Individually and collectively, the natural world is a teacher and guide for how Life is designed to be on this small blue marble we call home. Gaia. Mother Earth. The power of love abounds in Her beings. I see it in the heart rocks I observe as I walk this territory I call home. Just this morning I saw it in the prints of deer hooves and the pattern of lichen growing on a rock. Clear guidance from our Mother to love.
Somewhere, somehow along our evolutionary path we humans turned away from this natural harmony of our planet’s design. We chose a path of ‘power over’, of violence and war, of win/loose, of control rather than paths of co-creation, collaboration, care. We dared think some are better than others; and that we are at the top. We’ve exploited Gaia’s gifts and one another in unsustainable ways that can no longer stand. We broke the wine glass.
Admirable, well-intentioned efforts to legislate care for humanity and the planetary being into a system of power over have had limited success at best. Sadly, such ideas have become mere pawns in the game, and, as we witness today, are being used to further divide us.
Our evolutionary call is not for more funding, more programs, more crumbs from the ‘power over’ table. Our evolutionary call is for a change of heart, a collective shift in consciousness where the ways of control and power over have no fuel to continue. It is time to go beyond what is and to attend to what can be, to leap to love and co-creation of a new world from the ways of love.
Just as Nature does each and every day. She’s waiting, though not so patiently these days.
Love is the residence of true power. Let’s abandon the noise of the world and listen to our hearts, trusting and following where they lead. Let’s break no more wine glasses. Rather let us sip the rich nectar of Nature’s harmony and follow Her lead.
Hoof Prints of Deer on the Morning Path