Glorious Crestone Peak
I don’t believe that humanity can vaccinate our way to health. Nature will not allow it. …
Health is the state of natural harmony producing optimum performance. Gregge Tiffen
The Sangres are glorious this morning. Fog and low hanging clouds drifting about change the scene moment to moment. Springtime’s clean, cool, crisp air after yesterday’s record-breaking snow and rain. Sun’s rays come, then disappear. Zadie Byrd is perky yet patient as I stop to take a photograph. Mind begins to clear. Heart and soul take in the beauty as nourishment.
Love. This is it.
With some encouragement, my earlier heaviness lifts. At the same time, I invite curiosity about what messages that heaviness, even a touch of angst, might be carrying to remain. What the heck woke me from a peaceful sleep before dawn? What drew me to open the computer before opening my journal and picking up my pen?
I felt as if something had happened overnight or was happening in the moment. And I felt a need to know. Nothing caught my attention as I quickly scanned the headlines, not that there isn’t an abundance of jarring events being reported. ‘Close the computer. Open the journal. Be quiet. Listen. It’s blog day after all.’ That wasn’t my inner voice speaking. It was my rational mind. I wasn’t able to do so and allowed my attention to drift through the subject lines of my inbox.
One, caught my eye – ‘Covid Vaccine Update’ via _____ (a political organization whose views mostly align with mine). What!? Why was a political organization sending a vaccine update? Like so many updates and news flashes from groups these days, it was a request for a contribution to their campaign to encourage everyone to get vaccinated for Covid. While they certainly aren’t the first to jump on the vaccine bandwagon, they are the first to ask for financial help to fuel their campaign.
Somehow that crossed a line for me. Anger flashed. How dare they! Now, ‘close the computer …’ I did. I opened my journal a penned a bit about my disappointment with humanity and my grappling with knowing who and what to trust in this seemingly post-fact world. I was also bristling about the push to vaccinate, the subtle and not so subtle pressures that I personally feel as someone whose body (and soul) has so far guided me to decline. Why is it that this very personal health choice has been dragged into the political arena? Who benefits from the further division this creates?
Unlike some, I don’t believe that I have a moral obligation to receive the vaccine in order to protect others and ‘stop the pandemic’. I have reservations about the ‘science’ that is being reported. And questions about science and results we aren’t being told. Where, for example, is the science, the education about the impact of the food we eat to be found in mainstream reporting? What about air quality? Water quality? The list goes on.
Most of all, I don’t believe that humanity can vaccinate our way to health. Nature will not allow it. Health by vaccine isn’t true health. It is merely the absence of certain symptoms that cause distress, and yes, even death.
For me the moral issue is to take a stand for a new health story. One that pivots from the disease avoidance and management approaches of current systems to creating a culture of health, as Gregge Tiffen suggests: natural harmony producing optimum performance for all. Creating a Culture of Health requires new stories across many sectors – agriculture, environment, infrastructure, social/economic justice and more.
First though creating a culture of health requires us to look beyond current definitions and practices to dream what natural harmony producing optimum performance for all may look link. There are people and organizations doing just that. Find them. Support them. Join them.
Blanca - Glorious as well!