Bird Droppings February 2, 2012

Have we sold our souls?

 

Morning is a special time for me; it is a beginning and that is the easy way to say it. For me several aspects of this start to the day almost are routine, like taking our dog out then sitting down for writing and reading, each has become a significant part of my day. I walked out this morning and felt the coolness of perhaps hopefully the tail end of our warmest winter in many years. I will be watching to verify in a day or two General Lee the groundhog at Yellow River Game Ranch. Across the sky stars are literally alive and constellations everywhere, the stars were crystal clear with a hint of clouds creating a veil and lace pattern through much of the morning darkness.

 

“Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It’s in our hands.”  Cathy Better 

 

Yesterday I got into a discussion about a Bird Dropping from a month or two ago dealing with sacredness. In the course of the discussion I began to realize how much we have in our hedonism given away. I wrote a paper for my doctorial course of study on the stripping of soul from students as we demand and seek higher test scores as a means of showing learning. I listened last night to a news broadcaster thinking back and reflecting on the shootings at Virginia Tech and that young man’s anguish and angst that lead to it. That young man has observed and had experienced the hedonism of our society, mentioning this over and over in his rants. I began seriously thinking have we sold our souls for a few mere trinkets? One of the politician’s running for president got into a heated exchange with a mother whose son’s medication could run into the millions about how drugs should be market driven. His view is that without profits drug companies will not seek new drugs. A few lines down a Kansas hospital in a rural area, is luring doctors with a quiet and peaceful lifestyle and sense of accomplishment not money.

 

“It is not how many years we live, but rather what we do with them.” Evangeline Cory Booth

 

“Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality–not as we expect it to be but as it is–is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”  Frederick Buechner

 

Last night I sat down thinking and trying to put down words perhaps meaningful written pictures that may have significance. I emailed several people last night just touching base opening discussion about this idea of sacredness. But as I thought the interactions and intertwining of life that occur daily those we seemingly miss and ignore. I was talking with several high schoolers about how life is much like a puzzle interlocked one piece to the next and we tend too often miss seeing the tiny yet needed interconnections.

Listening to the story of VT and even years later still no real reasons and understanding as to why.  I recall many years back when I suggested psychiatric treatment for a student and was told not my call. Six years later he is sentenced to three life sentences for killing a mother and nearly killing two children that he was caring for.  Again tomorrow I have a similar situation unfolding although this time I think my voice is heard a bit more clearly.

 

“If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.”  Albert Camus  

 

“The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.”  Thomas Carlyle

 

Listening to the broadcaster rehashing the VT shootings and as I moved through the evening  yesterday, I recall thinking back to the shootings and of sensing something was amiss and even after knowing it is difficult to offer from a distance any sort of comfort to those in need other than keeping them on our minds and in our hearts. Most people as that day finished never missed a stride, there were tears from family, friends and those that knew the victims but beyond the moment it was lost on much of humanity. I tried to explain even in tragedy there is purpose and meaning be it in someone else’s pain and or our own. That concept is difficult to explain to people who live in a materialistic universe.

 

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” Crowfoot

 

I have used this quote many times and each time it seems appropriate. I remember as a child chasing fireflies across a meadow gathering those life forces in a jar to light my room and then releasing into the night watching them float away in the darkness. Life is seeing beyond the tangibles and foibles of our existence. Life is not the shirt, shoes or coat we wear. Life is about what is in your heart. Life is about your soul.

 

“It’s not how long life is but the quality of our life that is important.” Roger Dawson

 

“Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”  Charles Dickens

 

 In 1996 my brother passed away and my family was faced with a new beginning. We all had built our lives around my brother. He was severely disabled and our being inGeorgiawas directly related to John. As we celebrated his life reviewing the intricate webs that were laid each moment and people touched and lives affected what seemingly had been was now an enormous out pouring of life. Every day a new piece of that puzzle falls into place. It may be another teacher of special needs children, another person recalling the time spent helping with John’s rehab and how it impacted their life. Even recently talking with one of John’s teachers as she explained in a meeting their program at John’s old school. Within our difficulties and disasters always there is hope.  

 

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

We each approach the morning in a different way I embrace the day and begin with my writing seeing each moment then unfold trying to understand each tiny piece. Since 1996 I have taken many different roads and journeys and as I look back each has had meaning and direction and led me to now. I told a dear friend while I am applying for several positions teaching college part-time it is not because I do not enjoy what I am doing but because I may be needed elsewhere. It is about taking and experiencing the journey.

 

“Life is about the journey not the destination” Steven Tyler

 

Several years ago I received a call from my nephew that a close friend had been in a car accident and as the night proceeded I spent the night in the Athens Hospital holding a young man’s hand as monitors beeped and droned and he lay unmoving. We were all hoping that the numbers on the dials would change, they did not. When I arrived home on my computer was a sticky yellow note from my oldest son, the Steven Tyler quote from an Aerosmith song. As I think even farther back and as I was discussing sacred yesterday with a student, in 1968 as I left forTexasfor college I received a book from my parents on page 596.  

 

“To everything there is season, and a time, To every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;” Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

 

Many years ago Pete Seeger a folk singer and environmentalist wrote music and borrowed the words, a song was born “Turn Turn Turn” soon to be released by how appropriate “The Byrd’s”. “To every season turn turn turn there is a reason turn turn turn and a time for every purpose under heaven” the song became a hit.

 

“Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”  Robert Frost

 

So often a poets words offer comfort or give direction back to a journey set off course for one moment. There is no filling of a void yet when looking at life and all that has been, when looking at the journey to now there truly is no void. There is a turn in the road a new direction all that has led to this point has not changed and is there behind us lifting us guiding us strengthening us as we continue our experiences. I remember back to a photo of my son crossing a stream in north Georgia already sopping wet from falling in but still intent on making it across. He clambered stone by stone crossing the stream and a favorite Zen saying I often attach to the photo.

 

“You can never cross a stream the same way twice.” Zen Saying

 

We all can cross in our own time and there times when a hand is welcome. Years ago I set up a website for a youth group and today I will close with the starting line from that website “Friends are never alone”. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and today keep those friends who may need extra support close at hand and always give thanks.

namaste

bird