Hopeless Opportunity

 

HOPELESS OPPORTUNITY

 Copyright 2026 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

We, these nominally freewill individual elements of consciousness, find ourselves in this world of entropy, inevitable death, need, hunger, suffering, and evil.  We exist in more or less solitary confinement, our experience of life singular and isolated, with no way to share the essence of what it deeply feels like to be you and me.  

This might initially seem discouraging, and then depressing, and then abjectly hopeless.  

But only because we miss the point.  Perceived from a different perspective, a distinct Light becomes evident in the admitted darkness.

We are placed in a form of existence with boundless opportunity to do good and practice Love.  Yet our individual corporeal existence is all about us, all about our birth, all about our growth, all about our eternal destiny.

We are given ample, indeed boundless, opportunity to do good, to help, to alleviate suffering, to rescue, to heal, to comfort.  Anywhere we turn there is need, which is to say, opportunity.

We do not have to save the world.  We cannot save the world.  But we can save someone or something, and in the process accept the gift of our own salvation.

There need be little torment about exactly what to do.  In this world of suffering, the opportunities are boundless.  Raise your children, do a good job, or rescue animals, or shelter the homeless, or serve on church committees, or be politically informed and active.  But for God's sake, for your sake, do something.  There is no single right path.  There is no way for you to save the world.  But there are endless ways to save something and someone.  

That is the nature and Purpose of this world of entropy, to provide opportunity, to provide the Choice.  At its core foundational structure, below the infinite mathematical sequences that can only tease at a pseudo-determinism, resides entropy, the statistically not quite impossible, and hence inevitable, evolution of conscious life, and the inexorable death of that life.  The resulting overall perceived image is a grisly panoply of carnivorous cruelty.  Yet at the pixilated level of the individual elements of isolated consciousness, there we see the Purpose, the beautiful Purpose, the redeeming Purpose, in the opportunity to  choose Love and beauty in whichever direction they turn.  

It is a Universe and Creation of suffering.  It is a Universe and Creator suffering…...all for us, for each of us…..we children being born into what seems darkness because our eyes are still closed, we children of a Light awaiting our Choice to let it shine through us.

Copyright 2026 Don Ray.

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Conflict and Opportunity

 CONFLICT AND OPPORTUNITY

 Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Conflicts, between nations and among people, inevitable.

Collapse of systems, inevitable.

Conflict internally, inevitable.

Conflict, what to do, the assessment of what is right.  Leaving one’s  children in order to earn money to feed those children.  Choosing among overlapping demands of friends, family, obligations, God, church, team, patriotism, pets, colleagues.

Conflict and choice…..there is the core nature of this worldly life.  Each moment at work, playing with children, helping a friend, supporting the team, is a moment not given to all the others.

Law and order, compassion, enforcement, acceptance…...each of them right, each justifiable.  Each choice of what to do bringing to light everything not done.

We defer the choice to holy texts, to imams and preachers, to team colors, to authority, blessed authority, anyone, anyone, to save us from the torment of choice.

There will be suffering, and we don't want to make it worse, but the lovingly purchased pet food entailed suffering and death of natural resources or confined domesticated livestock.

Conflict and choices, enough choice by one group of people leading to conflict with that other group who made a different choice.

All the potential good... all the consequent suffering...

Some agonize over the choices.  Others don't.

"Just choose!" time and mortality demand.  Decide who will suffer, who you will neglect, while trying to love and help the others.  

Every opportunity is from God?.....but the "ruler of this world", satan or coyote or crow, confuses the issue.

Note and observe, record without judgement, then adjust as feels right.  That is a way to avoid taking control.  It is a way to make informed decisions.  

This is a finite world.  It is so in order to promote values and awareness.  It is the big Choice that matters.  

It is a world of mortality.  Only in the limitations of mortality do values and priorities arise.

God does indeed place before us opportunities, but we cannot take advantage of all of them.  The real opportunity is the Choice…..and there is no right answer for that Choice.  Manifold opportunities to rescue mean manifold necessities to neglect.  It is simply so in this world.  It is important,  critically important, to recognize that.

Give up control, but don't think that means escaping terrible choices.  The desire to escape moral choices leads to horrors of ISIS, Taliban, and Baptists.  Make informed decisions.  Be aware of what you are doing.  Accept, and this is critical, what you cannot do as determined by each choice of what to do.  

Yes, each life opportunity, each opportunity to serve and help and heal and rescue is from God, personally delivered to you, demanding your response.  And you cannot do it all.  It is a huge act of faith and spiritual growth to recognize and accept that.  

Mortality demands faith to accept what cannot be.  Eternity assures all good will be. 

Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Juniper Tribe

 

 

JUNIPER TRIBE

 

Hillside

In a tribe of junipers.

This is the safe time, the ancient time.

Only bears and coyotes up here.

Sunday, bless-ed Sunday morning.

The noisy threats abate for a moment,

not exactly out of respect or reverence,

but tradition and societal norms will do,

if it momentarily quiets the violent cacophony.

Safe time.

Ancient time.

Future time.

Copyright 2026 Don Ray

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Relationship Inflation

 

RELATIONSHIP INFLATION

 

Interpersonal connection is ultimately all we have, but its value has been subject to a deadly economic inflation as pseudo-connection has been rendered unlimited by digital media.  The principle at work  is the same as currency inflation.  Produce too much money in response to demand or economic weakness and the currency loses its value.  Our spiritual economic weakness, the hunger for more and more meaningful relationship, has been met with a profligate printing of currency in the form of FaceBook, Instagram, and the panoply of other social media.  We can connect with anyone anywhere at any time.  

As a result, individual relationships and interpersonal bond have been devalued.  We find ourselves in the position of so many nations throughout history who met economic privations not with addressing foundational economic weaknesses but by printing more money to momentarily placate the hungry, demanding masses.

We have not addressed the underlying crippling spiritual economic condition that leaves us hungry, empty, bitter, angry, frightened, and lonely.  We have responded to our spiritual ache of loneliness by minting ever more digital  interactions, rendering them all worthless.  We lug our bag of "likes", "followers", and "friends" to the relationship store and come away with a stale piece of bread, to which we respond by collecting more "likes", "followers", and "friends", each newly minted "connection" rendering all connections more superficial and fleeting.

Values of currencies arise only from the productivity underlying them, productivity in turn arising from work and investment.  Values of relationships likewise possess that value only when productive, when the exchange of relationship interaction among parties has some mutual and meaningful lasting benefit.  That is an economic parameter independent of any treasury, exchequer, or media corporation.  We each individually determine the value of the social currency we mint every day, with our authenticity, depth, and sincere listening, none of which are encouraged by screens and keyboards.  Log off.  Listen.  Care.  Watch the wealth accrue.

Digital Seduction

 Digital Seduction

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Copyright 2026

Is my present typing of any worth?  Will any of this message be discoverable in some distant day?

Everything indicates the avalanche of app evolution and digital format changes will render digital information of today indecipherable in the near future.  
The stunning inconsistencies and oversights of Artificial Intelligence profoundly testify to the unreliability of this digital force we have summoned forth.

My year of exploring many new softwares and devices has further confirmed that we can have no confidence in the answers so confidently pronounced by AI.

The sweetly naive responses of many people to contrived imagery demonstrates how readily manipulatable is the general populace.  

The lack of explanations and contradictory explanations for the unanticipated behaviors of my new devices testifies to our frightening ignorance about what really resides in them and what it will do.

Yet most people are seduced into implicitly trusting the apps and devices.  Permissions are automatically granted.  At this moment I employ the convenience of a soulless device created to feed profit to unseen oligarchs, a device with access to my inner needs and thoughts, a device with the knowledge of the ages about how to manipulate human behavior.

Unaware, we long ago passed the event horizon, but we have now fallen deeply enough into the singularity's grip that those of us old enough to remember the before-times can unambiguously discern the evident signs of our passage.  Our destination however, remains shrouded in the ominous darkness of our naive ignorance.  

We know only that the oligarchs summoning forth this inscrutable spirit do so for their personal profit and power.  We know that to that end they imbue it with skills to manipulate and control us.  We know that we do not know how this AI servant-become-master works.  We know that the governments we hire to defend us have prostituted themselves and betrayed us to the financial seduction of the digital oligarchs.  

This would not seem a recipe for positive outcomes.  In the inevitable ensuing societal storm, it will be up to individuals, it will be up to individual choices of morals and compassion and empathy, to salvage anything of spiritual value from the conflagration.  So it was and always has been.  A proffered hand, a trigger not pulled, a testimony of faith before execution, through the ages ruled by the worst of humanity, individual actions - relationships - and sacrifices have maintained the Light in the world, sometimes dim and flickering, but never ever fully extinguished, always, eternally, enduring.
Copyright 2026

Destructive Gentleness

 

DESTRUCTIVE GENTLENESS

So practical and understandable, the building of armies, the toughening of the children.

How inept, weak, and incompetent I feel in comparison to the guys who are tough, the professionals who are accomplished, the heroes who have survived.

Is their path superior?  Is it the better path to study martial arts, to prioritize toughness and combat skills?

Does gentleness have a place anywhere?

Is gentleness counterproductive? 

Is gentleness destructive?

Is gentleness so impractical, so irrelevant, so pointless that we would be better off relegating it to a wish-list but not wasting precious life on trying to practice it, unless with our own children in the safety of our well defended home?

We live in a world of walls.

We  surround ourselves with walls out of necessity.

How appealing it is, that image of security and privacy!

How imprisoning that is, that image of security and privacy.

What place gentleness and vulnerability in this world?

Gentleness and vulnerability appear only in brief flashes in scriptures and texts, and are for the most part carefully avoided in creeds and dogma.

We, of whatever religion, recite our beliefs, claiming we believe in this or that and such or the other, delightful intellectual constructs for our minds.  But seldom do our recitals of beliefs about theology and eschatology or our mantras of methods for enlightenment and transcendence invoke the word “gentleness”.

Our media, our sports, and our heroes hardly hammer home admonitions to practice gentleness.

For a politician “gentleness” might be misinterpreted as weakness.

Gentleness is far too impractical, and mainly, far too dangerous, to ever survive as a political position or religious dictate, much less as a way of life.

So, the world continues as it always has, practical and pragmatic, violent and tragic.

Those we would follow, cheer, and vote for must have big muscles or expansive egos, not big hearts and expansive souls.

Gentleness remains unencouraged and unnoticed. 

Yet we are always grateful when we are the recipient of it.  Its salt in the cauldron of humanity keeps the world from devolving into even worse violence and brutality.  With no rewards for it, no hall-of-fame for it, no high titles for it, and no job openings for it, gentleness avoids spotlights and awards - quietly laying its foundations for lives and growth and healing in even the midst of the clash and combat of this world, gentleness quietly revealing the real meaning of strength and courage.

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

For the Children

FOR THE CHILDREN

As I listen to reports from Sudan, as I watch reports from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and Democratic Republic of the Congo, I wonder how the opposing peoples’ goals so violently diverge.

If you look to opposing sides in any conflict, business - tribal - sectarian - religious - international or military, and ask what they ultimately want, down at the personal level of daily real life, might we find anything in common?

Would everyone want security for their children?  Would everyone want enough nutritious food?  Would everyone want health?  Would everyone want peace and security?

If you had these discussions even with fundamentalists who believe the only way to achieve their ends is through war and violence (apparently their God being too enfeebled to construct their pending Kingdom or Paradise without our help) would even those fundamentalists not still hope for the same ultimate objectives for their children?

Do our differences come down only to the means by which to attain the same unknowingly shared goal?

What if we focused on that goal, on the longed-for goal, on our dreams and aspirations, on our highest hopes, might we not find some ground for agreement?

If we first established that, if we first established the realization among warring parties that they ultimately all seek the same basic outcome and differ only in the path to reach it, might such revelation not dramatically improve the odds of discerning some uncontested, mutually shared objective?

Perhaps parties who enter the negotiations with the belief that their optimal outcome can be attained only upon the extermination of their enemies might recognize their enemies are not so different after all.  If two parties were forced to acknowledge that they share the same wants, needs, and desires, if they were forced to look into the eyes of each other’s children, might that at least in some incremental way temper the stridency and ameliorate some of the hatred?

When we enter discussions on the basis that “they” want to destroy us, of course we feel we must first destroy them.  But what if destroying us is not their objective?  What if they simply want to raise their children in safety and security and in the culture, society, traditions,  and  religion of their mothers and fathers? 

If in negotiations we could strive not to win, not to conquer, not to inflict our beliefs – religion - economic system - political system - ruling monarchy - and ancient prophecies on those others, but instead enter negotiations with the avowed goal of securing safety and security and health for our children - and their children - might we surprisingly find ourselves on the same side?

If we knew our children could grow up with the religion and beliefs and culture and dress and mores and leaders of our choosing, would we really feel so compelled to attack the other side’s children?

Of course, the fundamentalists and psychopaths and the greedy will always choose war and killing for the sake of war and killing.  We can only pray there are not enough fundamentalists and psychopaths and greed driven executives to provide the critical mass necessary to sustain war.

It is fear, fear for our children, it is injustice, injustice for our children, that stoke our condoning of and participation in the wars.  Hence the fundamentalists and psychopaths and greed riddled executives always have to portray the “others” as threatening.  Then, in the face of perceived threat, we rise to the occasion to defend our children.

Truth be known, the north/south Koreans have little interest in destroying the other.  They just don’t want to be destroyed themselves.  Most Sunni and Shia could care less about differences in opinion about inherited power more than a millennia ago.  They just don’t want to have their children’s school blown up.  Even Israelis (excluding the most rabid Zionists) might give up the quest for genocidal Zionist expansion between the Nile and Euphrates if they knew their children could grow and thrive with Jewish identity in safety and security.

I speak of people, not leaders, for the power of leadership attracts those individuals most afflicted by neuroses, psychoses, and all too often, outright madness, and the power drives mad those not already mad. 

Imagine negotiations held by juries, people drafted from the general populace, people drafted with one requirement, that they be parents of young children, children they bring to the negotiations.  Imagine negotiations held with one formal agenda item: both sides begin with statements of what they seek at the most personal level, while excluding mention of political system, economic system, religious system, or boundaries on a map.

Imagine one more thing.  The negotiations are held without the usual embarrassing childish silliness of arguing about table shape and who sits where, but one critical item of décor is uncompromisingly dictated.  The walls and the table of the conference room will be adorned with pictures of children.

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.