Judgement Days

Judgement Days
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

Never has humanity had such opportunity to judge and critique so many of our fellow humans.

Our media connections offer endless opportunities for judgement, and we greedily gather all of them in,

each broadcast,

each analysis,

each report,

all the daily fodder that provides the grist for our mill of judgement of others,

the broadcasts, analyses, and reports daily spreading out before us providing a litany of the failures and shortcomings of our species.

Outreach Music, Minds Reaching Out

Outreach Music, Minds Reaching Out
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

Outreach classical music performance at a community center.

Look at these little kids!  Look at their rapt attention.  Listen to their applause.  They have not yet learned to be bored.

It’s a poor neighborhood.  These families have no symphony tickets.  But a young mind exposed to something new, a young mind kept open a little longer, a young mind going home to one of these little surrounding homes, may be a little changed by this musical exposure, and a little changed mind can change the world.  

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

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Soul Music

Soul Music

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

While watching an amazing piano concerto performance by John Nakamatsu.

As I watch the extreme facial and body language and contortions, and marvel at the physical training and skills of these artists, it strikes me how ridiculous the whole thing is.  To train the human body to this extreme level, to concoct such bizarre contraptions of wood and string and metal, all in the effort to communicate from one soul to another…….this scene and countless others like it through the ages give powerful testimony to a profound and fundamental truth.

Musical instruments, and the musicians that master them, demonstrate the desperate drive that takes the human spirit to any lengths to establish, even if only for the duration of a performance, some connection with another human soul.

Bridges of Sound and Light

Bridges of Sound and Light
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

Sound and light, this stuff that serves as the tenuous connection among souls, this flimsy bridge we struggle to refine and craft and carve and polish, then call it “art”.

Sound and light, fleeting and gone in the very moment we perceive them, but imparting some miniscule fraction of another’s soul into our consciousness, thereby making us conscious of our own soul.  

The composers and musicians and painters and poets are the spiritual corps of engineers, fabricating their structures to bridge the void between our souls.  

Music can shine a light, paintings can stir rhythms, and we are left more human by their touch.

The palette of notes and the chords of colors hover before our consciousness, inviting us to awareness, momentarily filling the void between us, revealing visions and dreams and aspirations shared, their fading echoes and receding glow leaving us a little less alone.

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

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Digital Disruption

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

Do these times not till the soil to plant seeds of reassurance? 

The digital disruption has unleashed the worst of human nature and created levels of illusion and delusion and detachment never before experienced.

Never have people been so compelled and even coerced to look happier.

Never have people felt so lost and alone.

A pandemic of digital detachment has left us isolated from reality and each other.

Never have we had such opportunity for connection and communication.  Never have our connections and communication been so shallow and superficial.

We have created a societal sham when we need substance; we stand on shifting sand of fads and trends when we need foundations secure and solid.  The fog of the superficial hides the substance.  The glare of the shallow blinds us to solid reality. 

Evolution Within the Revolution

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Watching my computer screen dance as a McAfee technician in India works on my computer.  Day nine (?) of the computer saga. 

What is this strange new way of being?!  We insert just enough familiar words in our digital lexicon to give an impression that this is of our own creation and control.

So now we watch bits of information flicker across our screen, for the moment still deigning to communicate in cryptic collections of runes that allow some rudimentary illusion of our control…..for now.

It is so easy to just sit and watch them flicker, while across our thoughts flickers a nascent awareness that they are watching us.

We are learning to live in a world where

Humans

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

The worst of humanity,

the best of humanity,

both appearing at the most unexpected times.

Always dangerous, these potential children of God.

At the drop of a hat they can bring a tear to your eye,

a tear of pain or a tear of joy.

Flickering Faith

Our faith
like the candle flame,
flickers in the terror filled storms of world’s dark night.

Our faith,
like the candle flame,
endures to set the world alight.

Written 14 December 2012 on the evening of the Newtown school shooting.  Rediscovered on the 2016 anniversary after a year in which the president elect of the United States has complemented the radio personality that promoted the theory that the shooting was a hoax. 
Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Influence

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Influence,

person to person,

subtle,

oft unseen.

Do not pretend you have no role.

Do not pretend every word does not matter.

The speeches and grandiose proclamations may not matter,

for they are of the world, for the world, in the world.

But a word, a gesture, an attitude, an expression,

the countless ways that your soul is nakedly revealed,

there is the influence.

Persona and policies are transient and ephemeral.

But the touch cold or warm,

the word cruel or caring,

there your life loudly echoes through eternity.

Your influence,

seen in a little child’s eyes

made brighter or dimmer

in the wake of your passing.

Copyright 2016 Don Ray
WWW.DrDonRay.BlogSpot.com
If touched, encouraged, inspired, or changed, please pass it on.

Courage Walks Alone

Courage Walks Alone

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

At the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure to combat breast cancer

Ten minutes after sunrise, crowds in pink stream in, then shuffle blank faced around the grounds before getting in one of the various long lines to dutifully collect bags of stuff and trinkets and baubles covered with marketing logos of the sponsors.  

From the surrounding neighborhoods people stream in after finding a place to park, most of the pink clad people walking in groups of teams or families, some wearing “survivor” tags, some wearing “in memory of…” tags.  

But an older gentleman walks alone, dignified in his crisp, new, pink-and-white t-shirt.  He arrives alone. He will leave alone, his solitary participation eloquent testimony to the cost of the disease this event seeks to combat.

The droning speaker whom no one hears, the volunteers filling the bags of baubles provided by sponsors, they are all beautiful in their worldly attempt to address a cause of suffering….but it all must ring a bit hollow to the dignified older gentleman in pink and white, who more than festival and frivolous costumes could surely use a hug and that missing familiar hand in his.

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Hugged by trees

In perfection of harmony these old trees judge not.  Still and quiet and peaceful they stand, teaching one more lesson.

Their randomly tangled limbs, reaching this way and that, reveal life reaching, life reaching in every direction.

These limbs could be our lives, our lives every bit as crooked and tangled in their blind reaching for the Light.....but unlike our fading past and hidden future, in the trees’ branches that groping life-path is documented, each twist and change of direction and simultaneous growth in multiple directions all there to be seen, an entire life history sculpted through, and suspended in, thin air.

Might our lives not look similar could we see them in their entirety, from beginning to end, our growing roots reaching into the earth, our roots extending around the boulders and bedrock of constraints and barriers and setbacks, our roots extending into the world seeking sustenance in careers and crops and

Perceiving Purpose

On yesterday’s hike I was entranced by the wall of trees blanketing the opposite canyon wall.  I marveled at the intricate network of branches on trees on this side of the canyon.

Today I recognize that there before me was displayed a model representing all existence.  Each tree symbolizes a universe.  The chaos of branches and roots represents exploration in every possible direction, seemingly random and chaotic exploration, exploring every life-form, every geologic form, every stellar form, every planetary form.

In the tree, formed out of the roiling, random chaos of branches reaching this way and that, appears an unambiguous direction of growth, always up, always toward the sun......but this general direction of growth, the reaching down for water and up for sun, is indiscernible if looking too closely at only one or two or three knotted roots and twisted branches. 

Underlying the random chaos of the branches is the structure of DNA, for a living entity analogous to the laws of physics for a universe.  From tree to tree, and

Choose your ticket: Auschwitz or Roman Colosseum

Choose Your Ticket: Auschwitz or Roman Colosseum

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Society’s attitude toward Auschwitz and the Roman Colosseum  may tell us something about ourselves.

Nobody likes Auschwitz.  Everyone perceives it as a place of tragedy, except for perhaps a handful of unrepentant psychopaths.

Now go to the Colosseum.  Within its walls countless thousands upon thousands were murdered, executed, tortured, and generally torn asunder, no small number of them because of their non-conforming religious beliefs.  The Colosseum was a place of unbridled horror, blood, gore, terror, and suffering.

Auschwitz had to be kept hidden from the general populace.  Its perpetrators operated in secrecy behind walls.  The Colosseum operated for entertainment of the general public.  Admission was free.

The operators of Auschwitz were hunted down, imprisoned, executed, and universally condemned in public opinion.  The operators of the Colosseum are for the most part praised as one of the great civilizations in history.