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Return to Christmas

Our Nature
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

For millennia humanity struggled with Nature, simply hoping against odds to somehow survive.

Then we won.  We got our agricultural revolution and our industrial revolution and our information revolution and we settled into our boxes, little house boxes and tall office boxes and little rolling boxes to get us from one to the other.  Most of us could pretend our struggles with Nature were over and we could isolate ourselves from Nature unless it appeared in a calendar picture or a television program.  This was perfectly understandable after the millennia of struggle and fear and cold and drought.  

Then we got sick, spiritually sick, heart sick, societally sick, for as a species we had locked ourselves into solitary confinement, isolated away from that which gave us birth and made us human.  Our games and entertainment and luxuries and endless distractions tried to replace the role that Nature once filled but the results were ever deeper malaise and madness.

A new potential beckons if we would but recognize it.  We no longer need to fear Nature.  We no longer need to hide from it.  Our technology gives us the wondrous opportunity to explore, to enter, to immerse in Nature while maintaining the secure material life to which we are understandably accustomed.  We can safely crawl out of our boxes if we dare.  We can breathe the air, if we remove our smoke.   We can splash in the crystalline waters, if we remove our chemicals.  

We can walk in the rain, lie in the sun, and play in the snow.  We just have to get out of our boxes, physical and mental.  

We can celebrate Nature, no longer afraid or intimidated…...if we haven’t killed it.

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

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No Time for Grief
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

No time for grief, these times, no time for grief.  Too much to get done in too short a time.  Too little hope to risk letting that last flickering ember go out.

The madness has penetrated too deep and too high, to the highest echelons and the deepest of the sandy foundations.

There is no time to waste when the beams and girders that supported society are already falling in twisted heaps about our heads.

The charade is over - the facades are falling -  the masquerade has reached its grotesque,  unforeseeable, and inevitable conclusion.

Hold fast to what love you can in the deluge, hold fast to what is truly precious, as the swirling flotsam of material disaster batters and bashes in taunting reminder of its once decadent uselessness.

Copyright 2017 Don Ray
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Oblivious to the Obvious

Oblivious to the Obvious
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

“Oblivious to the obvious” defines the willful madness, the chosen madness, the cultivated madness that has become so entrenched and fortified in our society. 

There is no easy breaking of this spell, this spell cast by the rich and powerful seeking more riches and power, this spell cast via media manipulation.

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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Liminal Peace

Liminal Peace
Copyright 2017 Don Ray

There is a liminal peace, a liminal peace right at the edge of this temporal world, right there,

right at the edge.

It does not intrude upon our busy lives.

It ripples there at the edge, the leading edge, the edge of Creation.

It is not exactly hidden, but we seldom enter it.

It is the thinnest of boundaries, beyond which is the deepest of Realities.

Our Actions: Coerced, Compelled, and Chosen

Our Actions: Coerced; Compelled; Chosen 

Copyright 2017 Don Ray

The answers are all right before us.  The structure of existence, the nature of our being, the summary of purpose and meaning, it is all right before us.

Look just a little deeper, just a little deeper.

Gently peel away the worldly façade and recognize what is really transpiring in most of our human endeavors.

Everything we do falls into a few categories.  1) We do that which we think facilitates our survival-security-and comfort.  2) We do that which connects us to something or someone.  3) We do that which is irrationally loving.