Skip to main content

Communique #1

On the trip from Hawaii home I’m sitting in a window seat looking at clouds, above the clouds, I think of what an accident it is that we are so fortunate to be here, we humans. I am floating above the clouds looking down on earth.



It is really impossible to imagine what could have created all of this, beyond my abilities. I suppose the religions of the world represent what humans have imagined. All of which, in my mind falls short. The patterns of these clouds tell me this. I can accept that it is beyond my imagination to understand. And if there is one who can grasp and imagine it ALL, I’ll give that super being the name God. I am not at all sure there is that one. So I try to imagine some benign force at work here.



The cloud formations remind me of ice formation in water, irregular patterns and lines with open blue water. These clouds also have thickness.

The trip home. And all that it means to me, HOME, out the window I realize it is not just Portland, as meaningful as it is to me. I see it as our HOME planet.

I think about how petty and selfish humans can be and to think that we, mammals, are impacting the planet and all other life here. Supremely arrogant!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Communique #12

I wake up in the night, feeling warm with a dry throat and wonder if I have the virus.  I dismiss it and go back to sleep. But, there are more cases now than ever.  The normal that one might want to achieve seems farther and farther away.  We are at an extended existential moment.  The future is unknown. I suppose this is more realistic-- thinking one knows the future is an illusion, and yet culture, our culture plants the seeds and creates the markers for this illusion that the future is secure, corollary, one is safe and immortal, this against all evidence.  I suppose my surprise at how strong ideology is, some who are able to deny the science of the virus, is not that different then this culturally propagated belief, the future is known and secure. The pandemic brings this belief into question and we can call it existentialism.  No, the future is not known, so get over it.  Life is a fragile gift, we don’t know what happens tomorrow....
Post a Comment
Read more

Communique #5

Conspiracy Theory If you really want a conspiracy theory, I have it on good accounting that this Pandemic has been orchestrated. In our funny very human manner we have not considered that the higher beings we have looked for in the universe aren’t ever present here on earth, influencing human history. No we can’t see, small or taste them. Their intervention, in this case, the Pandemic is an effort to slow down the environmental degradation and an effort to create a teaching moment for our species. It is an act of grace from a higher power willing to attempt to create a better understanding amongst us, thereby bending the curve, from mutual self destruction, our current trajectory, to a higher order for our species. Why have we so thoroughly separated and isolated ourselves from one another? We have separated ourselves from one another to the great detriment of the planet, ourselves, and all other species here on earth? And why are we in this race to destroy our habitat? The...
Post a Comment
Read more

Communique #9

From “The Plague” by Albert Camus, the last paragraph of the book when the city gates are opened, the plague is gone. “Indeed, as he heard the cries of delight rising from the city, Rieux remembered that this delight was always threatened. For he knew what this joyous crowd did not, and what you can read in books — that the germ of the plague never dies or disappears, that it can lie dormant for decades in furniture and linens, that it waits patiently in rooms, in basements, in trunks, among handkerchiefs and paperwork, and that perhaps the day would come when, for the sorrow and education of men, the plague would revive its rats and dispatch them to die in a happy city.” What Camus doesn’t say in this last paragraph, but which he makes clear in the book is that the plague, plague response, lives on in the human species.  While this response is varied, it can be found back in time to the earlier plagues in human history.  Further, I would argue that one response can be...
Post a Comment
Read more