war

I am depressed.  The fresh-face and bright-eyes of youth have given way to hairy ears and bad skin.  My faith and optimism from another time is now dark doubt and cynicism.  I may have chosen incrementally to make it so, but I don’t like it.  The beautiful earth is more paved and more poisoned than when I came.  The vale and stream, mountain and forest where once I met the Spirit is inaccessible to me now.  The trees and rocks are still there.  The clear, cold streams still flow and the air, on good days, is still fresh and pure.  But the things I have learned in life have left me inconsolable even in the presence of the Spirit, even in the gentlest, most tender hollows of Spiritplace. 

I am a lover.  As my beloved physical life deteriorates, soon to hang in ragged shreds, it thus reveals an invisible structure that never decays, which has always supported all that lives.  There is a memory of the pure, unsullied flesh, but everything tells me to let it go, that it is not the true object of my desire for it will one day be gone.  I love eternally, therefore the object of my love, once found, will be outside of time.  It will remain after these rocks and stones have ceased their song.  It will remain when this dear earth and all its blue beauty exists no more. 

And so not only can I tolerate, but I can participate in all the follies that life presents, both those caused by me as well as those inflicted by others upon me, for they cannot obstruct my contact to what really matters.  There are no obstacles, only distractions.  I need to write this down, for in the face of the horrors in which I participate today, I need the reassurrance of these words.