1/8/2011

After the news today on the tragedy in Arizona, and a pretty chill-inducing visit to the Sarah Palin facebook page (there was some gossiping on the internet about a map, now removed, on her twitter page with cross-hairs over the districts supporting the health-care bill, Gabrielle Giffords' district being one of them, and a proclamation from the Alaskan belle herself: "Don't retreat...reload!"), the chill being raised not even so much by Palin (who is sort of too ridiculous to be chilling...like some kind of right-wing paperdoll) but by her commenters, most of whom, left and right, were hurling around taunts of "liberal" and "conservative"...as if perspective itself were the enemy--after all of that, all I can say is:

Argh!!  And then...

We gotta do better!  And then...

I've gotta do better! And then...

Oh my god, I've got to do better.

If I am the micro of this macro, as all the spiritual disciplines would have us believe...if I am both a reflection of and the reflector of the world around me, then this insanity which is OUT THERE, is also the insanity which is IN HERE.  The insanity which manifests itself not as gunmen and wars and hate-spewing politicos, but as self-loathing and complaint and anxiety and all of the other little nasties that love to have their way when there's room...and if that's the case, then how is there anything more important in the world than cleaning up that particular mess (the one on the inside...the only one I have control over)? 

All of the excuses I make, we all make, about why we can't, why it's too hard, why it's too frightening, why it just seems too impossible to love ourselves (and thus the whole little universe over which our minds preside)...all of the ways that we tell ourselves we are not deserving of a mind and a heart and a body that are PEACEFUL and thus emanating PEACE, and thus capable of PEACE-making...

Are all just a lot of bullshit.  (pardon the el language-o).

Because it is just of so much more importance than simply our own sense of wholeness and well-being (a welcome by-product, but hardly the primary reason).  Loving more, finding more silence, more sweetness, more compassion...it is the antidote for insanity of all stripes, and it has got to be important enough that one (me) is willing to pay the price of losing one's (my) small sufferings for the sake of it.

Hasn't it?!

So, in honor of all those wounded or slain this afternoon in Arizona, I want to tell you, all you Shanti-towners out there...that I love you.  Big time.  And I want to remind you (in case you've forgotten) that you are capable of such wisdom and such insight and such love and such grace and such equanimity...you could scew the whole out-of-sorts world back onto the path of sanity.  I swear it's true.  I know it in my bones that it's true.  You are needed.  You and your clear mind are desperately needed.

Sending as much love as I am able due East to AZ...

A Little Late Night Rumi...

Gamble everything for love,
if you're a true human being.

If not,
leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't fetch
into majesty.  You set out
to find God, but then you keep

Stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.

- Rumi

(Get away from the mean-spirited roadhouses, sweet shanti-towners...it's just a lot of mean drinking and name-calling happening there.  Find yourself a love-shack and bunk down there for the night instead.  I will if you will.)