So yesterday i'm surfing the web and reading emails and there's this video on yahoo news about the Japanese dog who was rescued from atop rooftop flotsam in the sea being reunited with her overjoyed owner - and tears are streaming and I'm a puddle. One simple act of serendipitous mercy - reunion of human and animal kin - in all this tragedy - can blast open one's heart and ignite a spark of hope and the rememberance that we all have within us this limitless capacity to love and be loved, no matter how buried it seems to be.
Every day on this gorgeous planet, the miraculous, the impossible made manifest, the destruction and creation of mankind and the ramifications of both, get a person to thinking - what's really important? Why is it that only humans have the privilege of choosing, and choose poorly and dangerously so much of the time, whereas other life forms have this superior intelligence to be what they are and go with what is? Who's really the "superior" species in this mix? Mankind would not be the first that comes to mind.
What are the moments that make life alive? Only this interconnectedness, this - surrender - for lack of a better word. How do we apply that to things we'd rather not know, rather not see? How can we bear this brokenheartedness that we carry every moment our eyes are open and don't look away? How do we nourish the seeds of compassion? I don't know. I still look away too often. Still use food as a drug. Still wallow in anger and self pity. Still make choices against life and living; yet still feel this supreme open heartedness in the moments I don't turn away.
I'm not religious in the traditional sense of the word. But I think every human wants some kind of cosmology to believe, and more important, experience. You don't need to hang a name on it or even put it into words. I have a friend who believes in the power of atoms and molecules - to forever create new designs of life and manifest seeming solidity and everything is dancing and made up of the invisible manifesting itself as visible. That seems about as close to something I can believe in as anything. May the unconditional love of the molecules surround Japan and its life forms, and perform their merciful miracles - and may we humans help them however we can.
