HUGE SHIFTS this next week, starting today

August 1, 2024

It’s August 1, folks.

Huge shifts this next week, starting today at Green Acres Permaculture Village (three homes, two on corner, and third adjacent; zoned for three people per home). Adam is moving out of my house after two years; he (and we) assumed he’d be here only two months. He’s an older man who prefers living alone — which I understand, being way older than he is!

And wow, six people showed up to help with his move! I don’t think he knew how many new friends he has made! Took only 30 minutes to fill the truck, people passing boxes from one to another, from bedroom to truck.

Adam is 68; I am 81. I envy him his coming solitude! And yet, I realize that were I to live alone I would, likely sooner rather than later, calcify, become so habit bound that I could no longer respond to change.

Next, two young people are moving in — to what will be, within hours, the two empty bedrooms. Young man today (I think), and young woman on Saturday. Both grad students at IU, and both love growing food in community. Plus, her mom is coming for a week, wants to stay in the yurt .. .

Then, on Saturday, long-time Community Dinner participant Elisha and her partner Dave’s moving van arrives for the third house, which she is purchasing from me. Closing August 14th!

And one more: my son Colin (still in Majestic Care after nearly one year), paralyzed from waist down and with nerve damage, will be going to Indy Methodist hospital for a procedure to eliminate a small abdominal aneurysm, on August 6; which means his brother Sean will fly in from Colorado on the 5th to be with him for a week, to stay in Colin’s room.

So, on my usual four mile morning walk with new puppy — five years old, both hair-trigger nervous and utterly responsive Scampy (no longer Scrappy, since I cut off enough scraps) — through Dunn woods on the IU campus with small creek streaming through, sensing the trees, rooted, connected — both laterally and below, reaching for the sky, spacious, allowing; sensing the stream, cascading without care, ceaselessly, swirling around rocks, flowing; I ask to become the trees, to become the stream, to get and remain present, centered, caring, alive and free. No matter what. No matter.

Nothing matters.

No thing matters.

It all matters.

All is one.

 

One hour later: Oops. Just found out that Colin’s procedure has been postponed, until the 19th. No wonder Sean decided to wait until the night before to make his plane flight. Smart move. Flow around that suddenly appearing rock! Wave your branches in the sudden breeze! No big deal. No matter. Nothing matters. It all matters . . .

What WAR does to a Face

July 30, 2024

Before

Eyes full of idealism, innocence, determination

Mouth: innocent, soft

Face: young, unlined, sweet

 

After

Eyes haunted, staring, shell-shocked

Mouth: hard, cynical

Face: decades older, lined

 

And yet, a face can be thus transformed even without being recruited into external wars. Internal wars, left unresolved, do the same, a seemingly eternal “dark night of the soul.” Any addiction —  to cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, sex, lies, fundamentalism, etc. unless  addressed, and fully processed (recognized as a shadow aspect of the self that gets projected) yields that face, sooner or later. And, at bottom, all wars are internal in origin. As we treat ourselves, so we treat another.

And to process a shadow aspect of the self, is ultimately, to recognize, and even exhibit, in full view of others, one’s vulnerability. This takes courage, an open heart.

Do you sense, as I do, that during this climactic era when so many regions of our world are either lit up with monstrous wars, or seemingly about to be, with nuclear war the ultimate dragon breathing down upon our collective neck; do you get the sense, as I do, that the human race is finally coming to recognize that it simply must begin to understand, and heal, the root causes of war — the root causes of unrecognized, unresolved conflict at every level — in order to avoid extinction?

If enough of us do our own shadow work, leaving us changed, vulnerable, no longer so dead certain of our own point of view — then not only do we avoid extinction, but we serve as way showers of a new culture.