my secret garden

Rumbles from the east raise my hair, all senses draw taut as I poise in attention.

The war is here.

I sense tensions mounting, and deep currents bucking against constraint, something cold and deep is congealing itself, honing its edge in a white fury, in an agony of disbelief as the tide turns. A dark mind drives hard toward a receding portal with deadly intent.

Warships are sliding into position, and the machinery of war is being oiled and polished by the earnest and jaded alike, quietly and efficiently in the moon-kissed night. Nuclear doctrine freshly minted stands ready to condone whatever means are necessary, whatever the horror wrought.

Innocent babies suckle, held tenderly for this long, short moment of their lives, as events roll inexorably forward, already encoded in all that has come before. Sweet lullabies murmuring, warm skin softly rising, falling, ancient drumbeat solid, steady within. The night breeze is soft but laden with portent. The cradle will fall, indeed.

Some North Americans will not go to the shopping mall today, as they take up their tiny arms and gather in town squares across the continent, with all the other little Who's in Whoville,  to raise all their tiny voices in unison, shouting "We are here! 'we are here! We are here! We are here! in hopes that someone, somewhere, will hear their truth, their passion, their urgent plea, that someone, somewhere, somewhen, will awaken, and alarmed, move to action.

Hope remains, a glimmer of dawn approaching across the dark waters. Maybe a baby will be born someday, who will never know war, who will not believe what the history books chronicle in its nightmare rendering of our oh-so-human affairs. Who will puzzle at our convoluted ignorance through the dark ages of our becoming, tracing our journey into the renaissance of Knowing as we truly individuate and integrate our body politic into One that honors its life in all its magnificent forms, and cares for itself with a fierce love.

Perhaps this is the war to end all wars.

I pray my mind can withstand the poison of anger, of revenge. I pray we awaken in our ignorance, follow our third eye out of this peril, and find our way up the mountain our two eyes can't see, and follow with pure heart and mind the path rising toward the heavens, through the dense fog of our pre-dawn dreaming.

We will meet there, at the top, you and i. We are already there, sleeping, cradled in the infinite arms of love, unknowing...  It is time for us to know, time for us to forget what we think we know, time to stop luxuriating in our own fractured perceptions, in our tangled rationalizations and projections and fantasies of power and damnation. It is time to recognize the siren-call that pulls us by the ring of desire in our fevered nose to the blood-slicked slopes of Mammon. It is time to know, to fully know the true secret.

It is difficult to imagine that we could have been so deaf, so dumb, so blind, that we could have believed that foul mind who scorned us across hellish plateaus of human becoming, the mind who would have us see ourselves as intrinsically evil, that would threaten us with the love of its beastly heart for eternity should we make one misstep or suffer a misfortune as evidence of moral failure.

This mind would sing long lullabies of damnation and tempt us into the Valley of Death before it would whisper this one pure, simple truth: That we have always been loved, always been welcome, and have always been supported by a deep and abiding compassion, that we have always been attached by a ribbon of light to the Mother and Father of all creation and manifestation.

We were never kicked out of the garden! We were stolen as infants and terrorized as we suckled blind the teat of Fear, and were taught the ways of Fear, infected with shame, inoculated against Love, and given the Sword of Judgment to ensure the sanctity of the unholy House Divided.

Deep in the mists of my own imaginings, I hear a cheerful voice filtering through the first rays of dawn: "Wake up, sunshine! Day's a-wasting! Time to rise and shine!"

Mumbling, I roll and put the pillow over my head, descending again into the trenches of delusion, where I fight dragons and demons and flounder through quicksand and run from tidal waves and airplanes falling from the sky.  And where, if I can wake up just enough, sometimes I fly....

See you at the top!