I was just on Facebook tonight, and an old friend from Sonoma County who I used to kayak with posted a video that I watched. I want to share this with you. It was of one of these X competitions on tv, where young unknowns get up and sing to a panel of four expert judges and a big audience. This particular night, a young dark skinned man got up, and the blonde Aussie host asked him, so lad, how old are you? 'well, I don't really know. I was found by nuns in a shoebox in Iraq, and taken to an orphanage. I was born without a birth certificate.' That pretty well silenced the room. He then went on to tell them about how he and his brother had been found in a shoebox in a park, in the midst of war in Iraq. They had lived in the orphanage, both obviously mangled from the trauma of war, without lower arms and bearing weight on compromised legs. The screen showed pictures of two lovely little boys growing up with disfigurations, happily playing together. "my mom is an angel, I knew it when she walked in through the orphanage door."
He went on to sing "Imagine" by John Lennon. His family was there, Mom, Aunt, Brother, Sister, and Brother from family of origin. His presence up there, his boldness with his challenges and how much life had given him in gifts, and his clarity, was so beautiful and awesome.
I feel awestruck, at his courage, his luck, both bad and good, and circumstance.
And while his story gave me hope, a part of me wants to curl up into a ball in the dark, wondering what kind of a world we are raising our child in?
"We are so far from this."
The kind of material worth that is placed higher than human worth... the mighty dollar and how much we have sacrificed as a humanity... the brightness of his eyes, his knowing, and wonder he holds, is inspiration at its finest... even the bridges to the other side of this life- how can we hold these qualities and magic of life here, when it feels that we are on a suicide mission as a people?
Don't know where exactly I am going with this, except to say that a lot of our little quibbles seem pale right now. I don't want to bail out of this lifeboat we are in together here in this star-spangled country, quite yet, but I am not sure it's watertight either. And I wonder where in the world, is the shangri-la we were sold? Why does our leader seem hell-bent on bending his agenda to meet in the middle? He has really got me scratching my head, passing NRA regulations like no other, putting so many more drones in the air than our last guy, going after medical marijuana outlets in CA, and severing arteries in the EPA programs to protect clean water by educating the public. I just don't get it.
If there IS ShangriLa, I do believe it exists right here and now. Eckart Tolle has written for years about choosing the world you live in, as perception creates reality. Funny trick, it's getting harder to imagine that better world. Here again, it's a case of us Needing to Imagine in full, Vivid color- that ShangriLa. Not just look at what is in front of us. That doesn't serve us any more. We don't need to know how to get there, we only need to hold that image. We need to paint it in technicolor, sniff it in, whiff it up, whirl it into a frenzy, know its scent, its vibe, how it feels inside. Put up our Bubble. Talk about it, Dream about it, Allow the Universe to Conspire to Make it Ours.
And the World Will be One.
Namaste.
