Redemption Song

How many songs have been written for redemption, or to inspire revolution, a new world, peace, and new ways of thinking? How many artists, writers, and musicians have hoped to inspire millions, perhaps even the whole world, only to have had their works fall flat,  or to have inspired just a few of the hundreds of people who follow them and their works?


Just how do you bring people together? How do you unite a nation, much less the entirety of mankind?


It really shouldn't be all that hard, after all, we all come from the genus homo sapiens, we all live on the same planet, we all live and breathe and eat and reproduce, more or less.

Most of us are taught the same basic truths through our religions; love, compassion, the golden rule. That ought to bring at least a great majority of us together.
And yet religions set themselves far apart from each other, refusing to acknowledge their similarities, refusing to work together for the same end, the end that, really, all of them are looking to achieve.

Once again, we really aren't all that different.

So why hasn't anyone been able to accomplish world peace or unity as of yet?

Alchemy

---> I watched it turn
from metal aggregate-grey
to warm, soft gold in
the heat radiated from
the top of our wood
stove.
---> It took a couple
of days for alchemy
To transpire,
replacing heavy storm-
cloud atoms with shining
sun molecules.

---> the dumbbell,
transmutated.

Spaceship clouds

from my Tao journal 12/9/11

“Trascending Decline” the ninth passage of the Tao Te Ching;

‘Holding to fullness

Is not as good as stopping in time.

Sharpness that probes

Cannot protect for long.

A house filled with riches

Cannot be defended.

Pride in wealth and position

Is overlooking one’s collapse.

Withdrawing when success is achieved

Is the Tao in nature.’

            The last line speaks deeply, truly, personally. It means much, though it says little. It makes sense, though what it says is not how society works currently.

            Instead of a fish scrabbling to keep it’s place in the perceived waterfall of life and success, this passage speaks of a needle dipping in and out of the fabric of the universe, staying above the material only long enough to secure a stitch in place before diving back down beneath. The longer-lasting mark on the world belongs to the needle; The fish fights to hold its place only for reasons of the self, but the needle strives to strengthen and beautify the fabric of all.

           

            To stand only as long as the effect holds, and to dip back down below the threshold instead of milking the deed -the attention bestowed upon the deed- for all it’s worth.