Sacredness

Sacredness

I like violence and destruction:

Their sacredness.

…………………………….

Little birthday girl, hair in curl

                                    Sitting at the front

The birthday kiddies wiggle and giggle,

Sitting on the floor

In tux, top hat and magic wand,

The magician steps through the door.

He points to the emptiness inside his magic hat;

                                    Kiddies’ faces all aglow

Taps his hat thrice, speaks the magic words:

Rabbit - Presto Magico

In struggling fight, pulls with all his might,

Out of nothing white rabbit appears

Gifts it to ecstatic birthday girl,

                                    Amid the kiddies’ cheers.

Something from nothing has appeal,

‘Tis magic, not really real

Her birthday dreams transformed to

                                    Ecstasy, being special

Soft snuggle bunny, sleepmate, playmate,

                                    Day and night inseparable

Something from something is the ideal

Not magic,’Tis really real

……………………………….

We stand on the hotel balcony, Daytona Beach

Looking out to sea, the reception for Corey and Chris

Our children, to be wed the morrow.

Two lives, individual, to be transformed into family.

Goals transformed, behaviors transformed –

Not to know the sleep depriving cries of hungry wet infant

Till those wonderful demanding days arrive.

They know the transformations of merging, body frenzy, feeling crashing love

That transforms to peace and release of fulfillment.

Then to follow, all unknown and unseen, sperm seeking egg.

These too merge and are transformed.

Individual goals and behaviors transformed to the birth of a single cell.

Who multiplies to become new individual life.

Transformation: violence, destroyer of what was

To bring into existence, to birth,

What is and shall be.

We stand on the balcony looking out at total blackness.

Black clouds obscure the stars and galaxies that gave us

All the heavy elements of our planet and our bodies

Born in the implosions of supernovas, a star’s death.

Now those clouds crash against one another,

The collisions generate thousands of volts that rip electrons from air atoms,

Make bolts of ionization and electricity that crash into the sea

In spectacular blinding flash and following thunder clap.

We count seconds to know the distance,

Embrace in silent awe at the majestic heaven display

Of beauty, violence, destructiveness -
Gentleness, fecundity.

…………………….

The south facing difficult site on Vicars Island, Lake George,

It has a thirty foot cliff edge.

We trek up the rutted hilly path across the island,

Many portages of gear from dock to site

Black squall clouds gather on the south horizon.

We nail and rope the tent securely to the platform

Weigh down anything that might blow away.

Grab our wet jackets and sit on the cliff edge in the sun looking south.

The blackness marches toward us, streaked with lightning flashes.

Thunder louder.

South wind a gentle breeze on our faces.

Grey wall of waves rushes toward our cliff.

Cold wind snatches wet jackets as we stretch them on.

Waves tops are so swept that spray and air and wave are one

With all its glory the horizontal torrent drives into us

As lightning and thunder claps strike and boom around us.

Squall passes north; sun comes out.

Shuck wet jackets to lie like lizards on the warm rock.

Sun sparkled jewel drops fall from the leaves

To evaporate with the rock puddles and rejoin the sky.

As sweat rivulets begin to tickle our skin,

We stand and leap from the cliff edge

Crash open the lake surface and plunge below

Look up - silver air bubbles rise and expand toward the surface

To burst open to rejoin the sky.

Climb the cliff ledges to lie down again as lizards

Await day’s destruction by gorgeous sunset.

.............


Brutal beautiful tearing blinding bolts from heaven
Rip oxygen and nitrogen apart to make delicious nitrogen oxides,
Washed by rainfall, essential nutrients to hungering roots of
Grasslands, grain fields, flower gardens, ferns, forests, tree vines, vineyards.

Too much, fossil fueled acquisitive man, drench with too much:
Great blooms on waters scarf dissolved oxygen
Eutrophic lagoons and oceans kill oxygen-life
With tar sands and global oil shale their geologic tombstones.

Walk softly with love
In sacred awe.

...........

Niagara thunders down the cliff edge that it slowly eats away

And carries off to deposit at the ocean.

Hold the bow rail of the Maid-of-the-Mist two handed

It plows toward the deluge and shudders to a halt

Mighty engines matched by the greater force of river.

Horizontal torrents of water and wind from Niagara’s down draft

Cascade against us as we throw back our slicker hoods

Feel and rejoice in nature’s force.

Why are we alone?

Rest of the crowd huddled by the cockpit house

Backs to the torrent!

…………………..

Alaska cruise ship hovers at the glacier edge.

One hundred years ago this whole bay was ice, for one hundred fifty miles.

Huge calves of ice thunder into the water;

Waves lift the ship’s bow under our feet.

The new born icebergs  melt in time to rejoin the sea water.

Millions of years ago they were sea.

They evaporated into the winds that wafted them to mountaintops,

Became snow, then ice and glacier

For the slow journey back to sea.

…………….

Look at the Rock Cycle.

Hot magma plumes from hot inner earth core

Rises toward the thin earth crust and cools

To descend toward the core and rise again

Great inner earth convection currents.

At the inter ocean rifts, magma surfaces and cools

Births islands and new ocean floor,

Causes continents to drift on tectonic plates,

About an inch a year.

What creative violence!

Oceanic life is born, dies and lies in the sediments,

Natural processes of gentleness and violence.

These bodies of our ancestors do not all decompose

To return their carbon to our atmosphere.

Some of their remains are carried over eons close to shore

To be interred by sediment from the rivers

Then subducted under the continents in long term burial.

Some subducted material melts and rises up through the igneous rock,

Pushes into up-lifted mountains.

Earthquakes split the land.

Eruptions send molten rock down mountain slopes and hillsides,

Spew ash and fumes into the air, carbon into our air.

Wet air from the oceans blows over the land,

Cools as it soars above the mountains

To caress them with rain and snow..

Births our fresh rivers and lakes for the hot dry summer.

Nourishes all growing things during the hot growing seasons.

Not just gentle and refreshing.

The rains and melting snows wear away the mountain sides

Carry the soil and ground rock to the coasts for its burial duty.

Carry soil for fertile fields, mixed with pulverized rock

That water will permeate to refresh roots

And roots will have their needed micro-nutrients.

If not for the internment of life that dies,

Volcanic gases would increase

To insulate our earth with CO2

Heat our planet too much for life.

Gentle and violent, wonderful transformations

Over time spans we cannot fathom.

……………

In my parents time the chapters written here were not yet comprehended.

Each chapter teaches reverence and sacredness.

There are many more exciting chapters to read

If we but take the time to see and love and read creation.

So I like the sacredness of violence and destruction.

Separate them from controlling or harming other persons or earth systems!

Gandhi.

Arrested and sentenced to four years by the British court

For civil disturbance

Because he walked his Salt March to the sea

To collect salt that by law must be bought from the British occupiers.

At his sentencing he stood small and thin

Barefoot and bare chested,

In his self spun and woven loin garment.

The judge stood tall in formal black robe and white wig.

The judge bowed in awe to little Gandhi as he pronounced sentence.

Gandhi was violent and destructive

To British dominance over other peoples,

Their use of other peoples and their resources for personal gain,

Treating them as underclass wogs.

Gandhi had the intelligence and intuition to do this

In England, South Africa, and India

In ways that engaged the best of British values

While destroying the worst of their behaviors

To which they maintained blindness.

I look on Gandhi as a paragon of life well lived

Dedicated to both violence and destruction,

Directed to transform us to live

More in accord with the golden rule.

I see the Prophets, Gandhi, King, Theresa,

Mandela, Borlaug, Yunus …..

Exemplars - lives of the golden rule

And confrontation of blindness, selfishness and injustice.

Be aware

When you stomp your accelerator

To feel the surge of cockpit seat against your back

In personal power and excitement:

The cement of the roads comes from

The shells and bones of the living who preceded you here.

The blacktop, the oil, and the gas are from their bodies.

Life of the sea, land and air –

In living, dying and internment under the continents –

They swept carbon from our skies so that we, their descendents,

Live in comfortable climate with great energy at our disposal.

As we exhume and burn their bodies for our energy and pleasure.

Be aware; beware -

We return our ancestor’s carbon to the skies

Insulate our planet home

Heat it to the higher temperatures of earth’s earlier times.

Temperatures to which our children and their children

Shall accommodate –

Less fertile land, less fresh water, higher oceans.

Transformations we fashion do endure.

We have a sacred trust as stewards of transformation.

In violence and destructiveness they are

Sacredly creative of the next

That shall be.

All you have, you received from those before you

Lives, deaths and burials that now give you breath and energy

To use your violence to destroy the destructive.

Dare hold open your eyes of reason

To the bright glaring light of sacredness!

Dare embrace the caring and empathy of sacredness!

Sacredness of your violence and destruction

Your stewardship

To

Transform now into

What is next

What will be

Long after your time

In the time of your descendents

Your stewardship

Sacred

"All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." Black Elk.

© David W. Oliver 11/28/09