Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,
No hell below us, above us only sky,
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too,
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.


Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

By, John Winston Lennon

I can hardly believe it has been twenty five years since John Lennon was shot down in New York. Mr. Lennon has affected me in many ways through his legacy alone, so I honor him today with this post. I love you, John, thanks for everything. wayf

Serpent mound is a pre-historic Native American earthwork located here in Ohio. I believe it's construction is attributed the the Hopewell tribe, but I could be mistaken. Anyway, it is a quater of a mile long, and is in the shape of a serpent. It starts with a coiled tail and then winds its way across the ground until you come to the mouth, which is open and appears to be spitting out a globe. As I stood admiring this place for the first time, I imagined the people who built it, and what their world must have looked like. I find myself more and more envious of their much more simple, quiet lives. I am awestruck at the capability of mankind to destroy any and everything of beauty in the name of "progress". It just blows my mind that we actually think we have it better than those beautiful people of the earth that our relatives ruined. Is what we have become justification for the atrocities they performed to get us here?

Our relatives spoke of the First Nations as "savages", and then went and killed buffallo so that they would starve. They called the Natives "uncivilized", then burned villages and killed children. Funny thing to me is, it doesn't seem that we are so very far removed from our forefathers' way of thinking. Now, of course, there are certain folks who will contend that many of the atrocities performed against the Native Americans were done out of "self defense" and there were many raids performed by First Nations against white settlements. This is true, the "Indians" did their fair share of burning and killing. They lived here, bothered no one and had no thoughts of going out across the "stinking lake". It was our forefathers who sailed across the sea, broke their trust, and then broke their spirit. The Natives were simply defending what by rights was theirs to begin with. I do not believe there is any justification for what happened to them, and I do in fact feel a great sense of shame that possibly relatives of mine were involved in the atrocities.

Standing at Serpent Mound

I stood on sacred ground

And heard the timeless voices

Eminating from the nearby woods

Oh, proud people who came before me

How beautiful you must have been

Before your world collapsed around you

My tears are shed for you

And I feel the shame that my forefathers

Should have felt

You of this land, you of the earth

Whose only crime was freedom

I cry out to you in ths timeless wood

In repentance of the sins of my forebearers

 

 

wayfarer

 

 I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine and I took a couple vacation days from work to go camping. We camped that night and woke up the next day feeling peaceful and centered with all the serenity around us. We talked and philosophized in the morning sun while I drank camp fire coffee, my friend went down to the lake, and I stayed behind to just lay in the sun. I looked up at a beautiful, clear blue sky, listened to the birds sing their songs in perfect chorus with the crickets and the frogs down by the lake. I slept a long, peaceful sleep. Soon, it was time to break camp, so we went about taking down tents and cleaning up the campsite. On our way out of the park, we saw a park ranger drive by. He turned around and pulled up behind us as we were dumping our trash into a dumpster. "Did you guys hear?" he asked us. "Hear what?" my friend answered. "They blew up the world trade center this morning. Two planes flew right into 'em, and both towers fell down". I waited for the punchline, it never came. The park ranger bid us farewell, and we went on our way.  

 

About halfway home my friend turned to me and asked, "Did he really just say they blew up the world trade center?" "Yeah" was the only answer I could muster. When we got to his house, his sister was watching the news. The first thing I saw when I walked in the door was the first plane flying into the building, I watched in silence as they replayed it over and over again. Thoughts raced in my mind, and I felt real, honest confusion. A haze moved over me like none I had experienced before. I was stunned. As I watched the film footage I realized what was missing in that beautiful sky (it seemed like days had passed since I had seen that sky, though it was only hours.), I had seen no airplanes. How I wished I could just see an airplane in the sky.

 

A few weeks passed and all we saw was that terrible day played over and over again, interspersed with random acts of human kindness (photo ops) displayed proudly and people singing patriotic songs and waving flags. And then, for a brief moment, a story came on that really meant something. A story that showed the very embodiment of human kindness and compassion. A small village somewhere in Africa had donated a cow to the United States because they felt we may have been hungry. It was all this small community could give, (and most likely someone there went with less food for awhile), but they gave it openly, without any pomp or circumstance behind it. I often wonder about the people in that village and hope they're getting on fine. I fear for their innocence, and not a day goes by that I don't whisper a silent thank you to each and everyone of those people for proving to me that somewhere, in a small corner of the world, tucked away and hidden from "civilization" there are people with true compassion. They won't be reading this, but,   I just want to thank them.

 

We love our words, don’t we? We like the way they dance, and how they caress our tongues as they fall listlessly out of our mouths. Created for communicating needs and explaining actions, words have become all powerful. We find ourselves at their whim.

 

When did the words become the things they used to describe?

When did language start to take on a life of its own, and consume us with its fire?

We can not see it, but these words we love so much

Have taken control, and we bow down to them as deities.

Our existence has become centered around these words we use

As if the word itself was the concrete embodiment of the thing it describes

Of course they dance, and sing off our tongues

We have forgotten how to rein them in, and not let them have freewill

When did these words become rulers?

Isn’t it time to stop them?

 

Look at a tree

Or a blue sky

A clear running brook

Or the autumn leaves

Scattered on the ground

 

This is where

You find

Wisdom

this is where

insight

resides