I find myself torn on days like
today. Old habits die hard as I allowed myself two Sunday morning talk shows for
the sole purpose of getting a better grip on what’s happening in Ferguson,
Missouri. I grasp the tragic shooting. But crowds like these and anger
this deep don’t happen overnight. I know
I’m not the only one who felt she’d entered a time warp and was watching
footage of the civil rights riots all over again.
I regretfully lost two hours before
I had to quit watching. Sadly, I knew no more than I did going in and the
residual emotions hovered between helpless and guilt for being so out of the
loop. (Not to go political with a farm
blog, but the governor interviewed by Andrea Mitchell should’ve done himself a
favor and stayed home. If you have nothing to say, here’s a tip: Don’t go on
Meet the Press. Saying “We’re looking into it” or “we’re releasing that next
Tuesday” do not good answers make. Granted, it’s easy to become cynical
watching politicians posture, but not since Katrina, have we witnessed such
a bungled mess.)
One of my main reasons for coming
home to start a little garden was to remove myself from my once daily diet of hard news.
I figured by unplugging the TV and surrounding myself with loving life forms
and dilemmas I can pretend I have a modicum of control over was better for my
soul than hard news and combative talk radio. Still, the desire in me TO help
is alive and well. Problem is: what IS the helpful thing to do? How are we
(people not living in Ferguson, but fellow citizens participating in this great
American experiment) to react while one of our cities goes up in tear gas?
My spiritual side says “ Turn off
the TV. Hug a goat. Read Walden. Go pull some weeds.” After all, what possible
good can I contribute living this far away? But deeper still, something says
“Not so fast, Evins. Pay attention. Be aware. Something’s happening here…and
what you’re witnessing in Ferguson, in Syria, in Iraq, in ________(pick a
story/pick a place) ” is but a symptom of a much deeper problem.
If we as her inhabitants, are cells in
the body of Mother Earth (or “Gaia” as she was called in Greek mythology) then
we’ve got a problem. Our girl is sick, and not just a little sick. She’s cancer
sick. And it’s spreading… cropping up all over her body.
Like my friend on the raw veggie
diet, we need radical change. A change in diet…A change in lifestyle. A change in consciousness. Clearly bandages aren’t cutting it anymore; business as usual is not
going to fly. I’m certainly not suggesting I have the answers here, but I can
give you about 20,000 filaments that won’t light the bulb. I think we’ve all
got a pretty good clue of what’s NOT working.
The riots brought to mind an
experiment conducted in Washington DC back in the 90s by a group of advanced
meditators (i.e. TM-Sidhas) who set out to prove scientifically that a
percentage of a population, committing to meditation—can alter the vibrational
frequency of an environment and literally lower a crime rate. (Picture the
ripples of a rock being thrown into a pond, as the waves are absorbed by the
shoreline. Well, in this case, the Sidha’s were the shoreline, absorbing and neutralizing the shock.) The results of this
study are pretty amazing. To read more, got to http://www.worldpeacegroup.org/washington_crime_study.html
Until I know what to do, sometimes
doing nothing is best, and today is one such day (made simpler by feelings of
overwhelm, helplessness and sheer, raw sad). If I, in my own little corner,
in my own little house can do but one thing for this day, the best my still
voice offers is “Be still, and know…” (And until it instructs me otherwise, this
one’s always a good fallback. Praying for peace is a second.)
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