I often write here about the peace I find in the predictability of the natural world. The living of last year is now so obviously disintegrating to feed the new growth of this year. The sun rises higher each day here in the north and the moon not so high. Day in and day out I continue to breath, my heart beats, all without effort on my part. Such is life even if sometimes chaotic and impossible to understand.
Clearly we are facing some global changes caused by me and most of the rest of humanity, and these changes are jarring to the peace much of life consistently brings because they are new and unknown and, as a result, I fear for life—not so much mine but those coming next.
This virus seems like a good opportunity to ask how I want the world to be. I’ve lived in the shadow of the very real threat of nuclear annihilation my entire live and I’ve known that more than 25,000 children die every day of hunger or hunger-related disease. I know it is easy to ignore both of these global catastrophes or blame them on others.
Not so this virus! Despite the blame some try to lay on China, it is simply a virus doing what viruses do. And while many in offices of power continue to fail to provide effective leadership, or, more insidiously, take advantage of the situation to grab more power, no one is immune to the infection, even if it clearly can and does often affect the privileged less so.
It has never been more clear to me that I am simply part of this blue jewel called Earth. Today I’ll see what I can learn from life as it takes the old and re/news it once again.
