h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

this is some writing - thanks john-the-gardener -

and I have been reading the subsequent debate from the folks here - all the echoes and thoughts and feelings - I have not the art of political debate - but I like to chip in anyway, with slices from my heart -

all this reminds me of a Leonard Cohen lyric from a beautiful song entitled "If it be your will" -

"so hold us close and bind us tight
all your children here, in their rags of light
In our rags of light, all dressed to kill
And end this night, if it be your will."

So where to go? Every morning I get out of bed and stand naked under the wide sky. I spread out my arms like a bird-angel and wonder how to fly with my claws and my wings - how to fly with my golden majesty and my broken halo, my blood soaked feathers and my need for pure air. All I know is that I have to keep it all in check, all of it, all of it - just stop for one minute, going nowhere, and in that nowhere is a strange voice running through me which whispers "don't do it Helen, don't kill, as Love will zap your tiny idiocy as quick as a bird of prey can pick up a mouse, and you will regret every second of it."

Helen

Hi Helen. Thanks for the kind words. I think unless you are Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama what Leonard Cohen suggests is about all that any of us can do. The thing is, I think, that if everyone did that, it would be enough. If everyone listened to that inner voice and chose to do to be generous when there was an opportunity to be mean, the world would soon be a much happier place. That's simplistic, but I don't think solutions need to be complicated. Simple choices can make the world a better place.

One of my favourite quotes is from Julia Butterfly Hill, the girl who sat in a giant tree for two years to protect it from loggers:

'Our ability to change the world lies in our hands, minds, hearts, bodies, and spirits - committed in action. It's not only that we can make a difference, it's that we *do* make the difference. The kind of change we make is up to us.'

Have you seen the Tibetan Greenhouse Dugout? A202654

JTG

hey JTG -

thanks for the inspiring quote and the link (which I'll check later) and also for what you said about the inner voice and how simple choices can make the world a better place -

this inspires me JTG! I have always felt this - and I think that to listen to the inner voice is, at times, so much more difficult than to go any other way - so simple, yet with such an intense edge!

I took a bit of a risk with my strange bird-ramble (which is mine, under the Leonard Cohen quote) - as I really do try to live like this! To pull back from the brink of disaster,time and time again - the risk is that I thought that I would be seen as being too simplistic - but now I am glad I did take the risk, as you seem to know what I am talking about - and how, at best, the personal being political could at least help this strange and turbulent planet -

So thanks JTG - are you Buddhist? I have studied Buddhism, but try to follow my own road from the inside, which obviously connects with Buddhism.

Facing the killer-claw part of my psyche helps me to be more forgiving -kind of flawed and limping myself on this strange highway of life -

Was it the Dalai Lama who said something like what is the point of the killing, when we are, in fact, already dead? Maybe its fear of death that fuels the killer brain .... trying to fight the inevitable .....

hmm

Its good to have talked to you JTG


Helen