I am shaking this morning, mentally, existentially, spiritually.  I am loath to use the term “spiritual.”  I know the term is spoken and written in a bastardized manner referring to the holy spirit, possession of the ego by the supernatural.  The idea is pure, unalloyed BS, which deserves ridicule.  We are standard issue human beings, fragile, subject to development and failure, but with the potential for greatness.

I am troubled, the result of an email exchange between friends.  I participated in the exchange on the periphery.  The exchange of emails expressed profound dismay at the apparent intractable impasse we have reached as a society, the political paralysis, the enslavement to influence which is bought and sold, by whomever the public elects to represent them.  This is an old story, as one of the email interlocutors pointed out, the devolution of democracy into autocracy. “It is how U.K. works, and Australia, and France, and India, and the Roman Republic.”  This is the blind alley, rule by decree, at which our republic has arrived.

Then there’s the wild card, which we are drawing from the deck: global warming.  The climate is changing with accelerating extreme weather patterns.  The West coast and the Pacific Northwest are hammered with drought, and attendant wild fires, diminishing water supply, and less reliable power delivery.  The South and Eastern states are beset with floods, and violent storms.

So I am shaking inwardly at these prospects.  The trick is to avoid panic, being dragged off by despair and/or self loathing, a dark psychological state that envelopes everyone within one’s circle of influence.

I walked around the backyard again yesterday.  Living things were responding to the first day of summer, glorious.  But there was also death, the natural demise of roses when they have finished their resplendent display of intense color.  Nature’s course is to finish one’s journey with muted tones, brilliance dimmed by shades of gray, saturated with white as color fades.  I like the notion that near the beginning of the series of images is a photo of the white Buddha sitting quietly in repose.  At the end another image of the Buddha, this one in the muted gray of a cast statue,  dispassionately observes change displayed by living things.

How about a song to hold onto?  This by Bette Midler is fitting.  It was the theme song for a movie about the life of Janis Joplin.

The Rose

by Bette Midler

Some say, “Love. It is a river
That drowns the tender reed”
Some say, “Love. It is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed”
Some say, “Love. It is a hunger
An endless aching need”
I say, “Love. It is a flower
And you its only seed”

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dyin’
That never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose

Lyrics composed by Amada Mc Broom