Thanks Due

My spirit went down for the count when I saw this destruction of the Peace Endeavor bench and planter and the murder of the tree that lived there. It had been a place of frequent circles, group photos, quick meetings. It had also been a place where homeless, using, and mentally ill people hung out and the businesses on the street wanted it gone and in compliance with the other park benches that don't shelter from the street. I thought I was ok with it but I wasn't when it came to my feelings based on all the memories going back to the time when Willa, Helen, Jessie, Art and Margaret, Delilah, Joan, Doug, Rose, Frank, Gerald, Shar and Theresa (and others) were with us. A place of meeting in gentleness and loving strength. Gone for commerce.

So I had a little moment there. Nothing new really. Sometimes the grief wells up and the powers of what needs to survive is dwarfed so badly by the powers of greed that a huge dualism is set up and its like a wall inside my psyche where a mythic battle is being played out so long it sets up into something impenetrable.

That's when meditation, actually a CSA attunement (www.csa.com) really helps. With gentle listening the area was identified, deeper and deeper sensing and the wall was entered. (Thanks Kath.) More time, more surrender into the way it was and a virtual tree emerged, sequestering carbon, breathing out oxygen, a river of quiet exchange, free of content, vast and opening into a universe of the 100%.

I'd been so worried about the Occupy. That the tents would come down, that folks would drift away from determination and purpose. That all the concerns we share (going all the way back from those peace-keepers who have left us,) would become amorphous again, buried under every day business.

But, the presence continues. The future is unknown. Orien passed the Bar. Let Thanksgiving begin.