CG Express

1. Birds singing – birds sang when the skies were quiet after 911. They sang after the tornado blew through, the dust storm blew out, after the last crack of a bullet from battle or the drive-by shooting. They sang when the unjust took power and life got harder. They sang even at the gravesite where mourners were speechless. If their bright songs, their ballad of joy ceases, who will remind us that hope still resides on earth?
2. Music –music sweeps through our cells and catches our deepest emotions and pulls them up and out to the surface where, yes, we feel. The order, the disorder, the rhythm, the syncopation, the sound on our eardrums travels through tiny bones and we are turned inside out, lost, caught up, taken away, let loose, drawn to tears, to laughter, to reconciliation, to hard choices sealed by a melody that holds the answer. No, humanity would not make it without music.
3. Wind – is there anything that speaks both peace and shear terror?
4. Compassion – in compassion is understanding that it’s not all about me, every person is a ‘me’. Someone else’s pain, is my pain. Someone else’s need is my need. Without compassion, there is unbridled selfishiness, loneness, anxiety and fear at failing to take care of ‘me’. Passing by my own needs, they are left behind like extra clothing on a hot day. I lose what I was afraid to not have without looking back because I’m lost in caring for the comfort of someone else.
5. Humility– if everyone was proud, everyone boastful, everyone up front, on top, the best, we would all be in a single horizontal line. If someone dropped something who would bend down, and for a moment be lower, to pick it up? Humility is freedom. Freedom to be last, to be overlooked, to be quiet, to serve, to rest in the shadow of another and be at peace.
6. Hunger– surprised? Hunger not starvation. Each and every day, every human knows hunger, a reminder that we have limitations, we need food to survive no matter how successful, powerful, self-sufficient we are. If our physical needs were not a part of life calling us back to the basic task of feeding our bellies, how much more trouble would we be in?

Just some thoughts. Write on, think on.