A Cry in the Wilderness
It’s no language I want to learn, this torrential, pelting dogma that is rising like a river gone rampant, its liquid bluster billowing over its banks into knitted communities and onto hard-scrabble streets where children’s futures are bantered about like a tether ball at recess by billionaire bullies who live inside exclusive fences secured by branded posts that declare inevitable loyalty to the unrestricted firearms marketplace, the international military industrial complex, and domestic healthcare profiteers.
It’s no language I want to learn, the angry spews of artless narcissism, the one-dimensional message that refutes the Golden Rule and tightens the grip of the Soulless Ones who learned their hateful ways somewhere, but where? The Valley of Smiles Gone Sour? The Monetized Monolith of Pathological Disconnection?
Flummoxed by what has been disregarded in the Halls of Justice and the Kitchen Table of Common Sense, I grieve the passing of a way of life that assumes benevolence and courtesy and protection of the defenseless other.
My heart feels trapped by the barbed-wire logic of Madmen Who Would Be King gesticulating simple syllables that decoded translate that the Emperor Has No Clothes. Am I bound to be a captive of the Greedy Grendels whose egos grow more vicious with every passing election cycle? Will I survive the sentries that slap kindness into dungeons and compassion, too?
Kublai Khan’s mother Sorghaghtani taught her children that all beings deserve respect, that understanding prevails over force, and that what destructs instructs. Her way of thinking promoted the bridging of divisions and the ending of cycles of wounding. Easier said than done, I think, as an empathy deficiency of pandemic proportions suppresses even the most evident truths — that love’s nearest enemy is fear.
The Meeting Place series will reappear next week.
