THE AWAKENING DREAM

The planet confesses how small she actually is as I approach the shore of another continent. People are people wherever I find them; walking, talking, eating, sleeping. They love, and cry, and care for their children the same way in the eastern hemisphere as they do in the west. Before my thought is complete, angel wings gesture through the animal kingdom, exposing the mothers and fathers there, who tenderly care for and protect their young too, not unlike mankind. Father penguin balances the unhatched egg on his feet for days, protecting it from cold death. Mother water buffalo charges the fierce lion who crept too close to a vulnerable yearling. The marsupials carry their children in their pockets until the youngsters are mature enough to venture out on their own. And the children? They run and play and laugh in every language, with a curious innocence that prepares and trains them for what’s to come as days and years draw them forward. Having shown the similarities, now my angels concede a troubling truth about our children. Many of them become helplessly alienated from life’s intended harmony. The curious innocence we admire so much sometimes gets tragically mutilated as our children grow and become poisoned by toxic leaders and teachers. Hate and prejudice are not inborn. They are not instinctive. They only exist because they are taught, or modeled after. The evidence of this surrounds me days later as I'm forced to penetrate the smoke and dust of war- torn regions. What happened to the children whose sparkling eyes couldn’t distinguish between the races or religions? Now they hurl grenades and launch rockets killing and maiming the same friends they would have loved to play with as kids. Dismembered limbs lay in blood-soaked streets. Homes and places of worship turn to piles of flesh and rubble. In split seconds, lives and families are destroyed. Individual and collective agonies last for decades, sometimes generations. Many questions rise into the ether, mixed with the stench of death. Who on earth cannot see how wrong this is? Who can tell me what is so valuable that it is worth mutual destruction? What inner peace or great fortune is this mayhem supposed to bring us? How blind and desensitized have we become that we accept such tragedy? What did or didn’t we do for our young children while we had the responsibility and opportunity to mentor them, and teach them empathy and compassion? The angels are saddened and disappointed. It’s clear that our work here is not done, they imply with heads hung low. I zip through a clearing and take out a little of my frustration by scattering organic debris through the air, interrupting the otherwise tranquil surroundings. The butterflies are blown off course and briefly redirected. The ants expeditiously tend to their nests, reopening their doorways. Birds flit and scatter, but return as quickly as they departed. In a matter of minutes the critters resume their regular routine and the evidence of my tantrum disappears. There’s room for all of us on this tiny planet, my angels profess. And our religions and spiritual intuitions guide us toward the clues to living harmoniously. Clues, not answers, are what we have to work with. The answers will reveal themselves, albeit differently to each of us, as we listen to and trust our instincts, as we incorporate the clues and move forward through life.