Grace
"Cuchulain stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide." - W. B. Yeats Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea
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- Some folk say that all hope is gone, but today, the world is one... Late afternoon sun dappled down through the greening maple leaves onto the stage we'd cleared along the back wall of the garden. The kids were ranged all 'round, two and three to a chair, still smiling at the clowns who'd taken off their red noses. Lucy stood on a log and talked about the garden, and the neigborhood, and us teachers, and the future, and the Earth, in Spanish then in English. Behind light-dappled Lucy and the insect-singing May air, the Hudson River shone like a carpet of hopeful diamonds glinting downstream into the rising evening.
The Buena Vista garden is slated to be destroyed to make way for a department store parking lot. I deplore so-called 'direct action' activism, but I'll sooner chain myself to the buldozers and wreck the machinery than let that happen. There are some places left in this world that are too good, too beautiful, too pure to let die.
We make a conscious choice every second of every day to nurture or to kill those things we love. To toss that scrap of paper in the garbage or to use it again, to yell and fume or to speak softly, carefully, to pick that flower, to eat that banana, to smoke that cigarette, to plant that seed. When we realize just how bound up we are in the affairs of our little corner of the world, how much of ourselves is held in those sacred places, and how fragile the meaningful crust of this lonely little planet of ours is, we are, I think, compelled to act. Whether that act is a turning away in fear and desperation or a headlong charge with resolution and passion is entirely up to us. Horror and glory are balanced on the fulcrum of worldly grace.
By the light in the trees and the shining river, we make the world. Because the love's still growing, and the love's still growing...
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"Don't you have a word to show what may be done
Have you never heard a way to find the sun
Tell me all that you may know
Show me what you have to show
Won't you come and say
If you know the way to blue?
.
Have you seen the land living by the breeze
Can you understand a light among the trees
Tell me all that you may know
Show me what you have to show
Tell us all today
If you know the way to blue?
.
Look through time and find your rhyme
Tell us what you find
We will wait at your gate
Hoping like the blind.
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Can you now recall all that you have known?
Will you never fall
When the light has flown?
Tell me all that you may know
Show me what you have to show
Won't you come and say
If you know the way to blue?" - Nick Drake
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.
.
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide." - W. B. Yeats Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea
.
.
- Some folk say that all hope is gone, but today, the world is one... Late afternoon sun dappled down through the greening maple leaves onto the stage we'd cleared along the back wall of the garden. The kids were ranged all 'round, two and three to a chair, still smiling at the clowns who'd taken off their red noses. Lucy stood on a log and talked about the garden, and the neigborhood, and us teachers, and the future, and the Earth, in Spanish then in English. Behind light-dappled Lucy and the insect-singing May air, the Hudson River shone like a carpet of hopeful diamonds glinting downstream into the rising evening.
The Buena Vista garden is slated to be destroyed to make way for a department store parking lot. I deplore so-called 'direct action' activism, but I'll sooner chain myself to the buldozers and wreck the machinery than let that happen. There are some places left in this world that are too good, too beautiful, too pure to let die.
We make a conscious choice every second of every day to nurture or to kill those things we love. To toss that scrap of paper in the garbage or to use it again, to yell and fume or to speak softly, carefully, to pick that flower, to eat that banana, to smoke that cigarette, to plant that seed. When we realize just how bound up we are in the affairs of our little corner of the world, how much of ourselves is held in those sacred places, and how fragile the meaningful crust of this lonely little planet of ours is, we are, I think, compelled to act. Whether that act is a turning away in fear and desperation or a headlong charge with resolution and passion is entirely up to us. Horror and glory are balanced on the fulcrum of worldly grace.
By the light in the trees and the shining river, we make the world. Because the love's still growing, and the love's still growing...
.
.
.
"Don't you have a word to show what may be done
Have you never heard a way to find the sun
Tell me all that you may know
Show me what you have to show
Won't you come and say
If you know the way to blue?
.
Have you seen the land living by the breeze
Can you understand a light among the trees
Tell me all that you may know
Show me what you have to show
Tell us all today
If you know the way to blue?
.
Look through time and find your rhyme
Tell us what you find
We will wait at your gate
Hoping like the blind.
.
Can you now recall all that you have known?
Will you never fall
When the light has flown?
Tell me all that you may know
Show me what you have to show
Won't you come and say
If you know the way to blue?" - Nick Drake
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