He Is Not Our Brother

Most of us are doing the best that we know how.

In this topsy-turvy world one finds the blessing wherever one can, the fulfillment, the satisfaction.  But the curse comes along sometimes like an undesirable uncle showing up unannounced at the door.  We knew he would eventually arrive, we just didn’t know from where, and we didn’t know when.  But we’ll have to live with that.  Like the promise of death, or ageing. 

But there is an even more sinister family member who increasingly insinuates himself into our lives.  He masquerades as a big brother.  And big brother has become a tangible curse for most people these days, just like George Orwell said he would.  He finds his way into our life most inappropriately, and at the most inopportune time, bringing with him new laws, taxes, fees, regulations, and requirements of every kind.  Listening in on us, tracking our every keyboard stroke or smart phone transaction.  But it’s for our own good, he says.  It’s for our own wellbeing, and to help with our own security.

Yeah, real nice brother.  Always looking out for us!

The main problem with that kind of brother is that he actually believes his own fiction.  He pretends to be a loyal, moral and ethical member of the family, working hard on our behalf.  And yet he wallows in his own self-importance stroking himself, and his buddies, for gratification, all the while thinking that we see him as the character he so disingenuously masquerades as for the rest of us.  The truth is, we can see him, but for whom he actually is.  The sad part is that for the most part we don’t care.  That is the real tragedy.  It’s how he’s able to continue being a disloyal, immoral, and unethical member of the family, entertaining delusions of grandeur, and working hard on his own behalf.  He is not our savior, by any stretch of the imagination.  And he is not our brother.  He has, in fact, become our master.

Most of us are giving it our best, just trying to get through life, and haven’t got the inclination to supervise the behavior of a government that insinuates itself into, and imposes itself upon, our struggling lives.  Big Brother knows that.  Of that you can be sure.   

And it’s really how he gets away with the charade.

But we, as the recipients of his untoward affection, must be aware of him and his spurious ways, 

and make the time and effort to resist his unscrupulous advances.

That is something we can and must do, and we must do it with vigilance, the best that we know how.

Consciousness

We’d all like to feel like we’re conscious, more so than the next guy, even if we’re not.  Consciousness is a relative term.  The next guy is just as conscious as, or more so, than I am, but in his own way, by his own experience and understanding.  His consciousness is uniquely his own, as is yours and mine.  One mans consciousness is another mans confusion.

Consciousness has always been relative, and that’s why it’s so easy to proclaim yourself to be conscious when those around you might consider you not to be.  By the same token you might consider them not to be.  They measure your consciousness by their own, as you do theirs by yours, whether anyone is aware of it or not.  And furthermore, theirs might be measured by a different standard -even apart from themselves- than you might measure yours by, a different standard of criteria, and by an innate personal bias that they are intrinsically incapable of taking into account in any self-assessment.

So rather than arguing consciousness, degrees of, or ownership of, let me just suggest that beyond any intellectual measure, emotional connection to, or conceptual ideation, a persons life will always be the best indicator of consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  or lack thereof.

Not Leading To Better

There was a person, and a situation, that left some extended family members appalled, not only because of the persons blatant attempts to unapologetically exploit other people, but to ascribe an innate holiness to the behavior as well.  Family members talked among themselves about the person, and not in flattering terms.  There had been a running commentary throughout much of the family, but nobody would address the situation with the person; choosing instead to gossip about it amongst themselves, while pretending that nothing was amiss when interacting with that individual.

I addressed the situation, the dishonesty, with some honesty, and some truth.  And some of the family members became afraid of me for having spoken so frankly.  In my opinion, that in itself is cause for concern.

 “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”

- George Orwell

Not to pat myself on the back.  That’s not what this is about.  I take no pleasure in calling someone out for their disingenuousness.  But untruthful people still don’t get it, that honesty is in their own best interest.  Others, who are privy to their untoward behavior are so afraid of being thought of as judgmental, or of being shunned, rejected, or excluded, that they will hide behind silence to protect themselves.  And they will often disassociate themselves from those who dare to be honest.  But they really only protect themselves from their own insecurities, and in the bigger picture they do themselves an enormous injustice, inhibiting their own ability to breathe freely. 

In defense of avoidance, people will say that honesty hurts other people, other people’s feelings.  In truth, sometimes it does.  But in order to accomplish anything in this life we must be willing to risk something.  In order to help someone else we must be willing to sacrifice something of ourselves.  So if a person is unwilling to risk hurting the feelings of someone who is raising disingenuousness to levels we don’t even want to be around, then the unwilling, and everybody else, will have to live with the behaviors of, and the repercussions from, the one choosing to be so mendacious.

What of the drug abuser or alcoholic whose self-centered behavior damages the lives of his entire family?  We wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings?  Or the family member who continually lies to those who love him the most?  Or the religious people who choose to exploit other people for their own gain?  Or the social climbers who want to look good in the eyes of whoever they choose to use to get ahead?  Should we be overly concerned with hurting their feelings?  Or is it that we wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of somebody we might want, or need, to remain associated with?  Should we just remain silent so as not to disrupt the status quo, so as not to mess with the illusion of bliss while embracing the elephant in the room, and enhancing the level of dishonesty rather than bringing humankind closer to living in the realm of truthfulness.  Maybe the question should be “Why would I not want to deal honestly, straightforward if you will, with someone who is less than genuine with me?”

There is no power to be had over someone who has nothing to hide.  That person can live forthrightly, and in good conscience.  That person is free to be honest.

Some people put no value on honesty.  They put value only on whatever it takes to get by, to get ahead, or to make themselves look good.  I feel very sad, and very sorry, for those people.

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that ‘A person is only as sick as his secrets’. 

Maybe you haven’t.  But you have now.

Silence kills . . . . . . . . . eventually. 

Yourself, and others.

A little bit at a time,

like infection poisons the blood.

How many times have we refused to respond to an issue someone has created for fear of causing drama, trauma, upset, dislike, disdain or rejection?  How many times have people allowed lingering resentments to fester like an ugly wound, only to have the infection take root and become a much greater problem than if it been had addressed properly, honestly, to begin with?  Honesty is not only the avoidance of telling lies.  It is about the manner in which we live, the manner in which we conduct our lives.  It is about the attitudes and innuendos we construct, and the impressions we project for others to define us by.  Honesty is a casserole of self-assessment, attitude, belief, and behavior.  It’s unfortunate that it gets reduced down to lying, or not lying.

I choose not to live with lies, deceit, or dishonesty, with myself, or with others.  And if it hurts somebody’s feelings to address it, or if it isolates or alienates me, so be it. 

I can live with that.  I mean them no harm.  They cannot be hurt by honesty if they embrace honesty as a trusted companion.  And I cannot be hurt by them if I’m not afraid of what they think.  I do not consider myself to be righteous, self-righteous, or even un-righteous.  I am simply doing the best I can with what I know, and with what I have.

And I believe it is better to have one good friend who is honest with me than to have a myriad of friends who are not.

Anything short of honesty is not leading to better. 

It may sometimes seem like it might be for the best, but we must ask ourselves,

‘Better for whom’?

The Angel Gabriel

It had been raining for seven days and seven nights.  I was in Morocco, northern Africa, traveling low budget through the small towns and big cities alike.  I’d been hitchhiking, and was soaked to the bone when I arrived in the town of Tetouan, about 60 miles east of Tangier, and positioned just a few miles south of the Straight of Gibraltar.  I’d been shivering all day, like a wet dog shaking forlornly on the streets of Chicago in the dead of winter.  I was in the throes of hypothermia when I finally found a place to stay.  It was not a typical rain that had enveloped the area, but, rather, a deluge of somewhat biblical proportions.  A rain they had not seen in memory.  A rain that washed the mundane daily concerns from peoples minds and replaced those concerns with anxiety about their own lives.  Would they be O.K? 

I took a room in an ancient hotel, stripped off my frozen clothes, and soaked in a hot bath for what seemed like an eternity, warming my bones, and renewing my resolve.  I ate a meal of crackers and canned sardines, and put myself to bed for some much-needed rest, some much-needed dreams, even. 

Traveling alone in a foreign country with a pack on my back and a guitar slung over my shoulder is not easy, by any means.  It’s romanticized in the recollections and retellings of they who have traveled those roads, however, it is anything but romantic.  It is early mornings and late nights in the middle of nowhere.  It is cold, and it is hot.  It is tiring, and frustrating.  It is lonely and foreboding.  It is dangerous and frightening.  It is certainly uncertain, and it is, in many ways, putting your fortune in unknown hands, tossing your fate to the wind, if you will.  It is, above all else, I think, a continuous examination of your self, a deeper examination than most men are even able to bear.  You are confronted with your own shortcomings, your failures, your frailties, your weakness, your fuck-ups, your missteps, your ethics, your morality, and, ultimately, your own mortality.  It strips you down to your very core, and redresses you in unadulterated truth.  It is like running a gantlet with all the ghosts of your past lining up on either side of you while you try your best to make it unmolested through the fray.  But you will not make it through unmolested.  Not if you’re honest with yourself, which, ultimately, you are forced to be.  The road is not a frivolous place.  It is not designed that way.

In the morning I woke to brilliant sunshine flooding through my window, and the sounds of celebration in the streets.  The rains had stopped, and the people were out in the streets full force, most likely for the first time in those long seven days.  I was situated in an ancient part of the city with narrow cobblestone streets lined with rug shops and open-air vendors selling exotic food and hawking their wares;

the food, admittedly exotic to me, but common fare to the Moroccans.  I just wandered around for the better part of the morning, taking in the sights, sounds, smells, and hustles.  Every rug shop I passed sent a couple twenty-something young men out to follow me and solicit me to come and have tea in their shop, look at the rugs, and, hopefully, make a deal.  After ten minutes or so they’d give up, and the next rug shop I passed would send out their own detail to engage me.

The streets were narrow and maze-like, winding, meandering, with no particular discernable pattern.  But it was such a joy to be roaming around among them. 

When the rug merchants finally gave up on me I was able to relax, slow my pace, and take in the intricacies of the town, the minutiae that gets missed and overlooked when distracted by other concerns.  As I moved along I heard what I thought was a child’s voice.  It was faint, but stuck out somehow among the hustle and bustle of all the other voices in the streets.  I thought I heard the words, ‘Mr. Americano’.  I turned around to look, saw nothing related to the sound, then began to continue on my way.  There was an old 4-story hotel that caught my interest just ahead on the left.  I thought I’d check it out with the idea of possibly moving in there if I liked it.  I liked where it was located, and maybe it was cheaper than where I was.  In any event, I took two or three more steps towards the hotel when I heard the child’s voice again, but more urgent this time.

‘Mr. Americano, Mr. Americano’.  I stopped again, turned around, and saw a six or seven-year-old child -standing about thirty feet from me- calling for my attention.  As I saw him, and connected him with the voice, the ground suddenly shook with a deafening roar as the old rock and mortar hotel crumbled into the street in an enormous cloud of dust, just a few feet from me, leaving me in disbelief, with about 50 people in the street buried beneath an enormous pile of rubble.  Needless to say, I was stunned, as was everybody else.  People ran to help, but it was daunting and dispiriting at best.  I tried to help, but, being an obvious foreigner not speaking the language, was held back from the rubble.  

Rescuers arrived quickly and took control of the situation.  They were not uniformed, organized groups, but, nevertheless, men who knew what they were doing.  Organized fire and police came later, but this cadre of volunteers found rescue efforts to be futile for the most part.  So many ended up just standing around with an ever-increasing crowd of mourners. 

After a couple of hours, and still in shock, with tears flowing uncontrolled down my weathered face I began to wander around the town listening for that familiar voice, the voice which had stopped me in my tracks, and spared me such an ignominious fate.  I walked around for the next couple of days, all day, looking for the boy, the angel, that saved my life.    

Today I call him Gabriel.

Baby Doll

For a couple of years, when my youngest son was just two or three years old, I was in the habit of keeping a mannequin in the back seat of my car.  Called her Baby Doll.  Sat her up like she was one of the family.  Strapped her in with a seatbelt for the ride.  Changed her clothes once a week to keep a fresh attitude.  She usually wore a cool hat, tilted just so, and dark glasses during the day.  

Sometimes my son would crawl up into the back seat and snuggle himself up in her arms.  It was pretty cute. Sometimes he’d fall asleep there.  I often wondered what he must have been thinking.  Baby doll was a pretty prominent part of our family at the time.  I realized many years later that the only actual full family portrait we have is one that includes Baby doll.  My wife and I, our two sons, and Baby doll sitting on the sofa, each of us looking straight ahead wearing sunglasses and matching expressions.

I was working for a corporation at the time, driving ten miles to work each day.  Corporate life did not agree too well with me.  The mannequin was a nice distraction from the seriousness of the workday.  Fellow commuters would see the mannequin in the back seat, slow down and wave as they went by, with a knowing smile and a ‘Thanks for the laugh’ look in their eyes.  Coworkers, and others from the office complex would make a point of taking a little break out in the parking lot periodically to see what Baby doll would be wearing during that particular week.  I think they understood that in order for me to maintain my sanity in a suit and tie, I must occasionally welcome a little insanity into my own life.  There must have also been some vicarious indulgence for many of the uninitiated, who were, themselves, bound by parameters they were struggling against. 

Baby doll was not a profound experience for me by any means, but in a corporate, conformist, and stifling world she did serve as a connection to the idea of personal liberation, an important, and necessary, connection for me at that particular time of my life. 

And she did put smiles on the faces of a lot of people who would have otherwise not been smiling.  For this I am grateful to her.  And I remember her fondly.

A Greater Purpose

We toil in the fields, in the factories, in the cubicles, in the corporate offices, and in the restaurants and cafés.  We try to find satisfaction in the work we do, all the while knowing that work provides a greater reward than not working ever could.  We don’t really discover this truth unless we’ve been both employed, and unemployed at some point during our lifetime.

If we work at a job that is not in alignment with our soul, however, with our purpose in life, we find that it wears us down, wears us out, and prompts us to either hunker down and unhappily accept the status quo, or seek a source of satisfaction elsewhere.  The dissatisfaction of such a job, the hopelessness, the futility of going through motions that we find no purpose in is like a hamster on a wheel for many.  It is a passing of time, but not a purposeful use of our time, other than for a paycheck.  That paycheck is important, but the seeking of our higher calling is what can make the difference. 

Now I’m not saying that if you are a server in a cafe, or a laborer, or a factory worker that you are not serving your higher calling.  And I’m not implying that if you are a successful musician, teacher, or doctor that you are serving your higher calling.  It is not about the status of the work, the recognition, or the pay scale.  It is about the place where you fit well with yourself, the place that feeds your soul, the place that enables you to have the greatest peace about what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.  It is an alignment with something greater than one’s self.  For some, being a servant is the highest calling of all.  And I’m not one who would ever disagree with that.  For some it is reaching for the pinnacle of financial success, gaining a position of influence and advantage.  And for some it might be in entertaining others.  Every person is unique, and every calling unique to the one who answers it.  It is about how we are with what we do, and what we do with our circumstances, acquired influence, and remuneration.     

It has been said that if you’re doing something you love, you won’t work a day in your life.  

Scripture says, “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.”  It is not just a principle of faith.  It is a universal truth of sorts.  I don’t know that it is universal in the purest sense of its promise, but it surely is in the importance of its intent and admonition.  It is an encouragement to reach for what your soul desires, to embrace the gift that has been granted, and to enter into the fullness of that promise.   

It is good fortune for an individual to find his life’s work.  It is an easy thing to find for some people.  Some know their path from a very early age, but some don’t find it until much later in life.  For some it takes the experience of life to stumble upon the work that fulfills them, but when they do they recognize it as their own.

Some people do, and will always, look at work as just a way to make a living, often hopping from job to job.  And that’s O.K.  Work is noble in, and of, itself.  Everybody has to make a living.  Everyone must find a way, and sometimes the esoteric does not need to enter into the equation at all.  People can, and do, find their higher calling outside of work.  And that is equally important.  What matters is that we find our greater purpose, in life, and in our day to day.  For many it is found in their work, and for some it is not.

Chin on the Chopping Block (A boys story)

As a kid I always had a propensity for finding wounded animals.  I found them, and they found me.  It was not as if I went out looking for them, they just seemed to end up in my company.  I was not particularly schooled in the healing arts, did not really know much about animals, or even have much of a clue what to do for a critter in distress.  But I did have a tremendous empathy and compassion for the wounded.  I could always offer comfort, and I could always feel their pain.  As I began to grow older, wounded kids began to find their way to my door as well.

But anyway, when I was five or six years old we used to drive out to the dairy on Saturday mornings to get milk.  My mom and my brothers and sister.  As I recall, the dairy must have been about six or eight miles away from our house.  We’d turn off the main country road onto a dirt road that stretched out for about a half mile before reaching the dairy.  A row of enormous eucalyptus trees paralleled the road, and several hundred crows made their homes high up in the trees.  One morning, as we drove slowly along the dusty road, shadowed by the enormity of the eucalyptus, I noticed a bird lying on the ground at the base of one of the trees.  I yelled for my mom to stop, and as she did I jumped out to see what was wrong with the bird.  To my untrained eyes it appeared as if it had a broken wing.  We were just a stones throw from the dairy, so I told my mom to go ahead and I’d walk over and meet her there in a minute.  She did, and I bent over to pick up the crow.  As I brought it up near my face to have a closer look it stretched its neck out suddenly and bit me on the chin, pretty hard, and it held on pretty tight.  I was kind of shocked, but OK, until realizing I couldn’t pull the bird from my chin.  I pulled with increasing force, I tried prying it’s beak apart, I tried relaxing, and coaxing the bird to let go, and when all else failed, I cried, and pleaded with the crow.  I was not just crying from frustration, I was crying from pain.  This bird was locked on to my face like a pit bull on a vulnerable leg.

I ran up to the dairy.  My mom quickly realized how traumatized I was, but she couldn’t remove the bird either.  She asked the dairy man to help, but even he couldn’t get the creature to release it’s grip.  They were both afraid of tearing my chin to shreds.  Mom piled us all back into the car to race home because my dad would certainly know what to do.  She drove the few miles in a mild panic as I became increasingly traumatized.  People in the other cars were looking, pointing, laughing at the crying kid with the crow stuck on his chin.  It was not fun for me.  Not at all. 

We eventually came screaming into the driveway at home, with mom honking the horn, and dad coming out on the porch to see what was going on.  He took one look at me, quickly assessed the situation, and laughed.  It was like a shot to the heart of a wounded puppy.  He couldn’t pull, or pry, the bird from my chin either, so he took me out in the back yard, got an ax, laid my head down on top of a tree stump, told me to stop crying, close my eyes, hold my breath, and hold myself still.  I was terrified.  Beyond description.  Beyond belief.  My father’s ax sliced cleanly through the neck of the crow, I opened my eyes, saw the body of the bird laying helpless on the ground, saw blood oozing red from its neck, and its head still clinging stubbornly to my chin.  I lost it, thinking, as only a child could, that I would have to spend the rest of my life with the head of a crow clamped tightly, and grotesquely, on my quivering chin.

Getting Old

Getting old (er) is the only chance we have to put into practice what we’ve supposedly learned along the way.  Getting old, in itself, implies that there was an ‘along the way’.   Without an ‘along the way’ there would be no wisdom to have accumulated to help us through today and all the coming tomorrow’s.  And that being the case, the mistakes we make would be for not having had the opportunity to have made them before, so as not to make the same ones again.

Now, as we get older if we continue to make the same mistakes we have to consider that just maybe we’re not nearly as smart as we’ve always thought ourselves to be.  Not nearly as clued in, not nearly as conscious, and not nearly as astute.  Either that, or we just don’t happen to care.  And that, I must admit, is pretty sad if it has become the operating principle in one’s life.

But, as we all know, there is the physical aspect of getting older also, and, concerning that dynamic, I just want to say that mama never told me that virtually everything in, on, or around my body would end up hurting.  Daddy never let on that he was in pain for much of the second half of his life, and the two of them together seemed as if all their secrets were safely locked away beneath an uncommon, but perhaps unhealthy, stoicism.

There’s a fuzzy line between being honest enough about your pain for the information to be informative for those around you, and those coming up behind you, and being vocal about it to the degree that it becomes self-indulgence for the intended purpose of garnering sympathy.  We need to be careful what we do with our pain.  After all, it is our pain, and it should not be foisted upon the general collective.  We’ve all heard about suffering in silence, and we’re all acquainted with someone who cannot stop talking about their own suffering.  Neither dynamic is of particular benefit to the person inflicted, and both can prove to be more damaging to the individual than the actual malady itself, or the pain that it engenders.

Ageing is for the old.  It’s not for the young.  The young have too much to learn, and too much to do to pay attention to all the peripheral setbacks and nagging concerns associated with a perpetually declining body.  The secret to ageing gracefully, I believe, the saving grace, if you will, is to not let your spirit break down along with your body.

It Pays To Make Good Choices

I was just eighteen.  It was 1967.  I was living with a bunch of friends in a big house in Covina, California when I suddenly found myself in a rather disconcerting predicament.  I was arrested for selling marijuana.  A man had befriended me over a period of time.  I liked him, and trusted him.  I got him a job at the place where I was working.  About three months later he asked if I could get him some pot.  I didn’t sell drugs, and he was a friend, so I gave him a little bit of what I had.

A few nights later, at about three o’clock in the morning, eight or ten cops busted down our back door, came barging into the house, shined a flashlight in my eyes, pulled me naked out of bed, handcuffed me and placed me under arrest for the possession and sale of drugs.  My friend turned out to be an undercover narcotics officer assigned to befriend, and elicit, a drug sale from me.  Because I was a dealer?  Because I was a danger to others?  No, because I had long hair in a time when long hair made one a target of the law.  My ‘friend’ set me up, exaggerated the transaction, and he and his associates took me down like an escapee from a Louisiana chain gang.

My roommates and I were the first long-haired kids in our town and the cops wanted to teach us a lesson.

With guns pointed, they rounded us all up and made us squat together in a corner while they emptied every drawer in our house onto the floor, overturned dressers and tables, lamps and stereo equipment.  They tore open the chairs and sofas, and knocked holes in all the walls looking for drugs.  They didn’t find any. 

One of my friends got scared and ran.  They took off after him, shooting at him like he was a rabbit.  He got away, but died shortly thereafter.  Not from being shot, but in an auto accident.

They wouldn’t let me get dressed.  Took me to jail naked, hurling insults and ridicule about my long hair and nubile body, shouting about how I’d be fresh bait for the big boys in the County. They kept me in the City jail for three nights, and then transferred me, manacled, by prison bus to Los Angeles.  I went through heated derision and ridicule during the spraying and cavity search, and was then placed as the fifth person in a 4-man cell.  It was actually a cell for one or two, about 8’ x 12’, but it had two sets of bunk beds, one set on either wall, and I was given a thin mattress to lay on the floor in the narrow space between the bunks.  

My cell mates were seasoned, hardened criminals.  They ranged in age from 35 to 55.  Two of them were awaiting trial on murder charges.  One of the men had beaten a long-haired boy to death at a Love-In in Griffith Park.  I’d been at that same gathering.  The guards made it clear to me that I was put in that particular cell for the pleasure of their company.  These were not nice men.  I laid awake all night, every night, and most of every day.  It was the only defense I had in such a threatening situation.  

I was released about a month later when a judge dismissed my case.  The experience has lasted a lifetime.  I do not, today, revile the police, or those in law enforcement.  I believe I have every reason to, but I chose not to let resentment defile my life.  It was a time of cultural conflict.  Us against them, and them against us, for no particular reason.  The reasons were many,  and the conclusions were few.  I have always recognized that there are good, honest, and thoughtful men and women in law enforcement.  Had I chosen to travel a road of anger and bitterness I may have gone on to become a life-long criminal because of it, rather than the well-intentioned man that I have chosen to be.  

Life is a crapshoot, as the past can indicate, a series of happenstances, unintended, and sometimes unavoidable.  But it is also a choice, a series of choices, really.  It pays to make good choices.  They can be the difference between life taking us for a ride in a rudderless boat, and us having control of the rudder.

The Final Benediction

Here in California the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains has been on fire and burning up for about the past ten days.  El Dorado County, below Tahoe, and North east of Placerville.  Thousands of people have been evacuated, including myself.  Several thousand fire fighters have been working hard to try and control the fire.  As of this writing it has burned 95,000 acres, or about 150 square miles.  The fire crews have been doing a heroic job.  And finally the rains, along with thunder and lightning, have come to put a final benediction on their efforts.

I’ve very seldom seen thunder and lightening storms such as these; some of the thunder so violent that it has been shaking my house like a cardboard box sitting on the ground near a jackhammer.  The lightning so powerful that it’s been lighting up the sky, illuminating the dark as if it were a movie-set back lighted for effect in the filming of an old Twilight Zone episode.  Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the woods.

This recent night sky extravaganza puts any man-made 4^th of July celebration to shame, dwarfing and overshadowing it like the Grand Canyon might upstage the nearby American River canyon that the fire traveled so rapidly, and so indiscriminately, through in its quest for more fuel.  It has served to remind me that nature has the power to create and to destroy.  It has the capacity to both comfort and frighten us.  It will turn on us with a change of mood in a minute, and it will settle into a predictable temperament at times to allow us some respite from its mood swings.

The fire destroyed an abundance of wildlife here in the mountains.  Some homes, some hope, and some dreams.  But it will regenerate in time, and it will bring forth new hope with the new growth, new homes where the old ones once stood, and new dreams for new people; for some old timers as well.  Wildlife that escaped the inferno will in time return to their old stomping grounds to find fresh buds and new shoots to munch on.  It will take a season, but the seasons will continue to arrive, and to change, as they always have.  Time does not follow our schedule, but its own.  

Nature has shown that it is stronger and more powerful than we are, more determined to have its own way, and to expresses itself exactly as it pleases.  The  devastating fire of which I speak was supposedly started by a man.  And men and women helped to control it as best they could until nature arrived with a timely downpour to finish the job, and, as I said, to pronounce a final benediction on their efforts.

What was demonstrated to me again, and what I take away from this brutal happenstance, is that people, though easily subjugated to the awesome power of nature, though misplaced, displaced, and threatened by ruin continued to look out for one another, to care about each other.  They truly do care about one another.  And that is a strength not only equal to, or greater than, the power of nature, but also a profound demonstration of power of a different nature.

Call it human nature, if you will. 

Or call it love.