March 26th, 2020

Wild Columbine

When I read about Republicans and "conservatives" willing to sacrifice human lives for the sake of their stock portfolios I am left feeling so angry (although not surprised) that I find it hard to speak.  I watched Trump's bumbling, self-congratulatory, self-serving (he wants his hotels open by Easter) news conference yesterday (though I know better than to do such a self-flagellating  act),  I wasn't so much angry as bemused—how can anyone not see what he is and what his toadies are?  (Fauci may be a modern day saint).  What can one say in the face of this that is helpful instead of hurtful?   Pray, meditate, go for a walk (if you're allowed to?) and look at the world which goes on its way, not paying attention to human frailty and hubris.

Perhaps it's self-deceptive, but in these crazy times, I still find some comfort in things like what Paul Kingsnorth wrote:  "it's something I've believed in—no, it's something I've felt--for as long as I can remember . . . That was what I wanted: to live in a culture which thinks the world is a sacred thing, for which reality is . . . a flaming hoop, whose language is the language of beauty and fire, which sings to the forest and expects it to hear.  I have always wanted to be part of a culture which walks through the wild world as if it were of it, which doesn't talk of . . . profit or growth but talks and lives as if this way of speaking were the poisonous bullshit that it so obviously is."