Imagine the distance 

back to your suffering:

travel as an opportunity

to love back into 

the community of your heart 

those tender aspects 

of your own world 

that 

in their fragile essence 

felt 

the piercing sting 

of 

innumerable sensitivities 

perpetrated by those 

who abandoned themselves.

"You are too sensitive,"
 the chorus resounds--

as if being insensitive were somehow

more fitting and functional

in a world were the threads

connecting our senses to our

sensitivities and ultimately 

our capacity to be sentient

have been forsaken.

They might as well say
"You are too aware,"
Or
"You are affected by what

you need to numb yourself to."

The subtle pressure to be insentient

in this world is not always so subtle

Sensitivity can be pummeled and beat into

submission like it were hot iron ore and not 

the radiant flower it once was in our youth.

We learn how to be tough and hardened---

as if this were learning and not the cruel adaptation

whose price is a vital loss of that foundation 

upon which valid insight forever rests.

This is when I hear that other chorus 

beginning to rise, the one that takes us deep 

into what we know is truer, that,
"You are too insensitive."

We are not sensitive enough. 

We need to become more sensitive,

otherwise we are destined to be the 

pawns and puppets of our own

self-reinforcing ignorance and stupidity.

Feel.... 

Feel everything and let it fill

your raw nerves with the news of the 

day and the secrets of the night.

Feel and let those sensitivities

carry you to your destiny

as one of the ones who knows

they are too sensitive and yet

not sensitive enough. 

Feel your way to 

understanding the consequences

of history's misunderstandings

and trust that those feelings

will foster us a future where 

sensitivity is fully realized 

as the essential basis for

knowledge that has a heart.

The Hero Myth & Our Triumphant Suffering

How noble is the one who pushes through pain and overcomes great obstacles? in spite of  the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?" Unyielding in the face of suffering, such a heroic figure seems to suggest that there is glory in not bending to the voices of suffering that echo inside of us. These figures are upheld throughout the ages as exemplars of human nobility---of the greatest that we are each capable of, of what we all should aspire to. 

And yet, it appears that there is more to the story.

I cannot help but wonder what kind of world we create when suffering's voice is merely a sound that we feel compelled to overcome all the time. I wonder what kind of a society we encourage when suffering is seen as merely a personal struggle that each and everyone of us should find the steely resolve to be triumphant over. Do we unwittingly create a society that is hardened to care and compassion in relation to suffering and its many shades and timbres? Do we create a culture where suffering has no value except as a weight that the force of our personal will is supposed to uphold day after day? Do we maybe create---subtly, over time--a world indifferent to the various calls and claims that suffering makes upon us , if for no other reason than because our preferred mythology has been that suffering is what heroes and heroines overcome, and that is all suffering is good for---another mountain to climb and conquer?

When suffering is merely that which is to be conquered by our will, by our technology, by our spirituality and metaphysics what do we miss in viewing suffering so narrowly? And what do we create, inevitably, as a result of so narrow a view of suffering's continued presence in our many realms and worlds?

The Origins of Our Ancestors

The question of our own origins appears to remain a profound mystery. Where we come from is a point debated by scientists and religious scholars alike. Everyone seems to have an opinion. Many defer to authourity on the matter. They believe what the Priest says, and take it on faith. Or maybe it is an Omar or Mullah, a Mystic or a Medicine-Man that gives us the answers we possess as our own on the question of our origins. 

I wonder what we miss out on when the depth of our questioning goes so deep. Maybe we miss out on the origins that are near to us---and, in many ways, dearer.

Do we overlook the immediate as our gaze extends out to the farthest horizon? Is the matter of our religious origins a topic that can actually result in our overlooking what we can know?

We know that we come from Mothers. Each and everyone of us. There is no one who is able to read this who did not come from a Mother..... and a Father. Whether we know them, love them, despise them, revile them, rejoice in them the fact stills remains: we are rooted deep in the soil of Mothers and Fathers.

Certainly we can follow this thread of Mothers and Fathers back as far as our stories can travel. We can do genealogical research into the origins of Mother and Fathers until we arrive at what exactly? Apes? Planets? Stars? Primordial Soup? Interstellar dust? How quickly we lose the thread.

Science tells the story of our Mothers and Fathers in terms of inherited traits and the inevitable mutations brought on by sexual reproduction, whereby we each are part Mother/part Father. Wrestle with this as much as we like we are this once in a lifetime medley of all the Mothers and Fathers who preceded us. We are the connections made. We are the connections being made right now. We are this unraveling thread of heredity and inheritance that extends back to a time before time. The thread disappears into a slippery void out of which not even our voices seem to echo back at us.

Which brings me to what I wanted to share today: Respect thy Mother and Father. I believe this is a commandment in some book or other. Maybe you know the name of it. Apparently, this commandment is up near the top of the list. Not that we are prioritizing here. :) Or maybe we are. Maybe this business about "Respect thy Mother and Father" has little to do with obedience and other such assumptions. Maybe it is just another way of saying, "Respect your lineage. Respect your heritage. Respect your ancestry. Respect your origins."

What is our heritage and ancestry and lineage if not life itself? There is really no separation from our own unique heritage and what life is. Life is heritage. Life is ancestry and origins. The continuation of existence in all of its forms is the story of these lineages and ancestries and inheritances.

It could suggest to us that respecting our origins is synonymous with respecting our self. They are inseparable and indivisible, after all. We did not emerge apart from them. It is the same as respecting life. The tenuous and tenacious story of life's survival has found its pinnacle of success in us... in each of us.... in all of us. <3