HOME

as is sometimes the case
at least for me in this life

at the moment I claim something of value
there is a response from the world:

prove it

giving up pot
and for a significant time alcohol and caffeine
has provided a couple moments of this
but manageably so

particularly in relation to the response I am getting
to reclaiming one essential part
of my spiritual path:

this notion of extending ki

yesterday's momentary blog
since unposted

reflected a frantic search
for meaning within a shocked system

entitled uproot
it defined the exact response of a being
clearly unable to extend ki

but rather pulling up roots
from a threat personally ferocious and toxic

the loss of home

___________

how is it possible to extend that
which is drawn up from one's connection to life
one's rootedness in the earth

when that source is arbitrarily threatened
by forces beyond one's control

an owner's needs
ever winning out over
the latecomer

this is not only a personal koan
for one whose life has traversed
hundreds of dwellings
in a seemingly endless parade of transition

it is the demented riddle
terrorizing most of the planet

as forests and farms
are torn down and abandoned

for the promise of profit
in a dysfunctional system of
private land ownership
and ever greater banking manipulations
of wealth

___________

it is not of course
most poignantly
the forests and farms
that are destroyed

but people and families
everywhere homeless around this
once and still beautiful pear of a planet

americans on the street

even the middle class now betrayed
by the supposed surprise of
a mortgage meltdown

even the victorious soldiers now dying
from depleted uranium munitions

yet the injustice runs far deeper
to those beyond euro-american borders

indigenous peoples
systematically slaughtered
uprooted and bordered

the millions murdered
in yet another prepackaged war

or brought to the diseased streets
of teeming filthy cities
out of economic desperation

or fallen into a drug-laced system
of global mafia

or mysteriously disappeared

or left to die starving
and diseased

is it not true that
underpinning all of this

is the utter loss
of the inherent and absolute right
of a living being
to a home?

________


for all the comfortable empathy
and all the other tricks in my new age bag
there is no escaping this convergence
of personal and global karma

yet what remains

remains available
to all in all circumstances:

a remembrance of our roots
not here in this juicy loving orb
of immense and succulent beauty

but those roots which draw
from some even more essential
and seemingly upside-down place

some heavenly source realm
untouchable by all of this misery
ever sustaining life even before life

and ever granting us autonomy
to know who we are
and act accordingly

by building and rebuilding
one brick at a time

some semblance yet
of heaven here

on Earth