With the sun now fallen below the equator, the mornings have come later with seeming haste over the past several weeks, as if anxious to move the season along toward winter.
It will come soon enough with all its challenges, I tell the sun, in hopes of seeing spring again. I cannot let go easily of this life. My spirit has not journeyed through the cosmos for God knows how long, and awakened to find myself alive on this little jewel of a planet, to welcome death; or, for that matter the end of the world. It is a gift, and to be alive for this brief moment, to be given the mind and body of a being set free to be joyful on the Earth is a wonderful miracle.

Like the children at the well, I could not contain myself. Maybe I was one of them, dancing around, coming closer, drawn by a certain delight we saw in the holy eyes, and the generous smile, in the empathy that made him one of us. No, he said, don’t chase them away, don’t diminish their joy in any way. Rather, be like them, and you will surely be in Paradise.

No, I am not one to let go of this life easily, or, God forbid, happily, in the name of supposed “end time” prophecy, the big lie of these terrible, lying times. Neither was he who wept in the garden at the imminent prospect of death. He loved life too, though he saw only too well what the future held, and tried to make another miracle to save the world.

And now?

“Oh, my dear friend,” I sometimes feel like crying out to the sky when the rain falls, “what have they done to you?”

Actually, it’s depressing to be alive in the last couple of years and wonder if the creeping madness of an unfolding tyranny can be stopped. Where are the “checks and balances?” How can so many people not tell right from wrong? How can people who should know better, who must have some knowledge of history, surely, continue to enable evil? Haven’t we been here before?

Sometimes, I think I’ll just stop watching the news. Just let it go. What can I do anyway, one small voice? I might be, probably would be, a lot happier. And there is something important to be said about going out into the world with wonderful happiness, like the children at the well.

But then I think that the best thing that could happen now, perhaps the only hope, is that as many voices as possible, millions and millions of them, are raised in unison, singing out another Ode to Joy for the sake of the world and life on Earth.