priorities Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

I’d Love to Chat

…but I’m heading out the door to check out those meteor showers again tonight.

I’m such a sucker for celestial events. Which also reminds me: recently we celebrated the 50^thanniversary of the moon landing. I’ve been meaning to watch the footage of that again, maybe even watch it with our kids (who are not ‘kids,’ I hasten to add). In fact, there are quite a variety of programs being offered this month to celebrate the technological innovation and tremendous bravery we witnessed all those years ago.

NASA and the Apollo Program were such huge parts of my childhood. It’s shocking, really, to consider how much promise there was when we landed on the moon in 1969 and how few dramatic accomplishments we’ve actually made since then.

I guess we got distracted.

A Lack of Will

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling a deep sense of disappointment at the lack of will our country has shown to continuing our efforts in space exploration. When I think about what we accomplished in 42 years, I am stunned at the apparent lack of comparative progress.

What 42 years, you might ask? The 42 years between when Charles Lindbergh made the first transatlantic flight and when we landed men on the moon. The reason why I speak of this span in terms of 42 years is because my mother was very fond of recalling how she was ten years old when ‘Lindy’ made that incredible, groundbreaking flight. As you can probably guess, since I was ten years old when Neil Armstrong took his famous first step onto the surface of the moon, she was 42 when she had me.

Quite honestly, I always expected at least one of my children to be witness, when they were ten years old, to some scientific achievement that rivaled that enormous leap in technological capability and vision. But it didn’t happen. Again, it seems we got distracted.

We Got Distracted

Probably the greatest disappointment to humanity resulting from this failure to keep the technological research and momentum going is the grievous situation we find ourselves in right now: the climate crisis. So many incredible breakthroughs and inventions were discovered in the process of meeting the challenge posed by President Kennedy all those years ago. We can only wonder what could have been discovered had we continued the quest.

All of which makes me yearn for an about face to the head-in-the-sand, intelligence and education-bashing, and steadfast aggrandizing of ignorance over scientific inquiry that we’re witnessing in our country. The ‘dumbing down’ of America has been tremendously successful – to our great peril.

We Need a Grand Challenge

We need brilliance, innovation, and creativity to be valued and funded. This starts with us collectively making education a priority for all our children, from pre-school on up. And for sure it demands respect for science and the cessation of the bald-faced censorship of scientific inquiry and the result of it.

We need to be challenged; we need our scientists to be believed; we need to want to save our Earth for the good of all – not just for those who hold all the power (and all the money).

We need a Grand Challenge, an audacious goal that flies in the face of what the naysayers would have us believe. We need to turn the Climate Catastrophe into a rallying cry for discovering the best, brightest, more brilliant among us who can turn everything around exponentially faster than ‘they’ say is possible.

Worth Saving: Tohickon Creek in July – Photo: L. Weikel

A Strong Dose of Idealism

Everywhere we look right now, there’s misery and unbelievable cruelty, there’s slavery and corruption, there’s deliberate exploitation of the Earth’s resources to make a few already obscenely rich people even richer – and damn the impact upon the rest of us, not to mention the Earth herself.

It’s no wonder so many are so miserable.

Yet we can turn this around immediately. We need to believe in ourselves; we need to believe we can do it. We need a person at the helm who has vision, who gives us hope in the future and in ourselves. We need some leaders to step up who are not solely out for themselves, but who truly know that as the least among us are made better, we’re all lifted.

I know, I sound naïve. But I tell you this: we cannot lose our hope. We cannot give up on ourselves, on humanity’s ability to bring brilliance to the fore. We cannot give in to the distraction any longer.

We have to take a stand, and we have to do it now.

Excuse me while I go outside to stare at the cosmos and dream.

Galaxy – Photo: Pixabay

(T-851)

Buddha-Gandalf – Photo: L. Weikel

So Little Time

This isn’t a post about time. It’s a post about priorities.

As you no doubt figured out already, I actually had in my mind the phrase, “So many books,” when I wrote the title to this post. But I decided to go with the second half of that familiar phrase instead. Because as much as you might think this is about books, it isn’t.

Yet it is true. I am a bibliophile. I have enough books ‘sharing space’ with me at the moment that I could probably go without having the television on for at least five years – and I wouldn’t repeat a single volume. That’s a lot of books.

Which makes me wonder. Will I ever read all the stories and references and other materials I’ve stashed here in my home?

Will I Ever Read Them All?

I’ve started to doubt it. And that’s a strange realization.

It’s the same with the various gifts I’ve brought home from my travels, especially my forays to foreign countries.

I’ve always made it a point to buy things for the people I care about while I travel. Little mementos. Pieces or items that reminded me of the person at home, yet had specific relevance to the country of origin. And then, once I’ve been home, I’ve held on to many of those gifts. Not because I’ve kept them for myself. (Indeed, if that were the case, that might be selfish, but at least I’d be using them!)

No, for whatever strange reason I talked myself into thinking by the time gift-giving time rolled around, that what I’d purchased wasn’t ‘enough’ or it wasn’t appropriate. So I didn’t give it. And then I felt like too much time had elapsed and they would think I was really strange for giving them a gift from a country I’d visited a year or two (and now more, sometimes many more years) later. So many loving, caring, and generous-of-spirit thoughts gone to waste.

I’m not exactly sure what I want to do with that vector of contemplation, either.

But they are tied together.

How We ‘Spend’ Our Time Matters

Every time one of these horrific acts of violence takes place, I ponder the lives of the people gunned down and imagine that none of them anticipated their life would end when they went to the mosque, the church, or the synagogue that day. (Or to elementary school, middle school, high school, or college that day. Or to the gym. Or to the news office. Or to court.)

And yet, here we are.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether we pass away from too many six packs and chocolate chip cookies or the unlucky aim of a madman with gun. We’re here one day and not the next. (That is, of course, if we’re fortunate enough to have avoided the destiny of lingering and drawing out our passage to our next assignment.)

My point here is simply to observe that I have a lot of stuff in my home that I’ve been unintentionally collecting. Books I’ve been saving to read “when I have time.” Presents I know I will give “when I have time” to figure out how to explain the delay in giving them.

I barely “have time” to write a post each night. I’ve certainly not been “making time” to write anything beyond these posts. (Let me be clear though: I’m sincerely delighted that I’ve managed to write as many posts as I have so far.)

Yet all of a sudden, I’m finding myself face to face with TIME.

Do We Treasure It? Or Squander It?

How I use it; how I squander it. How I blithely seem to skip along each day, whistling in the face of the absolute guarantee that one of these days I won’t be here any more. And all the books and gifts and well-intentioned thoughts of how I intend to spend my time will be left hanging.

And while this fact of life (the inevitability of death) has always been with us – throughout time and space as we know it – I have this really itchy feeling at the edge of my consciousness that we’ve never squandered quite so much “time” as we are right now. As I am. (I can only speak for myself. I hope you’ll forgive me for that sweeping generalization.)

I want to read at least some of those books. (Not all of them. I must must must have a stash set aside in case our infrastructure is hacked and we are forced to live for a time – perhaps a very long time – without electricity.) (Funny, isn’t it? My idea of being a “prepper” is not to stockpile water or guns or food. It’s books, baby. Books.)

And I want to give away those gifts I’ve set aside from my travels. My intentions were loving and generous at the time I bought them. So I’m not going to care anymore if I look like a whack job for not having given them away as soon as I returned to the states.

I yearn to savor the experience of living. I want to immerse myself in the joy and struggle of creating and healing, teaching and reading, giving and reaching.

I want to savor my time. However much or little of it I have left.