I awoke to gentle bird calls welcoming the morning. I then walked barefoot onto the grass lawn. No dogs were barking, and no motorcycle was revving a cold engine. Trucks with no mufflers and blasting music were absent. Immediately, a longing to be close to clean, clear salt water, sea birds, and whales flashed to my mind. I closed my eyes to feel into that vision.
I was shocked and mesmerized by a vision of massive cats in the vast lands of Africa, their bulging, muscular bodies and keen eyes searching for prey. Deer, antelope, mice, squirrels, and humans are fair game. My heart beats fast, witnessing the speed and grace of the kill. The fresh flesh of their bounty calls the flies, vultures, thieves, and other predators to the dinner table. Fights and more killing may occur; they all need groceries to survive. Life and death are bedfellows. The truth of how we feed one another, love one another, and how the souls of the killers and the killed meet each other is evolutionary.
Air, water, trees, vegetables, grass, and what we call weeds are all food. All species, fish, birds, reptiles, flies, bugs, mammals, and their excrement, are food for one another. We can go deeper into the food chain to bacteria, mold, and other microscopic relationships that are all part of the food chain. If we allow our minds to grow to a place beyond sight, sound, smell, or touch, a matrix of nature, life, and death appears to be inseparable. When humans interrupt this flow, we create a world of greed, waste, war, and fear.
My ears hear, “Write, speak, listen, listen, listen to the heartbeat of Mother Earth. Shout out to the universe, sing to the clouds, and find ways to see beyond the veil of ego. Find a new balance of creative possibilities, dare to love all life, to accept that life and death are not opposites; they are balancers, like the continual shed of the snake’s skin that allows the snake to grow inside and out. It is time to shed many old patterns, beliefs, and teachings to find new creativity. That is in our destiny. We are the cougar or tiger that kills its prey to feed itself and its offspring.”
Yes. We are. Yet, we are much more dangerous because we have a mind and body capable of creating weapons, chemicals, structures, tools, and bombs. We have the capacity to pull a trigger, push a button, set a timer or trip-line, kill a deer, poison the land and water, or kill billions with a single bomb. It is a choice. Ego, power, greed, capitalism, and supremacy are not the answer. The body, mind, and liberty of all humans, of any race, color, gender, or country, fed with love, kindness, and care for all life, can become the most beneficial creature upon the planet. Let’s grow new skins, recognize our power and unique creativity, and find balance within each other and with Mother Earth. Let’s go for a swim in a sea of all possibilities.
M. Chandler McLay © June 24, 2022