Metaphysical Mulch

I find myself in the kitchen singing compulsively while doing the dishes:

“I am living in a dystopian world and I am a dystopian girl oohohow I am living… ”

It’s March, and where I live, new green peeks out from its long underworld journey. “We’re still here!” The buds seem to say. “In spite of your perverted human natures, we are still naturally being vital over here in the soil.” The crocus choirs color the parks purple. Narcissuses trumpet along. It’s either defiance or oblivion, I think, their blooming.

I read the news today. Oh boy. Still trying to compute some impossible math with a faulty formula:
Evil plus evil minus evil divided by evil equals? Who are we as a species? What is this drama we are playing out on the world stage? Who’s directing this mess? Forever?

All accumulated information at our fingertips can’t seem to transmute knowledge into the wisdom of a healed/healing human heart. We can’t seem to redeem ourselves, collectively. I am reminded of some sentences I wrote in 2022 in the perpetual warfaring machine that is, clearly, our entire history:

Unloved beings
Unlove the world
And everything suffers for it

*Notice our implicit responsibility therein:
To Love far and wide and very well
For the sake of everything that’s still possible

Can life emerge from the underworld into the light? I have seen it happen. I have come across local small-scale evidence of miracles. Transmutation requires consciousness. And consciousness requires the bravery to look and see yourself wholly, inside out: the complete constitution of your personhood.

There’s no salvation in pretending your identity remains intact in times of chaos and destruction. You are no longer who you thought you were when you started this journey. There’s loss at every turn. And surprises too. Grief is love and love is a courageous and irrational act – it supersedes logic. If I love you well, with all my heart – I take it upon myself to continuously remove all the blockages in my psyche that stand between me and love flowing from and towards me freely. I will have to keep changing to learn how to love you better. It’s the work of a lifetime. Then, whatever happens, in the eye of any storm, I can face myself and say I gave it all I had. That’s neither defiance nor oblivion. It’s purpose. A more potent medicine doesn’t exist.

During the 13 Holy Nights ritual, my dream for March included a student-lead big band with lots of cool kids wearing colorful oversized chunky knitted V-neck-sweaters with tight turtleneck shirts underneath them. They did a super jazzy and complex version of When the Saints Go Marching In. The band members tried to get the audience to participate with the complex rhythm, but the audience didn’t get it and just kept clapping to the old beat they already knew.

I looked up the meaning of this tune, being almost cliché at face value. It’s an old African American spiritual, first recorded more than a hundred years ago. It’s actually apocalyptic in theme:
Oh, when the moon turns red with blood
Oh, when the moon turns red with blood
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

Today a total lunar eclipse turns the moon red in some parts of the world. And your redeemed sainthood – meaning; your unobstructed love flowing freely – is much needed now and always. Perhaps this is a marching band order. And perhaps you are being asked to participate in a complex polyrhythmic masterpiece: Let your Love supersede logic. Defy the maddening violence of these times with an irrationally loving heart. March on.