Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in the South all my life with a few exceptions for college in New Mexico and the military. It has its charm, and the regional food, and a way of life that in many ways has become both deeply familiar and enjoyably unique. It’s home.
Photimos – Ancient Greek for Enlightenment
An artist, a young school child, a shaman and other seekers use their imagination through art and anguish and reflection to express what their spirit says is their path forward, to illustrate a greater understanding of the world around them, to push light into the shadows, to reopen the forgotten tomes of morality and knowledge.
Native Americans typically embraced a state of deep connection with nature, spiritual awareness, and an understanding of one’s place within the interconnected web of life. Existence through spirituality becomes existential, becomes the way, leads to nirvana and an acceptance of one’s mortality. Spirit mothers and fathers watch over you on the journey.
“Illuminati – persons possessing, or claiming to possess, superior enlightenment.” How power is found, how it is used, in the way it is infused with morality and consciousness, its focus on the needs of others justifies the silver flow of the waters toward eternity. The poorest and most oppressed among us often possess the greater depths of wisdom and empathy.
Finding God’s grace in a hospital room is never easy. Some, desperately seeking a shard of hope, praying for God’s intervention, hear nothing, silence – but angels in the ethereal human form of nurses and aides surround the patient and, holding his or her hands, offers the assurance that they will use the hard earned knowledge they have of God’s love to ease the way forward. One way or the other.
Civilians in war torn lands around the earth and across time are never simply collateral damage. They are souls. Precious in their existence. We must do more than mourn them. Children lay in artillery damaged hospitals dying not for lack of care but dying for a lack of even basic medical supplies. Abandoned in conscience. We shall be judged for even the thinnest thread of complicity we have in their deaths. Speak. Act.
Zen Buddhism. Breathe. Exhale. Meditate.
