A Window of Light This Holiday Can Smite Your Greatest Enemy
Let light flow into your heart and gather all love and hope for all our future worlds.
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Happy Birthday Isaac Newton!
“Nature’s secrets lay hid in night, God said: Let Newton be, and all was light.” Alexander Pope, I think, said this about Isaac Newton, born Christmas Day.
(A lot of people also love the baby Jesus, and His light, too, is inspiring to those who still know his true message: Love.)
If you would smite your enemy and be triumphant, recognize that we have only one enemy: a false belief that we are not one world.
The light at the beginning of the Big Bang is about to be born, (revealed) in the 21st century thanks to the Jay Dub, James Webb Space Telescope. Views of all new worlds, including ours, will result. How could anyone not be as excited as a slobbering, Christmas puppy with a chewy, new plush squirrel?
As we rush forward in a giddy, and weird, holiday toward the birthday of Jesus Christ and Isaac Newton, many of us are filled with emotion.
Earth is a place where everything always happens
Earth is taking a lot of hits, but many of us believe it will get much, much, MUCH worse. Given variants of Coronavirus, given the storms fires, and floods — so many still cannot fathom — given the natural world on the run, and our window of recovery narrowing day by day, it’s hard to be merry.
But the season of light is opening a new window of light onto the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope is set to launch Christmas Day.
A candle in the darkness can enlighten us to the errors of our ways. And, it’s said, when you know better stuff, you do better stuff. (Who said that?)
While people down here on Earth squabble and tweet, rabble and rant, real people are doing real things — with international cooperation — that fill us with hope, pride, and dare I say, comfort and joy?
We CAN do fantastic things. We must look at how quickly we can turn on a dime, conserve every scrap of metal to fight Nazi authoritarianism, or screech everything to a halt to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.
We put a man on the moon, back when science was a thing, and we can mitigate the worst effects of plague, climate crisis, extinctions, and more simply by rearranging what we value: life on Earth.
Let’s stop putting polar bears and penguins on dead trees, and start putting the real ones into our real actions and activism. Let’s unite.
Do we struggle to get along? Yes. We are Grinchy to others, petty, hateful, racist, sexist, classist, and just plain clueless about the natural world.
But the natural world provides a form of reality therapy we are seeing the beginnings of right now. The answers are blown on the wind, crackling flames, and surging waters. Answers also are in the heavens. Look up and see other worlds to re-establish just how important this one is.
Feeling dire, at least at times, is more truthful than burying your head in tar sands and denial. Feel like a human being, but never forget we can open a window of light.
Remember that politics are not people. We are more alike than different.
Goodness and light
Light does not always come from laughter and merriment. It comes, too from hard lessons.
When I was little The Sound of Music was a holiday classic. My mother and I revised this line, and I think it speaks more to our present time.
“Whenever God slams a door, God smashes open a window.”
Go to the window, and let in the light.