Feathers and Dust

When once we see everything is a flower — from wayward child to walnut shell, changing sky to ancient, mottled hand — we understand that no measurement or value can express the shimmering grace of this world. Life is so fine and so rare, it cannot be fathomed by means of comparison, or appreciated on such narrow, limiting terms. Just as there is profound strength in the whole, the individual is by wonder and design a fragile, fleeting thing, to be experienced and relished fully only with an uncritical, open mind able to recognize that the individual also contains the whole, and plays an indispensable role in helping carry it forward. On a human scale, the shallow, thoughtless reduction to value goes to the very heart of injustice and inequality, environmental destruction, poverty and war. On a cosmic scale, we are a rainbow of feathers and dust. And there is no scale in the eye of God — only love, service, and gratitude, as real, vibrant, fortunate, and all-encompassing as we are — pure energy, deathless, always the same, ever changing, and new.

November 17, 2021

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