Home > Blog >

Clouds and rain and sky and deer and music and freedom

By Ari | Jun 22, 09 09:00 AM

Shira drove us to Albany this weekend to visit Jesse and Nitya. It was a fun, relaxing time. The drive both ways was beautiful - we went around Binghamton by taking a more rural route, and were able to cruise along in almost zero traffic. It was raining on the way over, and I saw lots of deer outside: two does walking through bushes, the one in front looking back to check on her friend; a watchful doe and her fawn standing in a pond, drinking; and someone standing under bushes, craning her/his neck up to pull at the leaves.

On the way home, we were listening to a playlist Shira made called "Peace and Protest" and I was reading Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, a young adult novel in the Golden Compass series. The book is about reclaiming your soul from organized religion. The songs were about giving children freedom to be themselves, about getting on the peace train, about people crying for freedom, about the poor rising up to get what they deserve.

As we drove we went in and out of the rain. I could look up at the sky and see the clouds go on and on for miles - dark and heavy with water, with sun peering through; patches of blue sky, with thin wisps of cloud floating off high in the distance. I love looking at the sky like that - something about the vast scale of those mountains of vapor, pouring over this horizon and trailing off over that one, reminds me we're on this little round planet, swaddled in air and water.

The book had me crying. The music and the beautiful world helped the tears out, I'm sure. I looked around and thought, how lovely, this. How incredible and beautiful. How lucky we are to have the senses we each have, to be able to enjoy this extraordinary place. The words of the songs and the book filled me with hope and awareness of others, who for generations and generations have been waking to the world's beauty and to our own power and strength. The people are rising up. The people are seeing heaven is on earth and not through some locked door guarded by people with power and privilege.

Are they? Are we? I hope so. As we drove, my mind flitted from idea to idea, ways to spread the bliss I was feeling; how do you tell others that another world is possible - that is is here right now, and that all we have to do is claim it?

Can you just write it on your blog? It's a place to start.

More: Activism | Animals | Environment | What we're up to

Archives