I thought of those who walk through life looking to the heavens, seeking God for their treasure, yet never looking ahead long enough to value the treasures laid all around them. Their family, their well-being, nature, friendships, loves.  Yes, I do think that spirituality is a lifelong quest, but without seeing the pleasures that the heavens have placed around you, there is no joy here and now.

I thought of myself, and my treasures. My children, my wife, my family and friends who are family; how they are all I ever needed, and I am so thankful for them all.

My wife and I were driving on a country road. Beautiful cottonwood trees lined both sides of the two lane road, and like many Oklahoma roads, you could see from one stop sign to the next down the straight mile line. We were talking about many things from home and work, we were laughing, enjoying the quiet drive.

As she was driving I was looking toward her, smiling, and that is when I saw the light. A strange red-brown light was coloring downtown Oklahoma City between the trees as we cruised down the hot summer tarmac. For a moment I was in denial, and then I told her to stop.

She slowed the car and the we stopped between trees, looking down on the city skyline which must have been thirty miles away in my dream-mind. We both looked on for a moment as the mushroom cloud grew over the cityscape.

She looked at me, tears starting to flood her eyes, and I smiled at her, kissed her cheek and said softly, “Hey, how about those kids huh, aren’t they amazing?”

She smiled, kissed my own tears, and leaned into my chest as the world was washed away in another mushroom cloud.

I am still shaken.

It was late afternoon, and clouds had been building from the northwest all day. The heat from the Oklahoma plains had pushed the clouds high earlier in the day, but what had once been a mass of white thunderheads had become a low-lying jumble of gray and black clouds. I could smell the rains as the winds picked up. The storms were coming.

Laying on a billowy green couch I read a book about spiritual transformation to myself, but when I found a passage about dragonflies, I had to read it aloud to my daughters. I called for them and they piled onto the couch with me. The scene was two men walking on a wooded hillside as dragonflies zoomed around them. The pages mentioned that dragonflies are actually wood spirits that want to come close to us, to be seen and played with.

My daughters loved this visual, especially the little ones. We talked about it for a couple of minutes, and they they went back to playing in their rooms. A bit later there was a furious lightning strike in the distance, and the thunder brought the girls back in to the living room. We decided to go outside and feel the energy before the rains came to wash the world clean.

Outside we looked around for a few minutes. You could see the different temperatures colliding in the air. A kaleidoscope of monochromatic colors was flowing and falling over itself in the air above our green lawn. My son joined us, and soon we were laying on the lawn, looking at the clouds as they neared. I laid back on the cool grass and watched the clouds swirling to the northwest.

My littlest daughter soon asked me a question.

“What are those?” she asked pointing into the skies.

I had to focus on something lower than the clouds, something I had missed until now. There, under the storm clouds, was a stream of tiny black dots. For a moment or two I could not understand what I was seeing, but then my son said, “Dragonflies!”

Suddenly I could see them in focus. Thousands of dragonflies were flying away from the coming rains. They were moving diagonally across our lawn, from the northwest to the southeast. It was amazing.

“They are faeiries aren’t they?” one of my daughters asked looking into the sky with amazement.

“They must be, right?” I said without looking down.

“I want them to come down here. I want them to play with us,” she said, clearly thinking about the story I had just read to her.

My son smiled and shook his head a little bit.

“How would you call them down to us?” I asked sitting up beside her.

She smiled, sat up and pulled her legs in Indian-style, and then began to chant as she has heard me do.

“Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung,” as she was doing this her little eyes closed and she called out to the river of dragonflies above us.

Soon, magically, the dragonflies did find their way to the ground. All around now were buzzing dragonflies flitting from here to there. In the trees, around the roses, between us and before us.

One large green and purple dragonfly flew up to my daughter and seemed to float in the air before her face for a moment. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The dragonflies were back above the trees, continuing on their journey. But, my children and I will always know that we were visited by the faeiries.

Tonight he sits, quietly watching his tea steep.  Steam rises off the decorated clay pot, and the tea leaves slowly fall into the boiled water. His cup is ornately painted with a scene of bamboo and wind.  He closes his eyes, clears his mind.  Focusing on nothing he realizes that he is not alone.  From across the cavernous temple echoes the sound of an old monk,  slowly chanting to himself.  His tones are careful and sure, he has practiced for an eternity to learn the correct intonation, to make a true and correct offering.

Is that my lot in life? The young prince wonders to himself.  Am I destined to be an old man, alone, chanting to the empty temple in the middle hours of the night?

The chanting echoes one last moment, and a deafening silence encroaches upon the young prince’s ears.

“Sit tall, my young prince,” the old monk says quietly sitting directly before the young prince.  “Breathe a full, deep breath into your chest.  Within your chest beats a heart that has the energy of a million suns at its call.  In your veins there is a liquid flowing that is more precious than any molten metal, any stream or river.  Why do you not know your worth?”

Ashamed, the young prince looks down to the tea.  A second cup now sits besides his.  The second cup is a simple bamboo cup; no gilding, no paint, no jewels. Plain in every way.

“My cup is simple, you are right.” The monk closes his eyes and pulls his hands into his thick winter robes, protection from the night’s chill.  “But does it not hold the tea as well as yours?  Does it not serve me as well as your cup?  And if it is lost to me, or if it were to lay broken on the ground at my feet, could I not find another to take the place of this cup?”

The young prince watches the monk for a timeless moment.  He is familiar, he is known to the young prince, but he doesn’t know who he is.

“Does your cup not long to be adorned, monk?  Does it not wish to sparkle in the light, with jewels and metals?  Does it not want to be noticed?”

The monk pours tea in to the prince’s cup, and then in to his own.  He lifts his cup to his mouth, and breathes in the aroma of the tea.

“Does the lily wish to be a rose?  Does the lion wish to be a snow leopard?  What if I told you that there was once a flower that grew strong and tall out over a running stream, and that this flower wished to be a fish swimming in the water?”

The prince closes his eyes, seeing this flower in his head, and realizes that the flower is the fish.  The fish eats the flower and so then the flower becomes one with the fish.

The young prince opens his eyes to tell the monk, only to find himself sitting alone in the temple.  He looks down and sees his cup is gone, and in its place there is only a simple bamboo cup.

our world is so screwed up.

we dont have the money to teach arts in schools, because we need to build arsenals.

we make weapons to destroy, instead of music to heal.
we strive to kill, when instead we should strive to give each child a home and comfort.
we make food into fuel, when we could feed the poor.

all of this could change. if you want to see children smile, to end suffering, to make war a thing only read about in our history books, then you have to be the first person to say so. others only count when you count yourself.

i dont want my son to see war.  i never want my daughters to know the fear that daughters all around the world know when armies approach. my children, your children, all children deserve better.

i deserve better.

you deserve better.

I hear that we don’t have the money to put computers on the desk in my local school. Really? How about we don’t build one F-22 Raptor jet?  The F-22 costs $137.5 million. Let’s say instead we buy some decent $800 Apple laptops for the kids at school.  That would be around 171, 875 laptops bought for that one F-22.  I think that is a really good deal.  Close to 172,000 kids would have a computer on their school desk… Seriously, that is amazing.

Look, I understand the hawks out there saying we need to have a well trained military, I am a proud Marine, but the spending is ludicrous to say the least.  And, I hate the argument that I hear from people that goes something like this, “spend whatever it takes to protect the lives of our young military men and women.” Umm, how about this for protecting their lives: keep them home, don’t send them to some forsaken desert to die at the hands of people who have been brainwashed into hating them by the ruling elite for the last 2000 years.

You don’t really think these wars are anything new do you?  Every empire needs an enemy, even more so than it needs allies.

I say we start the change now, today.  Stop wasting money and start healing the world instead. Can you even imagine how much the savings would be if we shut down a carrier group?  Imagine the money taken from 3,200 warships, all the sailors and Marines, all the land-based support personnel and all of the weaponry; and instead used to heal, clothe, feed and educate.

Don’t whine about all of those jobs being lost. Don’t. Instead think of all of that energy being diverted to growing food, teaching children, healing the sick, and more.  Actually, think about using that immense amount of energy to heal the sick before they are sick.

I mean it.

Teach meditation to the masses.  Offer free yoga and t’ai chi in every park in America.  Feed people clean food.  If it has an ingredients list on it, then trash it.  Vegetables don’t need ingredients, fruit, whole grains and meat don’t need the ingredients list either.  If you feed people real food, raised in an organically authentic way, then we won’t need to see our doctors every other week.

I sit in meditation every day, and I clear my mind of the garbage that it accumulates, seeking a clear vision of the me, or what ever that means.  I do this so that I can see the reality around me. So that I can understand what is moving around me.  This world could live in a state of compassion forever, if only we would try.

Try with me?

In that smile she must have seen that I was worried and so she reached out and her tiny hand clasped my forearm.  I looked down at her hand on my arm and it was a study in contrast.  My arm is thick and strong, I am not a small man, my skin has a Mediterranean tint to it, my hair dark.  Her hand was whiter than normal, the kind of white skin that the elderly get – thin skin and liver spots; but her grasp was strong and true.

“Everything will be alright son,” she said without sounding condescending.  I somehow knew she wasn’t talking about what my grandfather is going through, or the trials I face in life; somehow I heard her tell me that all of this will make sense one day.  With that the elevator stopped on the 6th floor and she got off without looking back.

I have been thinking about that little woman this morning.  She had never seen me before, will likely never lay eyes on me again, but she reached out to me nonetheless, and she affected my life in a small way, but a meaningful way.

We are all related, we are all the same energy, we need the same exact things to live.  Food, water, shelter, and a chance to live outside of suffering.  I want you to take a few moments from your life, from your busy day and night, and watch this movie.  It is only about 20 minutes long, but it is worth it.

What Would It Look Like?

I know the story and I will remind you,
I will correct you when you say the wrong city,
or the wrong job,
or the wrong name.

I will hold your hand and smile at you.
I will not show you my fear,
will not show you my sadness,
I will kiss your cheek and remind you that you are loved.
And honored.

I will give you back the dignity that your mind is stealing from you.
I will remember that you held me when I was a child,
that you taught me right from wrong,
that you laughed with your family, and smiled when you looked at us.

This is not the end,
this is what your mind will be forever.
This is a part of your journey, and we hold none of this against you.
Do not be ashamed, there is no shame that I see.
You are not weaker for this, for we know you did not ask for this.
You are more than this moment in time, you are the sum of your life,
and you can be proud for it.

Your hugs are weaker now, your walk less sure,
but my hand is here, beside you, guiding you now,
as you have guided me in my life.

I love you.

The sound of my own whimpers brought me close to waking at this point, but I could not break free from the dream until my wife shook me and held on tight telling me that everything was okay.  But, my eyes were open now and the room was dark in the predawn hours… I crawled out of bed, told Abbey to come with me and we went to sit on the porch.  I sat there in the muggy darkness, listening to the sounds of a sleeping world, patting my dog as she sat beside me.