Ma's Blog

"Today, I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life."

Deuteronomy 30:19

Towards the end of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, a crucial invitation is given. "Choose life."

What does it really mean to choose life in a world where death and destruction are all around us? Faced with wars, famines, massacres, mass shootings, fire, flood and drought, plague and pestilence, environmental degradation and species extinction, how can we choose life? And should we even bother?

Certainly, at times we face existential moments, when we are called upon to choose life in a big way. Yet the invitation to choose life is one we can respond to in countless tiny ways, every day.

When we get up in the morning to assume our daily duties, we choose life. When we cook a healthy meal for our family, we choose life. When we do our Ayurvedic morning routines, or go for a brisk walk, or take time to relax and settle before sleep, we choose life.

We choose life when we separate the trash and recycling, when we bike or take the bus instead of driving, when we make a small donation to feed the hungry, when we strive to distinguish wants from needs. These are tiny actions, yet if all of us take these actions, it adds up. The small choices of ordinary people can contribute to peace on earth and hope for the climate and the natural world.

Yet between the big existential moments like deciding to have open heart surgery or to donate a kidney and the tiny choices we make every day, there are moments of greater significance, times when we are called upon to choose life, not just for ourselves, but for all humanity. Are we going to stand idly by for the massacre of innocents, the starvation and displacement of millions and the destruction of any semblance of a habitable Earth?

For some, this might mean getting arrested for blocking a highway or sitting in a senator's office. For others of us, it might be marching through the streets, participating in a candlelight vigil, joining a strike or walking out of classes. We might choose to write a letter to the papers, sign petitions, participate in a phone bank or call our congressman.

Where do we take our stand? What calls us to choose life in a way that is not partisan or self-interested? Sadananda and I have chosen to take our stand on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international humanitarian law. When we see these infringed, we will raise our voices, again and again. We will not rest. All states, including the United States, have a duty to cooperate to prevent the violation of human rights, including the duty to take effective action in the fight against climate change.

We will not rest "Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." Yet sometimes our actions seem so small, so ineffective. At these times we remember the words of Otto in the film Alone in Berlin. Otto and his wife resist the Nazi regime by writing cards with an anti-Hitler message and surreptitiously leaving them in public places. Otto, a mechanic in a factory, explains that you can break a machine by putting a handful of sand in it, every day. Sadananda and I use the phrase, "sand in the machine," for all our tiny actions on behalf of human rights. Whether we take to the streets or take to Twitter, we choose life by putting sand in the machine of death and destruction.

Dear ones, hard as it may seem, let's keep on choosing life in 2024. I wish you and yours many blessings, peace, prosperity and comfort in the coming year,

Blessings

Alakananda Ma

Resources:

https://fridaysforfuture.org/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/

If you or someone you know wants to choose life in a big way, by donating a kidney to a young friend of ours, an aspiring psychotherapist, please reach out.

Dear sisters, brothers and non-binary siblings, welcome to my virtual Thanksgiving table. I have set a place for you in my heart.

First of all, I welcome all those of you who have an empty chair this year at Thanksgiving. As the Prophet Jeremiah says, I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

Next, in all honour, I welcome our Native American sisters and bothers, for whom Thanksgiving is not a celebration, but a National Day of Mourning for a genocide that has been going on for centuries. Thank you for persisting, for keeping your sacred traditions and for teaching us the meaning of warriorship. Thank you for all the foods you have developed and cultivated that are now found on every table around the world.

Thanksgiving this year occurs at a time of turmoil when so many are mourning. I offer all of you the hospitality of my broken heart.

Welcome, all my Israeli friends and relatives. I have set a place for you in my heart. May your sorrow be turned to gladness.

Welcome, all my Jewish friends and relatives. I have set a place for you in my heart. May you dwell secure and unafraid beneath the vines of safety and the fig tree of prosperity.

Welcome, all my Palestinian and Arab sisters and brothers, Muslim and Christian alike. I have set a place for you in my heart. "Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear". "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Welcome, all the humanitarians, doctors and first responders who risk so much to save the lives of others. As both Talmud and Quran teach us, whoever saves one life saves the whole world.

Welcome, all who strive for peace. "For they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war any more."

Welcome, all my Syrian sisters and brothers. I have set a place for you in my broken heart. May the day dawn when you know the freedom and justice for which you have sacrificed so much. "Give good news to those who patiently endure--who say, when struck by a disaster, 'Surely to Allah we belong and to Him we will all return.'"

Welcome, all my Ukrainian sisters and brothers. I have set a place for you in my heart. May you regain all you have lost and build back better, as a greener and more inclusive nation.

Welcome, all my sisters and brothers of Sudan. May you return to your homes in a land at peace. 'If Allah finds any goodness in your hearts, He will give you that which is better than what has been taken away from you."

Welcome, all the refugees and migrants who have left your homes and the graves of your ancestors because we, the privileged of the world, have allowed your lands to become uninhabitable and your lives unbearable.

Welcome, all those who have no home to go to, who sleep on streets and under bridges in the wealthiest country the world has ever known.

Welcome to all the forgotten ones. I have set a place for you in my heart. Welcome, my Uyghur friends, suffering a silent and forgotten genocide. We are with you. Welcome, my Rohingya sisters and brothers. The world may forget you, but I do not.

Let us meet together at the table of the heart, a heart as wide as the world, broken open by sorrow and compassion. Let us share together in a feast of love.

Lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace.

Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.

(Satish Kumar)

Baby Aya, the miracle baby, was born under the rubble after the earthquake in Idlib, Syria. Her mother died, but Aya survived, an embodiment of hope amid catastrophe. Please be part of the solution. Help Aya and a million other children in Idlib get the basic necessities of life.

• Aya needs healthcare. Idlib's hospitals have been deliberately targeted throughout the twelve-year war. Now they are also damaged by the earthquake and desperately short of supplies.

• Aya needs nutrition. She and all the children need formula, food, clean water and hygiene supplies. Idlib's infrastructure was already severely degraded due to the war. The earthquake has made a bad situation worse.

• Aya needs shelter. Most people in Idlib have fled there from other parts of Syria. Most have already been displaced multiple times. They need shelter in the winter's cold. They also need warm clothing.

• Aya will need education. There is little left for displaced children in Idlib. Many have to work at menial or dangerous jobs to provide for themselves.

• Aya needs to know that you care. Idlib's children believe that the world has abandoned them. Please don't abandon Aya! Help her have a future.

Donate to these trusted NGOs that are on the ground in Idlib.

• Syrian American Medical Society https://www.sams-usa.net/
• Islamic Relief USA https://secure.irusa.org/donate/give-gift
• White Helmets https://www.whitehelmets.org/en/

The child shall enjoy all the rights set forth in this Declaration. Every child, without any exception whatsoever, shall be entitled to these rights, without distinction or discrimination on account of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, whether of himself or of his family.

The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity.

UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child.

At this time of year, millions around the world are turning their thoughts to a child born in Bethlehem. In churches on every continent, Isaiah's messianic prophecy is read,

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. Unto them that dwell in the land of deep shadow, a light has shone. For a child has been born for us, a son is given to us, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And this is the name they shall give him, wondrous counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace."

For some, the wondrous child is still to come, as Messiah or as Imam Mahdi. For some, he is Krishna, born again and again whenever righteousness grows weak and unrighteousness prevails. And for those who celebrate Christmas, the wondrous child was born in a stable in Bethlehem and heralded by angels who proclaimed peace on earth and good will to all.

But in our Aquarian age, in the age of the collective, who is this wondrous child, the prince of peace? Who is the one who brings light in a dark time?

Dear sisters and brothers, today the wondrous child shivers in the Arctic air in Matamoros, just south of the US border. The wondrous child drowns, attempting to cross the icy English Channel in a flimsy boat. The one-year-old prince of peace dies of hunger and thirst in a small boat off the coast of Libya.

Today, the wondrous child is wet and cold in a flooded camp in Northern Syria. The wondrous child huddles in a bomb shelter in Kiev. The wondrous child is sold into marriage in Afghanistan, because her parents cannot afford to feed her. The wondrous child suffers from severe acute malnutrition in Mali. The wondrous child, fleeing drought, lives in a makeshift shelter in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

The wondrous child has seen her classmates killed in Robb Elementary School. The wondrous child, who wanted to be an inventor and prayed to the God of Rainbows, is murdered by security forces in Iran. The prince of peace, protesting at Al Aqsa mosque, is detained by Israeli security forces.

The wondrous child is cold and hungry on Pine Ridge Reservation. The wondrous child goes to school hungry in rural Louisiana. The wondrous child goes to bed hungry in Nagada village, Odisha. The Rohingya prince of peace has no school to go to in Cox's Bazaar camp. The wondrous child in Sindh faces a winter of cold with no home left, after this year's cataclysmic floods.

Seventy-four years have passed since one of humanity's greatest achievements, the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; sixty-three since the UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Since that time, we have made incredible technological advances, yet these advances have not been matched by progress in the area of human rights. Countless children, not only in poor nations but even in the richest country in the world, are effectively deprived of their basic rights.

Where does the power lie to change this? It lies with us, We the People of the world. It is we to whom these rights belong, we who are their guardians, we who are the ultimate protectors of each and every child. As we celebrate a new year in the hope that a child will be born for us who will turn darkness into light, let us remember that every child is the prince or princess of peace. If any child is robbed of the right to life, liberty and security, if any child does not receive the food, housing, nurturance and education necessary to fulfill their potential, it is not only they who are deprived. The world is robbed, the future is robbed, of all they have to offer. Make a special resolution for 2023. Resolve to get up, stand up, stand up for children's rights.

Dear ones, this year's Pakistan flood emergency was the single most devastating climate catastrophe to date. Its scale is almost unimaginable, and the misery caused has no end in sight. Countless families have not only lost their homes, loved ones, livestock and belongings, they have also lost their fields, their livelihoods, their communities and their stores of food. They face a winter of cold, hunger and misery. Despite having done nothing to contribute to the climate crisis, they are its foremost victims. Please join me in supporting the children of Pakistan at this crucial time.

I wish you a year of happiness and joy, and may peace and justice prevail throughout our world.

Blessings,

Alakananda Ma

Support Pakistan flood victims:

https://irusa.org/asia/pakistan/

https://www1.hhrd.org/Campaigns/Pakistan-Relief/Pakistan-Flood-Relief

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/relief-recovery-for-flood-affected-in-pakistan/

Do not turn from me because I am different,

For I am your child, your parent, your sibling,

Your uncle, your aunt, your niece.

I am your teacher, your pupil,

Your patient, your doctor

Your neighbour.

Your hatred kills,

Your indifference, too.

Stand with me

Open your heart to me

For we share one humanity

One love.

Sometimes it is hard to celebrate.

*

It is hard to celebrate

When a thousand of your neighbours' homes

Are smouldering ruins,

Hard to ring in with joy

Another year of war, famine and Pandemic,

Another superlative year

Of mega-droughts, super-typhoons,

Historic floods, unprecedented fires

And staggering climate inaction.

*

After seeing footage of malnourished Rohingya boys

And of little Afghan girls being sold into marriage

It takes courage to go to the kitchen,

Peel the butternut squash, roast the pine nuts

Make golden soup, bake lasagna

Arrange a caprese wreath.

*

In these moments,

I recall what Reb Zalman told me:

It is incumbent upon us to celebrate,

To welcome in the Sabbath,

To greet the incoming year.

And so, with courage, with freshness, with joy

I light the candle

Turn to the tree of light

Kneel before the crib

Raise the glass, l'chaim,

To life!

*

Sometimes it is hard to celebrate

Hard to reconcile

The irrepressible joy in my heart

With the world I see around me.

Yet at the turning of the year

The returning of the light

I lift a cup of chamomile

Softly sing Auld Lang Syne

Recalling the light

That shines in the dark

And the dark comprehends it not.

By Alice-astro - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24435549

Greetings Dear Ones,

In 2021, we saw the ending of the Year of the Iron Mouse and the dawning of the Tibetan Year of the Iron Ox. For my New Year's message this year, I'd like to take a few minutes to reflect on what the Iron Ox has taught me.

With the outbreak of the Pandemic in 2020, I took an instant dislike to the Iron Mouse, the animal who presided over most of that year. It's only when I look back that I can see how I spent 2020 doing what mice do best, hiding away for safety and popping out when nobody was around. The ashram and its beautiful garden was my cozy little mouse hole and Dakota Ridge my place to pop out on a trail that only the deer use.

When Losar 2021 dawned (The Tibetan New Year) and the Iron Ox came into play, I was more accustomed to adversity. I've kept the Losar greeting card up all year, to remind me of the wisdom of the ox--patience, persistence, hard work and quietude. The Ox has guided me in my decisions all year long. When we meet a challenge, we have to make a quick assessment--fight, flee, hide, or just carry on regardless. Does this challenge ask us to make a drastic change or to be more committed than ever to what we've been doing? Because it was the Year of the Ox, I've chosen to carry on even when obstacles seemed insurmountable.

For all of us, the Ox has offered the invitation to carry on keeping ourselves safe and protecting others as the Pandemic continues. Time and again we've been tempted to let our guard down and try to get back to normal. And time and again, our friend the Ox has reminded us to be patient and persistent. It's not over until it's over. Omicron is not Omega. The Ox is deeply loving, in a quiet way. And COVID has shown us that sometimes, staying away is the most loving thing to do. With my family scattered around the world--Wales, England, Ireland, France, Germany--and no chance of going for a visit, we've all learned to reach out in other ways. Virtual birthday cake, anyone?

Here at Alandi, the biggest Ox-year challenge came in late spring, when we were confronted with the reality of our home being sold from under us. And this little house is not just where we live, it's also our clinic, our school and our place of worship and ceremony. How could we replace our temple, our healing room, our firepit? Given a week to make a quick decision, I turned to the patient and persistent Ox and knew that somehow or other, we would carry on. It seemed impossible that we could purchase a million-dollar building, but the Ox told us, 'Just keep going.' In trust, we planted our garden, not knowing if we would be there to reap the fruits. And sure enough, a miracle happened. Our neighbours Whitney and Oliver decided to buy the building so we could continue our work. Not only that, they converted the garage into a beautiful onsite classroom, to replace the one we were leasing downtown. The Ox is rooted to the earth, and he has supported us in staying rooted in the place where our apple tree blossoms and our roses bloom. We, like the trees, have put down our roots, connected ourselves to the earth through our garden and our earth-healing ceremonies, and here we are staying, until the universe gives us other orders.

All of us here in Boulder have needed the strength of the Ox this year, when a horrific mass shooting occurred at Table Mesa King Soopers on March 22. I never imagined that our first time going out among people, a year after lockdown started, would be a vigil for a mass shooting. And our first time on public transport was to go to the informal memorial outside King Soopers. Flags had been at half-staff already, to honour the victims of the Atlanta spa shootings; now they were at half-staff for ten days in honour of Boulder's own. At this point I began to wonder if the flags would ever rise again to the top of the mast. Let's persevere with efforts to curb gun violence and end mass shootings.

In our lives as human rights activists, we have also needed to find the patience and persistence of the Ox. On March 16, I recorded my video, Syria Ten Years On: What does Never Again Mean? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak4S7GV7Olc&t=7s

For ten years, Syrians have protested, have struggled, have suffered, for the rights we take for granted every day. And they have not given up. They drown in the Mediterranean, or in the English Channel, they freeze on the border between Poland and Belarus, they are tortured and starved in Assad's notorious prisons, they live under bombs and sieges and in tents amid floods and dust storms, yet they do not give up the quest for freedom and dignity. And because they do not give up, we cannot give up on them. Although the Pandemic changed our methods of activism, we still continue putting sand in the machine of oppression, little by little, every day.

The Iron Ox comes around only every sixty years, so we need to absorb his wisdom and carry it with us. He is the toughest, most tireless and most determined Ox. One area where we need his ongoing support is in the laborious and lengthy process of gaining justice for crimes against humanity. If there is no accountability for nerve gas attacks on defenceless children, for relentless bombing of hospitals, clinics, schools and markets, for starvation sieges, for torturing and starving our opponents, then we are back in the Ancient World, where might is right and tyrants rule. It's easy to turn our backs on crimes committed in faraway countries, but if hospitals can be bombed and doctors killed in Syria with impunity, then no hospital is safe, no healthcare worker safe, anywhere in the world. The January 6^th insurrection was a signal that our democracy is more fragile than we imagined and needs to be protected. One of the key ways to protect liberal democracy the world over is to ensure that crimes against humanity do not go unpunished. To this end, the long-awaited film Bringing Assad to Justice https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bringingassadtojustice by our friends Ronan Tynan and Anne Daly has finally come out. They laboured long and hard to bring us this film. I encourage all of us to watch it and become part of the effort to end impunity--an effort largely being carried out by citizen journalists and amateur researchers.

Next Losar, March 3^rd 2022, the wild and quirky Water Tiger will step forward and the Iron Ox will yield his place. Let's carry his wisdom with us as we embrace what the New Year brings. I wish you and yours many blessings, peace, prosperity and comfort in the coming year,

Blessings

Alakananda Ma

The Year Things Did Not Happen

It was the year twenty people did not gather around the firepit

To honour Sadananda's seventy-first birthday

And the year I did not go to North Carolina

For an Ayurveda conference.

It was the year we did not go to Wales,

Walk on the green moors

Hear the sheep bleating,

And the year we did not bring Ros and Tony

To experience the majesty of the Continental Divide.

It was the year we did not visit Rocky Mountain National Park

And revel in the beauty of snowcapped peaks

And the year we did not go to Taos

To bask in Maharaji's darshan

And the year we did not drive over Kenosha Pass

And gasp in amazement at the wildflowers.

It was the year we did not share group hugs

Did not crowd into the living room for community lunches

Did not gather to chant the Healing Mantra

Did not share ecstatic kirtan.

It was the year we did not go to see a movie or a concert

The year we never went shopping

The year we did not see Mexican Modernism at Denver Art Museum.

It was the year we did not gather for family Thanksgiving

Did not unwrap gifts around Laura's Christmas tree

The year the house did not overflow with guests on my birthday.

It was in fact the year things did not happen

Except for massive forest fires

And smoke-filled skies

And broken ribs and Sadananda's tooth abscess.

Those happened, sure enough.

And the sun rose every day in glory

And set in pink and gold

And flowers bloomed in the garden

Chickadees called

Wild canaries fed on sunflowers.

Simple joys, shining out

In the year things did not happen.

Greetings Dear Ones,

A few days ago, a Wondrous Star shone forth. The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, thought by Kepler and other astronomers to be the Star that the Magi saw, occurs every twenty years, but rarely are the two planets so closely aligned that they appear as a single brilliant celestial body. The last time this occurred, in 1623, James I was King of England, William Shakespeare had recently died, and settlers were arriving at the Plymouth Colony. The Modern Age was taking shape. But even though the telescope had recently been discovered, the event probably passed unnoticed because it was so close to the sun.

Not since 1226 have people gazed up to see something as brilliant as we just witnessed.

And there's more to the story than the rarity of this event. The Great Conjunction of 2020 took place on the Winter Solstice of the Northern Hemisphere. And, in the Tropical Zodiac, at 0' Aquarius. Ruled by Saturn and Uranus, Aquarius brings both the individual and the collective. The individual critical care nurse working round the clock to save a single life; the collective effort to wear masks and social distance in order to protect others. The individual Greta Thunberg with her superpower; the collective youth organizing climate strikes around the world.

If the skies were telling us something, perhaps it was this:

"Today you face unprecedented challenges, not only because of the Pandemic and the related setbacks in the economy. The Pandemic itself is a symptom of much larger problems, the converging crises of climate emergency, species extinction and environmental degradation. You cannot meet the challenges that confront you by doing things the same old way, as you have been doing since last we met. Your so-called 'K-shaped recovery' has simply meant that during the Pandemic, the rich got much richer and the poor got poorer. COVID was not the great leveler. Black, brown and indigenous people have suffered much more, deepening the cracks that were always present in Western societies and in the world as a whole.

We are here together at zero degrees of Aquarius to tell you to let go of old crystallized patterns that have never really served you. It is time for a fresh start--one based on liberty, equality, sisterhood and brotherhood. Collective challenges call for collective solutions. Neither individualism nor nationalism nor any kind of 'me first' mentality will get you through these crises. You will stand or fall, thrive or collapse, as an entire human society.

It will take great patience and great perseverance to change things. Since our last visit, empires have risen and fallen, leaving havoc behind them. Wars of ever-increasing horror have been fought. The world has become hostage to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Indigenous peoples have been forced off their ancestral lands. Genocide, slavery and exploitation of people and the environment have been the order of business. Mighty old-growth forests have fallen to the chainsaw, prairies have been ploughed and rivers dammed. Structural racism casts its shadow over many of the world's societies, coming to the awareness of millions this year with the horrific murder of George Floyd.

We are here in our brilliance, with all our power to uplift you and inspire awe. Know that we shine as brightly on the miserable flooded tents of displaced people in Idlib, Syria as we do upon the mansions of the rich. We shine on the sprawling Rohingya refugee camp at Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh as we do upon the great cities of wealthy nations. We shine upon the homeless camps and upon the suburbs, upon the labourers picking tomatoes and the shareholders profiting from their toil.

Today, with great enthusiasm and great patience, with inspiration and with discipline, please come together as a human race to meet the existential threats that confront you."

Here are some ways that you can respond to the cosmic message:

Help combat COVID among the most medically underserved: https://www.sams-usa.net/

Donate or volunteer to combat the climate emergency: https://350.org/

Donate to support health equity,https://advancinghealthequity.com/, https://www.nationalcollaborative.org/

I wish you a year of happiness and joy, and may peace and justice prevail throughout our world.

Blessings,

Ma

Listen to Ma reading this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XJt1NqWMuE

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;--

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

By William Wordsworth

There is within each of us this 'intimation of immortality,' this profound sense of a Golden Age, a time of innocence, of glory and freshness; something we long for, but which, more often than not, is buried beneath the hubbub of daily life. We see our everyday reality as one of toil, weariness, and struggle, and know ourselves to live in Kali Yuga, the Age of quarrel and strife. Or, to quote Wordsworth again,

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;--

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

We live in Kali Yuga, in the clutches of conceptual mind, in ignorance and duality that leave us feeling alienated from our original innocence. And we long to return to the Golden Age, the Satya Yuga, which somehow seems to elude us.

At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity.

From Little Gidding

By TS Eliot

We turn, as I have done today, to the poets, who call us back to the heart, back to the place of innocence. The cramped spaces of our mind open up when we envision the Golden Age, and we become light and buoyant. Our flash-memories of a time of peace and loveliness bring us to svasthya, to wholeness. The weariness of life dissipates, and we experience freshness.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

From Auguries of Innocence

By William Blake

And what does Blake say next?

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage

It is our intuition of original innocence that moves us out into the world with a passionate and compassionate heart, to work for animal rights, human rights, or whatever cause is dear to us. The arc of history is long. Glimpses of the Golden Age inspire us to bend the arc towards justice.

Myths are things which never happened, but always are. The Satya Yuga and the Kali Yuga are synchronous, two poles of our experience. But what happens when we move from mythology to ideology? If we construct policy based on a romanticized past, we must remember that the past, too, is part of Kali Yuga. If our slogan is Make America Great Again, we should ask: when was it great? During segregation? During slavery? During genocidal Indian Wars? Isn't it better to project the Golden Age into the future and strive to create a more perfect union?

If we decide to leave the European Union and recapture the lost greatness of Britain, again, we must ask ourselves: Was Britain truly great when a quarter of the world map was red? I don't know if it felt great to my widowed great-grandmother Emma, eking out a living dyeing ostrich feathers, or to my Nanny, who became deaf from measles and went hungry as a child during the Printer's Union strike. I don't know if all the red on the map meant anything to my ancestors who perished in the workhouse and were buried in pauper's graves.

Glimpses of the mythic Golden Age inspire us to work for a world of peace and goodwill for all without exception. But efforts to recapture a glorified national past can have quite different results--the 'Muslim ban,' as well as family separations at the US southern border, may perhaps be examples of what happens when we move from myth to ideology and seek to impose our version of ethnic or national pride and greatness upon others.

Some of this came to a head for me this week. As Aya Sofia, originally the greatest basilica of the Orthodox Church, is turned back from a museum to a mosque, I wonder if this is an effort to restore lost Ottoman greatness. How I would love to see this magnificent building be 'a house of prayer for all peoples.' And as the foundation stone of the new Ram Temple is laid on the site of the Babri Masjid, destroyed by a mob in 1992, I see the myth of India's Golden Age of peace and harmony brought into the service of a Hindu Nationalist ideology. And I wonder in my heart what happened to the India I encountered in 1980 as a young woman; the place where I, the product of an interfaith marriage, at last realized that it didn't matter if you were a Christian or a Jew, for Truth is one and the wise have called That by many names.

"Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. A time is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth" John 4 21-23.

Perhaps it's because I've grappled all my life with the fact that one stream of my ancestry persecuted the other for centuries; but I have no use for any ideology that seeks a great nation for Christians but not Muslims, Muslims but not Christians, Jews but not Arabs, Hindus but not Muslims, White but not Black.

The Mahasamadhi of my guru, Raghdas, is coming up. He always dwelt in the peace and spontaneous joy of the Golden Age. Around him there were no divisions of gender, caste or creed. Here's an excerpt of a little song I wrote about him.

Children of the True Guru

Gather at his feet.

Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew,

One in his love.

He is Buddha, Zoroaster,

Mahavir, Baháʼu'lláh.

Hear his words, eat from his hand

One in his love.

This is to abide in the innocence of the Age of Gold even amid the turmoil of Kali Yuga.