A GLANCE AT THE PAST A PEEK AT THE FUTURE INVASIONS Pock-marked intrusions in the blackness of the night.

Why does man insist on marking his presence with an artificial light, to better make his way in the twilight or the dawn, or to ward off his neighbors from whom all trust is gone?1 Im sick and tired Well, Im not really sick and tired. I have been motivated into a productive aggravation. The moronic, shallow, childish, behavior of the elected bureaucrats (burrowing rats whose color does not matter) who scramble about the sandbox of Washington (What a sacrilegious use of a great mans name!) demonstrate so well the state of our nation petty to the Nth degree and ignorant to the 12th degree. When a culture loses a sense of right and wrong and cannot bring itself to call a lie a lie, it is very sick, it is pathetically ill. It is such a shame that that wonderful Greek word pathos has lost, for most, its rich deep meaning. Pathos is a state of suffering, affliction (read victimhood) a lack of a serious orientation, a loss of an appropriate knowledge of wellbeing
1

Invasions this is just the preamble for this poem. The whole poem can be found in Pieces of the Journey: A Collection. All cited texts are by Don Davison.

as a sense of essential order, essential in honoring the necessity for the individual and their reasoned and impassioned commitment to the greater truths applicable in their own lives, the lives of their families, communities, and also the life of the state. Many are lost in the depths of a fundamental ignorance. They lack sufficient common sense that hallmark of an integrating capacity to fathom the if/then of human life. We are currently caught as a culture (here in the U.S.) in a dantesque journey and we have no guide. Many individuals are the wannabes of the day lacking that sufficient understanding of the fundamentals of the human process of growth and development. They wallow in a childhood and an adolescence actually believing that they have sufficient maturity of character to walk around in an adult world and prognosticate such unbelievable prattle and babble feeling as though what they utter is worth any ones time or attention. Although we still do need to maintain a vigilance children play at the edge, so to speak, as they learn to crawl, walk, climb, and run it does behoove the adults to keep an eye on them lest they fall into a well or out of a tree. Winston Churchill noted well the characteristic of our adolescent cultural tendency when he said, You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after theyve tried everything else. It was true then lets hope there is yet a sufficient critical mass of maturity and wisdom to do it again. A brief glance at the U.S. culture, dare I say western culture (and to a certain degree all cultures) has fallen off the 2

reasoned cliff. From that apogee of the age of enlightenment where the shadows of the past had lost their grip on the limitations of the mind, heart, and soul of the species, thanks to an easier life and a plethora of entertainment venues, we have luxuriated ourselves into a fantasy of unfit ideologies and a plethora of opinions leading to thought and actions that no maturing reasonably responsible adult would continue to waste their time and energy hanging on to. Those with any knowledge of the absolute need for essential human freedoms, along with a concomitant focus on a sense of personal responsibility, would have abandoned these ideologies long ago. Life is not free, in that naive sense of anything goes and nothing really matters, it is governed by natures laws and the prudence of experience as well as that essential understanding of consequences. We are governed by these laws of nature and the laws of our accumulated wisdom. There needs to be a critical mass of this acumen in order for individuals to follow the progressive and ascendant profile of human maturation. Life must learn to be responsible for itself and the lives of others. This has personal, familial, and societal implications and this awareness of our participation in the human reality must follow the path from self out to others. The history of interpersonal relations is that essential record of the meshing of our individual and communal efforts as we confronted natures claws and fangs, tempests and storms. We have learned at least a sufficiently large number of us to pay attention or die. A fundamental characteristic of 3

natures ecumenical attribute has provided us with sufficient wherewithal to survive and to progress. We are not living at the mouth of the cave, for the most part, staring out into the sounds and sights of an incomprehensible and uncaring nature. We have tamed the bull and the horse, we have collected the seed, channeled water, and in all of this we have found a balanced (somewhat) pathway for ourselves and our progeny. This has taken us on an incredible journey in which we have circumnavigated our globe and stepped toward the stars. This was not always done with sufficient comprehension of the magnificence of our differences magnanimity was not our long suit. It has taken eons for us to blend, to meld, to discover our innate sameness and to struggle in our ability to learn to understand and to trust one another. We now find ourselves on the threshold of the 21 st century and we can no longer ignore our numbers, our proximity, and our technologys intended and unintended aftermath. We are it and it is us, and while we are at it the pun is worth exploring; the US is not the be all end all of the human story. It is, however, an incredibly important chapter and it happens to be ours. This means that we find ourselves in a circumstance that must be addressed with a reasoned effort and a focused dedication. It will not be easy or simple. We must do everything in our power to set right the ship of state. There has emerged, from our current morass of profligate spending, a culture of dependency and adolescent expectations. It has precipitated a mind set of I want mine 4

now. I deserve mine now. And I will do anything to get it! The idea of a functioning republic was not born yesterday, it has been sifted and winnowed in the social storms and cradles of the ages and it finally flourished on a new continent in its own time. Documents were forged from the efforts of the ages and they sufficiently inspired the hearts and minds of stalwart souls who would commit their Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor to the well being of their shared existence. Indeed, their individual and communal efforts have inspired the dreams and desires of an entire species all those who are yearning to be free. From this legacy, bought with blood, sweat, hope, and tears, we must never shrink.2 We must stand upright with head held high, shoulders set straight, and backs unbowed as we continue to manifest a fulfillment of humanitys greatest dream a dream that speaks to the very soul of the species. We cannot allow untoward ideologies tinged with or without religious attributes bind us or to turn us from historys path, a path that has led us on freedoms journey. As a species we have travelled on a journey that has given opportunities along with the time and resources to develop our innate personal rights to own and express our unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Our personal and communal responsibility is now and has always been (at least for some lengthy time now) for us to manifest a developing sense of a global effort to master
2

See Advice at the end of this essay.

ourselves and our circumstances. We have watched and experienced the benefits of the WHO (World Health Organization) yet we naively carried on with our petty politics wasting precious life and treasure offering inane solutions to our personal and communal problems: pollution affects us all, disease is very democratic and I might add just as stupid. It sometimes kills its host. What part of this universal circumstance is so difficult for us to comprehend? We are all riding on the same space ship at least for the foreseeable future. Now is the time for us to fathom the depths of our sameness.3 To reiterate, this is not a matter of red or blue, conservative or liberal. And this is not something that we can lose to ignorance and pettiness. IGNORANCE AGAIN We are tumbled on a new shore. In exhaustion, we crawl as children. In exuberance, we prance as adolescents. Raping the sensitivities of our elders, we wreak havoc on our gifts. We inherited a Dedicated Ignorance and a predilection for bad manners. Our only portal providing any hope to pay homage to our history, ourselves, and the Giver,
3

You may also wish to see The Twenty-First Century. in Murmurings: A Collection, along with Reap the Wind, Polis Mundi, Refugees, Who is my Brother and my Sister? and for those Mexicans recently arrived or for those still at home, And the Soul? in Always Extolling: A Collection.

is the gaining of sufficient experience, presenting that supreme gift of an informed choice, a choice in which we exercise a freedom complementing what is eternally already here.4

IT HAS BEEN SAID It has been said I come to you from fallen timber,5 born again for the first time. So who am I, some wandering ephemeral ought that seeks a definition of my being from some crumbling cultural template instead of a far distant aurora borealis of the space/time heavens? I am an I am, a conglomerate of being, a thought-thing with sentience. I feel seasons thrusts and drags, love another, covet amulets of history, know touch, listen and taste. What ideology drives my druthers? Must I kill another to be myself?
4 5

Ignorance Again is found in Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection. Secret Places is in Reflections from Lucerne: A Collection.

Only if means yes. Whose value mine or yours? What madness takes us towards our judgments of others? Must our life be some rabid frenzy of slogans saying nothing, when we all live in that sacred crucible of shared being emanating from the heart of One?6 While this is a poem that incorporates only a few strains of our current efforts, it has a focus that embodies sufficient understanding of eternal truths: We are all the same! The human journey has been a story of leaping ahead and falling back of crawling up and slipping down. In all of this, we have continued in our personal, parental, and societal mode to instill an ever-present attitude of hope.7 As we have covered the planets surface we have carried within ourselves the existential conundrum: mine and yours. We are now, finally, beginning to trifle with a new concept: ours. Life has demonstrated itself to be a communal endeavor. The ancient adages have proven themselves to be true: Stay the middle course not too much of this and not too much of that. Love thy neighbor as thy self. The journey is the destination this is where we eternally are. The current implosion of our presence on this planet carries
6 7

From a forthcoming Collection of Poetry, Still Water: A Collection. See Epitaph at the end of this essay.

with it a new dynamic a synergism of the human relationships of one to one and one to another. This demands a new level of integrity. This new level will bring with it a new appreciation of all life. The fields of bioethics will flourish and give us individually and as a whole the awareness of a new depth of knowledge care responsibility and respect that will present us with new modes of intrapersonal and interpersonal relations. These will become a new roadmap for that never ending winding pathway of life.8 PERPETRATORS Men, women, young, old, every race, every creed all are victims. Where is the hue and cry from the Imans, Mullas, Patriarchs, Popes, Clerics, Preachers and Priests, Monks and Nuns? Biophilia! Biophilia! It is the very sacredness of life that we all profess and so ignore. We come late to the table of magnanimous compassion. Too long have we felt ourselves sequestered by cultures ugly lassitude, that bigotry of ignorance, that conscious self avoidance leading us all to lonely deaths
8

See Life also from, Always Extolling: A Collection at the end of this essay.

and no understanding of the beatific. In our shallow thinking, in our eclectic fleeting deeds, in our insipid wonderings, we lack that simple depth of purpose, honoring the efforts of the All. Accumulating secular applications of knowledges shadowed purpose, we have slaughtered and ignored the slaughtering of every single thing. Their screams heard only by a saintly few, meant nothing to most of the rest of our brothers and our sisters of the world. Moaning in prayerful hubris, we hunched our backs and turned away from any form of hope and love. To you bastards of no purpose, I scream into your ears, Stop the pilfering of the divine treasure chest! Save the children!9 ALWAYS WALKING ALWAYS RUNNING Walking in the shadow, running toward the Light, life is the I am! of existence over time. The conformation of presence
9

Perpetrators, is found in Always Extolling: A Collection.

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the becoming of the beating heart of God, the still-point in the thrownness the yesness of the breathing of it all. Still, seeking the heart, we walk and run in the mind. We see with such clarity in the dark thought of night. We are the in between. We shout, Lech Hiem! Then we silently, prayerfully, breathe, Awesome! Time is spent running and walking over the bridge seeking to gather the other one in love, the one of self, the One of all.10 ADVICE Who am I to think that I have something, something to offer other members of the species? All are heroes, the vast, current, multicolored wave of humanity. That we have endured is laudable, knowing that we will always succumb. Time and change besiege our bodies and our minds. And yet 10

From Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection.

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each dawning finds us scurrying towards a current purpose. We are existential by fiat, reflective in repose, never too long. The sun sets and we sleep. That holy wave of nocturnal quiescence bathes our battered selves. After which, once again, we rise for another day. And somewhere in the pristine present, hiding in its nowness, we feel and see something. It - whatever it is causes us to believe enough to hope, to give ourselves again to the task of being a person. The truth is I can only speak of myself to myself, I love life. Among its many manifestations, I love my wife and children the most.11 We must all start by loving those closest to us and reaching out to those who know nothing about love. EPITAPH

11

From The Twelfth Hour: A Collection.

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Better red than dead! What have we read? Plato, Kant, Marx, Pope Leo XIII, Kierkegaard, People's Magazine and The National Inquirer. We live wanting so desperately to be lead. What difference will it make when we are gone? The Rebellion of the Masses, Into what? Where is the mystery, The holy, Communalism, Socialism, Nationalism, Materialism, Paternalism, Feminism, And finally, Fraternalism? Will we all wake up and realize we have had the wrong faith? Did we know what to hope for? Fundamental needs conflict with numbers and time. The ideal must become some of the real: The All = A Few / A Few = The All. We have not learned what to give. Hope is what we try to give a child, isnt it? The agony of a people is in not finding a way to give. And still we hear, How long does it take to rewind the movie?12

12

From The Swamps of Time: A Collection.

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DECISIONS In the constellation of my moment all my river-paths have broken ice save one. Im battered with a vision of necessity, duty, honor, and history. It shrouds me, penetrating all my soul-waking hours. To begin again, in the midst of life, is not an easy thing. To produce clarity of soul, bespeaking a holy purpose, is always the greatest challenge. One cannot abandon another nor is that the objective. The gift of freedom is the only choice. To stand and do with passion is the thing! And what about those haunting dreams and time? They must be lived with equanimity, as souls bend magnanimously, birthing tranquility. And yet, and still, there are always others in our space. So? Freedom is theirs and choice is always made in the context of the now. The fire will always and forever be: 14

True! Mine! Now!13 One must add to the embers and we can only add the Truth of One. Still, lingering thought remains, whose responsibility to hold the mirror? Always, always ones own, mine for me and mine for them.14 CHOOSE! Dawns soft halo breaks the wall of night bursting its brilliance beyond the mountains edging darkness over the far horizon. Warmths fingers grasp the day. Historys deeds flash from forgotten snippets of awe and wonder. To greet my time the early sounds sift in saying. Choose! Choose! Choose! Leaping from my resting place, I choose to grip the day and mow the hay.
13 14

Rule II from The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others. In Reflections from Lucerne: A Collection

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I choose to dance with God.15 LIFE Yes! Game on! pathtotheself.com/allpostingvols.html Don Davison

15

In The Swamps of Time: A Collection

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