Blood on the Rocks

  Across the valley the Sangre de Christo Mountains stretch quietly. The Blood of Christ: salvation, in the Spanish mind. For an immigrant me, they also are a refuge, wedged between the fires and smoke-filled skies of the west and the hurricanes and floods of the east. 

 The rocks beside me once flowed molten hot.  After eons their patina became a canvas for Tewa people. Their glyphs remain a mystery. What did they feel as their world wound down? They already had known drought and famine. In the end, did their eyes see demons in metal clothing, those ancestors of the enchanting Spanish accent of Santa Fe? 

 How did the Tewa face the end of their world? Did apocalypse figure in their stories?

 My friends flee fire that incinerates places I know so well. Family returns to a devastated home. Here it is peaceful before my eyes but my heart is rent as deeply as the gorge of the river that has given life to this land from a time even before humans.  It has meandered through the ages and though it will shrink and it will grow, it will not stop flowing.

 And the mountains and rocks of the mother we have treated so shamelessly? Will they remember us, as they do the Tewa who respectfully left their marks upon her? Or will they think of us as but a passing dream?

 Like the ancients, I am compelled to open my heart and inscribe my thought-images upon a canvas, but one much more fleeting than theirs.

Shakyamuni Buddha Teaching the Lotus Sutra

 I've been away from this blog for quite some time now and a lot has happened in our little world since my last post. In an ironic way the global pandemic has both isolated people and connected them. To the extent possible Kayla and I have quarantined ourselves.  This is perhaps desirable for everyone who can do so, but we are in high risk categories, so it is specially important for us to do so.  But the irony is that our connections with others have been magnified by our use of the internet. How astonishing that I can sit in my living room and take live teachings from the Dalai Lama -- on the other side of the planet. 

 The pandemic and quarantine has impacted all of us in our own unique ways.  For Kayla it presented an opportunity to refocus on her painting and she completed a beautiful thangka that had sat unfinished for years: Shakyamuni Buddha Teaching the Lotus Sutra. How appropriate for these times. 

 In the Sutra the Buddha tells many stories of a metaphoric nature. The one which sticks with me is about children fixated on playing with their toys in a burning house.  While the conflagration grows around them, they see and think of nothing but their toys. So it has been with most of us in this world of ours.  We have distracted ourselves with our toys, our ambitions, our disappointments, our desires and our anger. 

 But the conflagration of the pandemic is upon us, and we cannot help but pay attention to it. It has taken away so many toys (and of course lives and livelihoods) that we cannot help but look around and wake up at least a little to what really matters, to what is essential. And to look into the depth of our hearts to find what we really care about.