Recapturing Lovely.
Is there only one notion of lovey, of beautiful?
The old tale, Emperor and the Nightingale, address is this question. The story is as old as time, no?
Unless we have been insanely pursuing a mistaken notion of lovely, beautiful, where is the Hope?
But if we have been insanely pursuing a wrong notion of beauty, of lovely, then there is profound hope.
Standing Rock, the camp established to protect the Waters of the Missouri River, was aesthetically, visually, beautiful in the fall. During the winter months it was visually and physically quite materially ugly, hellish even. Inches of mud. Below zero nights and days. Ice everywhere, everywhere, everywhere... perfectly suited to breaking bones and skulls. Muddy dark army tents for meals. The world's largest police state glaring over us every moment with snipers on Hills, helicopters, planes, with folks relishing the idea of killing us.
But now a month after the camps are shut down by the police state, there is a regular stream of posts from those who are expressing their longing for being back at the camp. They are profoundly distressed at being back in what civilization prefers: safety, ease, Comfort, opulence, leisure.
What's going on?
Standing Rock was nearly everything that our society considers ugly. But to many who were there, far from all, but to many, it was and is beautiful, the epitome of lovely.
Whether or not we can put words to it, there was Supreme beauty, supreme loveliness, at Standing Rock in at least two ways.
1. There was the Supreme beauty of the opportunity to radically serve our fellow humans, indeed, all of creation. That's why many of us were there. To try and serve by putting ourselves in the way of the total Destruction of everything as well as we knew how. Exquisitely lovely.
2. It was an exquisitely beautiful, lovely, way of life, really, the only way of life. Huh? Yes. In truth. Though almost none of us in society can see it, it was a way of life, a way of living, that starved that which is killing us, the corporate capitalist consumerist state of things. It is killing us. It will finish the job in months unless we in huge masses move to a way of living that starves it.
3. And it was the, objectively iffy, way of life lived by many of us there. Huh? Yes. Every form of healthy tissue in every organism is designed to feel ultimate reward by using every single second to serve the well-being of the larger Collective. I know of no objective science or thought that can understand it any other way. That is, except for the life-form cancer. Think about it.
Yes, there were many many many Slackers at Standing Rock. But those in whom you would see Joy from sunup to sundown in the midst of the hellish conditions, in those you would find that they thrived on ways of serving, mostly small, from Sun up until the time they went to bed. Cutting wood for others, shoveling snow for others, cooking meals for others, washing dishes and pots for others, deliberately being a source of spiritual kindness, and uplift, for others. Tending the fire real in the fire pit, and ultimately in the heart. Among these people you could cut the joy with a knife. Few had experienced such Joy, such piece of heart, such loveliness, such beauty, ever before, or since.
Did those of us at Standing Rock do this perfectly? No. But with few if any exceptions we lived on the land, on our mother earth, in a way that even 7 or 10 billion people doing so could do so for eons. This as opposed to the way that we worship in our sick culture, which probably can't sustain even the Next Generation.
We all understand this in our heads, don't we?
But some of us at Standing Rock, whether or not we realized it, we understood it in our hearts, our souls. And we knew it as heaven. We saw, what to almost all eyes was material ugliness personified, but instead we saw ultimate Beauty. The beauty of a sustainable Earth forever.
Not to be critical or disparaging. Nearly all attempts at sustainability thus far has started with an assumption, we need to maintain our consumerist preferences but do so without destroying Earth. Inheriting this is a notion of beauty.
What is the ultimate Beauty is in a thermal Mass, Earth bearing structure, with virtually none of the trappings that we have been taught are essential in this culture, that can support people whose lives are made up of every breath serving their sisters and brothers out of love, that's their entertainment, that's their amusement? What is that Community, including the structures, were as Perpetual as the Earth and stone piled on top of them? What if even to build they cost maybe $3,000 per person? That is, extremely affordable.
What if? A different world is possible.
How was more rich, the emperor that first preferred the Nightingale in nature, or second, the emperor that had learned to prefer the mechanical Nightingale?
Who was more rich, the emotionally healthiest of our native sisters and brothers that lived on this land 5000 years ago comma living the beauty, the loveliness, of creation? Or is it those of us in this culture today, the most highly medicated culture that there has ever been comma with a lower reported quality of life than many if not most Nations on Earth, and way below the materially modest country this was even back in the 1950s?
Another world is possible. The world called for in Oceti Infinity Communities ( http://oceti-infinity-communities.weebly.com/) is the world of beauty. It is the natural Nightingale. It is the last and only hope. By this name, by this effort, or by some other. It is the only hope. There is no time left.
