When Does It Begin To Matter?

These times simmer us all along a story of eventual boiling, critical massness, whether we acknowledge the kitchen exists, or the stove, or the fire underneath the pot or the pot or…

We can say it doesn’t matter, that we can’t make a difference by raising our voice but how else have we made changes without shedding blood? And don’t we want to avoid that one in particular? Would we rather send troops to corrupt wars, pat them on the back with a grin, say our prayers repeatedly, send out all the best energy and hope it all works out well enough or could we maybe consider speaking the truth to established “time-honored” realities gone stagnant and toxic? Especially when those traditions quickly boot their once-revered boots, now seasoned veterans, into a purgatory of loss, of benefits soured and help non-existent. Why would anyone perpetuate such? Could we maybe ask ourselves why we see no point in voicing our opinions but have no problem supporting the send-off of troops? What perversion of truth are we embodying when we embrace such twisted contradictions of love? We can’t make a difference with our voices united in opposition to corruption but somehow we can make a difference sending young folk to their confusion if not their deaths?

And while we’re at the love shore: Why are we so in love with our dramas, our many ministrations for the injured and the cornered more than we are in love with preventing the injuries, the agonies, the worries about loved ones entrenched in “time-honored” dead end ventures? While we should never abandon our love for the wounded, it’s a vastly wicked farce of love to embrace futility of voice while clinging fiercely to our weapons of warfare and all the seeming heroics inevitable. We bind soldier to soldier on fields meant only for greed, their scuffle to keep each other alive somehow proving one man or woman can get another’s back in the sands of murky foreign purpose. We tell ourselves it justifies the futility of it all as we grin and play the romantic charade game of hide the truth. Can we not encourage our youth to occupy our own soil here in these anorexic lands where we starve out soulfulness minute by minute everyday? Not in some distant land where our presence creates enemies and problems so much more horrific than any we could have interrupted.

It’s like some sick roundy round with value, with preciousness itself. It’s like we don’t want it. We’d rather injure it, send it abroad into suicidal zones of alleged honor, duty and freedom before doing the most effective thing we can do to protect what we love, to further love itself. See, if we are real warriors, we speak the truth to centuries of corruption. We stand our ground, refusing violence. We question the powers that be and we do it endlessly until the reign of corruption ends, occupying truth, insisting on a fierce love that refuses the same old delusions and capitulations to overwhelming corruption.

When will it begin to matter? Until it does, we pose. We pose notions of care, of concern, of sincerity itself when we refuse to believe our voices can turn a tide in love, for love, as love.  How is it that our hands wielding weapons have more power than our voices sending out energy, uncovering truth, discovering purpose that embraces what matters, birthing and nurturing love? It is not so. Don’t believe there’s no point because if you believe there’s no point in a voice raised, then your belief in everything else is nowhere, nothing. Not one part of the human expression, not one movement of the body is without purpose and the fact that all the world is mostly ignorant of this truth is why we are where we are today, on the stove, working our way up to an ugly boil, refusing love itself. So, when? When does it begin to matter? And when do people realize what once stood on the edge of lands noble, possibly occupying honorable purpose, what once defended freedom is now a machine killing innocence? And no ancient semi-heroic history will redeem what is now. Only what we choose now, only when we embrace how much it matters now, only then will we stand a chance of avoiding devastating loss.