Love In The Mist Of Petrified Trees

by Jack Schimmelman

Mahatma Gandhi. Artist unknown.

I am the proverbial tree who has fallen in the woods, no witness,
unbowed. So at the risk of being declared insane, nave, idiot, dumbass,
etc., I fall once again and scream into an ether of desperation LOVE.
Now I understand fully that that word fell into disrepute long ago. No
respect for the unloved. No thought of those who aspire to love, but once
you get there, once you awaken from the horror of sleeping wrapped in a
fabric of loathing, you are noticed. And sometimes you are murdered.
Your very existence is unbearable in a sea of pestilence.
Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the King of Kings.
Im not speaking of ones love for ones partner or child, although I think
that first moment with your infant approaches the state of Being that I
wish to communicate. And loving each other can never be devalued. But
that feeling often vanishes into a veil. I speak of love as enlightenment.
When after you have struggled through eons of lifetime after lifetime (if
you believe in such things) of getting it wrong, getting it right, suffering,
ecstasy, in other words being ALIVE, being human, all that you think
you are dances with the wind, leaving you firmly rooted in earth. I speak
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to those who have journeyed through the entire human experience,
sometimes quickly, often slowly.
Me, I am a special needs student. A slow learner. But I do learn and I
am friendly enough.
So, why do I find it necessary to scream when the power of being in the
throes of unconditional love speaks volumes without a single word, no
unique utterance? Because I am unenlightened. Because once in a
while I have been given gifts to glimpse into what has been referred to
since time immemorial, the Promised Land. And because when
immersed in an ocean of suffering that we cannot prevent from
permeating our conscious quotidian lives, we must scream. Screaming is
the music of the day. The screams of those killed by missiles, screams of
those enslaved by sadism, screams of all keys, dissonant chords, never
disappearing, echoing throughout human time. Screams haunt our
waking hours, sleeping time, for those who have the luxury to be able to
sleep.
In this country we speak of wars out there. Somewhere else. Talking
heads babble in our media, untouched by their subject. We are shocked,
horrified, at the brink of compassion, but here in the U.S.A. we feel
somewhat safe as war hasnt truly hit our shores since that great
experiment in bloodletting the civil war. Yes, weve been victimized by
acts of terror. But those acts, as heinous as they are, do go away and we
do move on. Imagine Syria, eastern Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Iraq, just a
few places where the dissonant chords of suffering and dying penetrate
ones heart every moment of every day. Imagine how this must be.
Then, please stop if you dont have to continue in this vein, for soon you
will be paralyzed with hopelessness. Your fear would have transmuted
into an iceberg.
I am one of the fortunate ones. I have never been to war and not singed
with its insanity. When I see my government voluntarily send our
citizens into battle without truth, on rationales that obviously lie to our
faces, I want to raise my scream to the biosphere. And it is not a scream
of love. When I see those who have been dispensed into the pit of hell
return home practically destroyed, I am desperate for ways to help heal
these profound wounds. So, I go back to screaming LOVE. Always
screaming one way or the other. That seems to be the order of the day.
The forest is petrified. We who still breathe, feel, able to sway in the sun
as majestically as a willow, are responsible. We need to find a way to
soften the concrete that has encased human consciousness. It is insane
to think one human being can effect an impossible transformation. But I
have this understanding of life. I really do see us all made of the same
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stuff. We share DNA. The geometry of our DNA is our sacred music. It
is the music of creation. And if we start to contribute the harmony of our
true north, our hearts, our soul, to the mix of our collective humanity,
perhaps one day a moment of time a moment of space will reveal to us all
the power of unconditional love; the precious gift of life. That instant will
reverberate throughout eternity, dissolving our deepest traumas, our fear
and finally our hatred. So, yes, I suppose I am insane.