Turning Weed Thoughts into Flowers

There are many distressing weed thoughts permeating our lives and thoughts these days. While the specific shape and size of these energy-consuming invaders varies according to our specific situation, there is a simple practice that may help us all live more peaceful and vibrant lives.

For me, a simple checking of the WHO or CDC website for the most accurate information on the current Coronavirus can thistle up the field of my mind for hours. There seem to be far too many places for data to latch on to fear and spin me into uncertainty. This is a very old and established framework of thought for me, and this new “threat” just props up my internal reasons for maintaining the illusion that I am a separate, isolated and at risk creature in an uncontrollable world.

It therefore takes practice and discipline to let creative imagination lead me out of the tall grass and back into a fragrant garden. Let me share a bit of what I see when I tap into the broader perspectives from outside time and space.

We have a planet which is careening headlong into environmental self-destruction.  It is not possible for us to bring this impending environmental disintegration into focus, because it comes in scattered waves of evidence. We have learned too well to look only to what directly effects us and our scattered family members. Even when we acknowledge the peril to our planet’s health and balance, it is too hard to put the pieces together and to agree on how to tend to the Earth in her severe dis-ease.

Then a tiny virus occurs and we suddenly have a focal point. It enters a world without boundaries or categories, totally ignoring borders, ethnic differences, theology or any other divisive category the human mind has ever created. We discover that to care for our loved ones, we must care for all people everywhere. We are drawn together in heart and purpose to make sacrifices and rewrite our ways of life.

In my imagining, this breaks down all of the standard boundaries, even as it invites us to be more present in our lives. We stop traveling long distances and spending hours in commuter traffic. We open more time to be with family and to develop mutually supportive relationships with friends and neighbors. Creative ways of each offering our gifts and abilities in meaningful forms can replace our dependence on “jobs” which have often stolen energy and dignity with little reward.

We find that as the weather warms, we can gather in circles outdoor to hold meetings and share idea; express gratitude and envision creative possibilities. We grow community gardens and sing our songs out under the sky. We live more within our homes and take extraordinary care to keep them clean and free of chemicals so that our water and land remain healthy.

Many of the large group events which have been our distractions and taken huge amounts of financial support are released. We find more local expressions of creativity and discover that we have the resources for all people in every land to have free health care.

We use less fossil fuel on many levels and the Earth sighs with relief. We pull out the lawns and use the water for flowers and food, adding beauty and nourishment back in the land.

Perhaps we find that a few states in the middle of the country, which are free from the virus will become new homesteads. Close down the beef industry and tear out the industrial corn farms to make room for people to live at a more comfortable distance from one another as they restore the vitality of the soil. Go through a month of quarantine at the border and receive the grant of two acres of land. Relieve the press of population in the major seaboard megacities which will both ease the reinfecting cycle of illness and make it easier as severe weather events engulf these population centers.

I know that all of this is based on creative flights of fancy, but that may be the greatest healer and innovator in these times. The Chinese pictogram for “crisis” contains two elements. One is “danger,” and the other is “opportunity.” I invite all of us to take our weed thoughts of threat and fear and transform them into the living garden of new ideas. The transformation of our world and the reentry of the human family into harmony and balance within the web of life begins here.

Do you feel it? The sensation that was apprehension has become playful curiosity. There is more space in the body, heart and the mind for new possibilities. We change a thought, and then another. We entertain an outrageous idea and something amazing emerges. Wow, this is exciting!  Let’s watch the flowers grow.