I live smack dab downtown – right across from the Grove Arcade, right in the path of all that is going on. For the past four nights, I have fallen asleep to the sound of flashbangs, firecrackers, shouting, chanting, and police sirens. Sometimes marchers pass my building, sometimes a phalanx of cops on bicycles pass by. We could even see the commotion on the Jeff Bowen Bridge from our (9th floor) window the other day.
I wholeheartedly support the demonstrators expressing an anguish that has been building for CENTURIES topped off my three and a half YEARS of an administration fomenting fear and hate and violence. In a way we are experiencing ‘Apocalypse Now’ NOW. The “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” represent Pestilence (coronavirus), War (well, everywhere but now the response to the appalling death of George Floyd as well as the mistreatment by some policemen of the populace they are sworn to ‘serve and protect’ and finally the threat of the military being called out to fight our own people), Famine (breakdown in the supply chains), and Death (by COVID-19 with growing numbers being reported daily). It is, one might say, a ‘perfect storm’. But I think I can see the perfection in the current storm: we MUST change our ways. We MUST live guided by LOVE, not FEAR. We are seeing people all over the country and even all over the world stand up and declare this. We MUST ‘serve and protect’ Mama Earth and now we see the tremendous difference clearing of the air once we settled down to experience BEING instead of constant DOING. How else could we have seen so clearly what damage we have been doing? If we are blessed by having a loving family, we now have the gift of TIME to spend with them. We have TIME to evaluate what is really important to us and perhaps make better choices. The whole universe it appears has conspired to wake us up (we are being hit over the head by a gargantuan 2 X 4) to help us make a massive shift in our actions and our choices. There are indeed blessings in this horror. Are we listening, I wonder?
-Anonymously submitted on June 4, 2020