Arise!

Be the Phoenix

“Whether we remain the ash or become the phoenix is up to us.”

Deng Ming-Dao

I'll be honest with you, some days I just want to lie in the ashes and let the dust settle around me. Sometimes, when I read my news feed and see there has been another mass shooting—which is just about every day now—I just want to roll over and put a pillow over my head. The problem with that is, we can't. We cannot afford to ignore this problem. Ignoring the problem is what happened in Germany eighty years ago. Good people turning a blind eye to injustice is what happened when Bull Connor loosed the police dogs on civil rights protestors. Decent people looking the other way is why there is now a Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, AL. It is neither good, decent, nor acceptable to turn a blind eye to innocent people being shot down on American streets every day.

As far as I can tell, we are in the ashes as a country right now. We care more about our “rights” than we do about human beings and our own environment, and that's a recipe for the disasters we're experiencing. It is a corrupt and blind species that allows the murder of its own people and the destruction of its environment to continue because of its love of guns and money. We have to act now to change this. We have to become the phoenix and rise out of the ashes of this time. Our power brokers are not going to do it for us because they are too busy lining their own pockets. We have to make this choice ourselves—and the choice, whether we want to believe it or not, is between life and death. If having innocent people shot dead on our streets is not motivation enough, what is? If an annual category five hurricane is not enough, what is? If destruction of our protected wilderness, our endangered species, and the burning of the rainforest is not enough, what is? What will it take for us to realize that the ashes are upon us, and the only choice we have is to either remain there or rise up, look these problems in the eye, and claim them as our own. Do we want to join the list of endangered species, or rise like the phoenix? It's our choice to make.

                                                                       In the Spirit,

                                                                          Jane