people are more important than cars.
rivers are more important than roads.
we've over-extended ourselves.
let's buy up every other house in the suburbs
and bulldoze them and plant trees.
why do we want to live so close together?
let's build a highway of forest
that connects every backyard to every other backyard
every childhood to every other childhood
across the earth.
why do we want to live so far apart?
where are the walkways in our parking lots?
we've engineered them only for cars
and so people can only be in the way.
this space is an interface, an in-between, a transformation
from one way of being to another.
it should afford both.
all that's left of the river
is a name on a sign on a guard rail on a bridge
and i can't go down and sit by it
because it's private property.
we've relegated the lifeblood of this planet
to the sewer.
slow down.
why do you hurry so quickly to the grave?
you sit in your car for hours every day
and then complain that you're not in good shape
because you haven't had time to walk.
how many of our problems would simply disappear
if we all walked more?
why worry when you can walk?
what have we purchased with our lifestyle?
what separates my past self and my present?
i consume and eliminate, my cells die and are replaced.
i am a wave that travels through an ocean of ever-fresh water,
a worm tunneling through an ocean of soil.
what separates me from you?
time and space and distance are real, and so is the world's deep sensitivity
to every tiny detail, which magnifies effects chaotically
and binds everything incomprehensibly together.
the secret of death is that every life
is lived as if it is the only one that ever will be lived
and we are all of the same substance
and the separation between us is interpreted.
you will live every life that has been lived
and every life that can be lived.
every person you meet, and every person you never meet---
you will be.
what you do to the other will be done to you.
we are the spirit of god, the universe,
the movement which is in all things.
this is the one reality.
in it there are many perspectives,
and we give them names
like you
and me.
there is a piece that is missing in every limited thing.
hold that space open, for that is your tether to the infinite.
don't cover it up or try to fill it with something perishable.
hold it open to the vastness of time and space
and the great variety of life.
the love of god is holding you always.
the universe is holding you delicately
in the web of uncountable things,
in this forest of bugs and fungus,
holding you with an unmeasurable strength
like the rhythm of day and night
which is deep inside our bodies and minds.
may you feel it.
may you spread that love,
allow it to catch like fire among all people
and in all places,
that the world might burn with the light of god.