Prayers

I usually wait until the evening before submitting my blip, but this scene compelled me to post it this morning.

I hung these Tibetan prayer flags over the garden yesterday, and as I hung them, I considered the words Carl Jung had written above his garden: "Called or not called, God is present." I suppose it is in this thought that I hung these flags, flags that Tibetan buddhists believe offer prayers with each flutter in the wind. I like the colorful peacefulness they add to the garden, and I try to be mindful of their meaning as I work beneath them.

The irony here is that while I hung these, Reynolds High School, a little over an hour's drive away, came to grips with the horror of yet another school shooting. How can a world possibly exist where peace and insane hatred reside so closely together?

There have been 74 school shootings since Newtown; at every one I have been deeply saddened. And I am saddened this time as well, but this time I am angered. I am angered at a culture that allows this to happen, angered by gun lobbyists with deep pockets controlling our legislation, angered by adults who fail to parent. I am angered by the laws that allowed a mentally ill man in Seattle to LEGALLY OWN A WEAPON, a weapon he used in killing a student at Seattle Pacific University last week. We have reached the point where the news no longer shocks us. We have become, to quote Pink Floyd, comfortably numb.

Personally speaking, this time is different. I am taking action. The way I see it, if I am silent, I am culpable. If I am not part of the solution, I am part of the problem.

While I photographed this, a hummingbird broke the silence with a buzzing visit to a nearby feeder. I watched as it hovered, then settled onto the feeder's perch. And I thought of the peaceful possibilities in our world.

And the flags fluttered a prayer into a clear blue sky.