Good Evening Beloved,
I begin by invoking the idea of "Love is light is energy". To know love to know light is to know dark, cold, is to know warm, to know too warm or too cold. I invoke this spectrum of "attunement" VS "out of tune" rather than "hot" or "cold". The discomfort of too much or too little of any quality, rather than having the wrong quality. I'll define Love here not as Noise nor Silence, but the song which occurs between.
Love is my chief value and my first lover, my only most perfect life partner. Born out of love and into love, it is love which calls me down the pathway of my journey.
...
(I am the shepherd of my firewood parcel. My bank account is my flock. My net worth is infinite. My wallet my home my possessions are my flock.)
The bonfire is low, and I like the bonfire, I am the bonfire, I am the bonfire and I have arms, I can reach out and place parcels of wood, I am at a beach party, I am in the woods at a campfire with good stories, there are friends with guitars singing. I like being warm and I like the party. I like the tribe.
The tribe is not be-all end-all, no, the tribe is not everything, there is the entire wilderness which is alive. The tribe, this society, feels like everything right now, it feels precious in the vastness of wilderness. The tribe guides me and teaches me and knows me and gives me the nourishment of feeling the giving of support and being supported. The tribe shows me what I agree with by having disagreeable quality. The tribe shows me what godlove is in this way. The tribe teaches me what it is to be loved, to love. The tribe shows me who I am. The tribe is a nourishing vitamin to my human experience.
The nourishment of providing. Being provided for. Providing for myself, providing for others. Providing the opportunity to experience withholding.
Dams are batteries. Dams hold energy. Dams demand maintenance. Maintenance is energy. Holding onto things is energy. Storage is energy. Space is energy. Dams silt up over time. Dams are an idea which exist within myself, too. I store and withhold energy for droughts. I maintain and neglect my dams. Downstream rivers will feel this. The valley of me is inundated. Everything is tradeoffs. Energy is neither created nor destroyed.
My idea of "waste" is just energy escaping my eco-system as defined by my attention. If I cannot see it, it is gone. Is it gone if someone else sees? I try to maintain energy within my system. Energy spent is energy returned. This is the idea of investment. Investment with returns can be its own withholding. Its own dam.
Withholding is a part of the process, too. To be a withholder is a part of the path of being human here, now, as myself. To be a withholder is to know withholding. I withhold while I am called to withhold, even with the shame of being judged by myself as a withholder. A withholder is an archetype of the shame-inducer "selfish". The antithesis to "sharing is caring". A withholder is inconsiderate and uncaring and deserves consequences, says my judge.
The beach party bonfire.
I get to identify where the flame is low and where this firewood will go. To me, my withholding, to others, even to my detriment. My detriment for oversharing, undernourishing, my detriment for holding too tightly. Fear, shame, guilt. I offer this human experience.
Every dollar is a vote. Dollars are energy. Voting is dollars is energy. What if instead of "how can I grow my investment?" I asked myself "what do I want to hold up?" Holding space takes energy. Where I spend my energy, how I spend my energy, WHY I spend my energy begs the question of values.
So many are asking for support. Shame says bleed out everywhere. Give here, give here. To support by way of shame is to endorse shame. To support by way of love is to endorse love.
I am a part of the bonfire, too. The campfire is me. I love the sounds of chatter and guitar and beer cans and the smell of wood and the sounds of the night contrasting the coziness.
So I close by setting down this thought:
Love is light is energy. I am the shepherd of the energy which I only call "mine" by name. My energy is not my worth, but instead my flock, it is I who leads who teaches my flock who I am. I am born of love and live by love and love is what calls me on my way.
