Why is it that those with so little offer so much? How is it that the gift giver is honoured more than the gift? When is it that the feast that is not part of your religion or culture is still celebrated with respect for the other? Where is the stranger the guest and something deeper and more eternal is touched regardless of differences and maybe even because of them?

The story told and the story we tell of these times will either transmit the mind virus or offer an essential antidote.

What sacred cows are we prepared to sacrifice on the altars of our development? Personally? Collectively? To what do we bind ourselves? To whom? What flags or banners or colours do we stand under? What do we stand for? What do we see when we comprehend our deepest and highest value? What if this were the god we serve? What if the ultimate task of these times was to know this and find communion with the other? Communion with the Other.

The verb κλαιω (klaio) means to wail. Unlike the more modest and private activity of weeping (δακρυω, dakruo), this verb describes the loudly communicated expression of grief or pain. We are surely in klaios time. There is much to be mourned.

We carve our jack-o-lanterns and light our candles. We visage the monsters we know and costume our fears in carnival attire. Like the gargoyles on the corners of the Gothic cathedrals, we sentry the monsters we know to ward off the monsters we do not know.

We will forget and we will remember…

“I am here seventy-five percent of my own free will, sixty-five percent by compulsion.”

These fairy stories are the gestalt of both our basest desires and our highest aspirations. They are actually the same story. The universal story. The archetypal story. They speak with a thousand voices about the human journey.

We die unto those who have gone before us. Our task is to leave as unobstructed a path as we are able. Our task is to be an ancestor worthy of having come from.

Baba is well known in the Russian and Slavic fairytales where she is a paradoxical figure. The hero or maid who approaches Her at the edge of the tangled dark forest, best be prepared. Wits, not intellect is required. Not egoic purpose. We must be prepared to be seen, exposed, and maybe for the first time in our life, known.

Do we need to realign our economic and social attitudes toward sustainability? Absolutely! But I am not so arrogant as to believe that humans can control the climate, save the Earth, or virtue signal our way to atonement.

A memory on social media reminds me of what I had almost forgotten. To slow down. To notice. To appreciate.