I wrote this in September during a trip to Colorado and felt called to share it now.
We just got back into town from the mountains. A beautiful weekend in nature by all accounts.
It was a several hour drive from the vacation spot to get back to my brother’s house – so at some point we decided to switch from music to a podcast.
I don’t really follow podcasts. Not that I don’t like the concept; I do. It’s just that it’s an overwhelming amount of content to begin with, let alone to keep up with. I don’t mind a curated podcast experience, though. I figure, if it was worth downloading for the trip, it is worth a listen. The rest of our caravan agreed.
“Okay, I have one on the Salem Witch Trials or some I downloaded from Freakanomics,” my sister-in-law offered.
“Nerd,” my brother jested. “Let’s do the witch one!”
We made it through three episodes by the time we got home.
“That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” he said.
“Hmmph.” I got out of the car feeling queasy.
No magic. No mystery. No witches.
Instead it was a story about men in high positions using women and children as pawns in their power play – all in the name of religion, of course.
Even the narrator softened some of the behavior to the times and circumstances.
But it’s always been “the times” and “just the way things are…”
It still is. Every century. Every decade. Something new, but the same. When will we choose a different way? When will we claim our power within and listen to our own inner stirring of truth? The way things are is never just the way things are. It is a choice.
“Whoa, do you see the ash?” my brother asked when we pulled into town. “There’s a big wildfire north of us,” reported my sister-in-law.
I helped unload the car and then took some time to sit on the back porch. A mother across the way in her backyard was explaining to her young son why it was raining ash and the sky was full of smoke.
How many mothers are constantly explaining to their children the smoke and ash that fills the air around them? There’s a fire north of us, sure, but there’s a fire all around us. Don’t you see the ash?
