Inner Michael

In that twilight space, in early morning just before waking, in a reverie of dreams, an image and a few words emerged. “Light a candle,” it said with an urgency, and tell them to all light one too. What? Whom? Who is speaking?

Silence.

I stumbled to the coffee pot. I always pour the water and fill the coffee the night before so it’s hair trigger ready. I gulp a few mouthfuls, shake the cobwebs and try to go back to pick up the dream memory. Actually, it wasn’t a dream. It sounded more like a command in real time; no– a prescription. Something I was commissioned to hear. To do. To say. What was it? Too late; it’s gone.  It was something about all the tragedy and an invocation and a very clear message: “Light a candle!”

How many candles should I light? How many will it take? More than 200 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped and are still missing; a Malaysian Flight 370 aircraft with 239 passengers and crew disappeared into thin air in March: another Malaysian flight– Flight 17 with 298 souls on board was, it seems, shot down by a missile “by mistake” and lies in pieces on the Ukraine countryside.

Should I light candles for the Israeli teens or the four boys were killed in Gaza? For the war brewing there now? For the wildfires in the western U.S.? For the orphaned immigrant children in Arizona? For the Russian train derailment? For China in the path of a typhoon? For the folk in the Philippines hit by that same storm?

If I light all those candles, I’ll burn the place down. Oh wait, maybe I only need to light one candle… this one for humanity.
 
 

“It’s a turf war… on a global scale. I’d rather hear both sides of the tale…”
 

 
 

(Get Together; The Youngbloods (c) 1967.) Seems like we’ve been at this *sigh* a long time.
 

Michael Jackson didn’t like turf wars.

LIFE IS THE SCHOOL; LOVE IS THE LESSON.