SOS Asheville

Beauty Blog 070506

I was hiking in Dupont Forest this weekend, and accidentally found my way into the section which formerly housed AGFA. This is a beautiful section of land, complete with a lake and sandy beach, turtle habitat, and some toxic waste. Eventually this land is meant to join Dupont Forest and be available to the public for hiking purposes, but right now it is posted as private land, apparently for liability reasons. I invite everyone to join me in sending loving thoughts to this parcel of land, and/or any other which calls to you; see them in your mind’s eye as being once again a pristine and safe habitat for all who enter the area. Let’s see what a little unified energy can do.

7/13/06
Of course, one needn’t travel very far to encounter opportunities for beautification. I walked around my neighborhood in Haw Creek this morning, where the peace and quiet I moved into the area for are now often punctuated with the beep-beeps of heavy earth movers backing up—a new set of condominiums is going in just on the other side of the ridge from me. Perhaps in response to this, a number of my neighbors have dug up large sections of lawn and put in shrubs and flowers. It definitely took my mind off what my ears were hearing.

It strikes me that a lot of people are currently focusing on “survival,” and how to do this in their own back yards. I am grateful for the notion of “sustainability”; in my mind it carries a much more positive outlook. And, for me, part of that sustainability is beauty in all forms. This past weekend I was at a Sufi Peace Dance Camp where I got to experience the beauty of the land, both in cultivated and wild forms; but I was more taken with the beauty of all the myriad people who showed up for this experience—even the locals who came out late at night to honk at the “Moonies.” If we are to survive well, with any kind of sustainability, it seems to me that it just might require seeing the beauty in each and every person who crosses our path. “Light comes in all forms,” said a friend, smiling as she explained about the locals.

Part of this feature of sustainability is, for me, knowing that I now know all of these people spread out all over the eastern half of the United States, and that we created some kind of energetic net this weekend, to add to all the other nets being created. I am awed and delighted.
Namaste,
Laurel