DICKENS KNEW: thoughts from an Athens diary...

Dickens knew--way back when--that these were and are the best and worst of times. Same situations. Different Revolutions! There must be revolutions--to restore balance, to redefine the important concepts of human cultural existence. How do they occur? Where do they begin? Somewhere near the start of a Revolution, there must be awareness; a growing-into-consciousness awareness by the people...by some of the masses but also by some of those who stand a bit apart and take note and bring a bit of focus to the fore---with compassion and passion---with vision and intent. It is always seemingly impossible in the beginning. The odds are such that no small efforts, no nascent ideas, no movements can be seen--nor seen to have impact. Things change slowly until they change quickly. The complexity of an action, an inevitable action--anticipated and unexpected--spilling over the vessel of tolerance, indifference, ignorance, helplessness, poverty of experience--spills over and begins (always beginning) to flood the collective consciousness and unconsciousness...
Movements mature---gain momentum--like now, like in this 2011 world in which I begin to notice (really notice) what had existed beyond my seemingly safe personal world of exploration---insideoutside---one becoming the other. I become the other: The disenfranchised. The dejected. The one who yearns. "The wretched refuse"...
How slowly, yet how instantaneously, I walk and stumble and fall into expanded meaning; expanded opportunity---opportunity to participate in a revolution of spirit, of consciousness. And this will not be televised. Not this; not this awareness, not this metamorphosis, not this cell-by-cell transformation from the old "there" to the ever-changing NOW to the new "there"! The manifestival is manifestable! Slowly, slowly--as all instants go---not with a bang, but also not (we pray, we wonder, we hope, we fear) with a whimper.
I find myself in a circle of wondrous people, wondering, "What is my role, my purpose?"
What was it that "Bible Ruth" said? "Whither thou goest, I will go...Thy people will be my people." My people. These are some of my people: Ray and Medea and Hagit and Ann and Ken and Lisa and Richard and Kathy...and, now, to find my place among these new people of my people: to follow; to learn to lead; to leave the empty fullness of my past and to embrace the full emptiness of the void---not in the sense of endings nor of death---but in the arms of a revolution of spirit...
Help me, oh spirit, oh future truth, to be a good "drop" in the overflowing vessel of a revolution (a revelation) of good.
Do. Do not. Do not go. Do not go gently...