Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Summertime heat wave in progress – dry, windy, 102 degrees forecast.
PATHWAY PERSPECTIVE – PART 2
The journal content continues to rise up after I sit down in my STOP chair on the way down to work.
This morning’s first notes came from this provocation:
As I shuffled around my kitchen in the first light of day, there was a timid tapping on the big porch windows. A young woman was standing there, holding up a photograph of a little girl.
“Yes?”
“This is Maria – have you seen her?”
“No – has she been kidnapped?”
“No – she’s run away from home – again.”
“How do you know?”
“She left a note.”
(To make a long story short and spare you the details, Maria was later found sitting in her father’s car in the family garage.)
Have you ever run away from home?
Or been the parent of a child who did?
I’ve been both— long stories for another time.
Another way to run away is to turn away and stop paying attention to what’s going on in the world.
As I have been doing recently.
It’s so tempting to avoid the relentless tsunami of negative news by tuning out the sources of the daily feed of corruption, viruses, climate change, and death.
Not my fault – nothing I can do.
Don’t look – run away.
And then the primary election ballot shows up.
Jolt.
And I have a government job to do.
I am a citizen – and my job is to at least vote – to cast an informed vote for those who represent my values in representative bodies of legislators.
At least that. No running away – think and vote.
I’m inspired by a story passed on to me from a Mexican friend. His sister and two small daughters have walked 1,000 miles to seek asylum in the United States and have now been turned back at the border. They would do anything to have what I got for free just by being born here.
My Mexican friend asks me to vote on behalf of his sister.
Maria.
My primary ballot is in the mail.