All Things Being Equal

All human beings without exception are in reality homeless. It's a mistake to think we have a solid home."--  Roshi Kodo Sawaki

At 6:30 Pacific Time this morning the sun was exactly above the equator. Day and night are of equal length today, which is called the Autumnal Equinox. Our planetary alignment with the sun is equal. We should be in perfect balance. And we are.

Yet one would be led to believe just the opposite, what with Covid-19 spreading around the planet, wildfires torching the Western U.S., a hurricane flooding the Gulf states, protests in the streets, authoritarian strongmen running many countries and a butt-load of inequality among so many of the Earth's people.

If I were a religious man I would surmise that the world was coming to its proverbial finish line. Game over. The end. I have never heard the word "apocalypse" used so many times in one day as two weeks ago when daylight was colored orange. It was eery.

But I look around on this first day of Fall and I see blue sky not smoke. I breathe in air that holds the freshness of late September. I am one of the lucky ones who is able to sleep in his own bed in his own room in his own house tonight, next to the one I love.

Is this not Heaven?

Yesterday I passed a middle-aged man who was climbing out of his trailer parked at the edge of town where he had spent the night. He smiled at me and said, "Good morning."

I spied another sweeping the debris from the perimeter of his van where he is living. I heard music and noticed a woman dancing on a rug on the street.

This morning I was sitting on my surfboard soaking in endorphins I had aroused in my brain by paddling to the Rivermouth and back. The fog was playing hide and seek. The wind had just begun to move. I heard a loud splash in the water behind me. A brown pelican had just dive-bombed a small fish, carried it away clutched in the throat of its dagger-like beak. Another swished over my head, its feathers spread like a B-52, practically skimming the ocean's surface.

I was in the moment. They were in the moment. The moment is now. 

It's the equinox. Days become shorter and storms begin to brew up north near Alaska, which means winter swells and waves come to town.

We'll get it together. We just need to point our noses in the right direction.