This is the year . . .

"If every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year."

-- Martin Espada, Imagine the Angels of Bread

This is the year we were born to live in.

This is the year when we begin to live as who we are, who we always have been at the core, who we were born to be.

The year we have prepared for all our lives.

After so many lifetimes of believing that the path of liberation lay in going up and out of our bodies, up and out of the world, this is the year we finally begin to come fully into our bodies, to know that their skin and bone and muscle and blood and nerve and flesh are the instruments through which our highest aspirations can be realized,

that the pleasures of our senses feed a bright and fierce fire that rises within us

and that this time instead of burning ourselves at the stake we can set that fire loose in the world,

burning away the illusions that have made people believe that there is no alternative to a life based on the brutalizing assumptions of scarcity, danger, and fear,

already we are watching the fire start to burn away the screens onto which those illusions have been projected as markets crash and an empire comes up against the limitations of its power to subdue the rest of the world through the threat or reality of starvation or bombardment.

Yes, the suffering around us is real. And yes, those still caught in fear lash out in terrifying ways as they falsely believe the fire has come to burn them instead of free them.

But at the same time billions are realizing they no longer have to surrender their wills to the disembodied spirit behind the burning curtain.

And the fire melts the pavement and the ash covers our feet and we take root again in the soil and draw up water from the Earth

and rain it back down to feed the seeds that have waited 500 years to be called back to life.

This is the year when we know for certain that those seeds will give rise to flowers and fruit again.

Rejoice!