Side-Street Walking and Life...

      Dorothy Day with the United Farmworkers Union (Photo by Bob Fitch)

This photo of Dorothy Day by Bob Fitch is my very favorite of the Saint of the Gutter-Beautiful... and it perfectly captures what I call the side-street walking and life... Seriously, with the well-being of this entire precious blue Planet @ Risk, how is it that anyone can muster the where-with-all to be normal... to live as if nothing really matters? Or that you are powerless and little more than a victim... and so you decide to live invisible... 

If you watch FOX News you know nearly nothing of what is going on in the world: and maybe you live by the shrunken faith of the fundamentalist (whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, even atheist) that insists judgment (condemnation) is for "them"... or "that"... Or maybe you are simply choosing to be absent from responsibility, possibility, meaning, and purpose: obviously, many millions of people are doing just that... 

On the other hand, there is the other side of the street! There! There is the side-street meant for your walking and life! No one on this side-street is living a small life: oh, I may be a dishwasher and you a whatever, but going deeper, I dream because that's exactly what dreamers do... and I live and I work and I gather with other dreamers to organize something: maybe a soup kitchen, maybe a strike for living wages, maybe to defend immigrants or others @risk from the privileged systems of power... and more! And more!

Side-street walking and life is always peopled with the most amazing folks ever: prophets and saints are here (and why not just take it another step and commit to how they identify Divinity-on-the-loose). Activists are here, like Dorothy, Nelson, Martin, Daniel, Dolores, Cesar, Vandana, Mohandas, and Wangari. Contemplatives are here, like Bruno, Cynthia, Bede, Andrew, and Matthew. All sorts of artists live and walk here as well, like Frida, Georgia, Allen, Gary, Gertrude, Leonard, Joan, and Ani. Bohemians, difference-makers, truck-drivers, educators, cooks, cosmologists and spiritual outsiders: like Jesus... 

Side-street walking and life unhesitatingly takes on the important (and interesting) questions, like how and why did Nothing give rise to Something and Everything nearly fourteen billion years ago? Is Spirit co-extensive with the Evolutionary thrusts of the Universe? Is the Universe self-aware and is consciousness the only Real Reality? These questions are, of course, supposed to be the discussions at our dinner tables! Listening to Marvin Gaye, we certainly add what's going on? Why is greed still the economic "system" of the world? Why haven't we already eaten the rich, the militaries, and the exploiting and oppressing corporations? Why are people still homeless and hungry? Spaceships, yachts, self-driving cars, and chronic-psychotic billionaires: if we're going to save one another and the world, we need everyone to do some side-street walking and living!

Besides, the side-street is where the fun really starts...