At the beginning of the Ray’s Rays series I said there would be 30 of them. This post marks that number.
Ray’s Rays, Number 30
We Are the Fire, We Are the Ashes
by
Radiance Angelina Petro
The overall message of Ray’s Rays is to love yourself
and the communities and world around you.
To that end (beginning)
we’ve talked about taking everyday acts of kindness anarchy,
we’ve talked about mutual aid, fierce compassion, smashing the patriarchy,
dismantling capitalism, and the realization there are no gatekeepers
in the sacred arts and acts of social activism.
One of the threads running through the Rays is the celebration of,
and fighting for the rights of, LGBTQIA+ people.
Another thread is the importance and legitimacy of honoring
our freedom, agency, pleasure, and rights.
We also discussed deconstructing modern meditation
by taking away the competition to reach “higher levels.”
We’ve talked about the benefits of mindfulness, rest
and of the spiritual significance of darkness and of emptiness.
We’ve talked about the importance of movement, music,
and art in general. We’ve affirmed that some people (like myself)
need medication and therapy. We affirmed our bodies and rallied
behind the truth that all bodies are beautiful, perfect bodies.
That’s the overall summary of the Rays.
And to that, let’s add one final thing (for now):
Help one another keep the fires of hope alive in your efforts
to change the world and yourself. Some say “hope,” is foolish
or doesn’t exist. I think hope exists and I also think it is, in fact,
foolish. But all forms of love are foolish in the sense
that they needn’t (and often don’t) make intellectual sense.
The logic of the heart, however, acknowledges the fires of passion,
the imagination, and a wild, unstoppable love, and can appear
“foolish.” With that love comes hope. “Keep the hope alive,”
is almost cliché, and it is also possible. Each and every
big or small acts of kindness, compassion, mutual aid, activism,
radical justice, anarchy, and love, stokes the flames of hope.
It is possible to change, even if that means burning the whole
thing to the ground first. After all, the myth of the phoenix
is steeped in the spiritual reality that radical love survives.
And you and I are embodiments of that radical love and hope.
You and I are the answers. We are also the questions,
and that isn’t a bad thing. There is a quest
in every question. And you and I are living, breathing quests.
We are also the destination, even though there is no
ultimate goal to this work/play. Why? Because we are love,
and we are hope, and there are no final goals in love or hope.
We are the fire and we are the ashes.
We are the builders and the destroyers. May we use our powers
wisely, with compassion and justice, so that everyone
shares the fruits that each of us harvests
from the gardens of our hearts, and our fields of hope.