Diamonds in Earthly Bones: Organ Donation

Today Wales becomes the first country in Britain to introduce a different approach to organ donation with a presumed consent ‘opt-out’ system. And if I wasn't already a supporter of it, then hearing people in desperate need of a transplant call in to radio stations to applaud our "brave new" approach would certainly have swayed me. If I could wrap my arms around my beloved Cymru to give it a big Cwtch (hug) I would do so.
How could I not be proud? That last earthly act of unrivalled genorosity is a perfect good; a love that truly has no end. To wear my poetry clothes, a Spirit of the heart eternal. Not everyone believes in angels (and this is why I wince a bit on mentioning them) but surely in this selfless act of love supreme, this is where such beings would walk?
How incredible! To welcome new life as yours makes an exit, to live not only in the hearts of loved ones but in strangers too! I suspect I could type a million words but they could never hope to do it justice. Saints and heroes have no need for them, the deed is enough.
.
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.

Lao-Tzu Poet and Philosopher of ancient China.

A Good Promise

Death lurks in the shadows. It plots and plans, then pounces to maim and kill. To destroy and take away any scrap of happiness you may have. To ruin thy life, that is deaths aim in this world (but not the next.) It wants to take away your fun and replace it with black holes of mourning. Death has no heart as it showed yet again last night when news of the dreadful bombing of the Boston marathon was announced to the world. And the very spirit of death walked tall, blooming in its macabre cloak, prowling amidst a horrified and bloodied crowd of thousands.
But do you know what stood taller? What shined brighter than a million diamonds adrift at the foot of the ocean? It was human. Those brave folks, who after the explosions had spread their miserable carnage, went out and tended to the dying and grievously wounded without care for their own skin. Those bent figures were not bowing at all! Evil must never forget this. All of those figures were shards of good, the un~killable good, who after receiving a body blow will shrug it off and gather its pieces (the mortal flesh) to heal and live again.

Good will always triumph over evil for you cannot break the human spirit.

The Other Thomas

Poet R.S. Thomas

On this Good Friday, we also celebrate 100 years since the birth of R.S. Thomas, one of Wales' greatest poets. (He was also an Anglican priest.) It has been said that Thomas found communicating with God hard, indeed many even thought him an athiest but I think this is to miss the point completely. Read his works and you will soon discover that Thomas used his poetry to reveals his 'version' of God. A God that shows Himself in small doses if you will, through nature which was featured heavily in his beautiful work.
Work, that much like my own poetry, was not written with a solid idea or agenda in mind before putting pen to paper, but words and imagery that unfolded as soon as he wrote. What I like to call 'living poetry'. It really is a joy to read.

Night Sky by R.S. Thomas

What they are saying is
that there is life there, too:
that the universe is the size it is
to enable us to catch up.

They have gone on from the human:
that shining is a reflection
of their intelligence. Godhead
is the colonisation by mind

of untenanted space. It is its own
light, a statement beyond language
of conceptual truth. Every night
is a rinsing myself of the darkness

that is in my veins. I let the stars inject me
with fire, silent as it is far,
but certain in its cauterising
of my despair. I am a slow

traveller, but there is more than time
to arrive. Resting in the intervals
of my breathing, I pick up the signals
relayed to me from a periphery I comprehend.

People Are Not Strange

Sorry Mr Morrison formerly of rock band The Doors but your song 'People Are Strange' no longer applies because they are not. Not any more. No, after spending the last thirteen years on teh interwebz and reading thousands of comments and posts on websites, I can conclude than people have moved on from being strange and gone to being selfish instead. I guess its easier.
And not content with mere selfishness, we seem to have embraced greed, cruelty, indifference, envy and a whole host of other not so attractive traits. There was a perfect example of this in yesterdays news when it was reported that four US Marines have been pictured urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters. No doubt hundreds of people found this horrible act hilarious (idiots) but its not how supposedly honourable soldiers should behave. And if this photo is not some fake, these yobs ought to be chucked out of the military without delay. Shameful behaviour, no matter who your enemy is.


Hope...

There was another story however that did give me hope that the waves of calamity are not licking our heels...yet. Happy that it came from my beloved Wales too! Tragically a 77 year old lady in Newport died after the surgeon accidentaly tore her liver but the family accepted it was an error and have left it at that. If only the rest of us were as graceful and forgiving. Lesson to us all here and while money might be the lead in many souls, it hasn't smothered all of us.
How I wish I was as forgiving as this family! How not so distracted by the wink of money I was! The majority of us would head straight to our lawyers and sue so its encouraging to know we are not all like this. Proves somehow that humanity isn't doomed to a bitter and selfish grave. I constantly feel suffocated; surrounded by crabs and flocks of beastly shells with giant pinching claws and dead eyes. Stripped of emotion, only out for their own skins, hoarding their sugar baskets like rats in a stable. If I was the type who got depressed I probably would be.
However I can learn from these good people. You see by nature I am an utterly unforgiving man. Once crossed or slighted I am a horrible enenmy to have because I have no compassion (toward enemies) and very little in the way of conscience. But by reading good stories I can change and shape myself into a better human being. We all can if we learn by the good deeds of others. Being out for your own will serve nothing useful in the end.