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  • Writer's pictureRich Flanders

Ask not for whom the bell tolls...

Shoulder to shoulder they stand, grandmothers, daughters, teenage boys, clerks, professors, mechanics, clergymen and students cradling shotguns, hunting rifles, and molotov cocktails, against the obscene might of the Russian army. From our TV sets and iphones we watch dumbstruck as citizens huddle in parking garages, subway stations and basements and sing the Ukrainian national anthem in the midst of pitiless bombardment.


It is sobering to note that the world’s next great novels are being lived right now on the streets of the cities of Ukraine, masterpieces that will capture the mythic scope of the battle of light versus darkness, inspiring generations. But right now our TV screens cannot distance us from the experience. What we are witnessing is immediate, impossible to separate from. In anguish our whole being screams out to us, ‘’DO SOMETHING!’'


We each know what we would do if we were there. Some of us would take up the rifle, some would care for the injured, some would help others escape. And in every moment we would expect our fellow humans to rise up around the world to end this atrocity.


Good versus evil has never been more starkly displayed before the world. David is meeting Goliath, right is meeting wrong, in plain sight for all to see. Will the nations gather to defy the blustering thermonuclear threats of a psychopathic tyrant and end this, or will thousands more perish, along with the promise of freedom and democracy?


In the shadow of this titanic battle, something new is struggling to be born. A new way of being, an evolutionary step. Paul Hawken coined it ‘’blessed unrest.’’ You can hear it percolating across the world, in the young and down the generations.


Just ahead there is a corner waiting to be turned. Will we turn it? Will our earth glimpse the coming of the first humans at last?

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