all of us in circle, this earth, together

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Dalai Lama

I took these photos on Saturday, I had been sitting with the pain of the wounded earth, Paris, Lebanon, Syria, the Congo, all of it, so many places, so much pain and I am determined to move away from the hate that these attacks are designed to stir. Instead I cry for the mothers, and the babies, and the wounded men and broken women, I cry for mama earth being stained with our ambitions and I check in to see where my responses are coming from, from compassion, from knowledge of the complexity and contradictions of things, from love.

A year ago I was in Paris, celebrating my mother's 70 turn around the sun. She says to me now "If I was born a year later..." yes we would have been there, and yes I would have been one to hug that brave Muslim who stood blind folded and trusting humanities ability to respond with compassion and love. We must keep our hearts, our minds and our borders open.

I dreamt these images, of course they changed in process as things do, but their intention is still the same- all of us in circle, this earth, together, fragile, broken, torn, but together- and at the center... there can be only one thing.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Mahatma Gandhi

And a shout out to Catherine Just whose prompt on Begin Deepening had me express it all in images.