Poem and Reflection "Within The leaves"

Within the Leaves

A storm raises in the valley pantomime

Bruised and lowing seeking peace nowhere to find

I rage. I cry. I can’t Survive

If this is life then life must die

Underneath the soil sit seeds of sweet relief

Windswept voices sing of bringing in the sheaves

They’re brave. They’ll fight. They’ll make it right

From sound to light. From dank to bright

Oh fortune’s pythe, it was my call

Now sight’s unveiled and I evolve

Mother Father God start chasing after me

All refracted out yet dwelling in my tree

My brain. My saw. My mind. My law.

I’m resolute to change it all

Heavy now the ground a fertile pregnancy

Called to birth beyond woe, wakened reverie

Asleep the lie. Awake I see.

The skin of man is fallacy

His Lord lives not in lofty breeze

His freedom rests within the leaves

And now I know what I must be

I am. I am. I be. I be.

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Question

It is often said that without dark there would be no light and with no trial there would be no triumph. Is this the truth or a cleaver way the necessitate evil?

This is one of those questions that confounds me and intrigues me at the same time. I used to think, Well that's interesting. I suppose there wouldn't be light without darkness. Great! Now we know why bad things happen. It was easy for me to accept that rationale because it made God seem less culpable for creating a work with all the horrible atrocities that exist if he did it because our human minds needed contrast to comprehend calamity and cherish quiescence. (I'm so sorry guys, I couldn't resist the alliteration. It was just right there)

After a time, that rationale stated far too seem hollow. I mean, if God is GOD then he could have made us smarter and while at it nicer to boot. Even if for some reason he couldn't increase our intelligence and aptitude for love, why should we think that a thing could not exist without its polar opposite- at least its opposite as we know it now? At first, one might reason that since all things exist on a spectrum, love requires hate in or for the spectrum to be tangible. However, isn't it possible that if hate did not exist and love did exist then the polar opposite of love might be "like" or at worst"tolerance"? There would still be a spectrum, all be it an attenuated one.

If blue did not exist, red would still be red. We might not have anything to compare it to but it would still exist. Now the breadth of our experience with color might diminish but who is to say that would be a bad things. A thing can't be missed if it was never present in your consciousness. I say all this to say that we do not need all the evil alive in the world to experience the good. Believing otherwise closes the door to a world where everyone lives in harmony. That is the world I want to see. If we can accept a world as discordant as ours appears to be at the moment, I see no reason why we cannot envision and actualize one that is harmonious. That is the goal, the mark and the prize- at least it should be.