“INGST”

“INGST”

Noun

Pronunciation: ing +st

“Our challenge is to create a new language, even a new sense of what it is to be human. It is to transcend not only national limitations, but even our species isolation, to enter into the larger community of living species. This brings about a completely new sense of reality and value.” (Thomas Berry, “The Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 42).

MY NOTES: From what I’m hearing way too much in the world news today are struggles of one kind or another. There is a lot of ANGST in the world at large rather than what I’d term “INGST”, which I’m defining as a person’s conscious ability to empower their own life possibilities and challenges in some way.

I’m creating a new word here. We have to create, I think, new language vocabulary to come to terms with reality in our world today. You can add this word to your liv-ing vocabulary.

Maybe, we often see or feel ourselves or others as THINGS rather than BE-INGS.

I am open to your feedback on my creativity here.

Contemplating a Sunset

I’ve worked night shift at a care center, and I’ve watched the slow advent of dawn in the morning before anyone was awake and before the sun had arisen. It’s quite an awesome and I want to say other worldly process to contemplate. Walking at my favorite pond this evening, I had the opportunity to show up just as the process of sunset was occurring. The temperature was just right and there was a slight evening wind blowing across the water. As I’ve stated before, the colors here are amazing and actually were shifting while the sun was going down behind the trees.

When I began my walk, the sun was just above the tree tops and bright. As I stopped to sit down on a bench, the sun went behind the trees and the light, the colors, and the reflections on the pond began to slowly shift. What I was experiencing is difficult to put this into words. I think we imagine this change from day to night as being an abrupt kind of thing. What I witnessed took about 45 minutes, and then lights began coming on in the city. On the pond, the wind caused wave patterns which changed as the temperature of evening changed. The colors and reflections on the water of the trees and the picnic house also changed to gradually darker colors of brown, shadow, and greenish black from the trees.

All of this and more was how I witnessed this everyday event in nature. As I stayed contemplating the process, what struck me most was how gradual the changes were occurring. As I said, it was not an abrupt process. The gradual process was occurring to my eyes in the changing colors, the wave patterns on the water, the changing temperature, and the changing of the wind.

RICHARD EVAN MACKAY