{"id":879,"date":"2020-09-29T17:20:13","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T17:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/?p=879"},"modified":"2020-09-29T17:22:55","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T17:22:55","slug":"879","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/2020\/09\/29\/879\/","title":{"rendered":"Before Buddha&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"692\" height=\"783\" src=\"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/9-14-2018-1.jpg4-BLOG-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-440\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/9-14-2018-1.jpg4-BLOG-1.jpg 692w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/9-14-2018-1.jpg4-BLOG-1-265x300.jpg 265w, https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/9-14-2018-1.jpg4-BLOG-1-239x270.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 692px) 100vw, 692px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/audio\/Listening%20%20%20In%20the%20Air.m4a?_t=1601400117\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"fonts-plugin-block\" style=\"font-weight: normal;font-size: 15px;line-height: 1.3\"><strong><em>Listening<\/em><\/strong> <br>\u00a0<br>Before Buddha<br>before Christ, before Mohammed, before the idea of Shiva\u2026<br>before Caesar, before Hannibal, Emperor Yong Zheng,<br>Genghis Kahn<br>Kubla Kahn\u2026<br>Before Charlemagne, William the Conqueror,<br>The Battle of Clontarf, the Battle of the Boyne,<br>Gettysburg; before the bomb drop on<br>Hiroshima and Nagasaki\u2026.<br>Before the Crusades, the Dark Ages, the<br>Age of Enlightenment\u2026<br>Before all human interventions,<br>ego strategies, elevations, declinations,<br>births\/deaths, all the building up,<br>tearing down, the rise and fall of Great Men,<br>Great Civilizations, Great Movements,<br>Insurrections, Cries for Liberty, Wars of Outrage,<br>Banners of Manipulations, Scrolls of Distrust\u2026<br>Before all of these and<br>Before all of those\u2026<br>stardust became tree dust.<br>\u00a0<br>You and I stand beneath behemoths\u2026<br>throw our heads back and gasp.<br>I reach for you; you steady the vertigo swells<br>rippling up and down my organic shell.<br>We look at one another and simply smile:<br>Light, dancing.<br>Wonder needs no words, no definitions.<br>\u00a0<br>Up and up and up ~ Redwoods reach and rise.<br>Timeless towers, antennae spiraling energy out, into<br>universal spaces.<br>Universal Graces.<br>\u00a0<br>You and I exchange information each time we<br>speak or touch or laugh or cry ~ but we are no<br>leviathans, breathing sanctity out<br>breathing in the toxins of some lessor beings, as do they\u2026.<br>Breathe God\u2019s Breath.<br>\u00a0<br>With you, I have experienced a<br>depth of wonder, a bliss of joy\u2026<br>thunder of awe.<br>We help each other understand.\u00a0 As it should be.<br>Be.<br>\u00a0<br>Be.<br>\u00a0<br>\u00a0<br>(thank you Peter McKinnon, for taking me to hear the California Redwoods)<br>by Barbara Helvey Hughes, \u00a92020<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}