I Hope for Beauty

"This is totally beauty. It's also vandalism." (Be still, my beating heart.)

I just have to say that, IMHO, this is magic of the highest sort.

I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean it literally.

IMHO, guerilla gardeners do magic, deep magic, magic that really matters, and I don't care that they show up ignorant of magical practice, without an athame, bearing no incense, wearing no pentacles or robes, and lacking any chants or spoken spells. It's enough that they not only "hope for beauty," but that they also (unlike too many self-proclaimed Pagans) show up in her service under the pale Moon light.

Sometimes when, in Wendell Berry's words, "despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives [and most of all, what my G/Son's life] may be," (which lately is, you know, almost every night), I remind myself of something that Starhawk said after the midterm elections:

Remember that the real work of change is always going on—if not in Washington, then in thousands of towns and neighborhoods and communities, if not in the halls of power, then in the streets. Don’t be complacent, but don’t despair. All around us are allies working for more justice, more freedom, more ecological balance, more peace. This is not a time to fall back, but to step up, to be bolder, braver, louder, funnier, more inventive, more outrageous, more committed. Political winds blow back and forth—hold to your deepest values, and we’ll stay the course.

Guerilla gardeners are my allies, working for more ecological balance, more peace. I guess that it's time for me to step up, be bolder, braver, funnier, more inventive, more outrageous, more committed. It's time for me to do some serious guerilla gardening. Like Margaret Cho, I have decided to stay and fight. I'm going to hold to my deepest values and stay the course.

What other options are there? What have you decided?