Gratitude 69

I am exceedingly grateful for those things that money will never be able to buy and that will never be sold.  While reading this blogpost, Gentle Reader, please click this link and listen to this song, "Latinoamerica", by Puerto Rican artist Calle 13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWRHxh6XepM

I am going to focus on the refrain of this song:

"Tu no puedes comprar el viento,
tu no puedes comprar el sol,
tu no puedes comprar la lluvia,
tu no puedes comprar el calor,
tu no puedes comprar las nubes,
tu no puedes comprar los colores,
tu no puedes comprar mi alegria,
tu no puedes comprar mis dolores...
Vamos caminando,
vamos dibujando...
tu no puedes comprar mi vida...
mi tierra no se vende."

Here is the English translation:

You cannot buy the wind,
You cannot buy the sun,
You cannot buy the rain,
You cannot buy the heat,
You cannot buy the clouds,
You cannot buy the colours,
You cannot buy my joy,
you cannot buy my sorrow...
We will keep going and struggling,
we will keep drawing (persistent creative expression)
you cannot buy my life
my land is not for sale.

Hello?  Still with me?

You cannot buy the wind.  It is a force of nature and for me, as a Christian, the breath of the power of God.  It can move, carry and destroy.  As climate change from global warming, the bitter and venomous fruit of human planetary greed accelerates, the wind grows in its force and might as hurricanes of unprecedented force wreak the wrath and vengeance that we have sown.  On a gentler note, who cannot help but rejoice at the touch of a breeze on a spring or summer day as the soft wind caresses our faces and we hear the voices of the earth and heavens singing together in the rustling leaves overhead in the trees? 

Who can buy this?  Or sell it?

But we can also rely on the wind for its energy, clean renewable energy and force that will one day, if we can survive the wrath brought on by our greed for fossil fuels and their environmental havoc, replace the fuels of death.

You cannot buy the sun, which for millennia was worshipped as a deity, since without it, nothing can live.  We are also at the mercy of the sun's wrath for the same reason as the wrath of the wind, and we can hope that solar energy, with the wind, will make fossil fuels obsolete, before we are made obsolete by our reliance on the energy of death.  Still, that first warm kiss of the sun on our faces, following a cold winter, and the glory of its light filling the leaves and making incandescent the water, and the colours of the sky when it rises and sets.  How could this ever be bought or paid for?

You cannot buy the rain.  And we will never cease to be dependent on the rain to water the earth and give us grain, fruit and vegetables to eat and sustain us.  Climate change is disrupting our weather patterns, creating droughts in some places and floods in others, and we see here in Canada how this is worsening as many people are losing their homes now to unprecedented floods brought on by historically heavy deluges.  We also have the soft warm rain of spring and summer and the sweetness that fills the air.  Not an item for sale and you will never find this in a shopping mall.

You cannot buy the heat.  The sun gives it to us all for free and we all share it.  For free.

You cannot buy the clouds, and no one can prevent us from enjoying their beauty and majesty, whether like gentle sheep grazing on a blue pasture of a sky, or like the black terrifying thunderclouds that often sent lighting and thunder and torrential rain onto the city of Bogota when I was there.

You cannot buy the colours.  They are free, to dazzle and delight us all.  I do have to pay for art materials of course, but the time I spend on a drawing or painting is absolutely for free.  My delight in art has nothing to do with selling it or collecting money from an art sale.  In fact, getting paid for a painting has often felt for me like a bit of a letdown (but don't let that stop any of you!)  The process of creating is its own reward!

You cannot buy my joy.  It is my joy, to give and to share, for free.  Money would cheapen it and kill it.  Joy is the fruit of love.  How could anyone put a price on that?

You cannot buy my sorrows.  They are also mine.  You cannot pay me to paste on a fake smile when my heart is breaking.  And you cannot co-opt my suffering through the cheap sentiments of pop songs and market advertising.  You cannot sell back to me what I already have and possess.  Neither can you comfort me with your cheap sweatshop trinkets.

We will keep going and struggling as we fight against this insanity of globalized greed and its many tawdry seductions.  We will continue making art.  I will continue drawing and painting as my perpetual visual anthem of protest and jubilation against market greed and shallowness.  You cannot buy my life, the human soul is not an item of sale or barter.  And I do not care a tinker's damn about real estate values.  THIS LAND IS NOT FOR SALE!!!!!!!