And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. ---Matthew 24:6
TLC terrain is mountainous. Level landscapes along valley floors are transitory and lead nowhere, sheltered as they are by scarred and foreboding peaks.
Upon the serrated TLC horizon, visible to us from the valley, there now appears a rider well situated on a pale horse, silhouetted against advancing thunderheads. There is an electric apprehension in the wind as the rider places himself between the Warrior and new worlds, cantering to and fro on his glistening mount. From somewhere deep within our ancient genetic code, there comes a warning to flee from the sight of this rider, as if he brings to us the end of days.
He is not a member of our tribe. He is not anyone we know. If we yet live, we have never met him.
Strangely, though, tremors of elemental danger and rumors of war come to us from him on the wind.
Leaving the comfort of a valley floor requires courage, effort and sweat coupled with no small amount of determination. Determined, any member of the TLC tribe can scale the adjacent heights and discern new worlds. Absent such determination, one shall be condemned to live always in the valley.
In this terrain, even a slight relocation of your position from within the valley changes your view entirely. No matter how many times that happens---and it always does---such an altered scene quickens the pulse. Having just seen a vista in one light, a few determined steps will reveal it shimmering from a new perspective, as if the world is new.
Neither the rider nor his pale horse bears down upon us. It is not our time for that encounter. Instead, they are simply in our view, seen on the far horizon, in advance of streaming thunderheads which miss as often as they hit. They are but a vision, there for us to make of them what we will from our initial vantage point. Determined, we can stride from the valley, into the craggy heights, where our view of the panorama will inevitably change.
And then, from that evolved, heightened place, the world before us is new.
--J.R.
TLC terrain is mountainous. Level landscapes along valley floors are transitory and lead nowhere, sheltered as they are by scarred and foreboding peaks.
Upon the serrated TLC horizon, visible to us from the valley, there now appears a rider well situated on a pale horse, silhouetted against advancing thunderheads. There is an electric apprehension in the wind as the rider places himself between the Warrior and new worlds, cantering to and fro on his glistening mount. From somewhere deep within our ancient genetic code, there comes a warning to flee from the sight of this rider, as if he brings to us the end of days.
He is not a member of our tribe. He is not anyone we know. If we yet live, we have never met him.
Strangely, though, tremors of elemental danger and rumors of war come to us from him on the wind.
Leaving the comfort of a valley floor requires courage, effort and sweat coupled with no small amount of determination. Determined, any member of the TLC tribe can scale the adjacent heights and discern new worlds. Absent such determination, one shall be condemned to live always in the valley.
In this terrain, even a slight relocation of your position from within the valley changes your view entirely. No matter how many times that happens---and it always does---such an altered scene quickens the pulse. Having just seen a vista in one light, a few determined steps will reveal it shimmering from a new perspective, as if the world is new.
Neither the rider nor his pale horse bears down upon us. It is not our time for that encounter. Instead, they are simply in our view, seen on the far horizon, in advance of streaming thunderheads which miss as often as they hit. They are but a vision, there for us to make of them what we will from our initial vantage point. Determined, we can stride from the valley, into the craggy heights, where our view of the panorama will inevitably change.
And then, from that evolved, heightened place, the world before us is new.
--J.R.
