Great Use of Glowsticks

We just got back from our lovely July 4th celebration.  They had fireworks.  There were a lot of tarps and blankets.  There were a lot of glowsticks  for sale.  Preferring to save money, the boys got to enjoy collecting them as groundscores after the event. For those of you who don't share my musical interests, you likely have not seen what is known in show-parlance as a "glowstick war."  Individuals who love glowsticks will bring in huge tubes of them and gather them together to throw into the air all at once.  Or get them sent to the venue for pick up inside.  But we're talking big numbers here, like 400 at a time.  This distribution of the glowsticks happens all at once and it is a free-for-all.  Good folks doing good things for the greater community.

A few weeks ago a video was made of how they launch 2,000 glowsticks all at once.   Many people and a large tarp are involved.  As well as inspiring music.

Click here to get to the video, it is worth it!

And that wonderful tune Age of Miracles in the video was a subject of a blog post of mine last January.

An Age of Miracles...Before You Go To Sleep, Say a Little Prayer

Do Western people think of overt miracles happening on a daily basis in their very own lives?  Certainly, the types of miracles that appear in The Bible which detail discussions between man and God do not happen in our day.  Plagues such as blood on the Nile River are of the past.  No sea is going to split open and an oppressed people will just prance on through to the Promised Land.  These grandiose, larger-than-life miracles are difficult for some to believe, and yet.

My esteemed teacher Rabbanit Chana Henkin taught me a few lessons about everyday miracles for which we should be grateful.  The daily sunrise at a beautiful shoreline.  Waking up after a night's slumber.  The first flowers of a fruit bearing tree.  The appearance of a rainbow serves as a reminder of the covenant between God and Noah that the world will never again be destroyed, as was the case after the Great Flood.

TV On The Radio is a Brooklyn-based band which came out with the song "Golden Age" a few years ago.  Only today did I watch the video.




I presume the use of symbols connected to no organized religion was purposeful:  I like it.  I love their glasses, too.  The white-clad-angelic figures versus the dark-clad-law enforcement-evil figures set the stage in a place somewhere between heaven and earth.  Except that eventually the presumed bad guys (the fuzz) end up turning good, grooving and sending out love-hearts.  The angels send their symbols of peace upward.  Are they turning into animals that will be ultimately used, in a positive way if you can believe it, for animal sacrifice (korbanot)?  I don't purport to fully understand the genius behind that one, but it is there.

Everyone loves a rainbow, but do viewers realize its symbolism with regard to the promise of world peace, unity, and ultimate redemption?  This video got a lotta rainbows coming down from the heavens.  It's all good.

Thank you to TV on the Radio for an artful, insightful interpretation of the world's state of affairs.  Let's hope it keeps getting better and better.

This is not a spiritual blog.  Just in case you thought that.