There are so many amazing things a person could choose to learn about in this world, enough to fill whole lifetimes– like the way photons make decisions when faced with the conundrum of a diffraction grating, or the way high-speed traders manipulate the flow of money on time scales that make the pace of human thought seem like canyon-making, or how the fashion industry unraveled the mystery of the neons. There was a time when […]
With each breath the possibility exists that your heart will no longer merely window shop along the shores of Eternity, sneaking peaks into that vista of marbled light, self-tending gardens and pain-free childbirth, imagining with aching joy all the wonders doo-dads and luxuriant, long-lasting features that you probably can’t even begin to comprehend that come standard with the Wholeness package, but will pull open the door, step inside and ask itself, really ask itself, to […]
Once, when he was still learning his craft of ushering the anxious and doubtful from the shadows of falsehood to the river of poetry at the center of their own being, and in a well-intentioned effort to raise the general morale, Hafiz gave away two court-side seats to the Explosion of the Sun. Because, as we all know, sometimes having something to look forward to can make all the difference. In this particular case, the […]
Here in the Meanwhile, on the shores of Forever dotted with the charcoal stumps of forgotten fires, the mossy walls of collapsing wooden shanties and various debris of antiquity, such as: half-buried edges of glass, torn diary pages, ice picks, the bones of dead birds bleached by the sun, and a curious face caught in sepia, the faint notes of song drift past on the breeze, pastel tones that have nowhere else to go and so […]
I remember once when I was a boy, wondering if my knee would ever heal. A baseball slide on hard-packed dirt had torn it open. Then I had fallen off a bike. Mashed it into the ground in a soccer game. Made a heroic dive across the playground during PE. Every few days, the same. Finally, infection set in, and with it came the reality of an uncertain outcome. The improvement from one day to […]
What will it be like to Remember? Rumi advises we give up on this question1. My American football analogy goes like this: this is not a first down that we’re after. We can call out the chains and ask for a measurement, but the umpire will be dumbfounded and probably feint. Our questions are all boats without bottoms. The instant replay, on closer inspection, will reveal ten million angels on the nose of the football […]
The other day I had some old friends drop by for a visit– unannounced. I was sitting in the plaza having a sandwich, reading or reflecting or some such thing, when Depression slid one of the free chairs out from beneath the table, making a real show of it– dragged it along in a gritty clattering of metal across stone that sent all the pigeons fleeing, and then flopped down like a rubbery fish. Unshaven, […]
Time’s ruse is that it appears to pass. Every appearance, even voices, are a special effect. These echoes of the Invisible deceive me not. Every instance of drowning I endured came in the flood of something special. Show me the One who never speaks, and I will fall to my knees and listen, unmasked, mute and reverent. Change is the right-hand man of time, his charlatan enabler, the fragrance of sweet liquor hanging in the […]
Barreling down life’s asphalt highway in a vehicle of some description– a modern coup of surface rocketry whose every line represents the fulfillment of computerized crash-testing and the collected fall-out of Greek ideas, gathered like a powder, fired in the furnace of time and sculpted into the shape of silent, diving falcons– a machine built for catapulting over the ground in space-blurring borings through wind and air that leave behind a shimmering, perfectly tubular quiet […]
I’ve been developing a condition of late, a seizure that wracks my whole identity, an electric longing spun taut within an endless Answer. Out of the blue– tears. The core of my being, a wash cloth squeezed tight. The vast hands of compassion twisting and pulling, braiding me into a rope that is twined with all beings. Mary knows what I mean, how to hold this space, how to be flooded by the riches of […]
Embracing Forever 