Early on in A Course of Love, Jesus assures us that we are not alone in our experience of shock and dismay at what the world we see seems to offer. He says, “There is not a soul that walks this earth that does not weep at what it sees.” (CoL, 2.10) Recognizing that we might be reluctant to accept this sweeping statement at face value, he also says, “Think not that those who seem […]
There’s nothing quite like a good paradox to peel the shrink wrap off your inner life and release the beautiful flavors that you are, or to suggest the intersection of hidden dimensions with the particular version of Flatland we’ve been calling our own. Let’s try one. Consulting the book of Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks and John Moyne (The Essential Rumi), we find the following lyrical paradox poised atop the 105th page, like a […]
The laws of nature have received quite a bit of coverage over the years, and rightly so. In their silent immutability, there is no example more powerful in all the land of indomitability- of accomplishment freed from the constraint of effort, of action freed from the morass of choice, of character freed from the question of evolution and learning. Let me just say it: in my heart of hearts, I want to live as purely, […]
The day to end all days begins like any other. I awaken in the same bed. I begin an awkward stumble down the hall, but… even before my synapses have warmed, I can sense it. Something is strange. Nice strange. Really nice strange. I am filled with the abiding sensation that everything is worked out. The center of my being is a field of possibility and satisfaction. Nothing hangs over me and nothing begs for […]
Jesus suggests in the Treatise of the New- (of the Treatises on A Course of Love)- that we stand poised to enter the causative formation of the new world we have so long sought. It’s right here, now, awaiting our response. I feel like I’m in it up to my neck- but neck deep isn’t enough. I can’t stand on the end of the high dive, bouncing in place, and just imagine what it would […]
At dusk, a colorwheel sky. It is yellow-green to the west. Overhead, a dimming into blue. The day’s earlier torrent of photons has reduced to a trickle. The last of them bounce through the atmosphere and, without any pressure behind them, scatter. Far away, the spigot has been shut– eclipsed by the rim of a spinning world. One by one, they are absorbed. Heeded. Listened to, like sacred whispers. In some cases, become flesh. The […]
A darkening horizon at midday, swelling thunderheads, a green tinge, and muffled light. A question blown like sand over a cliff. An equilibrium turning inside out. A suspicion of trains, coal, and rust. A nail, old, once surrounded by skin, encompassed by pulsing blood and heat, alive in the minds of men, an artifact of purpose, now pitted and worn, clinging to creosote, earth, and wood. A decaying uncertainty. A man, miles away, brow knitted. […]
Sometime around the third grade I must have read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Shortly thereafter I was at a friend’s house, and our game of Monopoly had basically ground down to that stage of painstaking, asymptotic approach to closure that takes three-quarters of the game play and offers one-tenth of the fun, when we began talking about whether or not our mental powers might be strong enough to forge […]
In the seamless life, Loving and everything else are indissolubly joined. We are not splintered, or fragmented- not from our selves, not from one another, not from what is. We do not endure stretches of mundane, obligatory experiences in order to earn the right to partake of transitory, joyous interludes. There are no gaps between the dreams we share and the world we inhabit. No sacrifices are asked of us. No compromises demanded. We are […]
I can imagine a life after this one, in which I am the same, but different. I can sense the timelessness of Being- the possibility of not ending, of becoming a long vista of compassionate quietude, of hearing every Moment as it arises with simple clarity: because Love is a seashell placed over the Heart. but I can’t remember beginning or being born or ever having been anyone else. Somewhere, along this way, the being […]
Embracing Forever 