The construction of bridges can lead to the forgetting of rivers and the strengthening of commerce. In this way, thoughts can erect theoretical scaffolding to cross safely the tidal pools of the heart. This is far more efficient than wading through marsh and muck each morning, once in each direction, to pick up the day’s fresh batch of metrics. Less smelly, too. One day I was walking the planks when a great wind came up […]
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, […]
When I stepped out of the building in which I work this evening, my head seemed to have been pressed into a perfect, steaming cube– a polished alloy ingot of ordered rectilinear thoughts. You could have bounced a laser off it. My normally fluid mind had been sintered by the heat of prolonged concentration into a dazed ceramic. Even my cells had conformed to the geometric demands of the day’s efforts, having tugged their cytoskeletons […]
The places within us that are not yet healed, and have not yet been dissolved into the pure and guiltless and shameless and never-confounded substance of being, are like movie stars, and the events of the lives we lead the flash bulbs of a traveling horde of annoying paparazzi. Our wounded places simply can’t avoid them—can’t get a break. Offstage, without their make-up on, these stars just want to be left alone. Can we not […]
This post is part of a series on the subject of Awakening sponsored/inspired by Barbara Franken—a January Challenge that has claimed the first week of February as it’s own as well… * * * * * One of my favorite descriptions of awakening comes from the book Dialogues on Awakening by Tom Carpenter. These are Tom’s recounting of conversations he has had with his friend and brother, Jesus, that grew out of his daily practice […]
The Truth is True. That we can say for sure. Beyond that, it gets kind of prickly. Consider, for instance… …when a being who has latched onto a thought that is out of accord with the Truth is enjoying a period of relative satisfaction, expansion, and accomplishment in the world, it might be noted by some that things are going well, and concluded by others that a general condition of harmony must therefore reign in […]
Embracing Forever 