I have been away for awhile- took some much needed vacation and time for retreat with loved ones and enjoyed a string of days whose “purpose” was unspoken for in advance. It never seems to fail that the re-immersion into the world of our everyday needs and demands is a challenging re-entry, and that is part of what lies behind this post… Although, to be fair, the repeated need for movement from disconnectedness to connectedness […]
Sometimes after a period of engagement with the world- of rummaging through a serpentine forest of excessively close-packed motorists, of defusing tasks that have been thrown headlong like live grenades towards the hard wall of Deadline, of displaying all the requisite attributes of a trained specialist embroiled in the local deluge of a world economy – I take a deep breath and return to the Beginning. I stop and take a drink of the Solace that […]
This week I have felt particularly troubled, and perhaps some elements of my experience are worth sharing in at least a general sense. Maybe in the sharing others can benefit. Maybe in the sharing I will better understand what has taken place. Unlearning can at times be deeply challenging, as if you are pitted in a wrestling match for your own soul. In A Course in Miracles Jesus describes the way in which the ego […]
Some days I am smothered by the feeling that something isn’t quite right. That feeling is like a manipulative family member- one who is gone for days, off in the world burning brightly, too brightly, who then crashes and returns, moping around the house in a flaunt of bitterness. Disproven once again, he is nonetheless a fountain of answers and predictions. He is quick to point out the proper way to slice a tomato, to […]
I was sitting alone on a stone bench overlooking the harbor, sipping on a latte, as I took in the sights and sounds of a strange land- (I was on vacation)- when a young woman on a scooter whipped past and let fly a paper airplane. Judging from the sparkle, it was made from a laquer-faced card stock. This girl meant business. Her face bore an inscrutable expression, like the facade of an abandoned bank […]
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. […]
Last night I put on my air traveler temporarily delayed in a strange airport hat when one of those nebulous “mechanical problems” you hear about over the loudspeakers stymied the local maintenance crew for several hours. We all know what most likely transpired… A seatback got jammed slightly out of vertical, and despite the best efforts of three suddenly religious would-be body builders, the offending mechanism could not be convinced. When the crackerjack troubleshooters finally […]
I can remember my Heart. It was not a blood-pumping battery of striated, biochemical filaments. It was a star. I can remember it was all I ever had- all I ever knew or needed. It was not the kind of star that you see in the heavens that burn so hot all forms dissolve in their embrace. It was the kind of star you could hold in the palm of your hand, and watch its […]
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 […]
Embracing Forever 