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 was seated on a tall aluminum stool, in the middle of a high school gymnasium, at three in the morning. I wore a silk beanie on my head from which there stood a single aplomado falcon feather, pointed straight up like an antenna. My eyes were closed in concentration. Hafiz was seated opposite me on a stack of encyclopedias he had built just outside of the circle at midcourt. In front of him stood […]
Sometimes I imagine a breaking free, an unrestrained way of being, a way of living immersed within a beautiful and timeless feeling, and my heart soars. It is the sensation of climbing onto the back of a great and powerful bird called Peace, whose wings are as vast and wide as school buses, and vaulting into the air to glide endlessly over a deep blue sea. I am filled with warmth. I am the exchange […]
The hut in which I live is a simple shelter made of wood, set on a foundation of piled stones, with a roof of hewn wooden shakes. The chimney is short, the hearth just deep enough for a piece or two of firewood. It is perched on a rise near the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley that fills with morning mist and gliding birds. There is a trail that winds along the ridge, […]
If you are on a spiritual path- a path to awakening, a path to acceptance of the Christ within you and within everyone else and within all that is, eventually you will have a high noon showdown with the following paradox. To be awake is to know that the ever-changing expressions of Love that collectively are Creation do not simply ‘happen to’ us. They are not foisted upon us by a wrathful Creator. Nor are […]
The village in which I have lived my whole life is nestled along the coast. It is full of sun and figs and light breezes. Beyond our little harbor there is a great sea that stretches to the horizon and extends beyond the borders of the known world. No one has ever found the End. As children we used to go up on the roofs of our parent’s houses on calm spring days with baskets […]
I don’t know if you’ve ever imagined a state of complete and total nothingness- a field of emptiness without form or time, and most importantly, without any speck of awareness at all. It is hard enough to imagine being formless, but this is beyond formlessness. This is not being at all, which can be even harder to envision. This is picturing Nothing. This Nothing could go on forever, right? But I’m not that patient, so […]
In order to escape your prison, you will have to argue your case. No one can argue it for you. I’ve got a hearing coming up- Docket 249 in the Court of Self Appeals- and I’m getting antsy. I can tell you it’s no cake walk. I’m prowling around this cage like a tiger fresh off the jungle, drowning myself in images of freedom that induce feelings of freedom, that induce tears one instant, and […]
Embracing Forever 