The first task with a subject like genius might be to define it, but I’m going to resist that temptation. I’d rather develop the ideas as we go, so that just about the time we think we’ve put our finger on it, we’ll understand why we can’t. What I’ll say is that while genius may seem to be a rare bird in our present society, it is not because any one of us lack access […]
The wind is blowing softly, and just earlier today, three morning doves were nestled in the grass, their rounded faces poking up like a clan of bottle-tops drifting along together in a quiet green sea. We were watching from behind the window, and they were watching, too– each of us studying the way our own reflection was illumined by the vision of the other. We were all looking, blinking, beholding– when we touched hearts sweetly in a pane […]
Hafiz and I on a bench, basking in a rosy sunset. Falcons gathering on the limbs overhead– some Merlins, some Sooties, a Grey– all of them edging awkwardly close, coalescing into an artillery of vision. The theater is full. A door opens like an out-sized black pixel on the face of the sun– a cuckoo-clock pronouncement– and brilliant birds of flame fly out to swoop across our sky like smoke rings blown by the sun’s innermost […]
When I see a leaf as big as a baby elephant’s ear bouncing in sunlight, plunged like an open hand into a river of life-giving rays 93 million miles deep, and behaving so mysteriously— responding to the way of things with medicinal colors and chemistries only it can offer, as if flush with a secret I once discarded in favor of concocted ideas of legitimacy that involve passing out cards with my name on them in […]
I love me some Treatises1. Mmmm-mm! I love me some Jesus breakin’ it down, makin’ that holy road clear. I love me some Truth expo-zishuns! I love me some brotherly tutelage, some way pointin’, some little bing-bang dose of reality checkin’. I do, I do, I do– I do love me some Treat-sies… * * * * * 1In the second book of A Course of Love there are four Treatises, the first of which is entitled […]
There’s a kindness that isn’t about doing the right thing, or being good. It’s not about holding the door open for a stranger to be polite, or even nice. There’s a kindness that’s about upping the ante and challenging the status quo, about asking the kind of question that provokes a crisp rebuke from your inner skeptic, that elicits a little wait and see because here comes another sweet dose of I told you so– […]
Like that movie where the “bad guys” cast cocaine into the shape of statues and beautiful figurines so it could be hidden right out in the open, so the Beloved has smuggled Herself into this world. She is all around us, in plain sight, frozen into the shapes of all those hot-eyed, over-blown, sweaty, market-gaming, child-loving, war-fighting, family-valued, finger-pointing, smarter-than, smiling-laughing, loving, drop-kicking, device-wielding, stressed-out costumed beings who can’t quite figure out how the hell […]
Embracing Forever 