There are so many amazing things a person could choose to learn about in this world, enough to fill whole lifetimes– like the way photons make decisions when faced with the conundrum of a diffraction grating, or the way high-speed traders manipulate the flow of money on time scales that make the pace of human thought seem like canyon-making, or how the fashion industry unraveled the mystery of the neons. There was a time when […]
I remember once when I was a boy, wondering if my knee would ever heal. A baseball slide on hard-packed dirt had torn it open. Then I had fallen off a bike. Mashed it into the ground in a soccer game. Made a heroic dive across the playground during PE. Every few days, the same. Finally, infection set in, and with it came the reality of an uncertain outcome. The improvement from one day to […]
What will it be like to Remember? Rumi advises we give up on this question1. My American football analogy goes like this: this is not a first down that we’re after. We can call out the chains and ask for a measurement, but the umpire will be dumbfounded and probably feint. Our questions are all boats without bottoms. The instant replay, on closer inspection, will reveal ten million angels on the nose of the football […]
I’ve never really known quite what to do with my hair. Were I pressed upon by violent circumstances, fighting to defend the fort or preserve the realm, this would be of no account. Instead my life sprouts daily, like weeds in a field, matters of no consequence that require careful attention, a trained eye, and defensible motives– matters best handled, as the world well knows, by well-ordered professional-looking people who instill confidence in others and keep […]
Time’s ruse is that it appears to pass. Every appearance, even voices, are a special effect. These echoes of the Invisible deceive me not. Every instance of drowning I endured came in the flood of something special. Show me the One who never speaks, and I will fall to my knees and listen, unmasked, mute and reverent. Change is the right-hand man of time, his charlatan enabler, the fragrance of sweet liquor hanging in the […]
Been ‘way fer a few days. Vizit’n friends… what I wish I could call it. Nope. Cain’t say ‘at in good faith. Got me real serious like. Focus-al-“I”-zed, ye might say. All et once, yer walkin’ in a world o’ coloured glass. The whole thing’s a mirage, bunch o’ movin’ pitchures yer tryin’ like almighty hell to tame, to ketch hold o’ an’ shake some sense in’neh. An’ it jes crumbles in yer handz… Ye […]
Each of us has a flight data recorder housed in the deepest recesses of our being. In a commercial jetliner, the flight data recorder is a physical object capable of receiving and storing the facts of every flight. It has a part number. It has physical dimensions. It is manufactured somewhere. It can be damaged, broken or lost. It is but a crude caricature of the real thing. In a human being, the flight data […]
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 […]
One of the more challenging topics for me to write about recently was the topic of suffering, and the idea that what Jesus describes as “the choice of love” can end suffering. It was challenging because I could anticipate resistance to this idea, even as I wrote about it. I could anticipate potentially alienating a reader or two, (and when you have three readers, all of whom you value dearly, this is indeed a risk), […]
Embracing Forever 