For regular readers who want to see the most recent added entry without searching through the entire following page, go to the blog.
Unedited material from the wilderness:
Opus I
Opus II
Opus III
Opus IV
Suggestion: jump around in this section. Don't just read it top to bottom. Let your cursor land where it wants.
There is no particular order, because life has no particular order. This is a mix of social, spiritual, religious, poetic, kitty, and unclassifiable topics.
You'll find what you look for, or more likely, something you were not looking for. C'mon. Try it. Just one random flick of the scroll bar and see what happens.
Remember: unedited! Rough draft! Raw material! Which means it is embarrassingly authentic and unfiltered, which should be a refreshing change from most conversations and publications.
Why toss this out into the world in this form? Somebody someday will need some of the messages embedded in this verbal ore. I'm too old to get it all polished and marketed before I check out, though I'll try. And the way society is going who knows how long before instabilities preclude publishing anything. So I'll let you sort through the ore, in hopes a gem awaits.
All material copyright 2020 Don Ray. But feel free to print and share what you want. Who knows how long this will be available.
Tracks
Our worldly physical lives are like tracks on a beach, of no enduring value, quickly erased by the tides of time, but revealing the direction our eternal souls are walking.
SUNRISE STORM
Sunrise,
on the ridge.
How long since I’ve written those words!
Oh glorious routine and habit of worship!
So beautiful,
this place and moment.
I pull up my monk’s hood against the morning air….
An exciting morning it is!
All that cool moisture,
the low hanging,
almost still,
deep gray clouds bring dramatic portent of day’s potential.
This is the stuff of great change,
life giving change,
for life is change.
At any moment drops may fall, and there!
In dynamic tension,
I hear first tiny drops just as a sliver of orange glow slips between the chinks of gray armor on eastern horizon.
Promise fulfilled,
on a day hardly begun.
The glow spreads and brightens,
as the briefest caress of breeze mimics the sunrise breeze,
but this is breeze of clouds and rain and weather,
a growing gray energy,
moving faster now,
feeding this torrent of secret words,
rank upon rank
of darkening gray,
marching, marching
to lay siege to yonder peaks,
a misty vapor
makes damp the lands
that passive lie below.
While still the glow to east
does wax,
till finally clear appears,
tis sun and light and warmth
that drive the cold and gray,
which
with their rain
the earth prepare,
while darkness briefly stays
that light of sun,
that Source of all,
may call
new life
to rise.
SHAPING THE ONE CONSTANT
Vivid dreams last night, in incredible, complex, changing detail. Such dreams leave me disoriented in the morning, continuity of experience and expectations disrupted. In contrast to dreams surely one of the more remarkable aspects of physical “reality” is temporal continuity, next events following in some connected sequence from preceding events. I see no a-priori reason for the world to be so, but I am darned glad it is, more or less.
Certainly one of the greatest sources of stress for me is the radical disruption of sure and certain expectations, those rude twists of fate that tear you out of one world and place you in a wholly different “reality”. Such shocking, unforeseen life developments feel as disruptive to the psyche as awakening from vivid dreams to return to this familiar world. For a moment, even the supposedly familiar world feels untrustworthy, potentially just one more dream to which out of necessity you will frantically try to adjust, unable to anticipate what nonsensical development will next assault your logic, until awaking from being chased by one horned cattle to find yourself in the elevator of an Asian high rise business tower, rising out of a bustling harbor, while the boss makes impossible demands of you. At least that was last night’s dream “reality”. And truth be known, the leap from cattle in the mountains to business forms in 1000 foot (300 meter) high glass tower is not particularly any more nonsensical than quite a few events I have experienced in what for this moment I call “real life”.
In the dreams the transitions of physical reality are perhaps a bit more abrupt, but no less disorienting than the situational transitions of real life. Deaths, accidents, layoffs, and lotteries serve to unceremoniously toss us from one ‘reality’ to another. (Chased in by unexpected cold breeze, I now sit by ‘Tasha as she eats breakfast. Such a cute little life moment it is, and such a blessing to have in my life a living thing for whom to care.)
As dreams and “reality” exchange control of our mind with disorienting abruptness, as “reality’s” unfolding crises explode on our reeling consciousness, we carry from nonsensical scene to impossible situation only one reliable constant. (‘Tasha kitty now lies across my lap on the couch, purring mightily. How she loves lap time and lubbins after her breakfast. Warming sun shines deep into her fur, revealing that auburn, rust color between the jet black shimmering with silver rainbows.) That reliable constant is our own self and identity. It is me unceremoniously tossed from mountain trail to corporate high rise, me facing loss of certain future and betrayal of one most trusted.
That being the case, it would seem incumbent upon us to invest no little effort in establishing and defining that identity of self that serves as the sole reference and continuity as the scenes and dreams of our life lurch from one impossible scenario to the next irrational outcome. Yet modern life in pursuit of modern dreams offers precious little opportunity for establishing that one firm foundation, the identity of your own sculpting, that will awaken in each new dream scene.
The tools for consciously sculpting the self have been stolen, time for introspection, meditation, and prayer having been ironically removed by a world of labor saving automation and programmed convenience.
A ceaseless barrage of media and marketing tells us what to feel, do, and believe. Our look, our music, our opinions, are meticulously crafted by others behind a speaker, monitor, or display screen.
As dream scenes flash from impossible to outlandish, and “real life” delivers the impossible made reality, what identity, what core essence of self, do we carry as secure reference from scene to unpredictable scene? It will be me in those scenes, but who will I be?….and will I have consciously chosen that identity? The drunk kids on the bluffs this past weekend, the young girl asking others’ suggestions for her next tattoo, the new neighbors with their collection of motorized vehicles copied from covers of off-road and motorcycle magazines, have they claimed the power to consciously sculpt their identity, or surrendered it?
Of course I have no way to know and am hardly in a position to judge anyone else.
I know only that the world is as wacky and unpredictable as my dreams, and over and over I have found myself reeling in confusion at the latest impossible life transition. All I carry form one irrational stage play to the next is my own character and his chosen spiritual foundations.
In fact, the world’s reality is so fleeting, ephemeral, and unpredictable that I think the only real purpose it serves (the word “real” being carefully chosen) is to provide the opportunity to define our identity by our choices, of response to this hour’s circumstances.
That being the case, it seems it would behoove us to put at least a little conscious thought and effort into that definition of self. What values and priorities do we arrive at once the boss and family and media and marketers loose their grip on us?
My goofy dreams and life’s surprise plot twists are out of my control. As long as I listen to all the family, society, trends, fads, bosses, media, music, and marketers, even my own identity that gets tossed from situation to situation is not of my choosing. But if I let that happen, if I surrender to the unrelenting assault of influences that would claim possession of my soul, that surrender is of my own doing (or “undoing”).
We are each empowered to claim possession of our own soul, to freely choose our own values and priorities, and to apply them in the struggle to respond to the dreams and temptations, the nightmares and traumas, that fill our days.
An individual identity will experience your dreams tonight and awaken in an unpredictable world tomorrow. We cannot see the dream or the tomorrow until we walk onto the stage. But we can still rehearse the response of our character for the next unseen scene by consciously defining who we want and choose that character to be.
CHASING OUR SPIRITUAL TALES
Well, a migraine just made it impossible to drive to work. Rendered incapable of doing anything productive, I’m once again left to solving the mysteries of life and purpose of the universe.
What is this life and consciousness?
I finally realize that so few people even bother asking the question because the answer is so exasperatingly elusive.
Why should so much prayer and meditation be required to attain enlightenment and so-called inner peace? Why would that attainment be so ruthlessly resisted by worldly circumstance and our physical nature?
Does our ability to ask the “big questions”, yet be denied the answers, make any sense?!
In asking that question, do we seek someone to blame? Don’t we want some god to blame? But we dare not blame God, so we create stories of fallen angels and the whole mess being our fault after all.
Inevitably when I wander down this path, I come to the thought that we exist as conscious individuals in the very earliest stages of birth into that consciousness. In that scenario the fact that nothing makes sense can make sense.
But if our individual consciousness is born of a loving Source, why in this newborn phase do we not experience the cuddling and care and closeness and nurturing that penguins, orcas, and even the occasional infant human experience in the days after birth?
Upon asking that question, I usually return to the conclusion that we are still in the midst of the painful process of birth into consciousness and must simply pass through this momentary tearing of bonds. Either that, or we have already entered the adolescent phase of consciousness, and our spiritual confusion arises from our obstinate insistence on self as the center of the universe, and once we mature and accept that we share the universe with other conscious beings, all will be OK.
Round and round like a dog chasing its tail I pursue the answers to the mysteries of life, until I fall down in spinning spiritual dizziness.
Perhaps this exercise of creating models for understanding this life arises from a need to convince myself that God is a loving God, and that there is hope, this will pass, and all the good that we can imagine will in fact come to pass. A similar motivation probably motivated the apocalyptic scenarios that arose in Zoroastrian beliefs a few thousand years ago.
By all rights, any objective assessment of the results of our efforts over past millennia to understand the foundations of reality should leave us collapsing in abject despair. The consistent disagreement among religions and philosophies, and the ready collapse of those religions and philosophies in the face of the next invasion, whether military or intellectual, provides consistent, recurring, and repeatable evidence of the hopelessness of our quest to understand.
All logic and rational intellect would seem to decry the hopelessness of this Quixotic quest. Surely to unquestioningly accept the dogma du jour simply in order to “get along” is our only prudent course of action.
But the dogma du jour keeps changing because some troublemaker won’t compliantly accept it. Up jumps a Moses, Buddha, Yeshu (Jesus), Mohamed, Luther, or Nietzsche (with no peer relationship implied) and our discreetly tucked away questions about meaning of life rudely return to the sedate dining room of our intellect, like that crude cousin knocking on our door during the holidays.
Ah, if only these penta-centennial disrupters of our quiescent beliefs were the only source of our questions about life, meaning, and everything. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the darned questions do arise, especially that pesky “why?”, sometimes when a loved one dies, sometimes when we think we are going to die, sometimes when we wish we could die, sometimes just because.
Perhaps the concept to which we really have to resign ourselves is not the religion du jour, but the fact those irrepressible questions in whatever form will keep appearing at our doorstep: “is there life after death?”, “will I have life after death?”, “is there a God?”, “if there is a God, will I like Him/Her if I meet Him/Her?…..and will S/He like me?!”……..and finally, the generic and all encompassing “why?”
In fact, in contrast to the dynamic variety of religions, beliefs, and philosophies that proffer answers to the questions, the questions remain doggedly consistent throughout human history.
To turn one’s back on religions and institutional beliefs may at times be necessary for personal spiritual growth, at least if the virulence of society’s inquisitions of the day does not cut short the life of one so inclined to free thought. But to turn one’s back on the questions themselves, to bury one’s head in the sand of worldly distractions and pursuit of pleasure and profit, seems fundamentally unhealthy, unnatural, and counter to our nature as human beings.
To face the questions, but to then flee from them in agnostic retreat, might seem quite reasonable considering the exasperatingly elusive nature of the answers, but then to not at least try to humbly address the profound questions of life from the context of our own individual discernment seems spiritually slovenly, perhaps even cowardly.
We each know precious little, but we know our experience, that inner experience, that profound essence of life experience unique to our own personal universe.
Our answers will not look like our neighbors’ answers because we do not share the same sum of individual conscious experiences.
We are each under no obligation to arrive at the same answers, nor even ask the same questions. I do feel however we are under obligation to sincerely listen to the others’ questions and answers.
As stated at the beginning of this wandering in the wilderness, I keep arriving at my own answers to my own questions, each arising out of the experience of my own universe of consciousness.
My answers will likely bear little resemblance to yours. But I suspect that your questions and mine may share quite a bit in common.
I will probably keep chasing my tail in trying to catch the “big” questions with my little answers. Like Marco, the golden retriever puppy that once brought me so many smiles, I just can’t seem to help myself. I would not necessarily counsel that others should invest much time in their own version of this exercise., but I would counsel that it is good and spiritually healthy to bid entry to those questions of the ages. I would encourage that each individual brings a unique perspective, an entire personal universe of experience, to the answering of those questions.
I believe we are each better off when we attentively listen to those questions of our heart.
I know we are all collectively better off when we each share our versions of the answers.
Rhythm
There is such a rhythm to a manual push mower. All life is rhythm, perhaps the reason most machines seem so so very not alive, and steam locomotives do seem live.
Hawks
In the wet, dense woods, holy and blessed and blessing, sunrise.
07:00…..two juvenile hawks, one only four meters away, the second five meters away.
Facing me. Curious watching.
07:01….two more west of the trail.
Facing me. Curious.
Little downy Feathers drifting down from the preening second hawk
Can watch little beak open with each triple cry, PFWEEEeeeee, PFWEEEeeeee, PFWEEEeeeee.
Unnaturally orangey orange sun through thin clouds.
Can see how someone would feel they could entice them down. They are watching, curious, probably hungry. Hold up a piece of meat and it is easy to imagine the closest fluttering down to retrieve it.
07:10 the two restless siblings west of the trail fly away together.
07:21...the first two….finally cry and majestically fly away.
Walking further on trail, still immersed in aroma of wet woods:
Hummingbird nest! Chest high. Such a tiny treasure.
Still the hawk cries surround, from this direction and that.
Time
Let the time slow down. It is in your power you know.
That relative thing called time will accommodate your business. Slow, slow, and let life enter your consciousness.
Potential
Early morning, at the spring.
Just a moment, let me linger.
Just a moment, away from the shocks.
Just a moment, denying obligations.
The sound of shelling penetrates even here,
the babbling brook unable to hide
the reverberations that penetrate the earth.
Just a moment,
let me see
Your world of which you said
“it is good, it is good”.
The potential resides,
in each of us.
Your Spirit resides,
in each of us.
Well hidden we keep that potential,
hidden under the blanket of our fear,
well justified fear of each other.
Well hidden we keep Your Spirit,
behind the facades of our loneliness,
aching, abiding, unconfessed loneliness.
Oh these blind and fleeing children of Yours,
lost in their imagined universes of self,
awaiting the birth only they can choose.
We pray
bless us,
redeem us,
heal us,
forgive us.
Let us live Your answer,
and bless one another,
redeem each other from our carnal bondage,
heal one another,
and forgive everyone, starting with ourselves.
Hawks II
Homestead spring, post sunrise.
Hawk visits this morning, the four around me, barely visible, whistle calls, up in the trees, their morning ritual, in the forest where the descent trail to the homestead leaves the trees. For a moment one flew down out of the foliage to appear on a bare limb close and in view. But no need to linger. A quick perusal of this familiar visitor and s/he is off on the morning warmup, whistle calls to siblings filling the air.
The creek is already noticeably lower after a day of no rain. But the air in the woods still smells moist.
...oh my gosh! A hawk just swooped me! Right by my head! I felt a strong breeze, a blowing “whoosh” of air all across the right side of my head and face! I’ve never felt anything like it! What a visit! What a gift!
Low angle golden morning light through the forest,
Gently babbling creek,
Surrounding hawk cries from foliage above…..
This, this reveals the abject madness of pursuit of money and power and entertainment and possessions, all those delusions that would destroy these places and tear such opportunities from our hungry souls.
Hawks III
At the spring. Hawk family cries about, calling, calling, maintaining contact.
Deep, deep peace this morning. I dare not disturb such a treasure, nor do I completely understand it, so I just give thanks for it.
I listen to the music in my head, music of my dad, sweet old hymns, the hymns that get me through the frightening times, the hymns I invoke when feeling chest pains or altitude sickness or panic attacks. Other songs of my soul include the melodic slow almost jazz like music of Graham Nash and David Crosby.
I listen to the music in my head and sorrow for people growing up in the past thirty years, their souls assaulted by rap and hip hop and bubble gum pop. To what songs will they turn in their times of fear? What remembered music in their head will bring them solace and comfort and calm and reassurance?
Such miracles, my father giving me the gift of those old hymns he softly sang as I went to sleep, that peculiar age of the late 1960’s when gentle music of Crosby and Nash could be popular, miracles that sustain me these many decades later.
Such music harmonizes well with the hawks and other birds of the moment.
On cue one of the hawks lands on a branch above me and loudly whistles a soliloquy, it's sibling chorus answering from surrounding trees.
The creek is quiet again, still nicely running but not sufficiently to babble out loud.
Twice now I have seen a hummingbird fly up next to a hawk sitting on a branch, the hummingbird hovering near the hawk, seemingly looking at it in curiosity, as if marveling at its size.
Mid-day. Juniper
Surrendering to the blessings.
They are all blessings you know,
the interruptions and conversations and unplanned commitments.
It is utterly out of my control.
The commitment to Life and the Source of Life and the Spirit of Life and the Savior of Life took it all out of my control.
Have faith? Surrender?
Did you have any choice?
Or did you have only the Choice.
Celebrate the gifts of the moment.
Celebrate that you have something and someone to love.
Much is missed indeed.
But much is present.
It is a far better life than you might think.
What exactly are the depths of possible suffering?
Aren't you glad for what you know about that?
How drastically different you would be without the losses!
There will be time. Try hard, but try with surety, not concern.
Let another miracle unfold.
Has it not all been a miracle?
Aim clearly, but do not ignore the current and boulders that will redirect you.
What was that? Why those thoughts now of all times?
Sense and feel. Something new has arisen. Let it unfold naturally, and marvel.
Hawk IV
The spring
What a hawk show! All around me the calls.
Directly above me.
Walking on the descent path through the woods there were two on the trail in front of me! They lightly launch into the branches above. I approach.
As I type though a different call. Pepepepeskree. Pepepepeskree. That’s not the long whistle of the hawks. A smaller raptor alights above me! A falcon?
It swoops to a lower branch. I watch it, till hawk calls draw my attention to the clearing between the homestead and the hillside woods. There the juvenile hawks play chase, three of them swooping down from the trees, racing above the tall grass, splitting the air with wings and calls.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Earlier, back on the descent trail, I had viewed the family almost at arm’s length, their calls drawing my attention to a branch five meters away, then another two meters away, then one right above my head.
For minutes I watched, but these youngsters are restless. One launches, their growing, size making it difficult to negotiate the interlaced oak branches, but all three launch, the one above me so close I could feel the air of its first flap of wings.
They call and cry and cavort through the woods around me, at one point two of them playing tag in a trajectory so directly at me I instinctively ducked.
It is the morning hawk show, glorious and majestic and playful.
One sounds hoarse, it's whistle a raspy screech.
As I type quiet has returned to the homestead woods. Playtime is paused, but the soaring hawks have left my heart soaring.
Back home
Parent hawk and juvenile on the second pole south.
A hummingbird flies over from the utility line and as I’ve seen several times this summer, hovers around the hawks, seemingly gawking at these over-sized relatives.
The juvenile hawk cries and cries, begging for breakfast. Mom ignores it, finally flying away.
In our upper yard a bunny leg, someone's breakfast leftovers, maybe hawk or bob kitty.
Hawk V
Post-sunrise, pig corral
Four hawks, three falcons!....or so I will call them.
All on the horse corral fence. Like last year. The hawks fly in formation and spook the falcons away. All return, swooping about the corral.
Like last year the falcons play hunt each other, swooping to contact like fighter jets across the corral.
Like last year they alight on the barn. Blue eyes they have. They look directly back at me, my blue binocular lenses sparking their curiosity.
Thank You!. Thank You! Thank You!
Like last year, the swoops and calls and dives disappear into the woods once people arrive.
Oh health! Oh Nature! Oh Life!
There is no time for critique or analysis or criticism for there is not enough time for celebration and thanksgiving.
The times of fear and grief and sorrow are aplenty. When they abate, when blessed relief and respite visit, it is time to celebrate and praise and immerse in the warming morning sun!
Enough of forced smiles and contrived scenes. Let authenticity reign, let life in the bright moments fill the soul and let the soul radiate that Light back into the world.
Do not try to capture the river of life, but ride it, ride its chaos, and call others to the ride.
What good the photos and memories if not of life authentic.
Consciousness
How do I incorporate pain and suffering into my definition of consciousness as a mental state entailing free will choice? This question becomes critically important as we consider machine consciousness.
The following attempts to clarify
I now realize that the options of response, some choice (even if only regarding inner attitudes as opposed to actions) that are required for consciousness need not be active at the moment of experience.
I have long been bothered by whether the following fits my definition of consciousness. A person experiences pain or fear and can do nothing about it, if for instance they are trapped or tied or tortured, or they react instinctively, pulling their hand away from the fire or running in panic.
How is such automatic response different from my unconsciously reaching up to deflect an object thrown at me in my stroke induced blind spot?....an object I never see and of which I have no conscious awareness?
If someone intercepts the thrown object before it touches me I will have no memory of it. I may even raise my hand to deflect it but I will afterwards figure some random nerve tickle led to my actions . The approaching object plays no part in any present or future choice or decision process. I am not conscious of it.
On the other hand, I will remember an incident of pain or fear. Even if unable to make any choices of action or response at the time, I can incorporate the experience and memory into future free will choices that might expose me to similar risk.
Consciousness plays its role as long as we have memory of the conscious experience, even if at the moment of the experience we had no free will choice. If at any point we can remember an experience and make a future free will decision incorporating that experience, we were conscious of the experience.
Good and evil
The muskrat swims for the end of the pond as the rising sun sets green aglow.
The woods were full of hawk and falcon cries and calls and whistles and screeches. As I type those words a news alert appears on my device about the Lombok earthquake death toll.
I experience rippling pond and muskrat and hawks. On the other side of the world rescuers pull bodies of loved ones out of rubble.
Dare I thank God for my good fortune? Dare I not? Yet does it not seem the height of selfishness to savor these blessings while others writhe in despair and agony? Yet would it not seem the height of insolent ingratitude to not appreciate and savor this moment of sublime peace and beauty?
The thoughts and feelings should be conflicted. The beauty is undeniable. The horror is undeniable. The paradox is inescapable.
“You shall know good from evil” was the promise and threat made in the Garden.
If you are for the moment one of the blessed people, do not pretend you deserve the good more than those under the rubble. Do not kid yourself that God loves you more.
Stare at the paradox and squirm uncomfortably, both because you do not understand it and because your turn under the rubble will come.
Do not look for justice or sense or holy logic in the random twists of fate. Those are human concepts, and our experience in this world is too fleeting for us to see some eternal justice and holy logic fulfill the grand Purpose.
This holy Purpose is bigger than that. “You will know good from evil”, both of them being abundant and simultaneous. You will know them, and then you will choose, you will have to choose, you will have no choice about facing the Choice of how you will respond to the good and evil that enter your life and that comprise this world.
Helping at hand
Sometimes it's OK to just help, to just help a blind kitty or recovering friend or inept acquaintance or ignorant child or addicted adult. Sometimes it's OK to ignore the big picture and life projects and societal goals and critical job and just help someone.
LIGHT
Calm in the storm,
sunbeam in the cold,
candle in the darkness,
love in this world,
warm touch to frightened soul
LEARNING TO APPRECIATE THE LIGHT
How brightly acts of kindness and compassion shine in the midst of crisis and disaster. Their glow is directly analogous to the brightness of even a match or candle in the darkness of a cave.
Is the love and care in hiding before the crisis and disaster? Or do we just not notice it? Or we do not need it as desperately?
What lessons can we learn from the love and compassion we give and receive in that moment of darkness? Surely in brighter times we should still savor the beauty of the candle, and we should still light our match to warm another. We can let the darkness teach us to appreciate the beauty of the light, whether from only one candle, or from multitudes of suns.
Beyond knowledge
Time to be present. Time to watch green turn to gold as the rising sun lights the forest.
Imagine an understanding so true and deep and complete that concepts and models and constructs were simply not necessary, and in fact would only serve to hide Reality, not reveal it. Imagine understanding so thorough that you do not have to think about it, but simply know it. Imagine insight so richly integrated into the soul that delusion and madness would be impossible. Imagine full Unity with Truth and Reality.
Now look at how far we are from that. We are so far from such a state of being that we cannot even confess how far we are from it. We desperately hold on to being right. We fervently recite our beliefs, praying that recitation will make them true.
There is Truth. There is Reality. But our constructs and models are but the flimsiest and clumsiest mental representations of it.
Imagine not having to try to understand. Imagine simply being in full awareness and consciousness in the Truth of Reality.
Would it not feel like embrace? Would it not seem like being snuggled and wrapped in security and Love?
Is that not itself an answer and guidance for our quest for Truth and understanding Reality?
Surely the closest we get to living in and with Truth, not merely mentally understanding and faithfully believing some construct of “truth”, is in secure and loving embrace, in the moments of unambiguous - if ineffable - Unity, whether with each other or with Nature or with the sustaining Source and Spirit.
CHILDREN OF GOD
Automatic, automatic the behaviors of this generation,
unconscious and dangerous.
Oh yes, great beauty resides within them.
Against all odds God was right when S/He said "it is good, it is very good".
But don't hold your breath waiting for that holy Light to shine forth from that bitter, self-absorbed, angry, irrational person before you.
Keep your distance? That is the only reasonable course of action, the only safe course of action. But isn't that turning your back on God? These children of the Most High may for the moment be wallowing in their prodigality, but they are after all still His/Her children.
Now is the time for forgiveness, for at this stage there is little else we can hope to do for each other. God knows there is ample opportunity to practice forgiveness.
Forgive, and look for the Light, the Light of loving Source that dimly flickers behind their scowling, angry, threatening, frightened, lonely eyes.
Know yourself?
Know yourself? What a simple admonition. What an impossible assignment.
Know yourself. Shudder at the prospect.
We know the image we erect. We know our wishes. We know our fantasies. But know ourselves? What a surprise awaits us! All along we were not who we thought we were.
Of course the grandiose plans did not turn out as expected. In hindsight it is obvious, and it was not the fault of all those others after all.
Know yourself. But do not begin that formidable undertaking until first amply arming yourself with forgiveness. Practice and practice some more forgiveness and compassion on others that you may be able to apply it to yourself.
Know yourself. Don't turn and run from what you discover. Just turn, turn to a new chosen direction in the Light once you finally perceive your past direction lost in the darkness.
Discover, then recover. Discern, learn, then turn.
Consciousness
History. Timelines. How about the timeline of individual consciousness? Our consciousness flashes along the axis of time like the spot of silver sun-sheen on a wind twisted spider web. We discern only that racing point of brightness, moving on an invisible trace, but the unseen web remains, anchored at beginning and end. Are our conscious lives also so, seemingly shining at a single point, moving independently through their worldly life, or is our consciousness just moving along the strand of our life, life invisibly connected, a path for our consciousness, each point made visible by the fleeting passage of the light of awareness.
ANIMAL FORM
White tummy horse was trying to visit the pigs as he always does this time of year as they near their demise.
Then he came to say hi! He turned toward me, then came to the fence, then came close so I could pet him, then stuck his nose over the fence, then stuck his whole head over the fence! It's by far the most time and contact and communion I have ever had with a horse! He looks right at me! I had forgotten they have horizontal pupils.
What an unexpected connection! He lets me pet and pet him. He turns his giant head toward me. We get some time without others coming by. What a moment.
At the pond the muskrat paddles across, then a second! They come together and swim a tight little circle together, then paw at each other! This happens several times!
Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.
Faith
People are desperate to believe.
This corporeal - temporal existence simply provides no answers, no satisfaction. In the face of that we will believe something, usually the first thing we get exposed to, and we will believe it in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence.
We will.have worldly, spiritual, and political beliefs, and in all three cases, the simpler the better.
We do need social support for our beliefs. Nobody wants to be the only person to believe something. The number of believers, whether in political or religious or scientific fields, pretty much determines the validity of the belief in our minds.
Woe to the first person to believe something and try to espouse it! Woe to the last person to believe something when societal norms have shifted.
So we believe, believe in political parties and flags and sports teams and economic systems and leaders and all the other religions of our family, friends, and society.
The corporeal-temporal world, resolutely silent regarding why it is, what we are, and how we should proceed, serves as a blank canvas for our beliefs, Creation having laid a physical foundation upon which we then continue to create with our panoply of ever evolving dogmas.
Upon realizing just how high and exposed we are in our beliefs, beliefs we trusted to provide rigid reference and resolve, we are beset by spiritual and cognitive vertigo and respond by tightly closing our eyes. But it is just all a natural and unavoidable facet of growing individual consciousness, a birth process acutely uncomfortable and frightening and avoided as long as possible.
There is something to believe, we just don't yet know exactly what it is. That's how faith grows, core faith that survives when beliefs are rendered obsolete or exposed as delusion.
Believe as you must, but don't mistake belief for faith. Fear not learning and growth and inconvenient truths, and the threat they may pose to beliefs. It is learning and growth and Truth that forge faith, that ineffable certainty that discerns beyond the flimsy facades of the corporeal, that inexplicable certainty that endures beyond the fleeting veil of the temporal.
HUMMER WINTER
So glad I put out hummingbird feeders though temp is in the 20’s F and it’s snowing! I couldn’t bear to think of a little hummer, perhaps migrating, having no energy source in this weather that brought such a sudden and radical change.
Sure enough, there was a little hummer, drinking and drinking!
I’m cycling the feeders, every hour putting a third one out, leaving only two out, because they are freezing.
God remains quiet
God remains steadfastly quiet regarding what we are to believe and do….or does S/He?
It is a complex Creation, and our myriad roles and responses to it do not readily lend themselves to simple understanding. So we believe what we are raised to believe and do what our circumstances dictate. Maybe that is how God tells us what to believe and do, without a constraint about our beliefs being universally right. Perhaps our conflicting beliefs and goals are all wrong, but perhaps they are still all right within an indiscernible Wholeness.
What a drastic difference Yeshu has made in the world compared to other religious figures.
A little Love! A little hope! Flickering stars in the darkness, providing course changing points of navigation for our navigation Home.
Jesus
Look at that relationship!
Cajoled and pressured into turning water into wine before His time had come, but caving in.
Looks like it was a brother’s wedding, since Yeshu and Miriam (Mary) were in the house and as oldest brother Yeshu would have had some authority.
He may have already turned brother against brother, right there in his own household.
He may have already turned mother against daughter.
Why did He return to Nazareth and come closer to getting killed than any time until his crucifixion? Wouldn’t He have gone back to see His mother?
Look at the incident of denying His mother was even a true spiritual relative, saying those who listened to Him were His brothers and sisters, while His mother was left outside, saying He was crazy, and demanding He come home like a good eldest son should.
That is not a classic healthy relationship!
Christian gunfire
I was shocked to see when I looked it up that the facility with the massive continuous gunfire, where we changed our hiking route and hurried to avoid stray bullets, was a Christian ranch camp! Dear God, I would not exactly call that a contemplative experience for the youth staying there.
A “Christian” camp…..how much time will they spend in contemplative prayer by a stream?
How often do people from some religious group meet our expectations? How often are we pleasantly surprised versus disappointed?.....if not outright shocked.
Does the fact that most people in most religious groups turn out to just be people, warts and all, imply that the various faith traditions must not be of much value? Shouldn’t the people in the ashram and monastery and church camp be somehow different, somehow a little above the world? Or do their painfully evident shortcomings, the disappointing revelation that the attendees and monks and members are just like the rest of us, testify to the relevance of faith for the world and it's worldly people?
The gun range at the church camp…...cynicism at the ashram…….personal backstabbing and political plotting at the denominational convention…...all evidence that religions and spiritual practices are not a cure-all for our innumerable shortcomings……..all evidence that we need not attain heights of spiritual enlightenment before seeking relationship with an evidently extraordinarily patient and forgiving Source-Sustainer-Spirit-Savior that we obviously badly need.
TILLING THE SOIL
Seeds grow in tilled and disturbed soil. That's why this age must collapse.
People will maintain their course until dislodged from it.
No listener will absorb the bulk of the message. But some key word, some detail, some specific aspect, will suffice, planting a seed so they may grow on their own path.
And everyone can use some encouragement.
So don't expect much. But know it is critical for someone.
Keep in mind how many people in this day and time need the message!
Do not be dissuaded by the scowling faces of those old gray heads. There are others who have been sufficiently shaken to be open.
Calming meditation
Peace. It is OK to take a moment off.
Peace. Peace. Let the healing happen.
Calm. Wonder.
The mystery shall abide a while longer.
Keep listening. Then listen some more. The answers are not intrusive or forceful or insistent.
There is so far to grow and so much to learn. That must always be the case.
Of course it all makes no sense. So it's OK for a change to relax and soak up the healing.
Peace, peace, "fear not" if you can believe that.
Calm, peace, no need to look deeply.
Let the security en-vel’op and blanket you, a warm cushly blanket, all that love of the ages allowed entry, no longer hidden. That is an adequate answer for now, and truth be known it is the ultimate answer. All the other analysis and compartmentalization is just necessary distraction. For a moment allow consciousness to shake off all the thoughts and models and understanding and let the soul be touched and cuddled and wrapped in warm security.
Even the body's aches and pains abate a little in this state of peace.
Peace, peace, blessed peace. The grandiose lessons can wait a little longer. The profound insights are after all just ways to reach this peace and the warm cushly blanket state of being.
The world will still be waiting out there. It can still be saved a little later.
For now
Peace
Peace,
A flowing security.
There is enough to do that a moment not doing is OK.
Take the Peace with you back into the world. You will need it. Others will need it.
Allow the embrace of Yeshu and the cloud of saints and the warm gifts of touch.
Peace, peace, penetrating so deeply that you will never quite completely lose it.
Shock us!
Open yourself to shock.
Shouldn’t that be the objective of prayer? "Open yourself to shock."
Isn't God surely shocking? Isn't God so far beyond us that even the merest brushing touch, the most constrained insight, the faintest whispered word, would absolutely blow us completely out of our familiar lives?
"Open yourself to shock."
Well that's not what we want out of prayer. We want results and answers, answers of course that fit our preconceived expectations and self-focused wishes.
"Open yourself to shock"?! I don't think we'll sit still for that.
"Shock us." When's the last time you heard that in a prayer?
But isn't that what life routinely deals us anyway? Wouldn't it be better to be shocked by God, or at least to perceive life's shocks as God's Purpose manifesting in our lives?
"Thy will be done." How serious are we when we mutter that in the church liturgy? That prayer didn't turn out so well for Yeshu (Jesus). We are painfully aware of what happened to Him when we mumble those words while fervently praying God doesn't take us too seriously.
"Thy will be done, but please don't shock or surprise us, and for God's sake don't even think about changing us." Isn’t that the more accurate unabridged version?
"Shock us"! I think God would like to hear us pray that, would like to hear us genuinely open to just how radical God's power in our lives would be if we allowed it. Well, maybe we can aspire to someday praying that and meaning it, along with "change us, teach us, disrupt us", all implied by "thy will be done".
Meaning in the moment
So in the midst of the storm, what’s the relevant question? Try this one:
To whom did you give today?
Oh that's an intimidating question! I'm not sure how people would react but I doubt you would get invited back if you walk into the party and start asking that question..
But how fulfilled and blessed the people who can meaningfully answer that question.
To whom did you give today? What did you give? What did you give of yourself? Not trinkets and gewgaws and baubles, even if expensive trinkets and gewgaws and baubles, not even your time. No, not those, but what of yourself did you give?
Is there any higher gift than mere presence to deeply share the present moment? The present of presence in the present. Silly wording perhaps but profound in its cutting to the core of the gift for which we all long, a gift so rare we do not even know that we long for it.
The gift is rarely proffered and seldom accepted. We are too busy being alone in the past or planning the future, too fixated on goals accomplished or grievances experienced to shut up and be present for even a moment in the moment, much less notice the exquisitely rare gem of the presence of another soul sharing the moment.
God gave us sex and sports events to try to give us a hint of what it could be like to share the present moment with another person, but we don't extrapolate the lessons to all the other moments in life.
There are only so many of them you know, those moments of life, and even fewer opportunities to share them.
"To whom did you give today?" If you shared a moment with someone or something, you gave them a gift, but you also gave yourself the best gift. Cherish it; remember it; that more moments might enter your consciousness, that perhaps some of them might also be amplified by sharing with another.
Who’s right?
I recently attended a Southern Baptist service with dear family members
sitting in that service raised the question of “beliefs”. What do we believe?! What do they believe? Who’s right?
There’s another question we dodge. Why does God let everybody else…. but us……. believe such wrong stuff?
It strikes me that there is one singular consistency about God. S/He is bafflingly quiet about specifics.
I look at those sweet people in that Southern Baptist church and I feel they really do want to follow God's will. I listen to Muslim friends, and Mormon friends, and Roman Catholic friends and I feel they sincerely want to obey God's plan.
They, and so many faithful people, sincerely pray to know God's Truth. And God does not answer. Either that or God gives different answers to everybody.
Sincere people, wanting to know God and God’s Truth…….and none of them getting the same answer.
Those people are so sincere! God is so quiet! This is a profound and inarguable fact. There has to be great meaning in this. How does God's Purpose get served by not clearly revealing answers to sincere religious worshipers? Do all those other people really not want answers? Are they all really that closed minded that God feels they’re just not worthy of answers?
They just want to know what to do and what to believe. They would accept answers if they knew they came from God.
So does God leave most people in the dark then reveal the Truth only to us? (Of course it would be us, not them.)
If for some reason what we should believe and do is not to be revealed to us, does that mean what we believe and do does not matter?......at least to God? If that's the case, what then does matter?
We sincerely ask for guidance and clarification and get not a whole lot of specifics. Why? Why are most people (we of course being the exception) left stumbling in the dark?
What does matter? The darkness itself surely must be a massive clue. God leaves most of us to believe absolutely goofy stuff, even though we genuinely want to know what to believe and what to do.
OK, fine, philosophers can say that lack of specific answers is necessary to maintain our freewill as children of God. But what if we guess wrong? Are going to hell?
Is it possible that what we believe, the specific details of our conceptualization of Truth and God and Heaven and theology (generally cast in the image of however we were raised) does not matter to God?
If so, what does matter? What does God expect us to do in the face of the darkness?
What could matter that would consistently matter across the panoply of beliefs of all these sincere, faithful people left in the dark but committed to serving their Creator?
Maybe that's a question for which we can find an answer. Maybe that's what God really wants us to do. Maybe that’s the only answer we need, the only answer we will get, the only answer that matters.
Maybe that's why those sincere, genuine, faithful in the pews and on the prayer rugs and in the folding chairs get no brilliant revelation to correct their misunderstandings or fill in the blanks. Maybe that person faithfully committed to seeking the desires of God is closer to God than the faithful believer with secure beliefs.
We sincerely pray. They sincerely pray. They and we would change our beliefs and actions if God clearly told us to. God doesn't.
Instead of clarity and details spelled out in flaming letters, we get subtle whispers and tugs on our heart. Someone in that other church or masjid (mosque) or synagogue or temple feels the same whispers and tugs.
Maybe we don't get the answers or corrections or clarifications that we don't need, details of doxology that don't matter. Maybe we already have the answers that we do need.
God surely loves our prayers seeking guidance and inspiration and correction. What a beautiful testimony of faith those prayers are. Then, continuing on in the ensuing darkness without sure answers is an even greater act of faith. Then….. tolerating and forgiving and accepting that other benighted person with their obviously wrong beliefs, perhaps that is the highest faith, perhaps the faith toward which the silent God (or is it “whispering” God?) is gently leading all of us.
Coincidence. I finish this section and on the music rotation comes the lyrics by John Prine “Just give me one thing that I can hold onto.”
CHISEL OF FROTH AND FOAM
All this temporal existence and physical structure is merely the thinnest of froth on the deeper spiritual reality. In infinite variety our actions and interactions and creations give momentary expression to spiritual essence, and in their turn shape and sculpt and define and give life to that spiritual essence. True life, deep life, lies in not living trapped only in the tenuous surface froth, but living through it, using its fleeting interactions to simultaneously express and thereby create your eternal identity. This temporal froth of time and bodies is in and of itself as inconsequential as the bubble of ocean foam that pops in almost the same moment it forms. But in our moments of choice this temporal froth of life wields the power of the tempered chisel as each choice shapes our eternal being.
THE BURDEN OF BEING A CHILD OF GOD
God’s self declared title is I Will Be What I Will Be.
All options lie open to God. All is possible.
God does not create things or worlds or universes. God creates God’s self from which the nature of things and worlds and universes arise.
We are created in the image of God.
We have options. We have choices of what to create. Our instincts and limited intellect and physical limitations and circumstances and programmed behavior all limit the degree and scope to which we can create. But are not helpless. We do have some freedoms.
In many arenas we have far less free choice than we would ever want to believe or admit. Our shopping, our eating, our likes and dislikes and passions and fears, these we inherit from past genes and present circumstance.
But in choice of interpersonal values and ethics and morals we have far more freedom than we would like to admit. Our scale of compassion and care and tolerance and patience and empathy is much more in our control than we want to take responsibility for.
We shape and create and sculpt our self, just as I Will Be What I Will Be creates the Universal Self.
We simply have a smaller range of options among which to select. But they are the important options, those of the very essence of our heart and soul.
No answers.
It will take a while to quit pestering God for answers. But there is also great relief in the acceptance of, the surrender to, this state of affairs.
Faith may be able to move mountains but it still cannot answer every question.
“All the answers can be found in the Bible.” Well of course not. Good luck with that one.
“God answers every prayer?” Maybe, in God's own good time, and not the way we might want our prayers answered and our query may get answered with a persistent “no”.
BUT, we are not left alone. We do get some answers. I promise you, the Comforter Spirit does intercede in our lives.
That touch of comforting Spirit is sometimes evident, sometimes subtle, often indirect. Sometimes we infer answers from circumstances and feelings and events and instincts and inputs from other folks in our lives. That’s all OK, albeit naggingly uncomfortable and routinely frustrating to not get the prompt, unambiguous answers we request from God.
This ambiguous and unresolved state of affairs actually makes sense if the nitty gritty details of our spiritual understanding and our choices in this world do not - in the overarching scheme of things - particularly matter.
We would generally not bother God with our choices about pizza toppings or which shade of sunglasses to buy. What if God were capable of working out the Purpose of the Universe regardless of our major career and family choices, so asking for answers about them is as impertinent as asking about the pizza toppings? What if we will be loved no matter what bone- headed decisions we make, so we don’t need a play-by-play game - plan to tell us exactly what to do? What if our big calling in life is to exercise and develop our faith, and that means flying blind? What if in the spiritual birth process of this carnal life the whole point is to see just what we will decide and believe in the absence of miraculous writing on the wall?
We want specific answers. For the most part we are not going to get them. In our spiritual blindness we get to, we have to, choose our responses, directions, and beliefs. That is not only OK, it is necessary. That’s why we are here. That is how we sculpt our soul and how we actualize our repentance.
It’s OK. It’ll all work out. The universe is in good hands. Go forward in faith, blind faith, trusting and relying on miracles. Don't wait for specific answers. You have to choose your answers. That is the price of eating that fruit in the Garden. That is your responsibility….and your gift…… and power……. and burden…….as a child of God.
What faith matters?
Always doubting.
Always tempted.
Never seeing the path………………..
Welcome to faith.
40 days of temptation turn into 40 years.
Pass one test of faith so you can face the next.
The clear path always remains just out of sight.
Yet that “not knowing” and lack of understanding is OK.
The more anguished the prayers in the Garden
the greater the authenticity of this frustrating relationship with our unseen God.
Pity the person of certainty as well as the person resigned to not knowing.
Do you really envy their lack of torment and doubt?
If you’re going to climb a faith mountain let it be a worthy one,
with storm and ice and summit invisible,
devoid of trail or path or marking.
God just may be more interested in your willingness to negotiate that craggy, trackless waste than in your capacity to discern contrived clarity in your beliefs.
Any faith clear and certain is too simple and untested to be worthy of the title.
Any faith journey that leaves you where you started is not worth the ticket for the bus.
Always tempted.
Always doubting.
Never seeing the path.
But you see something, you see something, by God,
by that hidden God you refuse to give up on.
You see something, and you follow it,
to the disappointing ends of the earth,
Always tempted,
always doubting,
stumbling on a non-existent path,
because the greatest mountains have no paths,
because certainty is for those securely staying in place,
because something in you hears that nebulous calling through the fog,
reassuring not that your beliefs or direction are right,
but that your faith is well placed in the journey itself,
reassuring that faithful searching,
even without finding the way,
will still bring you Home.
Something to believe
What really matters? What brings enduring joy? How much of all the things we believe and do really matter? When we look back is there some consistent thread running through our joys and our sorrows, and is that the same thread running through that other person’s joys and sorrows?
In light of however we answer this, where’s that leave our cherished beliefs?
It is all distraction, all of it, the ritual, the travel, the laughter, the busyness, the beliefs, the tribalism.
Salvation and connection to the eternal are to be found in the child of God before you and next to you, whether they know it or not.
Forget ritual and belief. How you treat and relate to and empathize with the life around you, there is your salvation, there is your peace, there is your joy, there is your fulfillment.
Do you try to understand them, do you care, do you tolerate them, do you value them, do you forgive them, how sincerely do you listen to them, what will you give up for them….there, in those questions, is all the religion and spirituality and answers of the ages that the world needs. There is the path to which Yeshu led when He said “follow me”.
We don't like that. That leaves us as utterly un-special, unable to lay claim to being the chosen ones or the enlightened ones or the transcendent ones. That leaves us having to live our salvation every day.
This is no philosophy, no religion, nothing worthy of an institution. This is not a glowing answer, but a nagging demand.
This is surely to be rejected outright as both heresy and inconvenience. Where is the profit in this?
Why even those who have never heard this teaching could unwittingly practice it!....perhaps better than we do!
No, don't look for popularity or profit or a prophet in this teaching. But know that having heard it you will never forget it. It will haunt you, for knowledge of it was already inside you, already part of you as a child of God, just waiting to be awakened.
There is so much more than we perceive
There is so, so much more than just what we see and touch in this corporeal world.
We are left here blind and in the dark and without overt guidance because only in such extreme circumstances can we be free enough to be children of God, and only in such abject lack of perception can we create Love pristine pure.
Real Love, profound and eternal Love, must be voluntary.
We are stupid sheep, except far more willful and cruel, made so by the harsh demands of survival in this violent carnal existence. Yet from that bloody and dark starting point, such amazing wonders of selfless compassion arise.
The angels grieve and sorrow for our self-inflicted misery, then marvel and wonder at the holiness of the forgiveness and mercy that occasionally flashes in the grim night of humanity.
There is indeed more
We don’t get a lot of specific answers. Which must mean the specific answers are not as important as we might think. But by gosh, we do know some things, maybe the most important things, even if a bit nebulous and ill-defined. What our hearts know may even be seemingly contradicted by a world that seems intent on making us forget what our heart knows. We know…..there is more.
All these lives,
all these lives,
swirling about one another,
complexities of biology and psychology
underlying our actions and behaviors,
each of us ultimately alone in the dark.
Yet somehow, ineffable and inexplicable,
there is something more,
something beyond
fleeting biology and psychology.
We grow tired
of reproductive and tribal explanations for our behaviors.
We accept our neuroses and genetic predispositions.
There is after all no denying them.
Better to face them and be honest about them.
But dang it, there is something more.
These connections between us are more than reproductive economics,
more than alliances rooted in survival instincts.
We rebel against the biology that dictates pragmatic courses of genetic propagation.
These bonds, these friendships, these families, these loves
cry out
“there is more.”
The soul does not arise out of reductionist biochemistry.
The biochemistry arises out of the compelling necessity of the soul.
These bonds among homo sapiens are nothing so cheap and tawdry as mere reproductive and economic opportunism.
There is more,
there is more,
however stridently the biologists and divorce lawyers and in-laws may proclaim otherwise.
There is something eternal in these bonds that intermingle souls,
bonds that demand we grieve upon their severing.
There is more,
something more,
telling us that we are alive,
alive beyond the body’s respiratory and rhythmic chemical functions.
There is more,
our mortal bodies not the sum total of our existence,
but mere tools of expression for these nebulous undefined entities we call
“souls”
for lack of any better word.
Let us accept our corporeal mortality and neurological deficits.
But let us not deny our essence that just momentarily inhabits these biochemical mobility units.
There is more. There is more,
tangible, discernable, undeniable,
in each ache of loneliness,
each embrace of welcome,
a friend's laugh,
a pet's parting.
There is more,
you are more,
there is Light to be caught,
there is Life to be shared,
these physical forms destined to so quickly expire
serving to connect your soul and mine,
and in the process affirm
there is more,
you are more.
Heaven
So we know there is more to us, and more to that other person, than biological reductionism. We know we don’t get a lot of specific answers beyond that. We know we need specific answers to motivate us and give us hope. We could use a set of instructions to know what to do today, and some sense of what matters for the long term, the really long term, like eternity. What, something beyond just reciting the right liturgy today in order to play a harp forever?
Salvation and eternal Purpose in our connection to the odd, irritating, obnoxious, benighted person next to us?! Well what’s that say of Heaven? What is Heaven like anyway? What if we don’t know how to play a harp? What are we supposed to do and what will Heaven be like? Maybe we get answers after all.
To share something authentic of the self and have that bless another, that is Heaven, that is the loving Purpose, that is the reason for God breathing Life into us, that is the message of the ages and the scriptures and in our hearts. That is Unity. That is believing in and following Yeshu. That is the Christos.
Every other joy in life points to this Joy. This is our eternal destiny. Toward that glorious shared essence of individual self mutually blessing each other we are growing,
The joy of shared self amplifying another's joy in turn amplifying our own joy, on and on. This vision of paradise is so far beyond mere peace and lack of conflict as to be incomprehensible to our worldly minds.
We do indeed have a long, long way to go, but how it helps to get glimpses of where we are going, glimpses when our true nature and self is not only accepted by but celebrated by others for the blessings we bring them simply by being who and what we are.
When the essence of your Self is not just accepted, not just safe, not just secure, not even just loved, but when the essence of your Self by its very being and expression and actualization brings blessing and joy to another, there is the Kindom, there is Heaven, there is Paradise, there is the Spirit and Christos and Heavenly Father and Holy Mother and our Destiny Home that awaits us.
Miracles
Are we getting answers after all? Glimpses of meaning and answers about what to do here and now…..and even a sense of the nature of Heaven? What’s next…..can we start expecting to witness miracles? What do we believe about miracles? Anyone squirming in their seat? We know too much to believe, too much of science and data. What forms could miracles take nowadays? We don’t see evidence of miracles……do we?
Such a loss to not allow belief in miracles.
The world is unpredictable chaos and madness.
Nothing has ever turned out predictably.
Better to be realistic about that.
Yet in the midst of the swirling chaos,
wonders and beauty arise,
connections are made,
love is born,
many do survive,
freedom arises in spite of trenchant opposition and crushing corruption.
Do not write off the miracles,
perfectly explainable miracles perhaps,
but miracles nonetheless.
The foundational structure of the world is relentless, destructive entropy,
yet here we are.
Human nature is greed and selfishness, evolved out of combat and survival,
yet care and compassion and generosity still abide and ease the inevitable suffering.
The cellular structures of organic life forms shut down if cold, cease functioning if hot, function only with a preposterously complex and meticulously precise recipe of enzymes and nucleotides and proteins subject to the runaway propagation of cancers,
yet here we are.
All political systems are subject to the ignorant mob, the delusional despot, and endemic corruption,
yet society endures.
Chaos rules, collapse threatens, confusion reigns,
yet progress continues and love abides.
Do not write off the miracles
for they unfold only with your unwitting participation,
and this world of madness and chaos and violence and greed
desperately needs the miracles,
desperately needs you to allow the miracles,
to be a part of the miracles,
whether you admit you believe them or not.
Our physical senses blind us to a greater reality, leaving us in the corporeal, temporal maze of this world
So we know, or better said, our heart knows, deeper Truths than our worldly senses can verify. Yet here we are, souls trapped in an experience limited to physical senses.
No wonder fear is ever present in this corporeal life. All our sensory inputs are so far isolated from spiritual Reality. It is as if to live in this carnal world is to enter a maze of walls and barricades erected by the senses. Our individual consciousness is left awash in temporal senses that hide the Reality of spiritual consciousness.
We scramble through this worldly maze, knowing not toward what, bouncing off the walls of our physical perceptions. .
We try to not condemn each other as we get in each others’ way, but that is hard to do. We briefly experience contact and camaraderie when we share a segment of the maze with someone going the same direction, but as soon as we choose a different path we promptly lose that contact and we are again left alone in the maze.
Some of us immerse in the running itself, eschewing trying to map or understand the maze.
Conversely some of us expend great effort to decipher the maze, even refusing to join the running until knowing in which direction to run. Of course even upon finally deciding the direction to run the problem of decision recurs at the next confounding junction.
Some recognize we are just running blindly in a maze and quit in despair.
Most never notice the nature of the temporal walls constraining their perception and furiously run and run and run wherever chance turns direct them.
With prayer and meditation and theories and equations some try to see through or over or around the walls of the maze. Some of them try to tell us what they saw.
We all know only that we will each reach our own end of the maze, singularly our own. For all our running we are actually trying not to run toward that unforeseeable ending but to avoid it as long as possible.
For all our contemplative and scientific and liturgical efforts we do not understand much about the nature of the maze. We do not even know much about the sections others of us traverse, being too busy trying to wend our own way through our particular path.
Ultimately then we are left pretty much just with each other in our brushing past - getting in the way - entangled whiskers encounters.
That may in fact be the biggest clue we have to the nature of this worldly maze…….the only thing we can really know is that we have others in here dealing with the same puzzle. Run as we may the maze doesn’t offer much more than its ending, the ending we hope doesn’t lurk down this particular corridor of the moment but which inevitably lurks around some dark corner.
Perhaps we should pay less attention to the unrewarding maze and more to each other.
So we muddle through without specific, I emphasize specific, answers. But maybe we are learning to see a little deeper, that the maze of worldly constraints and carnal senses is a bit of an illusion, an instructional illusion to allow us to discover what really matters, a deeper and eternal Reality.
It’s OK to not be thrilled with that. It’s OK to see it for what it is, but it’s also important to look deeper into the gray and brown until we see past it..
It’s a cold and gray (or brown) time of year, this holiday season
The intensity, the eternity, the infinity of Life, contained in even the most barren moments…..
Dead grass under thin drifts of icy snow, in the moment after all is lost……
even there, at the gray edge of concrete….
even there, in the blank time of having lost it all…..
even that frigid moment under a relentless slate sky……
there when absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, remains,....
even that utterly lifeless moment remains connected to all.
All color of life is painted on a gray canvas of death,
the pastel watercolors
waiting since the first touch of brush to be washed away by the dripping of time.
Know, know deeply this crumbling facade we mistake for life.
Add your colors to the canvas, for you can do no more,....
and no less.
Shelter as best you can from the biting wind
Weather your moment in the frozen storm.
Feel what passed for life stripped to its marrow,
And know the blindness of imprisonment in the concrete moment,
know it must be so and know in the eternity of the moment an abiding Truth,
A Truth not yet revealed,
something deeper than the gray canvas,
something acutely known by its momentary absence.
The cold, the gray, all rendered barren, that out of the intensity of the moment time may dissolve into eternity, and Life be born anew as Light connecting the Infinite.
Cold, gray, barren……it’s the holiday season!
Defiant-Subversive-Seditious Christmas
I’ve already attended two Christmas concerts!
We approach the holiday season, again. In light of the condition of the world, how does Christmas fit into it? How do we make Christmas relevant? …..real Christmas, not perverted materialistic commercial Christmas.
How I love singing those traditional religious carols!
“What child is this…..haste, haste to bring Him laud…”
“Joy to the world…”
“Hark the Herald angels sing….”
Oh the joy in those words! Oh to sing them full throated and robustly and sincerely, to sing them with choir and voices of praise and celebration!
That is a joy easily forgotten in the course of a worldly year. So badly, I at least, need the reminder of salvation and triumph, triumph of the gift of Love incarnated in the most preposterous places and improbable form.
The Christos enters, and we sing of triumph eternal, triumph still well hidden in the world’s grim condition, but oddly enough triumph enabled by the world’s grim condition.
The Love that radiates from highest heights of Heaven is pale and wan, with nothing over which to triumph.
No, the glory of the Christmas Love arises out of the dung and blood - the fear and pain - the conflict and combat. This is Love triumphant, Love so bright it can shine through the rubble and debris of the human world.
We do not need the pale suffusing Light of the angels in their perfect realms. We need a Light sharp and penetrating, a Light insistent and demanding, a Light that can undo even our stubborn clinging to darkness.
Let there be Light, Light unquenchable, Light that can illuminate even battlefields and boardrooms.
Let there be Light that even the marketers and manipulators, that even politicians and presidents, that even the priests and pugilists cannot extinguish.
Let there be Light, Light bright and startling and arresting, Light unafraid to speak Truth and assault the darkness, Light in a baby’s eyes in the cold and dark and dung of real life.
Let there be Christmas, defiantly merry Christmas, seditiously accepting Christmas, subversively embracing Christmas.
Relationship
. We raised questions and didn’t answer any of them. But it is in the questions that real faith is born. Faith without questions is a pretense, an ephemeral façade.
I may not know much, but in moments of terror and panic and despair I do know my recourse. I know my rescuer and my source of solace, and it is intensely personal.
We live in a carnal world that presents us with only ambiguity about its Source. Our nascent spiritual awareness demands we try to construct a comprehensible structure for the spiritually incomprehensible. Our resulting religious constructs are clumsy shadow representations that serve to help us find reassurance that something underlies and lies beyond this carnal temporal world. Distorted facets of the incomprehensible Truth are contained in each of these religions, varying degrees of Truth hiding in the childish rituals and images and stories that we codify for our comfort.
So in light of the undeniable fact that our personal religion depends more than anything else on where we were born, does it matter which belief construct we trust? For me it absolutely does.
I have no illusions that I happen to have arrived at beliefs that are right while everyone else is wrong. But in our blind stumbling toward conceptualizing the inconceivable, in our individual collections of puzzle pieces that reveal fragments of the still incomplete image of the Greater, I give thanks for the blessing of Connection and Communion and reassurance and Love and acceptance and forgiveness and healing and salvation and comfort that form the core of my religious experience.
We can each believe in different constructs of God(s) and Heaven and ritual and liturgy and soul, or none of the above. Our various constructs can provide some intellectual reference point that in turn provides individual spiritual solace. I cannot claim my model is right and yours is wrong. But I know the intense comforting presence of Spirit I experience when in the dark moments of terror and grief and desperate loneliness I call up the simple, childish, deeply profound lyrics "Jesus loves me this I know….." and "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world…." and I give tearful thanks that I am blessed with that profoundly personal relationship that goes so far beyond religious intellectual constructs.
Sympathy
Then I look at quotes of Yeshu (Jesus), and wonder if He ever said anything kind or sympathetic. He did not pull punches! Same with Paul.
Yeshu never said “bless your heart”. He never said “I understand”. He pretty much just told people what to do. Did the caring, sympathetic, empathetic, compassionate comments just wind up on the cutting room floor? Was there not room for them?
What He did, what he told people to do, and the results, that is all that made it to us today.
“Go, your faith has made you whole”. “Go, your faith has healed your daughter”. Those words we picture being said in a compassionate manner. I can imagine nothing else.
Was sympathy not necessary when action was possible?
The most sympathetic words in the Bible seem to be “fear not”.
Not condemning the woman at the well was pretty sympathetic. Asking people what they wanted was pretty sympathetic.
But we do not get an image of a lot of chitchat. We hear rebukes. We hear criticisms. We hear honesty.
But then we hear the Beatitudes. There we hear comfort, comfort for the meek, the poor in spirit, and those who grieve.
But small talk comfort, the “oh that’s too bad”, the “I know how you feel”, the “I share your pain”, we don’t hear that, we don’t hear that from anyone in the Bible.
It is left up to us. Will we be compassionate? Will we be sympathetic? Will we extend condolences? When we cannot heal, when we cannot feed, when in our ignorance we cannot give brilliant advice, commands, directions, or advice, will we give our care and consideration? When left with nothing else we can do, will we express Love even though reduced to feeble and seemingly powerless words?
We have no command or example in the Bible to do so. We are left with only whatever command and calling we discern in our heart.
Condolences and compassionate listening in lieu of action and directives seem a cheap and tawdry substitute. But when all our power and capacity and insight and wisdom is reduced to just the Love in our heart, when we cannot raise the dead or heal the sick or guide the lost, surely, surely it is still a holy and blessed and loving course to empathetically express our oneness with those grieving, those suffering, those confused.
We should not need scriptural guidance for this. If we have chosen Love we should have no choice in this. Do all we can. Heal all we can. Guide and teach all we can. And humbly accept how little we can do and heal and teach; and then let the Love of the Source flow through us, sharing grief, carrying pain, and leaving none of us alone.
There is a stunning perfection in the oneness of all, and a stunning ongoing disaster in the chaos of all.
I read of the nucleome, the astonishing 3D packing of the genetic material in the cell nucleus, a packing comparable to taking a utility line stretching from Manhattan to San Francisco and packing it into an average sized two story house. And that packing has to be perfect, not merely stuffed, certainly not random. The proximity of each gene to each other within the folded and knotted and twisted complexity determines the function of all, a subtle mis-arrangement resulting in birth defects, cancers, and all manner of horrors.
That, and the perfection of the location and composition of earth for promoting intelligent life, and the perfection of the physical constants that lay the foundation of the universe ----- all this perfection in every direction, our central location (Bodhi the Bodes hops up into my lap, speaking of perfection) in the universe, the astonishing perfection of genetic structure, which in turn relies on the perfection of the universal constants that determine all chemistry, the perfection of our location in the history of the universe allowing us to discern the beginnings, and to observe the structures of galaxies, none of which will be possible in the distant future ------astonishing perfection in every direction, and in the vast distances, and in the most microscopic dimensions ----- all this perfection allowing precisely and exactly ….. us.
It is hard to not conclude that it all is indeed oriented about consciousness and the conscious experience, consciousness not arising out of the evolving universe, but the Universe arising out of consciousness, or Consciousness, or the imperative teleology of Consciousness.
This latter scenario would give rise to a Universe in which all would necessarily fit, all would necessarily perfectly accommodate the One Source from which it arose, because it cannot be anything else, since it is in fact part and parcel of that One Source. So the Consciousness, or the elements of consciousness, all see a perfect fitting and perfect consistency for nothing else is possible.
But then come the cancer and the wars and the extinctions. In that astonishing perfection of the nucleome lie the broken links and the misplaced kinks. In that perfection of the location of the earth still collide the asteroids and meteorites that occasionally annihilate most life on the planet.
The entire universe spins and expands in the perfection that puts the conscious children of God at this perfect place and moment, and those children remain trenchantly stupid and self-destructive.
(Bodhi uses my left wrist as a pillow, little face resting its left side on my wrist, nose facing keyboard. This is a rare and wonderful treat. I don’t know where the ‘Tasha is, her absence allowing this Bodhi interlude).
Stunning perfection and violent chaos…..the deep and profound paradox of our existence.
Our minds cry that the perfection cannot be, it is too improbable, too ridiculous, too deep, infinitely deep in every direction and dimension we look, too perfectly fitting to accommodate exactly and precisely us.
Our souls cry that the clash and conflict chaos cannot possibly be; surely that planetary ripple cannot induce a seismic event resulting in incomprehensible horror for hundreds of thousands; that minor twist in a DNA strand can’t possibly leave our dear, precious loved one suffering and dying in that room full of soulless equipment.
The perfection beckons us to look deeper, to discover ever more convincing improbabilities, and to worship the Conscious Source at whose very heart we reside.
The random chaos and the cruel fates arising out of that chaos stoke our cynicism and bitterness, battering resolve into resignation.
Inspiration and desperation hold hands across the gulf dividing infinite perfection from stochastic desolation.
Indeed, as promised at our distant and forgotten Beginning, we have come to know Good from Evil.
We would do well to deeply know both, to acknowledge both, to marvel at the perfection while grimly bearing the consequences of the chaos.
Let us not deny either, neither pretending that the perfection is inviolate nor sinking into the despair of hopelessness engendered by the violent chaos.
This is paradox perfect and profound, every quantum value of the Universe combining to produce precisely you in this exact moment, every quantum fluctuation of the Universe promising to destroy you and all you love.
So do Purpose and perfection, that preposterous confluence of quantum values and temporal and spatial location that give birth to precisely ordered nucleomes running the biological machinery that serves elements of consciousness (you), meekly succumb to stochastic chaos, all Love and beauty inexorably dissolving into doom and disaster?
Or, in ways beyond our comprehension and counter to our wishes, is the chaos, all the molecular and stellar violence, somehow part of the perfection?
There are of course no defensible answers to a genuine paradox. But there are our own answers, the answers that define us even if they don’t resolve the paradox.
Perhaps in those answers, in the answers we freely choose and in our acutely individual responses to the Paradox of Life and the Universe,….
….we fulfill the Purpose of the Paradox, continuing the Creation process,….
….that process that so perfectly balanced energy in all its detectable and undetectable forms and so exquisitely intertwined proteins and nucleic acids,….
….that process that in its perfect, stochastic chaos opens the door to liberate individual consciousness to accept the Invitation to perfection.
DEER
The little deer came back!
I return from my walk to see at least six deer crossing our street from our yard, heading east toward the traffic. I turn around, walk all the way back to the ranch so as to not scare them in that wrong direction, hoping that if I circle around the block I can head them off and get them to head back toward the hills.
On the next street over I see the deer have turned and are walking north toward the Ranch. I turn around again, looping around the block again, again to avoid scaring them into a bad direction.
Now, an hour or so later, they are back in our yard!....at least four of them are, maybe two mommies and two babies. I feel good about having changed course so as to not scare them toward traffic!
They munch weeds; What a remarkable blessing, to be able to see them so close and so safely. Seeing them on a hike or walk or while in the car is a different situation, some schedule requiring I keep moving. Here I can keep working while looking down on them. Such a lovely blessing!
The little ones’ ears are so huge and fuzzy compared to their faces! Their noses are still short compared to the adults.
Three of the four have now disappeared .
They look healthy, the lush growth from the wet spring and early summer having been good for them.
They keep moving. Deer always keep moving. They stand in the middle of a feast of many varieties of foods, but they keep moving.
Grabbing a moment. We do tend to grab moments.
Curse of the miracle
“My time has not yet come” Yeshu told his mother when asked to turn water into wine.
He knew what would happen when the world learned of miracles. The world would never again leave Him alone. The demands would start. The fame would start. The questions would start. The pressure would start. The disapproval and criticism and jealousy and condemnation would start. It would all be out of His control.
That is why He often told those just healed to keep their mouths shut. Though impossible to keep the secret, the less publicity the better, for the inevitable result would simply arrive that much sooner.
The questions would be inescapable. The answers would have to be honest. Those answers would anger everyone.
Do a miracle. Watch all hell break loose. Do a miracle and find yourself in the midst of the demanding world.
This world does not take kindly to miracles, and does not respond gently to the concomitant Truth.
Do a miracle. Watch the crowds, the demanding crowds, swarm. Watch the jealous powers that be begin their reprisals for daring to cast their authority in an uncomplimentary light.
That’s nothing peculiar about first century Palestina. Those responses hold true in the school clique and the bike club and the boardroom and the halls of power by whatever name.
“My time has not yet come.” He knew His time would be almost over when the world heard of the miracles and the crowds gathered, crowds that so easily can become mobs.
This world is always ravenous for the next miracle, whether a cure or an investment or a weight loss program. This world will also sooner or later crucify anyone and everyone that has the misfortune of becoming a center of attention.
“My time has not yet come.” That first request was simply the first demand, the first of endless demands, the same demands we would make.
“My time has not yet come.” Don’t you figure He had to dread the coming of that time? Imagine knowing there would never again be a safe moment, a quiet moment, a moment when people in the town were not be looking at you either wondering what you would do next or what kind of trouble you would bring or why you were not doing more for them.
Do a miracle? Better screw up your courage first and be realistic about what you are letting yourself in for. This is the world, where every new gift multiplies the demands and where no miracle goes unpunished.
Visual seductions
How is it that so much that looks so appealing in this worldly life turns out to be so appalling? We are faced with the tempting, shiny fruit of the Garden over and over.
Humanity dresses up its soldiers in dress uniforms, crisp and colorful and devoid of the blood that will soak so many of them. We dress our football players in marketers’ colors to distract from the brain injuries that will devastate the later years of the players. The fighter jets and bombers and rockets always look glorious, the most dangerous women are often the most beautiful, the most dangerous men are often the best dressed, the car that seduces us to spend too much money and drive too fast always has a gorgeous mask of a body, a mask that will crumple about us as we lie bleeding and dying in its wreckage.
We are easily seduced by worldly appearances, the modern marketing version of the fruit in the Garden, and we allow them to pull us into worldly entanglements and involvements and investments. Then we find war involves nothing about crisp uniforms, the broken bones in the game hurt, the beautiful woman or man is also beautiful to the affair partner, the shiny metal and synthetic materials are used to drop bombs and deliver warheads. We are easily seduced by the shine and the glory, pulling us into worldly bonds, teaching us over and over that this carnal world is, once you are inextricably entangled in it, a bloody and ugly and dangerous place that will steal your soul.
Beware man's contrived, passing, physical beauty lest it blind you to eternal beauty. The uniforms and shine and sculpted curves and marketing images all serve to hide some brutal reality and each of them rust or tatter or fade with time and closer inspection. Conversely, eternal beauty reveals Truth and grows brighter with time and deepening awareness.
We will all be seduced. Our job is to grow through and out of the experience, learning to discern, learning to accept the enduring beauty that is offered through Life liberated from illusory worldly temptations.
(ir)relevance
What message could possibly be relevant for people of this corporeal world?
“You are loved.” Would people accept that?
“Eternal love arises from the evil and suffering of this world.” Would anyone understand that?
“The Purpose unfolds through miracles.” How many would scoff at that?
Visions
I have had two experiences some people might term “visions”, and a number of other experiences that came close but without the distinct visual component. For someone my age that's not very many, but I'll be grateful for quality if not quantity.
Yet it seems describing such visions would be pretty irrelevant to anyone else. Shouldn’t ideas and philosophies be of greater interest, intellectual and spiritual concepts that could change lives, change one’s outlook on life, change the understanding of life? Why would my visions be of any interest to anyone? Why would anyone believe them? I would not believe them if the tables were turned.
Both visions, or better said, whole-life experiences, were profound gifts, life changing gifts, among the most cherished and astonishing experiences of my life. Anyone else however should approach my “visions” with skepticism, and if insistent about pursuing “visions”, maybe they should get their own darned visions.
To experience something absolutely jaw-dropping in its magnitude, a vision, a transcendent episode, an out-of-body passage, is to experience something essentially impossible to communicate to others, and to experience something about which others should hold deep skepticism.
Tales of visions and transcendent episodes and out-of-body-passages should be considered delusional or deceptive or at best doubtful by the hearer. It is what comes of such experiences, what the person having the experience subsequently does with their lives, the lessons learned from the experience, the changes wrought by the experience, that is what the hearer should assess and judge and consider whether to incorporate into their own lives.
Break
There is such wonderful news for the world, condensed into the phrase "the Kingdom is at hand". Of course that phrase has to be individually made relevant for anyone hearing it.
But what can you do for people determined to not hear?
Oh to help them accept their liberation! But the trust is not placed.
Such enduring anger, such tragic anger.
Only Love can penetrate it. But how to communicate the Love over the barriers people erect?
Such beauty awaits! But also such sorrow. Seek Unity with your fellow children of God, and feel the seeing pain of their betrayal. Immerse in the healing beauty of Nature, and flee before the bulldozers.
What to do for these people, these stiff-necked people? What could possibly temper their anger and bitterness to allow healing and embrace?
Sorrow for them. Grieve for them. Each in their time.
Such potential awaits, but in most cases not now, not here.
They are a frightening and dangerous lot. They are hard to touch. Listen to them, listen to the aching loneliness they do not recognize. Look at their suffering, so much that could be eased.
You can only do what you can do. Some have had the blessings of Unity in their lives and lost it to tragedy and still not learned the lessons.
Do what you can. There is no teaching. Even actions and gifts do not penetrate the barriers, much less words. It is tragic. Sometimes you can only ask and grieve. There are no answers or solutions. All Creation grieves. Join them, be part of that great wailing sorrow for the willfully fallen. And provide an open door for someone else.
TORMENT OF UNITY
So did I have it exactly backwards? I thought joy was to be found in Unity, especially Unity with other people. But in people lies conflict, hatred, violence, and betrayal.
I said possessing materials and worldly pursuits offered only anti-life. Yet one can reliably derive at least momentary pleasure from the worldly creation and accomplishment.
Did I have it all wrong, at least for this world? Is that what happens upon eating the fruit in the Garden? Is that why my life has turned out the way it did? Was I completely wrong? Was I foolish to not conform to the world? Is pursuit of Unity just a torture in this world? Ever rarer has it seemed the few who could understand must be. I now cannot imagine even one understands.
Is investing life in new floors and yards and home decor the best we can hope for? Is investing in Love and interpersonal Unity mere foolishness? Does interpersonal Unity not exist anywhere in this universe?
Flood and fire and decay will claim all our possessing materials. But death and betrayal will claim all our relationships.
Is it only wishful thinking, this interpersonal Unity? Are we simply not even remotely ready for it? Did we lose even the desire for it upon leaving the Garden?
Is it just a torment to even propose seeking it?
Is there any point to describing this aspect of the Kingdom?.....the whole point of the Kingdom.
Is it useless here, all these Unity concepts? It is certainly impractical at best.
But all is so pointless without that! There is no Reality without that!
They are all just so far from recognizing or understanding it.
I describe an incomprehensible destiny without a way to get there or a motivation to start the journey.
Oh yes, the message is needed, needed here and now. But none can hear.
It is not illusion or imagination, this Unity. We are just too far from it to care. No one knows what they are missing.
The message is as true as ever, but seldom realized in this world. But this world doesn't matter. As pointless and impractical as the message might be in this world, it still can for someone, a lost sheep, start them on an eternal journey.
No, Unity will not be found here. The Garden’s fruit of knowledge set these souls on their material course. Nothing will change that in this world. That is why anything that can even slightly ameliorate the suffering here and now is so needed. That is why hope for a different reality is needed to start the course.
It is not a message of or for this world. It is to heal the rare lost sheep that has discovered the emptiness of this world. It is not practical. It is wishful thinking…..based on eternal Reality, far more enduring than anything here.
Understanding, vision, open eyes, that is what is needed, and that was destroyed by the fruit. Yet still progress happens, still lost coins are found.
Yes, you were utterly mistaken to hold out hope for Unity here. You experienced it by miracle, nothing else, so you would know the message, so you could deliver the message. It makes as little sense as "turn the other cheek". That's not its point.
Any effect on this world will not be noticeable. The effects will be infinite and eternal.
It makes no sense in this world because this world makes no sense. Since when did Truth have to make sense?
No one knows they want it. You know everyone wants it. They are just blinded by eating the fruit in the Garden. Don't worry about lack of a way. This world can not show any way. But of course there is a way. Relax. Let it happen. You will look back and clearly see the path that was so invisible before you.
You had Unity, in that one, and in that house, so you could receive the message. Those who lose all the world will be ready to learn. Those who lost what seemed like Unity relationship never saw it or knew it. They were still trapped by the world. You have known many like that. They cannot experience Unity until losing the world, even if Unity stands before them.
There will be many. Give them something to hope, when they have learned to not hope in this world.
WIND
Raging winds. For some reason I love the winds today, a rare response on my part. They are warm winds. I have a house to retreat to. But more than that I savor the potential for energy and change they portend.
Did a rare evening walk. Watched a hummer catching insects over the pond. I’ve seldom if ever seen that. Back and forth, up and down, rapid course corrections, over and over it zipped across the pond just above the surface.
morning walk:
White Tummy horse shows me the pigs are back!
I return home by the upper trail. I look down and see White Tummy horse at the pigs’ pen. He’s usually not there in the mornings. I suspected what was up, and went down to see, and sure enough, there are two new baby pigs in the pen! Of course White Tummy was visiting them!
WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE?!
How those guys sitting on the sidewalk and leaning against the front wall of the bookstore bother me! How the pair of ladies, perhaps a daughter and mother, cruising in the old beater of a car, with looks of abject bitterness on their faces, how they bother me!
How the news bothers me!
How the collapse of my country bothers me!
Who are they?
Who are those people so different from me?
How could they possibly have turned out the way they did?
Just how malleable are these human spirits, set on opposite life-courses by mere whim of circumstance and parenting?
Who are those people, who look so different from me?
Who are those people, who act so different from me?
Do they share none of my fears or wants?
Do they know nothing of the things I know?
How far away they seem, in a different world.
What are they doing this morning?
Have they ever prayed?
What do they expect to do today?
And the dreams, the dreams,
What are their dreams?
There he shuffles, sucking on a pacifier cigarette, pants falling off, his black clothing covering an explosive risk of violence, or so says my paranoid mind. But what are his dreams?
There, perhaps only there, can we compare and determine how fundamentally different we are.
If we looked at our dreams, if we looked at unleashed hopes, how different would we be?
Circumstance and choices have put those people into lives so dramatically different from mine.
But compare the dreams, the dreams and wishes of the white trash ladies in the beater car, the dreams and wishes of the goth curb huggers, compare the dreams and wishes, and is there any chance that maybe those people, distant – strange – alien – threatening, would be revealed to be this person?
I have long thought I would love to ask people so different, like the tattooed girl begging for money in the parking lot, how did you wind up like this? How did your life turn out so differently from mine? What influences and choices set us on such drastically different courses?
But perhaps the better question would be “what are your dreams? What would a really, genuinely, wonderful life look like? Would our dreams differ as drastically as our lives?”
Yes, there is the question.
“Do our dreams differ as drastically as our lives?”
What if they did not? What if we really wanted the same thing?
I don’t know that we do. Perhaps their dreams revolve around unlimited booze, drugs, and sex. Certainly the dreams of people I know well dramatically differ from my own.
Do we choose our dreams? Or are our dreams an outgrowth of what and who we choose to be?
Yes, “how did we turn out the way we did” is an interesting question. But “what are our dreams?” seems far more relevant for the future and for our relationships.
Apply the question in the peace negotiations and the international conflict and perhaps some basis for a mutually beneficial future could be found. Apply the question in the relationship and perhaps at least you could determine the viability of and possibilities for the relationship.
Perhaps wars and divorces could be avoided if people first asked “for what to you long?”
Perhaps most marriages would never happen. Perhaps we would find we would best keep our distance.
Perhaps we would be disappointed. Perhaps we would feel more alone.
But the question, “what are your dreams and hopes” would surely lead to greater understanding, even if not acceptance.
Who are those people? Perhaps upon removing circumstance and respective bad choices, our dreams could reveal they are simply me.
WHO ARE WE?
Watching Nova on the spread of humans across the planet.
There we are. There is our physical form.
There we are….creating.
There we are, 160,000 years ago.
There we are, exploring.
There we are, killing.
There we are, today.
There we are, vulnerable and dominant.
There we are, death as a way of life.
Surely we did not have the luxury of caring for the animals we were killing…..did we?
At what point did any spirit of Love enter this evolution? Or was Love always there, and we lost it as we evolved?
There we are, expressing ourselves with art and decoration.
There we are, marking ocher 75,000 years ago.
There we are, communicating.
How much could they communicate?
Did they communicate better than we about how they felt and deeply personal issues?
….or are we only now learning to communicate anything beyond the mechanical and that relevant for survival?
When did fear enter the occasion? Was it always the prime motivator?
There we are, humanity then and now.
There we are, in our diversity.
There we are, pain the only certain common denominator.
There we are, filling the world. There we are, the product of our evolution, the product of our hungers, the product of our needs.
There we were, intimately connected with and contacting Nature.
There we were, part of something, and knowing it.
Were we always moving toward something, or were we leaving something?
We’ve no idea how we did what we did. We are not even sure what we are today, much less what we were.
MIGRATIONS
Program notes:
Humans could migrate out of Africa because of a climate change creating lower sea levels, allowing direct walking to the Arabian peninsula…maybe.
Reaching the Mediterranean was easier during a time when more rain allowed migration north across the Sahara. The Arabian peninsula would also have had rivers and green areas.
Humans reaching Africa would have been skinnier than Neanderthals. Neanderthals evolved for the cold.
Human kidneys evolved in a jungle environment, hence they need to flush a lot of water. Humans in dry climates had to discover how to find and carry and store water.
Neanderthals had no weapons for throwing, only thrusting. The arriving humans had throwing spears, able to kill at a distance.
Ice ages arrived rapidly, in less than ten years. Chaos would have erupted. Familiar landscapes and animals would have disappeared in years.
Neanderthals were twice as old as homo sapiens. But after one of the biggest of the ice ages, it was Neanderthals who were on the brink of extinction.
The oldest North American skeleton is about 13,000 years old. It was discovered in the mid-20th century near Bozeman Montana.
A 9000 year old skeleton of Kennewik man provided a DNA opportunity. But tribes objected.
For the Bozeman skeleton, one local tribe protested, one said OK.
The researcher had grown up on the ranch where the bones were discovered.
Analysis proceeded.
The Bozeman child skeleton revealed, after four years, genes from the east Asia and Siberia. This gene combo is not found in Asia though, but only in America. There was at some point a cross with east Asians and Siberians. Native Americans are genetically unique.
Glimpses.
Occasionally I see glimpses, glimpses of what we are, of how we are.
Occasionally I almost wonder if I might get more than a glimpse. In moments of Deep Communion, in moments of awareness, might I attain that state of transcendence that can then lead to allowing the holy a greater incarnation?
I wonder. I wait.
I certainly see far more now than I used to. I certainly more vividly see the storms of human delusions as they coalesce into great political movements.
I see the delusions and illusions of individuals, and it is easy to extrapolate to what they might someday become when combined with others’ fears and anger.
Isolated! Unaware! Blind!
That is our curious condition, able to consider God and eternity and the Greater, but not able to discern them.
We are left with only Love.
So I love kitties, I love watching the Bodes all energetic on these cool mornings when it is too cool to put them out.
I love sitting here writing, watching the neighborhood activities.
I love going for a walk in the cool evening and seeing families out walking with the children. I love seeing the deer in the yards. It is idyllic.
Then this morning I read of Afghan asylum seekers in Europe getting sent back to Afghanistan, and I grieve.
I have read much of Afghanistan. What an ongoing tragedy, and what an example of human madness. I see it all playing out again, both in Afghanistan and now in Syria.
I read my mom’s Sunday School lesson. She was darned good at that, shockingly good.
WHAT ARE WE?
So here we are, the product of family and upbringing and examples and circumstance.
So here we are, the product of inherited genetic structure.
Hardware and firmware and software, all telling us what to do, and here we are, not knowing what to do.
It is quite laughably curious that with all the genetic and environmental and experiential programming we do not readily know what to do in every situation. Is it that we are just waiting to see what all that programming will finally decide? Is our indecision indicative of freewill, or is it merely our lack of patience in letting the programmed algorithms run their course and reach their conclusion?
Is our consciousness a tool for Choice, or is it merely a window of observation?
If the latter is the case, then we can relax and just enjoy the show.
But somehow that is deucedly difficult. It seems inescapable that our decision process involves the software tickling our fears, pains, and desires, as if insisting that some indeterminate element without us, whatever “us” is, ultimately make the decision.
We make the decision, and it often feels as if we probably knew what we were going to do all along. But it certainly did not feel like that before the decision.
Is our genetic, environmental, and experiential programming something from which we should struggle to escape? Is freewill something we have to fight for and claim?
The questions are of course all academic, for we cannot answer any of them. We merely choose our belief and response to them…..or do we?
STARVE, FREEZE, AND GET EATEN
On den couch, in dark. ‘Tasha kitty in my lap.
Such blessings, these kitties! Such a source of comfort! Such a source of acceptance!
Such cuddlers! Last night as we watched a special on TV ‘Tasha sat on my shoulder. Then, as most evenings, when I went to bed she cuddled up against me between me and the edge of the bed.
Oh these details of life no one will ever read! But perhaps they will mean something to me someday.
Oh life, you strange and curious experience.
Life and this world, not even remotely how we would want them to be.
So we spend our life trying to reshape them into what we would want.
There is some deep irony in all our struggles,
as if the real answer would simply be to stop struggling.
But surely that is not possible. We would starve and freeze and get eaten, not necessarily in that order.
Life! This accursed carnal life!
The story of the Garden is surely a story to try to reassure ourselves that something better is possible.
Bodes pawsages the couch above my head.
Something better is indeed possible, and it is happening to me right now, with two kitties expressing their desire to be near me.
Here is a little focal point of that Garden,
a touch of the potential of life,
Does it lie ahead, or does “ahead” get rendered meaningless by the conclusion of Time?
Perhaps my own loss of my fiance' was too fresh, and news of suffering and disaster was too painful to absorb. Certainly last night’s program poignantly focused on loss.
I see that program on the same day that I read mom’s personal history. It is good to delve back into one’s past, but only to a limited degree.
The emotions evoked by those images from the past, mom’s words and the news events of my 20’s (including pictures of a young guy my age who looked remarkably like me) are not easily deciphered, and that is an indication of how important it is to expose myself to them, and to explore them. There is much to be learned there.
But it is important to learn that which is relevant to the present and the future, not to dwell in that which cannot be changed and cannot teach.
The explorations of emotions past should shine a light into the future.
I love to savor the security and peace and safety of the complete dark and quiet each morning.
It is time perhaps not well spent, but necessarily spent.
Points of disagreement….how do we respond in those moments? That defines the relationship and defines our suffering.
Disagreement…..that is natural…..why can the resolution not be a laughing, brotherly, sisterly exercise in tolerance and mutual learning and generosity and sharing?
Two kitties in my lap! Bodes tries to squeeze in beside ‘Tasha!
Success! A pawsage! The longest pawsage! Then Bodes curls up, and ‘Tasha snuggles against him!....both in my lap!.....with the computer!.....for a long, long time! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Two little Waschbaers trigger the patio light.
Later in morning: broken voiced coyote sings an aria from somewhere near the neighborhood.
WHAT WILL BE DO IN HEAVEN?
Once in Heaven do we shed all the influences of this carnal world that warp us into our worldly personalities? What are we like once all the fear and hunger and struggle for survival is passed?
Our behavior and beliefs are clearly a product of our passage through this carnal world. Upon making the quantum transition into Heaven, with all the worldly references instantly stripped away, what is left?
Obviously the vast majority of people will find that their beliefs were abjectly wrong. Only a minority will wake up or pass through and see that their conception of God and spirit was dead on.
All that with which we so frantically busied ourselves, mainly survival in some form, eating – working – planning – shopping – growing – raising, will be of no more relevance.
What in our temporal, carnal lives is in any way related to what we will do and see and experience in Heaven?
Forget the schedule, time pressures, battles, shopping, and combat. Forget pleasing the boss, washing clothes, sweeping floors, and learning new computer systems.
If this worldly life is a training exercise for life in Heaven it seems woefully misdirected. Almost nothing with which we concern ourselves will be of any use in Heaven.
Is there anything at all that might be of relevance? Is there anything at all in our present lives that provides a prelude and practice for life in Heaven?
Will we feel completely lost and at loose ends upon arriving in Heaven?
Does “the Kingdom is at hand” really mean that at hand is a radically different way of existing bearing essentially no resemblance to anything in any moment of this carnal-worldly life?
Or……does it mean that even here, even now, we can invoke some of the same ways of being that we will experience in Heaven?
Perhaps we cannot imagine what Heaven will be like because we allow so little of it entry into our daily lives.
Might it be a useful exercise to imagine that first hour, that first day, that first week in Heaven, to imagine what will unfold, what will we experience…..and upon attaining that momentary vision of our hope…..to try to live that way here and now? Is there anything to prevent at least trying?
Conscious awareness of our personal vision of Heaven will not liberate us from going to work in the morning and making the doctor appointment to address that unsettling symptom. But even in the midst of the schedule and demands and threats, surely we can notice and cultivate some aspects of our actions and attention that will bear at least some passing resemblance to the Heaven for which we hope.
Maybe that means we simply take a break. Maybe it means we notice the warm sunlight. Maybe it means letting a kitty cuddle on us. Maybe it means a slightly longer and more sincere hug. Maybe it means momentarily setting aside disagreements and arguments and fights to just be in each other’s’ company.
C’mon, use a little imagination. Heaven is not that strange. It is this temporal world that is strange. Imagine Heaven. Imagine what will occupy your thoughts and time in Heaven.
Then redirect your thoughts and some portion of your time to invoke that image here and now. Discover that the Kin’dom is indeed at hand.
COMMUNICATING WITH DECEASED LOVED ONES
Of course we long to have some contact with our deceased loved ones. Of course we long for guidance from some wise source of Light. Of course we don’t want to be alone in this carnal world.
Connection and contact and interaction with the spiritual realm may occur, but not in any verifiable and detectable and specific way. Perhaps dying people do in fact get to peer through the veil of the thin places and see long dead relatives. My mom certainly did seem to. Or maybe that was just failing brain chemistry weaving together a tapestry from shards of past and present images.
I cannot quite accept that we are utterly isolated from the individual elements of consciousness that are no longer trapped in this carnal incarceration. Yet I must accept that our communication and interaction is indirect and subtle and unspecific enough as to be confusable with imagination and wishful thinking.
For sure any connection and contact through the veil arises only in cases of genuine and sincere Love.
In that sense the contact is enduring and unambiguous. We may not get instructions or explanations or guidance. We may not quite feel the hug. Our ears may not hear and our eyes may not see through that veil separating us from the departed. But the Love endures and connects and communicates. That may not be helpful in making specific decisions and assessing specific worldly situations. But ultimately it is all that matters. All the specific decisions and worldly situations will pass, whether we make the right ones or not. But the Love, those bonds, those enduring connections, are eternal and more real than any fleeting physical form.
Contact and communication with the dear departed?......in tangible words and images…..no…..for any word and images would be of passing in-consequence, as is all of this world. Contact and communication with the dear departed in the form of Love no longer shackled by corporeal constraints?......absolutely……for this is all that is real and enduring anyway, all that survives the passing from this ephemeral transience we call the physical world.
While constrained to his physical existence we will of course always long for more…..but in fact we already have more than we can for now even imagine.
SHORT WISDOMS
We all reach days in which we wonder what to do with our lives….or at least we ought to.
The failures and dull surprises of normal life should routinely prompt us to examine what we are doing with our only meaningful investment, our life.
Inspection, introspection, and retrospection should be a routine part of life. This is not self-doubt, this is self-confidence and self-construction and self-empowerment. This is being human, as the capacity to choose what to change about one’s self is the only capacity unique to humans.
What should we do with our lives? We dread the circumstances that drag us to such a question. But in those moments of doubt, defeat, loss, and feeling lost, in our own response we set a course toward the human being we would become, we set a course toward becoming human.
LOST IN THE MATERIAL
Look at people, so lost in the material, so enamored of their momentary bodies. Mention of spirit and soul will be welcomed but only if associated with some sugary promise of peace and tranquility. Spirit and soul can be discussed if associated with a cookbook recipe for salvation or a simple step by step program for peace and tranquility.
There is something repugnant about most popular spiritual speakers. Their oversimplification of the struggles of the soul, the saccharin vapidity of the promises of inner peace, the convenience of exotic sounding names and rainbow images with glowing angelic faces, it is repugnant, spiritual snake oil, charlatans of the soul, spiritual con-artists. The sale is too easy, peddling transcendent escapism to these spiritually starving people. Spiritual placebos they peddle, trite little phrases and simple-minded mantras, or conversely, endless volumes of verbosity invoking all the right phrases and optimistic words while saying absolutely nothing.
The world is harsh. The soul gets battered. Any spiritual teaching and teacher that doesn't look directly at that grim fact is denying inescapable reality and denying the power and potential of the human soul to grapple with that reality.
Seeing the beauty in life does not mean seeing the ethereal, cotton candy, fairytale fantasies of escapist meditation. It means seeing the inspirational courage of souls overcoming the burdens and terrors and embarrassments and insecurities and abuse of this harsh world.
Spiritual sugar-pills quickly dissolve in the flood and storm of real life. Seek spiritual foundations firm and enduring, not convenient and alluring. If the spiritual or religious or meditation guide, guru, or godly messenger is too popular it may mean their message is too easy, too simple, too convenient.
In your spiritual journey beware the crowd. Counter-intuitive as it is, fear not the crosses and crucifixions that litter the authentic spiritual path. You are stronger than the flowery fairy-tale soul some would have you believe you are. You are a child of God, whether for now you accept that or not. And you are not alone. You will never be alone, though it may sometimes seem the sustaining Spirit has deserted you.
Escape into the ethereal or pick up your cross…….down one path lies peace and tranquility…..until you open your eyes. Down the other awaits Reality, growth, and your eternal destiny.
God is a verb,
not a noun. Always dynamic, changing, growing, always in perfection.
God is action.
Picture a growing crystal or Mandelbrot pattern, growing in spectacular fashion, always changing and growing. Everything fits. Without that, the patterns in one area clash into other patterns, fracturing the pattern or crystal.
Our focus on our individual consciousness results in crashing, colliding, conflicting boundaries.
RACE OF LIFE
It’s a race,
this life,
but not a race of pursued and pursuer,
for the pursued will inevitably be caught.
The race is among the pursuers,
the accidents, the diseases, the threats, the malignancies, the degeneration,
all the pursuers, there in the race, who will prevail, who will claim the prize,
your life being prize.
You’re the rabbit for the greyhounds. Don’t pretend you are competing in the race.
A grim perspective?
Not at all.
Now you can relax.
You are not competing.
You are fulfilling your role.
One of those pursuers will get you, so it seems,
but no, you will continue,
even after one of the pursuers wins its race.
Don’t worry too much about which pursuer wins the race.
Enjoy the speed while it lasts, and look forward to the next lap, maybe occasionally glancing over your shoulder, not in fear of your pursuers, but bemusement at their frantic chase,
knowing one will win,
but never catch you.
KITTY TEETH CLEANING
I can’t feed Bodhi this morning before his dental cleaning! He doesn’t understand! He’s so patient!
This must have an analogy to our relationship with God, we not understanding the trials and denial of our desires, and being nowhere near as patient as Bodhi.
Faith in God’s Love should mean we curse God a little less and trust a little more. I suspect God would appreciate that.
Bodhi scratching at the bathroom door!
He’s asking for treats!
He’s running down the hall!
He pooped and pinkled to get three treats! He’s feeling OK! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
FINDING OUR ROLE VS. ACCEPTING OUR ROLE
A role…..do we each have a role? Is it pre-ordained? If so, why does it require such a struggle to discover it?
If we pursue the wrong role, is it our fault?
Perhaps the best roles, the most important roles, are the ones we do not even recognize, the ones lacking title and recognition, the ones that fill a spot in the unfolding miracle of Creation, the ones for which we cannot train or get a degree or certificate.
Do we each have a role? Of course, and it is the role we are in, without our knowing it, the role that naturally unfolds without our planning.
Everything and everyone has a role, as every grain of sand in the bricks and mortar has a role.
We want to ascribe some mystical, miraculous portent to our role. And indeed, all roles and every detail of Creation are miraculous and mystical, but that does not necessarily mean dramatic and world-changing.
Our role is whatever place and situation we are in. There we try to do our best. There we try to be authentic and sincere. There we try to love.
It is less “finding our role” than “accepting and acknowledging and celebrating” our role, though it be probably unplanned, unexpected, un-calculated, and unrecognized.
BOBCAT
Bob kitty!
Bob-kitty appears across the street. He walks along the base of this end of the house. He gets to the corner and waits. He’s alert, but not tense.
I take time to grab the binoculars.
Perfect, up close view. I can see details as I’ve not seen before.
Big furry Pfodens (paws).
Looks healthy.
Stealthily moves to the corner of the house and lies in the leaves, looking into the front yard.
Finally he begins slow-motion Bodhi style cat steps, one paw at a time, lifted up and forward, front, then back, while the rest of the body remains utterly motionless.
So beautiful! What a majestic creature! I can’t believe I’m getting to watch this! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
White chest and tummy.
Spots are in rows. I never realized that.
Dark line curving down from his eyes.
The color! Golden.
A 30 minute view.
Coat so thick and lush.
Now watching something in the front yard. Gets that hunting kitty tension.
Squirrel runs out from behind and beside him!
Instant reactions!
They disappear behind the tree, except for the bob-kitty’s little black and white tail that I clearly see for the first time, extended in excitement.
In a moment bob-kitty turns and appears from behind the tree. He runs with his breakfast up the driveway.
He’ll keep coming back here as long as he has that kind of hunting success.
HIDDEN UNITY
Does Unity appear even in the death of the squirrel? Considering that one of the participants in the drama got killed, the event hardly seems an illustration of the joys and beauties of Unity.
Sure, the health of the squirrel does now, at this moment, contribute to the health and well-being of the bobcat. Does the death of the squirrel simply indicate the broken nature of this world? In a perfect world would the squirrel live forever? Or does the death of the squirrel fulfill its role, completing the circle of Unity?
Is it conceivable that an element of consciousness is indeed mortal? Do some, do we, fulfill a role, a role as a grain of sand in the mortar or brick in the construction of Creation?
Does mortality depend on the depth of connections the element of consciousness had?....whether anyone or anything grieves for it?
If that had been my pet squirrel I would now feel loss and would want to know I would again have my pet nibbling out of my hand once we are both in Heaven. As it is, I instead am thrilled the bobcat got breakfast.
My emotional connection to the squirrel seems a rather arbitrary criteria to determine whether that element of consciousness continues through eternity.
“It is good” said the Lord, and I continue to try to reconcile that with what happened to the squirrel and to millions of other suffering and dying elements of consciousness this week, and today, and this minute.
My every instinct, were I honest, thrills at the beautiful bobcat on the hunt, though that hunt if successful will end in terror and pain and death for something. My every instinct feels like, were I honest, that it is indeed “good”. My every instinct and fiber of my being cries “no!” upon remembering my fiance's death and upon thinking of what countless parents and widows and siblings will feel on this very day as a loved one dies.
There is no intellectual contrivance to reconcile this paradox. There is only heart’s chosen response, there is for now only the paradox of this world, there is for now only opportunity to love and contribute as best we can to Wholeness and Unity.
I cheer for the bobcat. I feel sorry for the squirrel. And in blind faith and acceptance of the paradox, I will accept as truth, truth in an eternal perspective, “it is good”.
BOB KITTY
Bob kitty again! Lying in the Street
Then he sees a squirrel in the yard. He tenses. He runs. But this time the squirrel makes it up the tree.
Perhaps because we are all there watching, and Carol is getting close to take pictures, bob kitty runs away on the sidewalk down the Street.
BOB KITTY
Bob kitty! Viewed from the window. 08:30.
Great view with binoculars. Prolonged view.
What a face! White markings. Dramatic appearance, gold and white and black. Bright white highlights around eyes.
Spots along its upper back are in rows.
I don’t know if it can see me through the windows, but while sitting in the Street it looks right at me for a long time. What a joy to look right into the eyes of this majestic creature!
Every move so intense!...so precise, so triggered, so focused, so spring loaded.
Look at that face! This is just a kitten! Usually its eyes are bright and wide, but for a moment it relaxes when no squirrels are in sight, eyes slowly closing like the Bodes.
How I cringe every time a car drives by. The bob kitty never pays any attention at all to the cars. Its entire focus is on the squirrels.
So soft looking! Every time it stands and gallops it looks like an exaggerated Steiff stuffed toy, so perfect and fuzzy and lush!
Look at those giant mitten pfodens!
Lies by the curb, using the curb to hide behind.
Runs in direction of any squirrel. Disappointment every time.
No breakfast yet!
Ear spots, white, pronounced, on the back of its ears, below the pointy tufts.
Such an expressive kitty tail, though so short!....black and white tuft twitching and rising in response to what kitty sees.
As it lies under the car, gray and white kitty comes out and walks down the sidewalk, away from bob kitty, utterly unaware, a perfect target. But bob kitty never even seems to tense, though looking right at gray and white kitty. This would be the perfect opportunity. That is encouraging, that bob kitty may not go after other cats.
It spots a black Abert’s squirrel across the street. Bob kitty flows across the street, glued to the pavement, like a rippling golden carpet, flat, low, never rising even a centimetre as it glides across.
Abert’s squirrel, oblivious to the new object in the street, crosses the street right in front of bob kitty!
Chase! They disappear behind the red trailer in Don’s yard. Did bob kitty get breakfast? I watch and watch but do not see him again.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
CERTAINTY IN UNCERTAINTY
Pre-dawn dark. Winter wind and clouds.
Oh to live with certitude!
Oh, to feel so natural at a job that the job would require no discipline. Oh to see reason and purpose.
Oh to not doubt.
Oh to see how it all unfolds.
Yet curiously that would not work at all, would not work that is for the Purpose.
We are here to promote individual growth.
To know it all, to see it all, to have certainty and confidence, would preclude real commitment to faith.
Indeed, with such certainty and clarity of vision we might accomplish great things. But we would not accomplish our own growth.
There must come a moment of “Father, why have you deserted me?!” There in that anguish, there in the moment, and in the preceding moment of desperate prayer to have this cup taken away that we might not have to drink of it, in the anguished prayer of uncertainty about what has to happen, there is the Purpose, there is our growth into eternity, there is our entry into Love and the family of the children of God.
Oh, to see the path……but such an illumined view would deny us the very reason and nature of our existence.
Let the angels trod paths clear and unambiguous. Such is not to be our fate. We are destined and doomed to choose, to choose our best effort at Love and Purpose, to choose most of all whether we want to love and to serve Purpose.
Setbacks and blind alleys and disillusionment and shattered beliefs are our lot, for that is the path of true commitment, true desire of the holy, true growth in faith.
Let there be moments of doubt, and let us accept them, and then let us move on into deeper love, still insecure and guessing and blind, but filled with faith and desire, full of awareness that we are part of something greater, even if we know not what.
Look not to results and outcomes to determine whether we were right or wrong. Ask instead if we acted in love and faith and desire to serve our God .
With that effort, with that faith, with that commitment, with that giving over of our very being to the Source and Comforter and Savior in whatever guise we can discern, we will discover a budding certainty, not certainty in course of action and outcome and our role in it all, but budding certainty that with unrecognized guidance we will choose a course, that as yet unforeseeable outcomes will fit a greater and loving Purpose, that we can choose to accept our still mysterious role as children of Creation and Creator.
Mid-day
BOBCAT
Bob-kitty! Sitting in the middle of the street again. Goes back and forth across the street.
Eventually settles in against the north curb.
A black Abert’s squirrel runs along the base of the curb right at bob-kitty! Oblivious! But he ducks up the driveway right before reaching bob-kitty, at which point bib-kitty takes off in pursuit, but to no avail.
No breakfast yet this morning.
BOBCAT
What a show! What a thrill to watch the following from just inside our own fence!
I put the kitties out and noticed the deer at the north edge of the oak grove all looking south in unison, just like impala and wildebeest, etc., do in Africa if a predator is in the area.
Magpies were gathering in the oak grove.
Motion! Something up in one of the trunks! It’s bob kitty!
I can barely see him! But I can clearly see a squirrel tail hanging down! Bob-kitty’s eating!
Kitty starts at the head, just like PC did with bunnies.
Throughout this, we keep hearing a deep guttural growling, on and on and on, regularly repeating. I at first thought it was bob-kitty celebrating getting lunch.
He moves to a different branch, always well hidden, but a leg and head still visible to us.
He got lunch! I can’t help but feel some sense of celebration. A big paw holds the poor squirrel.
It looks like an uncomfortable perch for eating.
Does he regularly eat here?
It is so much better to see him here in his natural environment than on the street! So much better to not worry about cars hitting him.
The deer continue to watch, occasionally moving closer.
We’re transfixed. This is a scene out of a nature show.
He looks like a leopard up there.
He finally hops down.
He lies at the base of the trunks and takes a thorough bath, as a proper kitty should.
Finally he starts to walk out of the grove, probably hoping to warm up in the sunshine.
But then he starts running south! At first I think he is on the hunt, but no, mama deer is chasing him!
To south oak grove he runs!
Other deer join in pursuit!
Mama pursues into the grove.
Bob kitty gets flushed out, runs to next little short oak grove.
Mama gives chase again.
Finally either Bob-kitty got away or it’s now far enough away to pose no threat to the deer.
Mom rejoins the family, and grazing resumes.
Thank You! Thank You Thank You!
BOBCAT GHOST
Opening my eyes, the bobcat, directly before me in the street,
Running, to the curb, then along the curb.
Under the silver truck of the neighbor.
Golden eyes,
White upper legs, with circling stripes of spots.
So beautiful, so beautiful.
Such lush fur! Giant round Pfodens!
Eyes squinty in sleepiness, till hearing something.
When he sits he sits just like the Bodhi kitty, hind feet walking forward to join the planted front pfodens (paws).
The man comes out of the house and walks to the truck!
He opens the door, does something, then closes the door.
Bob kitty watches him all the while, at the point of the door opening he slips out from under the truck.
As the man walks back to the house, bob-kitty slips back under the truck.
The man was never aware.
Bob-kitty sees something across the street and stealthily runs across the street. I loose sight of him behind the homeless person’s truck.
Now he’s back! Bounding into the yard! Now across the yard! Now sitting by the house. The magpies gather, going berserk. Zillions, raising a ruckus. A crow joins, kitty runs under the silver truck.
He lies down, waiting for the ruckus to calm down.
Another crow, all gathering in the tree.
Bob-kitty lies by the front tire of the silver pickup.
For all this, before me and around me, the present corporeal and the universal, thank You, thank You, thank You.
BODHIKENS
Playing string toy with Bodes before bedtime is tiring but joyful. How he rolls and runs and jumps and hides and bats and twists and swings!
‘Tasha just needed a reminder to start cuddling in bed. The last few nights she has curled up against me, even returning to that position after getting up to potty.
She has been so brave outside, going up the stairs and exploring the upper garden!
For all these joys, thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
MISSILES
Too cold to sit out with Bodes.
I cannot think about the visit to White Sands Missile Range without thinking about how I was delivered. I have been delivered from all the worldly situations that dragged me down to the world.
Lordy, I shudder when thinking about White Sands Missiles. I would have jumped at an opportunity to work there. Would I have gotten inescapably sucked in? If involved at too young an age would I have not even needed to rationalize working on systems to deliver death?
But look at how young I was when applying for conscience objector status. That act itself would have probably kept me from working at White Sands Range.
There is just some sense of wholeness and immersion in flowing Purpose when I look at the recent White Sands experience. I now so clearly see the horror and evil of that work. I can also so sharply see how seductive it looked! My God, those white missiles, exploring the realms humanity had since the beginning wondered about, human creativity pushed to the max, intellectual and planetary frontiers, adventure in every aspect of the undertaking, dramatic scenes of objects out of science fiction rising into the sky, an environment of the smartest people, patriotic pride blinding everyone involved…...how could I look away?!
Yes, I was delivered by not getting a job there. I look with a deep, profound, instinctive spiritual relief at those missiles.
WE WILL ALL BE SEDUCED
How is it that so much that looks so appealing in this worldly life turns out to be so appalling? We are faced with the tempting, shiny fruit of the Garden over and over.
Humanity dresses up its soldiers in dress uniforms, crisp and colorful and devoid of the blood that will soak so many of them. We dress our football players in marketers’ colors to distract from the brain injuries that will devastate the later years of the players. The fighter jets and bombers and rockets always look glorious, the most dangerous women are often the most beautiful, the most dangerous men are often the best dressed, the car that seduces us to spend too much money and drive too fast always has a gorgeous mask of a body, a mask that will crumple about us as we lie bleeding and dying in its wreckage.
We are easily seduced by worldly appearances, the modern marketing version of the fruit in the Garden, and we allow them to pull us into worldly entanglements and involvements and investments. Then we find war involves nothing about crisp uniforms, the broken bones in the game hurt, the beautiful woman or man is also beautiful to the affair partner, the shiny metal and synthetic materials are used to drop bombs and deliver warheads. We are easily seduced by the shine and the glory, pulling us into worldly bonds, teaching us over and over that this carnal world is, once you are inextricably entangled in it, a bloody and ugly and dangerous place that will steal your soul.
Beware man's contrived, passing, physical beauty lest it blind you to eternal beauty. The uniforms and shine and sculpted curves and marketing images all serve to hide some brutal reality and each of them rust or tatter or fade with time and closer inspection. Conversely, eternal beauty reveals Truth and grows brighter with time and deepening awareness.
We will all be seduced. Our job is to grow through and out of the experience, learning to discern, learning to accept the enduring beauty that is offered through Life liberated from illusory worldly temptations.
UNRELENTING DISSATISFACTION
Dark. Pre-dawn.
Both kitties yowdel and yowdel, crying to fulfill their natures.
‘Tasha was a prowler. After breakfast in the shower room she would hop into my lap on the couch, pace back and forth, (Bodes hopped into my lap at that moment). ‘Tasha would get some lubbins, then prowl about some more, then return for more lubbins. She was a prowdler, but now her dark world makes prowdling too frustrating. In this house there are too many barriers.
So she eats breakfast in the bedroom, hops in her box, and yowdels and yowdels.
Bodes wants to be outside, to hunt and prowl and be a cat, so he yowdels and yowdels. It is dark and cold, and putting him out is not an option.
I pet and pet ‘Tasha, and that momentarily quiets her, but only for a moment.
These kitties exemplify the distilled essence of our lives, blind and trapped, surrounded by danger, our natures constrained and crushed and boxed.
I give my life to trying to keep them from yowdeling, for that is my nature. But the effort is futile.
How to allow ‘Tasha to prowl about? How to allow her to exhibit and exercise her natural restlessness?
Bodes can get out later when it warms up. But ‘Tasha?
Even if she prowls, she bumps and hurts her nose. She no longer can hop up onto the couch and hop down. So she sits in the dark and yowdels, as we all do.
I could spend the entire day trying to keep her from yowdeling.
We are given our natures, then we are put into our worldly circumstances that preclude living out those natures.
I seek solutions, but would be satisfied with solace.
She would repeatedly go from her water bowl to the couch for lubbins, then a drink, then lubbins. It was wonderful!
My days are used up trying to console her. It is ridiculous.
What balance to strike? How to give her some sense of freedom and independence that ‘Tasha so cherishes?
So natural and honest is her response! Is our response to our plight any less honest and natural?
Her life situation is insoluble. She cannot fulfill her nature. Nor can we.
I cannot counsel her to submit, to accept. Can I dare counsel anyone to do that?
Do I just leave her to mournfully yowdel?
Petting her in her box helps, turning yowdels to purrs. But the time to continually do that is impractical. To coldly ignore her yowdeling is the antithesis of my nature.
To respond to each yowdel at any time of day leaves my day totally disrupted.
She sleeps with me at night! Even when I did not put her in the bed last night, still I wake to find her cuddled beside me! Oh it is glorious! She stayed there all night, even returning after getting up to potty.
Oh how I miss her free little spirit paddling around the house.
I used to sit on the living room couch, preparing for contemplative prayer and Deep Communion, and here she would come, trotting down the hall, hopping up, trompfling around on me, blessing and purring.
Still she cries.
She would hop up into my lap as I typed on my computer in the rocking chair in the sunroom. No more of that.
DAM COYOTE
Mid-morning.
Scraggly little coyote on the dam this morning. Poor little guy had almost no hair on his tail. He kept scratching and scratching. I pray for him.
IRRELEVANT VISIONS
I have had in my past two remarkable visions, PC and the ghost, with other experiences also coming close.
Yet describing visions seems the least relevant thing to do for anyone else. Shouldn’t ideas and concepts and philosophies be of interest to people, intellectual and spiritual concepts that could change their lives, change their outlook on life, change their understanding of life? Why would my visions, why would seeing PC enter Paradise, why would such a thing be of any interest to anyone? Why would anyone believe it? I would not believe it.
Both visions, or better said, whole-life experiences, were profound gifts, life changing gifts, among the most cherished and astonishing experiences of my life.
Yet to experience something absolutely jaw-dropping in its magnitude is to experience something essentially impossible to communicate to others, and to experience something of which others should hold deep skepticism.
Tales of visions and transcendent experiences and out-of-body-experiences should be considered delusional or deceptive or at best doubtful by the hearer. It is what comes of such experiences, what the person having the experience subsequently does with their lives, the lessons learned from the experience, the changes wrought by the experience, that is what the hearer should assess and judge and consider whether to incorporate into their own lives.
BUSINESS METRICS MADNESS
Example of the madness of business metrics.
The Soviet Union set a goal for nail production. They met it. By producing millions of tiny, useless nails.
BLIND KITTY
Bodhi cuddled beside me last night! At one point I felt his rhythmic motion and looked to see he was giving ‘Tasha a bath!
This morning ‘Tasha came down the hall for breakfast!
The sweet Bodes watched from a half meter away until she finished eating. I never had to intervene. Then she went back to the bedroom, seemingly knowing exactly where she was.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
She didn’t yowdel upon returning to her sauna. That reflects getting her out the last couple of days, in spite of the cold and snowy weather. She needs to get out!.....just like us! Her whole demeanor is happier all day long! She got out twice yesterday.
Saw little muskrat again this morning, as on most mornings anymore.
RACE RIOTS
From PBS program 11. November. 2018. In 1919 there were many white race riots, with white invading and destroying black parts of town. 39 blacks were killed in Chicago, large areas destroyed. This was in response to decorated blacks returning from WWI.
KITTY TALES
‘Tasha wandered in after Fruhstuck!
Little deer were wandering around the house this evening. Waschbaer on the back patio this evening.
Dear God, thank You for the good times. Dear God, give me courage to face the not good times.
Such a violent world was the old west. Such a violent place our nation is becoming.
OUR INFLUENCE
We cannot possibly see all our influence in this world, and that is only the half of it. For those who consider such things we also cannot see our influence in the next world, or next life, or parallel worlds.
That influence though extends through eternity, propagating infinitely. Someone knows us, someone will remember us, someone will behave differently because of us. It is essentially impossible to interact with a person without having some change, some influence, some altering of direction exerted on our life. In some subtle way that change, influence, and direction will then carry on in our subsequent interactions.
It is subtle, not measurable, not quantifiable, not noticeable. Yet the ripples connect, person to person, life to life, endless and enduring.
Do not take yourself lightly. Do not underestimate your influence. It can be small, a word here, a touch there, a smile or grimace or blank expression. But that small influence carries on, affecting a life, then another life, then another, then another.
Life multiplies, each life, every life, all life, multiplying through time, expanding, rippling, connecting, contacting.
Take your life seriously. Take every contact seriously. Take every interaction seriously, for they are each beautiful and enduring, profound and eternal.
From free writing notes while watching a caterpillar in the woods before sunrise, notes completed while taking ‘Tasha for a walk.
SPIRITUAL CATERPILLARS Wooly bear caterpillar!
Black mink bands, like a poodle!
Blazing along!
Shiny, copper-black helmet.
Two inches, four centimeters, long.
Long legs.
White skin between black bands of fuzz.
His direction reverses.
Why? What do the pine needles and lichens feel like to him?
After climbing back up the trail he had just gone down, he traverses the trail, working along the base of a tree root. Then he disappears into a large hole under the base of root! I wait a while, but don’t see another sign of him.
Is that hole what he was looking for?
He’s so far in I cannot see him. And there he stays. From where did he start his morning journey? How did he survive last night’s rain? What’s going on now in that hole under the tree root?
Did he see it and recognize it from a distance? Or does “recognize” mean respond to programmed instincts directed by patterns of light and dark, or a smell, or hints of moisture?
We can only guess at what consciousness means to this poodle of a caterpillar. But from our lofty perch as “intelligent” beings we can analyze patterns and paths and pheromones, deciphering the codes of chemicals, textures, and patterns of light that guide the “unwitting” caterpillar to its next meal, mating, or maturation. We can also see the torturous ranks of barriers, detours, and distractions that our poodle caterpillar must negotiate on the way to that pre-ordained goal that will allow its life to continue and even to blossom into glorious new form as iridescent colors of the butterfly take wing.
On the way to its newfound den, our little rippling teddy bear had to negotiate a phalanx of sharper pointed pine needles. (Little young squirrels in bright morning sun play ring-around-the-pine-tree as I write.) The caterpillar had to scale vertical redoubts of rugged roots crossing its path. Wet sand slipped, twigs and branches barricaded, while the goal remained distant, unseen, and who knows, perhaps even unimagined.
But something called, something led, rippling step by rippling step subtly and indirectly influenced by a molecule here, a cell there, a pattern of light above and a changing texture below.
But surely this tale of programmed instincts negotiating a torturous path to destiny has no relevance for our lives. We are intelligent beings. A root of one of our hairs is as large as the caterpillar’s brain! We choose our path and destiny! Uh huh.
Tell that to the neuro-marketers who meticulously craft the color schemes for chain restaurants and food packages to turn on our appetites. But for the moment I will not explore the similarities between the caterpillar finding breakfast by following a trail of decaying mold spores and our following the red and yellow colors to the drive-through pickup window.
I find the caterpillar’s path to flight on iridescent wings far more interesting. This morning my poodle caterpillar may have sensed it was hungry. A present need may have led its manifold feet to find instant gratification with a tasty morsel of composted leaf matter. But I doubt the caterpillar concentrating on coordinating a couple of dozen legs thought much about flying. In its rippling hunt, I doubt it was consciously looking for that optimum place from which in the coming season it could launch skyward on iridescent wings. Yet by following its instincts, by fulfilling its nature, over all the pine needle spears and tree root barricades, that is exactly the incomprehensible, glorious destiny that awaits it.
How many of its instinctive actions must seem utterly senseless in terms of immediate survival, getting food, hiding from predators. All that spinning cocoon stuff makes no sense, burning up food and body resources, immobilizing it from escape, and leaving it exposed and vulnerable. Yet on that course so nonsensical in the present world of the caterpillar lies its unimaginable glorious destiny of flashing colors in the sky.
To what unimaginable destiny might some whispering instinct be calling us? Indeed, the torturous path is indirect, full of detours and barriers, distractions and temptations. But what callings, nonsensical in worldly terms, hint of destiny glorious? The hard necessities of the world’s path demand war and aggression, and lawsuits and litigation, and preemptive strikes. But don’t we sense some whispering voice calling us to something far, far above those immediate necessities? We cannot really comprehend what awaits. We cannot see the path beyond the immediate moment. In terms of pragmatic needs for today’s survival, the actions to which we feel called, an embrace, a song, a prayer, a gift, a forgiving, make no sense at all. When we surrender to those whispers of the heart calling us toward that unseen future, when through the rocky, sharp, barrier ridden path of this physical existence we heed those instinctive callings of the heart, we wend our way toward our destiny, a way that like the caterpillar’s is indirect and sometimes seemingly pointless. Yet with each pointless step, the molecules on the unseen breeze guide the caterpillar, inch by inch, to the sky. so also moments and people that enter our lives, a touch, a need, a cry, a laugh, a hunger, a grief, a joy, can, if we choose to allow them, guide us day by day to the wings of our souls set free, aloft in skies unbounded.
THE RIVER TURNS
I saw the river turn! The loving Sustainer led my steps to exactly the right time to see the river turn! What are the odds? I think I saw that happen at least once before.
The little stream was running from the recent rains. As usual, it only ran part way down the valley before the warming morning caused enough evaporation, combined with the rate at which water would sink into the sand, combined with the diminishing flow, so that the flow turned into a trickle, which then turned into only a shimmering silvery sheen on the sand, which within a few centimeters turned into just sand.
But when I arrived at the end of the flow, having let it distract me from my jog, the flow was making progress. Centimeter by centimeter the end of the little rivulet tongue of water crept further down the sandy stream bed, occasionally reaching little depressions that it promptly filled, before pausing to gain momentum and begin overflowing to wet the sand another centimeter downstream.
But as I watched, the leading edge of the water seemed to slow. Considering how slow it had been moving, in spite of the pronounced flow of the stream itself upstream, it took a few minutes to verify that in fact the leading front was no longer moving forward. Eventually it became evident that in fact the leading edge had begun to retreat! Then the retreat sped up!
Sand that upon had my arrival had been dry had found itself under a thin, trickling flow, and now again, only minutes later, found itself drying in the sun.
That was the one moment of the morning, the turning point, when the confluence of promoting and denying forces took the forward progress of the flow and reversed it.
Perfect timing, to watch a phenomenon which I suspect occurs in many more environs than stream beds. Species migrations and populations, perhaps even spreading belief systems, all kinds of dynamic entities may mimic the complex dynamics of this little stream.
I know only that it seemed a special moment at which to be present.
Within the remaining little stream great life-and-death dramas unfolded.
Little nymph critters of some sort, and little critters resembling tiny crawdads, must have sensed the approaching doom of the retreating leading edge of the rivulet as it worked upstream. Frantically they raced upstream, racing directly into the flow that had carried them down to that point, but now struggling with all their might to move toward water faster than the evaporating edge of the water raced toward them.
One miniscule little wormlet got landed on by a fly (indicating the millimeter depth of the water at that point). The distraction diverted the wormlet nymph from its path, sending it scurrying up the bank. Frantically it searched about, its tiny legs on the front of its body dragging the rest of its body along. Just as it appeared the last trickle of moister would race ahead of it, leaving it on dry ground, the nymph regained the water and began to again race upstream.
Like tiny 5 millimeter salmon they raced against the stream flow, while flies waited like vultures along the drying sands for the hapless victims that could not outrace the accelerating evaporation.
I celebrate a gift of a living moment, an amazing, alive, dramatic moment, a moment perhaps without profound lessons or theological implications or financial worth or benefit to anyone else. I celebrate in spite of, and in fact perhaps because of, that lack of redeeming justifications for the time I invested in that moment.
TASHAGES
Tashages! Oh glorious morning! So normal! She did not even feel like she was struggling to walk around. The new way of arranging the comforter for the night, rolling them to the side instead of to the bottom, gives her less barriers to surmount.
She came into the kitchen this morning! Joy! Just paddling in like normal.
Sunrise walk: a buck following a doe made the low gutteral growly noises I’ve seldom heard.
The dam trail had horizontal ice crystal spikes up to 15 cm. Long across its surface from refrozen slushy surface.
No kitties in my lap. What’s with that?
RACING COLLAPSE
pre-dawn dark, Bodes in lap, purring and purring.
Will any of this message get out in time?
The pending world collapse is so obvious. Maybe a miracle will save us, but it will be quite the miracle.
SPATIAL GEOMETRY AND FINITE CONSCIOUSNESS
From notes of yesterday upon waking up.
The space-time geometry of our universe results in spatial resolution decreasing with distance.
This is necessary for the existence of finite individual consciousness.
Spatial geometry fits the Purpose.
This characteristic matches what happens at extremely small (quantum) and extremely large (relativistic) scales.
Boundaries to perception are necessary for existence of conscious individuals sharing the same universe. Only in this way can mental-spiritual finitude exist within infinity.
We perceive finiteness, but in fact that is a peculiar subjective perception based on the structure of the universe in which we exist. We recoil at the concept of infinity but only because the universe puts finite limits on our subjective experience.
UNITY IS NOT AUTOMATIC
The nature of this world makes fight-or-flight perfectly natural, an automatic part of the behavior instincts of every animal and person.
Unity on the other hand is not automatic. Unity arises only by conscious, free-will Choice.
OLD CARS
Poetry
Old cars,
All ages,
Reminders arrive,
Old songs,
Airplane “just yelling”,I say nothing,
Always a little out of sync,
The cars and music,
Such promise,
so naive.
SUFFERING LOVE
The suffering and death and disabilities and disasters are built into the system that we may choose Love. But the anger, bitterness, clumsiness, scowls, grimaces, pettiness, and stupidity are also built into the system that we might choose forgiveness, compassion, and Love.
IMPOSSIBLE UNITY
Unity is not to be here. It will be unavoidable to trigger anger. You are giving them the Choice just as they give you the Choice. That is the real Purpose, evident from even a cursory glance at the nature of this world. Strive for and long for Unity, but accept that for now it is not to be. Absolute pursuit of local momentary Unity (entailing avoiding others’ anger) is tempting but may not always be the optimal path within the Purpose. We are sculpting our souls for eternity, practicing Love, compassion, and forgiveness, and faith. The conflict and anger are as unavoidable as death and suffering. So must this world be.
THE NAME OF JESUS
Pre-dawn. The Purpose is the Choice. “Whoever believes in me shall be saved”. Of course! That deep belief and trust (beliebio) is a choice to follow Love. Yeshu’s teachings are unambiguous about that. Anyone choosing Love is accepting Yeshu’s message. And believing in Him. That provides salvation, redemption, deliverance, and new birth, even if the person has never heard of Yeshu. Those “worshiping” the name “Jesus” (or Yeshu, or any other name derivative) but not choosing compassion and forgiveness do not believe in the essence and message of the Christos. They will be “surprised” on their day of judgement.
Those rejecting Love and forgiveness, in the message and life of Yeshu or otherwise, are indeed condemned to hell, that component of hell that comprises aspects of this worldly life. That hell is indeed eternal, meaning that person will live life to life in exposure to aspects of hell that enter these worlds of Choice and birth until freely choosing Love, that is freely choosing to enter the Kingdom.
Entropy is the consuming fire of this world. Hell is eternal because our Hope is eternal. Our souls are eternal, and always bid to make the Choice of Love and Unity. Souls do not cease to exist at physical death. If they have not chosen Love and forgiveness (Christos by name or not) they are simply given more chances at the Choice, as long as necessary, living in the worldly hell of non-Unity, but the Kingdom of loving Unity always at hand, the Choice free and available.
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, had six brothers, her father, and uncle, all of whom were Congregational ministers.
The book was a best seller in Europe and Charleston, albeit underground. It incited the freeing of the serfs in Russia.
SHOCKS
Shocks.
Those disruptions in life that shake our foundations, that leave us without an obvious course of action.
Shocks.
That which we most desperately want to avoid.
Shocks.
They can tempt us to give us. They strip our motivations, wreck our plans, force us to react without a prepared course of action.
Shocks.
“This can’t be.” “This cannot be.” “This can not be.”.
Shocks:
We have no basis for response. All that matters, all that has meaning, all that makes sense, all that underlay our actions and plans a behavior the moment before, are all torn away.
Shocks.
…..both reveal and hide reality.
Shocks.
You will not choose your actions. Your life up to this point will dictate your actions.
Shocks.
Will send you running, maybe toward, maybe away.
Shocks.
….. will always leave you asking, wondering, searching, about yourself, about the meaning, if only for a moment.
Shocks.
…..revealing the stone or sand under what we once considered foundations of our lives.
Shocks will make you - even if only for a moment - ask why, that exquisitely rare question we so assiduously avoid. That’s when, if you finally survive, you can begin to build new foundations to replace those that were crushed and crumbled, new foundations built on something deeper, something revealed when all else was swept away.
PAWSAGES
Bodes is too precious.
The way he talks to me as I get up in the dark in the morning. Those little sounds and chatters, so soft and quiet yet so expressive, so welcoming.
I sit in contemplative prayer in the den corner chair. He hops up, pawsages, rests on my arms, bottom on the right arm, front paws on the left forearm. I can nuzzle into his rich fur, soak up that special air in his fur, nuzzle behind his ears, Bodhi purring and purring. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
As I type this, he hops up again, pawsaging again,golden riches again settling into my lap.
After the den lap time he asked to go out on the front deck. I watch through the door as he looks down on the front yard, until little Pfodens get too cold on the icy wood and he starts shaking them in the air. I open the door, his curiosity satisfied he walks toward it, each step requiring shaking of the paws that almost stick to the ice.
It only takes a minute or two for him to be satisfied on a cold morning, then he comes in and can settle in to enjoy warm home.
FICKLE MOBS
The mobs that cried for Yeshu’s crucifixion were in all likelihood many of the same people in the crowds that had cheered Him.
He had disappointed them. They came for the show. They came for the revolution. They came for the new king. Isn’t that what He had sold them?
How fast the fickle cheers will turn to murderous mob. The fickle cheers are looking for the entertainment, the rescue, the victory. Give them instead something of profound meaning and watch how fast they turn against the former object of adulation.
SURRENDERING INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the human species is its propensity to unquestioningly follow a leader. This is also the most baffling trait of humanity.
Why they would do that, why they would not question, why they would not assess facts, why they would not form opinions independently of the influence of a compelling leader, is utterly baffling.
Why would anyone so readily surrender their intellectual liberty? Why would anyone believe anything in the face of evident reality?
Once the bait is taken, there seems to be no saving people from the deceptions. Loyalty to a powerful leader is stunningly stubborn. Only disaster, such as the destruction of Deutschland in World War II finally brings people to their senses.
One person with peculiar traits that allow them to lead others…….masses willing to be led, even looking to be led…….the great common path through history, the great repeating disaster of history, the inevitable recurring tragedy of the species.
If my time in this bizarre corporeal life is to educate me on the nature of humanity I have a long, long way to go. Each day I find myself more baffled, more shocked, and more perplexed. The tragic mob and cult and national behaviors through history that I thought were things of the past now parade before me in real time, dressed differently but no less wrenching and no less destructive.
Pre-dawn dark. Waiting for ‘Tasha to ask for breakfast.
CAT FALL
No kitties slept with me after ‘Tasha fell out of bed. Oh that was so sad, but it immensely helped for the first time in ages to be able to comfortably spread out to sleep. I just do not want that to become the norm.
She’s up! Yayy! Came down the hall!
I hold Bodes while she eats. I try to placate him by brushing, but instead of relaxing he cranes his neck to see if she is through. Every time she pauses from eating and lifts her head Bodes squirms to get down to her bowl.
Finally she daintily finishes and I scoop her up for brushings. Sweet whisker kisses and purrs and post breakfast kitty breath reward me until she’s had enough brushing and hops down.
How can I possibly convey such wonders and blessings to anyone
Oh the blessings that await if we would just accept them! Oh how desperately we need them in this world of suffering and strife.
How to open eyes and ears and hearts? How to help the spiritually blind to see in the darkness? How to awaken those who sleep in death?
Is it enough to encourage those who have made the Choice and need reassurance?.....to encourage those who are opening their eyes?
I pray to help someone, for some culmination of a woefully imperfect life of striving to share the gift of spiritual blessings.
(Bodes hops into my lap and pawsages. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!)
PAIN OF LONELINESS
“From NPR: The same part of the brain that responds to loneliness responds to physical pain.”
What great example of both dimensions of Unity, the need for communion and the need for individual health.
MIND VS BRAIN VS SOUL
The mind and the spirit, one giving birth to the other, but which to which? Or is the question a duality irrelevance, a fruitless attempt to over analyze and craft simple models that we can pretend we understand?
The topic arises from my efforts to resolve my spiritual experiences with my mental way of being. And the effort leads to intellectual cartwheels tumbling into dead end alleys. I get no more verifiable answers than I got when this afternoon I marveled at the swarm of little wasps or bees busily flying in and out of the juniper tree at the front window, little mandibles greedily working on some unseen treat near the ends of the branches. Or were they collecting material for nest building? What about the tree could possibly attract so many buzzing visitors?
What about my thoughts and feelings and instincts and intuition and needs compels me to buzz about the inscrutable mysteries of mind and brain and soul? Why do we even have those three different definitions in our language?….two of which illusively defy definition.
Yet I find our groping understanding of the terms profoundly relevant to how we live our daily lives. Surely we act and react and choose differently if we believe our consciousness arises from only a soup of electrochemical processes constructed from DNA programs and sensory inputs, versus perceiving the conscious being as existing independent of the “soup”, the brain and its functions providing only a distorted lens through which to view this world from the vantage of a bipedal brain transportation unit.
Soul is born of the physical brain?….or soul activates and defines the brain’s functioning? Brain provides expression of the soul, making the soul real?….or physical brain shackles the soul, limiting its perception and experience to only that of which the bodily brain is capable?
I think the brain and our body determine what we see and experience. But the soul chooses how we will see and experience, and from among options the brain provides, the soul chooses how we will respond to what we see and experience.
So which defines which, brain creating soul or soul animating brain?….Yes….to both. They are different components, but not divisible components, of the conscious individual.
Does the right hand wash the left, or vice versa? It is a silly question. And perhaps questions of soul versus mind versus brain are also silly. For this time in this worldly life, our souls experience their existence through the brain. Our mind and its mental experience obviously cannot be divorced from brain. Yet I know with immutable certainty that soul’s existence, if not experiences, is independent of the physical brain. When the electrochemical processes cease, the identity created by the free choices while the soul had use of that brain will continue, its next form of consciousness perhaps now instantiated through some other system of experience.
And for now, to whatever limited degrees our brain allows, we can choose to explore beyond the sensory inputs and genetic responses of the brain. We can at least ponder the nature of our conscious being, and in moments of calm in the roiling electro-chemical soup in our head, momentarily sense our own existence, not merely the existence of brain in this world, but of soul sprung of and part of eternal Source.
ARC OF DESTINY
We experience the majesty and Purpose and direction of life in much the way an astronaut in a space capsule experiences the space flight.
Seen from outside the ballistic arc of the space capsule, the audacious concept of human beings leaving their home planet, the stunning complexity of the accomplishment, is cause for wonder and amazement, in addition to the astonishing beauty of an object suspended between the living blue of the planet earth and the sparkling depths of space above with the glowing boundary arcing across the view.
Yet the astronaut is shut inside the tiny metal canister, strapped and packed into a space barely sufficient to hold his/her body, with a tiny window through which to barely glimpse an occasional flash of a view of a tiny portion of the surrounding grandeur when not preoccupied with the tasks necessary for survival in the midst of the battering, jostling, jolting, vibrating violence of launch and reentry.
So it is with our lives as they traverse the arc of their destiny, units of incomprehensible biological complexity containing consciousness capable of creating and exploring and learning and loving.
Yet from inside those lives we get no view of the grandeur, constrained and contained within the circumstances and finances of our struggle for survival, preoccupied with obligations and activities and necessities as life inflicts its shocks, surprises, and disruptions.
However we also have windows on life, however small, and we would do well to at least occasionally look up from our tasks and duties and desperation to catch a glimpse of the majestic arc of Life of which we are the sentient leading edge.
Poetry
TALE
Would we still be us if we had taken a different life-path?
Would we have become the same person?
Tell the tale, the tale of your life, and tell it in a different year,
after a different choice,
after a different circumstance,
and would it be the same person telling the tale?
Does the tale determine the teller,
Or the teller determine the tale?
Were there really any options along the way after all?
If only we had known!
If only we had had different friends,
different family,
different teachers.
What tragedies and triumphs would we have missed?
What tragedies and triumphs would we have experienced?
One choice, one simple choice, at that critical juncture of life……
…..who would have emerged?
Just how sacrosanct is the self after all?
We walk only our one path, or so it seems.
Do events shape us, or do only our choices shape us?
Forget not who you are, if you know.
It is a new path, each of these days,
Bringing new choices.
It is a new life, each of these days,
Bringing new circumstances.
Is it a new person making the choices and facing the circumstances?
Are all these paths not taken merely different tools for revealing in the end the same self?
Reflect on the choices,
ponder the reflection of your life,
but do not get mired in what might have been.
Here is what is,
Here you are.
Marvel at the wonder of it all.
Absorb the lessons of the years,
carry them in your heart,
do not deny the miracles,
or the mistakes,
though who’s to say there were mistakes.
It is Now,
the beginning of eternity,
and there are choices to be made.
You did not land there,
you landed here,
the result of choices and circumstances past.
Look back, but only to inform the future.
Look back, and learn.
Look back, and marvel,
then return to the present, looking into the future.
Diary
‘Tasha comes in for breakfast almost every morning!
Diary
Extended bed brush and cuddle and nuzzle time with ‘Tasha this morning! Such a tiny kitty! So precious! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
UNFULFILLED PROPHECIES
One of the biggest prophetic disappointments had to be for those listening to Yeshu (Jesus) proclaim “The Kingdom is at hand!”. In hindsight we can weave our explanations of that odd campaign slogan and pretend we know what He meant, but you have to figure the average Palestinian of the day was pretty keenly disappointed when only forty seven years later not only had the prophesied Kingdom not yet arrived but Jerusalem and its Temple were sacked and precious few Jews were left alive in the city to debate the meaning of Yeshu’s prophecy.
The exact meaning of prophecies and the ultimate outcome of scriptural promises seem to have little to do with worldly fact. The prophecies dangle hope. They influence behavior. For a few centuries they plant seeds of belief and provide employment to sages and scholars in the task of interpretation.
Then another temple gets unceremoniously rendered to ash and rubble and those clinging to literal interpretations are left treading cold, stormy water in the dark.
Religions dangle hope before us. “The Kingdom is at hand”, expressed in whatever language and religio-political context, serves to keep us in line and keep us from giving up all hope.
Is that necessarily a bad thing if it gets us to go in the direction our souls need to go?
Religions dangle hope before us like a carrot before a horse.
The promises of religions inevitably seem to not exactly pan out exactly in the detail described. Yet in the long term, will we, in the next life, or some following life, be OK with that?
Might the occasional prophecy actually turn out to be true, if we wait long enough, if we look beyond the short term, if we look beyond the temporal world?
Might we instinctively respond to the hope of prophecy in spite of knowing its worldly meaning is a ridiculous long shot? Might we instinctively know there is something more?....more to kingdoms and temples than thrones and stones?
“The Kingdom is at hand”.....what painful disappointment for those hearing it in worldly political terms.
“The Kingdom is at hand”......what comfort and solace and salvation that brings for those seeing through this carnal existence, through this temporal veil, to an approaching Truth and Reality compelling and enduring and far too bright to be captured by any words of this dark world.
TRAPPED CONSCIOUSNESS
Oh the healing of contemplative prayer. Surely the world would be at peace and productive if everyone engaged in contemplative prayer.
Oh these struggles to connect.
Here we are, isolated in these corporeal bodies. They provide a means for individual consciousness to come into being, but what a prison. Our bodies are wonders and miracles, but so clumsy and vulnerable.
There are times I feel like panicking, claustrophobic within this body, consciousness so trapped and isolated.
If sedated for surgery doesn’t it seem consciousness should be free to roam, getting a break from the physical brain, getting out on parole for the duration of the anesthesia?
Oh these routines that chain me. Oh how disciplined will I be after surgery? To what degree will I collapse in self-pity? I’ve never been good about this pain thing.
Dear God, thank You for Your healing! Dear Yeshu, thank You for your healing!
Soul and body and mind, craving the loving, tender, gentle, healing touch of the sustaining Spirit.
Fear! Fear intrudes! Yet all is OK when loved. Oh, how all is salved by Love.
Oh contemplative prayer, such blessing, such healing.
Let the Spirit enter.
Let the Love enter.
Let the mind be released from the demands of the world.
Let eternity enter.
Let all that heals, all that underlies, all that loves, all that saves, deeply enter, entering so deeply that the mind can carry it forward into the day.
Let not rote recitation hinder the entry of the Spirit. There is nothing rote about the Spirit, this radical, revolutionary, uncontrollable, untamed loving Spirit of holiness.
Let others recite the formulaic ritual and liturgy. Be glad that it works for them, but do not pretend that it works for you.
Let unbound Holy Spirit bring Love and healing. Everything else can be worked out later, but nothing is possible without the spiritual health and vitality and Hope and Love of the sustaining Spirit filling the soul, body, mind, and life.
KITTY YOWDELSs
Two nights of ‘Tasha cuddles and no yowling! She’s like people: just needed help to return to what she needs.
DON'T GET CLOSE
This spiritual generation of people is like bears and moose Cute, but don’t get too close.
MAP
Look at Your world! Look at all those untouched places! Look at all those places of suffering and horror. Look at all those places so spiritual, so advanced.
Look at your humanity filling the earth.
Look at the colored patterns on the map, patterns representing countries, a relatively new invention. Countries. Boundaries. Different colors on the map. What a bizarre concept. What could more eloquently capture the wretched condition of the human species, these arbitrarily divided patterns on the map of the world.
Those colors and patterns and lines represent the hideous evil, testimony to the hardness of the human heart, evidence of the savage rejection of Unity.
Those colors and patterns represent Unity, people over large geographic areas coming together in identity, and in each different color we see the foundation for Unity, namely, diversity and uniqueness.
Such potential on Your planet! Such tragedy, such potential.
Dear God, save us. Dear God, give us words that will touch hearts so deeply those hearts will actually change. Dear God, change us in our submission to Your perfect will.
STOSSES
Just Heaven.
Face Stosses from ‘Tasha as she lies on me and I brush her in bed as she purrs. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.
Plus she’s finding her bowl and the bedroom so well!.....and she had a great yard exploration and ate grass like old times!
She’s so glad to have lap time. She gives my hand little licks.
‘Tasha takes a bath on my lap. How can I possibly get up?!
From old notes
‘Tasha trampfles!
Bodhi comes down yard steps to bathe ‘Tasha.
Bath in bed last night.
Such blessings.
From old notes
‘Tasha paddling around house in days before departure! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
She’s finding her way around so well!
Both kitties hop into bed and cuddle with me after Bodhi gives ‘Tasha a bath, then the rhythm as both take baths while lying on me. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.
Afternoon: she races down hall to go out! Goes on her own up little path then to end of house! She’s sleeping outside!
Dear God, I am helpless. I understand nothing. I lie prostrate before You, wondering how You can possibly use this life, but all the while feeling Your Love.
Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.
INSANITY BY OVER CONNECTION
Humans are driven insane by isolation and sensory deprivation. I am convinced they are also driven insane by too much input.
The human brain and soul is optimized for a given range of demands and inputs. Factory work, the internet, driving in traffic, media assaults, too much information from too many sources, all these exceed our capacity.
Just as our bodies are programmed to eat when food is available, resulting in obesity when excess food is available, our minds are programmed to seek connection and input. In today’s world we are inundated with information we cannot avoid and do not want to avoid and should not avoid. We should care about what our friends are doing. We have a duty to know what is happening in the nation. We have an obligation to know what fate is befalling the world. This is all true before we even consider the temptations of entertainment and our innate curiosity.
We are hyper-saturated in information and connections, and just as sensory deprivation and solitary confinement will destroy a human mind, our brain circuit overloading is fundamentally changing what it is to be human, our behavior, our beliefs, our attitudes, our mental and emotional state.
I watch my developmentally disabled friends and see how their minds are consumed, in the most negative meaning of the word, with even the very limited exposure to media their caregivers allow. The effects on us are no less dramatic or damaging. The effects on us are simply not noticed because we are all experiencing it together, so we are all in the midst of the storm of the new norm.
The impact of connection overload is more than just stress or having limited time or not getting enough sleep. Look at people. Most of them behave in ways not possible only a few decades ago, rampantly pursuing entertainment and pleasure and possessions and travel and purchases and consumption, gorging on media, frantically pursuing more “likes” and “friends”.
A simple exercise helps make the point. Examine for a time, a few minutes, an hour, the thoughts in your head. How many of those thoughts, fantasies, chattering monkeys, wishes, plans, and daydreams would have been possible before the invention of the telephone? Before knowing all those people, before the option of efficient travel, before media access to job opportunities and vacation places and news outside the community and things to buy and images of what other people were buying, how many of those thoughts that consume our conscious time would be present?
Humanity has entered a different way of being, a different way of mental being, a different era of what controls our conscious thoughts.
This is more than not healthy. This is not human, at least not when compared to what it meant to be human for the last few millennia. Is it any wonder some people crack, getting too distraught by the gaming, and ads, the “friending”, and then commit suicide? Is it any wonder some crack, getting too distraught by the gaming, the constantly hammering reminders of failure and threat and perceived injustice, and pick up an assault rifle and begin the slaughter?
TECHNOLOGICAL SHARECROPPING
Sharecropping: an economic system in which those doing work to produce product do so using property owned by another and a percentage of the product or profits thereof go to that property owner in return for the opportunity to use the property.
In practice, sharecropping, with essentially no exceptions, effectively functioned to keep those producing the product indebted and subservient to a property overlord, and further, ensured the producers of the products could not progress to ever own their own property and rival the existing property overlords. Sharecropping has always proven a powerful means of enforcing a class system.
A technological version of sharecropping has evolved in recent decades into intellectual sharecropping, namely the patent ownership system of corporations. Employees working long hours to the detriment of health and family receive none of the financial rewards of the patented products they produce. This is simply an extension of the factory manufacturing system that likewise denies to workers the rewards of their labor, other than the right to continue to work on the equipment owner by the corporation.
The owners providing the land, factory, or database necessary for the production of crops, cars, or computer chips certainly should share the profits thereof. The question is one of balance, equitability, and societal stability.
Sharecropping is now almost universally reviled as a system that crushed societal progress and stifled economic growth.
With wealth disparity attaining unrivaled levels in the United States and China, with the system of intellectual sharecropping playing a non-trivial role in perpetuating and amplifying that disparity, what social trauma will be required to instigate the wrenching changes that will, as they did in centuries past, render sharecropping in its many inevitable forms a relic of an unjust past?
SURVIVING SPIRITUAL METEORITE IMPACTS
How critically important it is to claim awareness of the Self, that Self arising as branch from the living Vine.
In that awareness one can see the world of our temporal experience orbiting about us, seemingly a world of chaos and conflict and confusion, but for an instant one can discern the Purpose in it all, the coalescing of all the just right events and circumstances so that just as beautiful planets and stars emerge from the chaotic melee’ of molecular collisions, so too our souls are given birth in the chaotic melee of life experience.
In Deep Communion with the loving Source one can momentarily gain this perspective, this beautiful perspective, and that helps immensely in allowing entrance of the eternal Self into temporal consciousness. With that entrance, the Self is perceived as a stable center point around which orbits our temporal experiences. This way of awareness is far, far different from instead allowing the temporal experiences with all their seductions and fears to serve as the prime source of consciousness, penetrating deeply into the eternal Self soul.
The growing planet accretes dust and micrometeorites to its being, adding to its size and structure and identity.
So too the soul aware of eternal Self accrues temporal experiences, experiences no longer threatening to destroy the Self, but adding to it, adding to the individual identity according to the freewill choices of how the Self will respond to those experiences and circumstances.
But the individual consciousness immersed in and dominated by temporal experience is like the small asteroid, still fragile and vulnerable, subject to shattering by collisions onto its worldly surface of temporal events and circumstances.
The consciousness rooted in relationship with Source, the branch firmly grafted into the living Vine, is like the stable and solid planet still subject to the ongoing collisions with meteorites, but at no risk of shattering or catastrophic dissolution from those temporal collisions, instead growing from and adding form and shaping its own identity from those temporal experiences.
Fear will still impact the surface, causing earthquakes and tsunamis in the temporal consciousness. But that temporal consciousness is only the crust of the planet, and the underlying bulk and core of the eternal Self, that Self in Deep Communion with Source and Sustainer, remains undisturbed and unthreatened.
METEORS AND MAMMOTHS
Whoa! A meteor shower may have rained down on the Clovis people! This is based on discovery of spheroids at many sites, spheroids that can only be produced by a comet explosion, brighter than the sun. Trees would have blown down. Trees would burn. The air would have been almost unbreathable. The shock wave would push air aside, asphyxiating animals.
The wind would have carried bits of trees and sand.
The soot and dust could have triggered the 12,000 year old ice age, and changed the ecology, and contributed to the decline of the Clovis culture.
The grains contain magnetic spherules, the chemistry matches bedrock in the Canadian shield geologic structure, but the chemistry in spherules is found in South Carolina.
Something unusual happened. Spherules are found at many layers, but those matching Canadian geology are found at a specific layer.
A layer of dark matted layer is found at 12,900 years. No mammoth bones are ever found above that time layer.
Dr. West’s theory is controversial. But many scientists now give it heed.
THE FIRST STOCK BUST
John Law created the first stock bust! He sold Louisiana to investors. Eventually investors heard that Louisiana was a nightmare. The stock value plummeted.
For decades people remained shy of stock investments. The resulting collapse in value bankrupted the French aristocracy, collapsing the French economy, which led to the French Revolution!
Now, fast forward to the 1820’s. Nathan Rothschild was made rich by the bond market. He was obsessive, focused, ambitious, and clever. His only pleasure was business. Between 1810 and 1836, five brothers attained unequaled power in international finance. Nathan led the group. He founded the present-day Rothschild Bank.
War brought him the opportunity for financial breakthrough.
In 1815, British and Dutch troops faced Napolean at Waterloo. It was a contest between rival financial systems. The French system was based on plunder. The British based on debt and bonds.
The Rothschilds made millions speculating on how Waterloo would affect the price of the British government bonds.
Supposedly Nathan bribed a French general to ensure Napoleon lost. But that’s not true. The Rothschilds bet on the wrong side.
The British had raised cash by selling bonds. But Wellington needed a currency universally accepted.
Nathan was chartered as a government agent to deliver British government gold, as much as possible, to Wellington. The plan relied on Rothschilds pan-European connections.
Bonds were worth nothing to Wellington.
The Rothschilds were effective as war financiers because of their network within the family, five of them spread among five countries.
They would buy gold in one country, and another brother would buy in another country.
When Napoleon returned from exile, the brothers had bought all the gold they could get, apparently anticipating war and the demand for mass amounts of gold to pay the armies.
Waterloo: the late arrival of the Prussians brought victory. Rothschild heard this news 48 hours earlier than anyone, because of his own courier network.
But the brothers had gambled on the war lasting, thereby keeping up the price of gold. But now the armies were disbanded, so they did not need gold for wages.
The price of gold would plummet.
But Nathan could bet on the bond market.
So on July 20 1815, Nathan bought huge amounts of British bonds. He gambled the British victory would send bonds up in price. He kept buying as the price rose, for another year.
In July 1817, having gained 40%, he sold.
Bonds were more than a way to fund wars. Bonds could generate personal money and power.
Their power won the war for Britain by delivering gold to Wellington’s army.
They stayed out of the US Civil War, in which money also decided that conflict.
The turning point was financial, occurring before the decisive battles.
The south had to control the cotton trade. The south had a scheme to bring the bond market into the war. The confederate treasury sold bonds to its citizens. But the south had limited capital. So the south looked to Europe, hoping for the same help Wellington got.
It looked like a good plan. The Rothschilds’ representative in NY opposed Lincoln. But even so, buying bonds from rebel states seemed too risky.
The south planned to use cotton to back its bonds. If interest could not be paid, bond owners could get cotton.
A French company sold bonds convertible to cotton at the old price.
The south tried to blackmail Britain. In 1860 Liverpool was the main port for importing cotton, 80% from the CSA.
The south thought they could force Britain’s support. They shut off shipments to Liverpool.
Cotton Bond prices rose.
Mills had to lay off workers, by the hundreds of thousands.
Production ceased. 25% of people were on relief. It was a man-made cotton famine.
The key to the south’s strategy was investor confidence that investors could take possession of cotton.
But after the fall of New Orleans, the cotton could not be shipped.
Britain found new sources of cotton. Cotton backed bonds fell. The south’s economy collapsed.
CSA printed paper dollars, $1.7billion.
The paper money dropped by 1 to 100. Inflation exploded by a factor of 90.
……………….
Because of the Rothschilds, in the 19th century land ownership and political power in Britain was no longer limited to land owning aristocrats. The land owning elite had gained money from agriculture and rent on their lands. It seemed foolproof.
But they borrowed, beyond the worth of their property.
The great landowners of Victorian Britain found they could not pay off the loans on their property.
Immense properties seemed more than sufficient to maintain a lavish lifestyle.
But grain prices began a long slide downward. Land prices plummeted. Agriculture income declined. Borrowings exceeded values of estates. Interest payments ate up new loans.
BRITAIN THE NARCO-STATE……………..
China.
It’s hard for an investor to see what a foreign company is up to.
So European governments sent in their military to ensure investor confidence in overseas investments.
Opium was the big business, though banned by the emperor.
The Chinese besieged the warehouses and destroyed contents.
Jardin the investor got the government to intervene with guns.
Britain was a narco-state. They won.
China suffered terrible drug addiction.
The glory days of globalization arrived.
Jardin diversified into other businesses, like railroads.
But WWI was to halt financial globalization.
The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in August 1914 initially went unnoticed by financial markets. The world seemed safe. But over one, two, three weeks investors finally saw the chance of war in Europe. Liquidity, the ability to sell assets, crumbled.
Global economic systems collapsed.
The British stock market was closed.
Written after crying upon seeing George H.W. Bush’s dog lying by his casket.
MOMENTS LEAVING US QUIET
poetry
There are moments,
yes, there are moments,
when we know,
when all that lies in our hearts,
all that this world and our determination would deny,
moments that a picture or a word or note
lets flow.
There are moments,
when we feel, if not recognize, our potential.
There are moments when we are touched by that which we dare not acknowledge.
There are moments,
leaving us quiet,
placing a tear in the corner of our eye,
Moments,
inconvenient, interrupting moments,
when without words we know.
The moments quickly pass,
we make them pass,
we cannot bear them for too long.
We return to busyness and tasks,
Ignoring that tear that would roll down our cheek.
There are moments,
when nothing else matters,
moments showing how close we were to something real,
moments when we lose our hard denial
of all that really matters.
We cannot predict them or seek them or duplicate them.
They arrive and are gone.
They are just moments after all,
inconsequential,
appearing on no plan or schedule or chart of milestones.
They are simply life,
Life without the worldly facade,
Life so often glimpsed only in death.
You cannot bid them enter,
but you can linger with them,
and you will be richer if you do.
In these moments we can forget,
forget the judgement, the pressure, the machinations
that occupy our mind and time.
In these moments we can remember,
remember what Life felt like,
what contact and touch and closeness
felt like, whether we’ve experienced them or not.
If we are profoundly blessed we might be able to experience many such moments.
Pray for those who cannot.
Pray for those whose souls have grown hard and blank,
those too rigid for life to squeeze out even a tear.
There are moments,
gone the next,
when eternity intrudes into our practiced mortality.
HOW MUCH DARE WE FEEL?
Perhaps a great challenge of life is to allow the soul to feel it all, to authentically feel it all, the pathos and pain as well as pleasure and joy, to feel as God must feel.
I think the common image of God entails a detached state of non-feeling. Surely human emotions are not part of God!
But I passionately believe that image to be false. I know that God feels all suffering, to a far greater degree than we, and more than just feeling the suffering, the suffering is part of God, the very essence and being of God and Creation suffering for our birth into freedom.
It is in our emotional suffering that we experience the most authentic awareness of the truths of life, the truths of essence of life underlying all our experiences. In our suffering we are given to understand that which is real, eternally real, our suffering eloquently teaching through the momentary losses of this world.
From notes on pre-morning lying on floor, by back door, in semi-darkness, with glow from snow.
BLANK SNOW OF TIME
Beautiful!
I wait,
Surely something is coming
on morning such as this.
Surely, I wait like my cat,
looking out the door,
knowing,
knowing that surely something is afoot,
on such a crystal morning.
Such pure and feathery snow is
destined for tracks
great and small,
the very crystals of space and time
awaiting the footsteps of life.
White, white and pure it lies,
Creation’s pallet,
the first and final gift,
potential unbounded.
So for this moment I watch and wait,
before placing my own tracks of life on waiting canvas.
White and blank and rife with potential
it waits out there,
anxiously awaits our steps.
What tracks will be left at end of day,
what tales of dramas bold?
What paths will cross and trails will join,
forever to be changed.
For moment more in light still dim
I’ll watch and wait to see,
what wonders and exciting life-
will enter scene before me.
Surely wondrous things await
on day so pure beginning
With cat I’ll share this
great suspense,
Time’s palette without ending.
HIDDEN DANCES OF FATE
poetry
Waiting,
Actively, frantically, nervously
waiting.
Great spinning worlds
and hidden dances of fate,
dimensions piled upon dimension,
whirl and role and meld
and merge
to shape this drifting life,
and put in place
the tracks and trails
from which we choose our fate.
And on our Choice,
made in the dark,
still tangled in the strings,
long ago cut that they no more
can pull,
on our Choice.
The Heavens wait
while angels hold their breath.
DESPERATELY TRUSTING
Living in the holiness of each moment,
trusting, desperately trusting,
embracing the gifts for the soul,
accepting the curious derailments
that set our plans aside,
and clear the stage of life
for miracles sublime.
ALATE PRE-FLIGHT
Morning swarming subsiding. Tracks from 2 to 3 almost gone. An occasional flier shuttles between 1 and 2. Still no rain to create the right moment. But they bravely remain ready! Working and drilling and practicing, God’s Creation, and these ants, and I, await the evident moment.
STRING TOY
A shoestring pulled under piles of packing paper makes a glorious kitty toy! How she pounces into the piles of paper, and snags the string!
RITUALS OF LIBERATION
“Rituals of submission”…baptism, sacrifices, penance, beads, bowing, kneeling, and prostrating….how curiously consistent is the appearance of some form or another of symbolic submission.
Of course high priests, god-kings, shamans, and every other style of theologues have long counseled such humbling surrender as a way to keep themselves securely ensconced well above the hapless flocks serving as foundation for their power. But I think there is something more to our universal propensity to symbolically bow in submission to something.
For you see, only by submission can we be part of anything, and thereby attain some bond, connection, or wholeness we crave.
We obediently stand and cheer at the prescribed moments so we can be a part of the fans cheering an arbitrary set of colors that denotes “our” team.
We submit to the bylaws and meeting schedule so we can be part of the organization.
We submit to arbitrary and often impractical clothing styles because we desperately want to be included and accepted.
And that spark of awareness that persistently whispers that we are more than just information-processing meat leads us to desire submission to the bylaws or behaviors that would allow us membership in and acceptance by that “something more”.
So we bow and kneel and chant and baptize that we might become part of, enter into, connect with.
Rituals of submission….voluntary, liberating, empowering submission….
Even without the priests and kings through the ages ensuring their job security by our bowing, I think we would, and do, instinctively contrive rituals of submission to facilitate our admission to some higher plane of living.
There is no magic in the rituals, nor does God dictate their form or write their script. The rituals are of our own making, born of a desire to return Home, or find Home, or create Home, that place of which we are intimate part, and in which we are again, or finally, Whole.
Our rituals of submission are rituals of entrance. In our submission we submit to embrace. In our acceptance we accept gifts and empowerment.
Rituals of submission, nonsensical and impractical, institutional or intimately personal….their worldly pointlessness flies as a banner of liberation, declaring our chosen freedom from the world’s dictates and pragmatism, declaring our submission/acceptance of our spiritual nature.
We will bow that we may stand free.
We will quietly meditate so that our souls may jubilantly dance.
We will close our eyes that we may see bright Truth.
We will give precious time to unproductive rituals of submission, submitting to the caress of the eternal.
MAGNIFICENT HUMANITY
So glad to have a warm house!
So glad!
My writing is like a grain of sand buried in a giant sand dune. Of course I would like to think it is like a little gem buried in a sand dune. But the hopelessness of that gem ever sparkling in the sun, ever casting some flash of color into someone’s vision, weights heavier and heavier with each day.
I’m just trying to pass along the gem I’ve been given..
But it’s dark in here, buried in this generation..
Yet it is so evident that I live in a unique gift of opportunity, a time when I have not directly experienced war or natural disaster (yet), all in a world of astonishing communication. Those are exquisitely rare times, and not to be squandered.
More and more clearly I see the condition of the human species, of this generation. More and more clearly I see the magnificence of their accomplishments in the face of their situation.
BIRTH OF NURTURE
This spiritual generation of humanity can be perceived as analogous to the dinosaurs, with a few of those dinosaurs sprouting feathers and a few having learned to fly.
For the most part the dinosaurs busied themselves with eating everything in sight, be that ferns or each other. Massive teeth and claws were the norm. Yet out of that sprung what would become the cockatoo and the bird of paradise and the hummingbird. Out of that world would come fuzzy kittens and Mother Theresa, and even Yeshu (Jesus).
There were moments in those Permian and Jurassic and Cretaceous worlds when parents nurtured offspring and herd members protected each other. There were moments of beginning.
So too now, in the relentless wars and soulless violence and political demise of noble values and brutal destruction of environment and savage consumption of resources, parents nurture children and team members look out for each other. There are moments of beginnings, eternal beginnings, moments of spiritual birth and beauty that linger not in this corporeal world but emanate as enduring Light in that world not parallel to, but orthogonal to, this temporal flow, eternal Life emanating from our moments of life.
Pre-dawn dark.
NEEDED TOUCH
Bodhi pawsages and purrs after a long brushing.
Earlier he sat between me and the device screen, his fuzzy outline silhouette and whiskers glowing white from the light of the screen, a lovely image of this Bodhisattva gift of God.
Thank You, thank You, thank You for these moments of closeness. I get to love something! I get to brush a Bodhisattva kitty! I get to commune in peace and safety and quiet acceptance and Love! Such astonishing blessing. Oh such a moment, so needed, so precious.
LAUGHTER AND HORROR
Look deeply into the laughter and the horror and try to distinguish the difference. Look deeply at this generation, look deeply, and try to not give up hope.
Look at the reason for the wars and conflict, look through the blindness, the willful blindness, and strive to forgive.
Acutely feel the aloneness, the crushing emptiness, the enduring void of the isolated human soul, and ponder whether it can ever be filled.
Try to imagine God’s words echoing from first moment to now, “it is good, it is very good.” Try to reconcile that with the juxtaposition of the wars and conflict. Dive deep into the dark paradox and pray it won’t forever swallow you.
Here it is, laid bare before us, there for the obvious seeing, naked humanity, it's savage civilizations and technology enhanced barbarity relentlessly assaulting the soul that dares to look.
Here it is, the crown of creation, a roiling cauldron of cruelty, weapons and economies dedicated to inflicting misery and suffering.
Here it is, your moment of Choice, that exhausting ever present eternal Choice, that free Choice to locally obviate some modicum of suffering and justify God’s seemingly overly optimistic resigned sigh “it is good, it is very good.”
SLIPPING IN PROVERBS
The Old Testament’s blood and gore, gaudy miracles, and “we win, they lose” is necessary marketing, all the fun stuff people remember, in order to slip in lessons like the seldom read Proverbs.
GOD TREMBLES
There is no peace to be found with this spiritual generation. There will be the stress of good and evil,
yin and yang, light and darkness, love and loneliness, life and death, in every interaction.
Yet from all the madness of this corporeal existence arises enduring Love and good and Unity, launched into eternity by every Choice to love, to forgive, to compassionately embrace.
“It is good” God sighed, trembling at the good and evil unleashed, immersing in the bright new dimension of holiness awaiting the children of the Choice.
BLIND KITTY
The preceding written while ‘Tasha explores! She is all the way to the shed! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I never imagined this was possible! She walks so normally through the leaves! Oh that brave little girl gift of God!
PRIMORDIAL HUMAN CHAOS
There was a time. Such an amazing time.
A time of answers.
Such a sweet memory, reclining on that perfectly formed fitting stone in that perfectly formed time.
There were answers then, answers about the nature of Reality. There was hope then, hope to share.
Such moments before the sunrise, often cold, then that predictable sunrise breeze.
There were answers then.
The questions were different then, about simple things, Reality and Purpose and meaning.
Now the questions have dissolved into chaos, the chaos of humanity, a chaos so turbulent it even precludes meaningful questions, for the human ambient is too chaotic to even lend itself to a meaningful question.
This human chaos is the spiritual version of the primordial chaos before stars and planets formed. In this analogy even the disk of gas and dust has yet to form with its submission to the law of angular momentum.
It is almost unbearable, this human chaos. God help God watching what has become of His/Her Creation.
The madness was so unpredictable. Of course I miss those moments of transcendence on that embracing stone. Of course I miss immersion in perfection. Of course I miss hope and purpose.
I have been possessed by my perceived mission for nigh on a quarter century now. Never has it seemed so hopeless and pointless.
I no longer get the answers, for I am immersed in the human madness, unable to shake each day’s shocking developments from my thoughts.
I await, morning after morning, grateful for the occasional caress of spirit, but as blind as ever to any path.
“It will be, it will be” with no further clarification is the only certainty.
It will indeed unfold. The life lived will be an integral part of it. The miracles will be securely woven into it. “Fear not” was the advice of the ages and still is. “You are loved. You are loved.”
DEMAND INSPIRATION
I demand inspiration,
demand insight,
demand words,
demand wisdom,
demand vision.
I rail against the oppressive darkness,
that darkness that clings and presses harder every day.
I rage against the blindness,
the blindness imposed by time.
I demand, rail, and rage,
and see nothing.
When have I seen?
When not looking.
When waiting.
When patient.
When stepping out of the flow of time.
What have I seen?
Nothing I could describe,
nothing neatly fitting into words and print.
Why did I see?
I have not seen that answer.
GLOWING BODHISSATVA
Lordy, Bodes getting in the south window in the morning is sweet. The sun just sets his fur aglow all around the edges of his silhouette.
Such blessings.
IS ANYTHING RIGHT?
Is anything “right”?!
Isn’t everything “wrong” from some perspective?
Do any of the big choices in life arrive with unambiguous right and wrong options?
Aren’t there good reasons for everything we do, reasons built on the base of every life moment we’ve ever experienced, no matter how bad or stupid the choices eventually turn out to be?
There are always reasons, for the most stupid and the most horrid choices. Every person making every bad choice has sufficient reasons to convince themselves to make that choice, even if later it looks desperately bad.
But at what point do we not have a choice? At what point to emotions/desires/programming/instincts take over? At what point can we no longer pretend to rationally defend our choice, knowing it was simply a caving in to temptation?
How many choices do we make because we can get away with it? How many choices do we make under social pressure?
How many choices do we make for altruistic reasons? Just how far will this world let us go with our altruistic reasons?
Do we really make any choice other than the base of what kind of person, applying what values, we want to be?
Do none of our ultimately abysmally bad choices actually look bad at the time?
Why do so many people respond with anger when confronted with evidence that their choices were bad?
Do we actually make all our choices long before we come to the point of decision?
On the matter of Choice and freewill and analysis of how and when we make our decisions, there is only one substantial, meaningful path that unambiguously holds true.
Look at yourself. Choose who and what you ultimately want to become. Freely choose the nature of the beast. Keep looking at yourself and your actions. Imagine interacting with that self of becoming. Imagine the history of your life’s impact on others and the world.
What will be different? Will you be loved and hated?....why and by whom?......does it matter?
Choose not your path, but yourself, the self that will impact others’ lives, the self that will then know the path.. Choose, don’t run from the Choice, for you cannot escape it, for it is in you.
CHRISTMAS DARKNESS
A liminal darkness.
Do you feel it?
That is the darkness of Christmas,
darkness of coming not yet arrived.
A liminal darkness, growing darker, not lighter,
a darkness through which a promise is almost heard.
Liminal darkness,
leaving one with no sense of direction,
no warmth, seemingly no hope.
There is no feeling or seeing the Light.
Yet there is hope, only hope,
an instinct,
a prayer,
a certainty,
a certainty of faith
that casts its own Light into the abiding darkness.
Welcome to Christmas,
another one,
like all the rest,
promise awaiting,
awaiting us to cast forth its Light,
Christmas Light,
appearing not on the horizon,
not as a distant glow,
but appearing within us,
casting its Light one to another.
Dawn.
YESHU GIVING UP
Did Yeshu see the inevitable pending disaster of rebellion against Rome and initially focus His ministry on fitting in with the counterculture crowd in hopes of winning them over to a radical rebel Kingdom of peace and Love? Did He initially try to save Israel from itself? Does that explain His baptism? Did He hope to convince people the Kingdom was at hand if they would only love and care?
Did He eventually have to acknowledge the futility of diverting the great human tides of madness, instead following that terrible path of crucifixion and resurrection that would launch His Message through the ages?
EACH A UNIVERSE
We have it backwards. We are not in the universe. We are each a universe. Physical existence (what we call the universe) is merely a matrix through which these universe’s of consciousness can interact.
The intersections of conscious universes create Reality. The absence of intersection of conscious universes is merely Void.
FLIMSY IDENTITY
God, the twists and turns of life that liberate our souls, and the twists and turns that entrap us.
A person here, a choice there, a hunger meeting a temptation, and our lives launch down a radically different trajectory, all completely unseen to us at the time.
In the absence of that pivotal happenstance would something else have nudged us toward that same path? Would our entire being and who and what we became really have turned out completely different in the absence of that one person, temptation, or opportunity?
That would seem to make this essence of self that we so cherish a rather flimsy construct, if we would be a totally different person with a totally different life if only that bus had arrived a little later or the sudden storm had not chased us inside or we had never met that one pivotal person.
The nexus points deflect our lives into new and unforeseen and at the time unrecognized trajectories. We are a pachinko ball bouncing this way or that based on the next unpredictable pin blocking our path, only descent to inevitable and universal ending being guaranteed.
With path so unpredictable and subject to whims of chance, and ultimate fate so inescapably certain, we would be wise to consider what we can with any confidence claim as identity and Self along the way. Path and destiny far more out of our control than we would care to admit, what of any essence of Self can we carry with us? Is that not the point of our unpredictable chaotic path and its concluding worldly oblivion?
Marvel at the chance circumstances that fling your life’s orbit this way and that, but do not take them too seriously. It is still the essence of you, regardless of ephemeral titles and trophies and tragedies accumulated along the way, that makes the journey. The path is simply a momentary opportunity to choose your essence in response to the wild, unpredictable confluences and collisions and conflicts and combinations that launch you from moment to moment.
Accept the peace of knowing your temporal life is out of your control, but it unfolds so as to empower you to make the Choice to shape your eternal being.
(I typed this with a little white Bodhi Pfodens reaching out in the dark from under liddl ‘puter to bat at my moving fingers. Too sweet!)
DUTY CALLS
Faces,
Aging,
Life,
Ticking,
Lives dropping through an hourglass,
So much to learn,
Then so much to pass on,
But such insecurity compounded by disaster after disaster,
Loss after loss,
Betrayal after betrayal.
Finally, just tired,
More insecure than ever,
But duty - necessity - purpose call.
SHARED TIME
Conscious entities require common temporal flow for shared experience. The existence of time illustrates the complete dedication of the universe to individual elements of consciousness.
Without a shared temporal flow experience of one conscious entity could not occur in synchronization with any other conscious entity. Any sharing at all requires a common temporal basis.
Look at the confusion we experience with even the relatively simple issue of relativity!
We exist in a most peculiar realm of the universe in which shared time is not complicated by distance or high speed or quantization.
EUGENICS
American Experience,
Eugenics = “Healthy Birth”
Institute founded about 1906 in U.S. by Davenport. Would breed healthy species.
Moron WAS a new technical term.
Used totally bogus data, fulfilling expectation
Eugenics display at world’s Fair. A huge success. Diverse groups saw it as the fix for their problems and causes.Uswed Wacky I.Q. tests.
Used for WWI draftees.
Half were determined to be morons.
The public was scared.
Easily sold, rational, compelling argument.
Mendelev pea discoveries were in the previous century.
Eugenic shifted to racism. “America was doomed.”
“Science’ displays posted in congress.
Intelligence of the nation would collapse. Congress was convinced. Massive racism resulted. Immigration was stopped. Anne Frank’s father requested a visa four times and was refused. Consequently she died in a concentration camp.
Birth control decried until seen as a eugenics tool
1925: 350 colleges required eugenics class.Mainstream culture excited about eugenics.
Hitler said Germany should follow U.S. example.
“Fitter Families for Future Fireples’ contests were held at country fairs, like stock judging. Straight teeth were important. The winning family paraded with ribbons.
Dubois said negroes should breed for brains and beauty.
Eugenics promoted healthy babies. Who could argue with that?
1927 A Verginia test case, Corrie Buck would decide if state could sterilize people. Case could break the dam and eliminate socially inadequate classes of people.
Kellogg made Corn Flakes to clean bowel. He promoted eugenics.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said to sterilize people. Allowing their reproduction was bad for the nation.
2000 per year were sterilized in the next six years.
CHURCH
This atmosphere of willfully blind, unthinking, unchallenging conformism is what gives rise to nationalism, tribalism, war, genocide, and slavery. In this church there seem to be far less loyalty to Yeshu’s (a name they would probably decry) teachings than loyalty to a style of clothing, a recited liturgy, a sense of belonging to a homogeneous group (though the syllables “homo” would raise their hackles.).
It is dangerous, these places of conformism and group think and slowly repeating music that sucks out the brain and inserts marching orders.
It has taken me a couple of days to recognize what so deeply bothered me about that place and people and performance (and it is a “performance”.) In that mindless marching in suits and ties and makeup are the seeds of the deepest evils committed by humanity.
With Unity as my life-watchword, that place was the antithesis of Unity. There is no Unity when everyone is the same, when all believe the same, when individuality and independent thought is usurped by mindless groupthink that can be turned in any direction convenient for the leadership.
Of course I felt queasy and disturbed and uncomfortable and ill-at-ease. I was witnessing the innocent appearing but definitely not benign pattern of human behavior that absorbs individuals and eventually issues marching orders.
FOLLOW THAT GUY WITH THE DEMONS!
In this time of faith renewal during Easter season, I find myself drawn to read the account of miraculous healings in Mark 5.
I read them with fascination, with curiosity, with wonder, and on this morning I read them for what they are, without trying to project any of our modern, scientific, rational perspectives onto them.
I read them in terms of the people involved.
I see a demon possessed man who, in spite of the mental tortures besetting all his conscious thoughts, sought out Yeshu (Jesus).
6: “When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him.”
“From a distance” he ran. It’s hard to imagine the demons were counseling this rash action that would spell their demise.
The man ran to Yeshu, though once there, it was the demons that did the speaking.
Unlike so many other people healed by Yeshu, it appears this man could not even verbalize his request. All he could do was “ran and fell on his knees in front of him”.
That was enough. Upon that act of personal choice, before the possessing spirits could even start their pleading, Yeshu had already responded to the man’s act of faith by saying “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!”
Such a powerful and exciting lesson this paints for us!
In the midst of our addictions, in the midst of all that controls our lives and possesses our behavior, when we cannot so much as even utter out loud that we seek healing and release from those forces that so completely control us, all we have to do is run to Him who waits to save us.
Of all the healings described in the Bible, perhaps this one is most relevant for our times. In this age when we are all to greater and lesser degrees possessed by the marketing influences of modern life, when the colors of the restaurant décor subliminally tell us to eat more, when for every discomfort and inconvenience someone will sell us a pill, when during every waking moment a myriad of media tells us to indulge our every desire…..when in those rare moments that we dare to look at our day’s actions and we briefly recognize how much of our day was dictated to us by the possessing demons of possessions, pleasure, and entertainment……in our emptiness we may not even be able to utter the words to plead for healing, because the subtlety and thoroughness of our possessing demons keeps us from even fully discerning what it is that we need rescuing from.
But still we can sense, sense with our hearts that which our bedeviled minds cannot even fully understand, sense that healing power to which we are inexorably drawn, in spite of the demons that would keep it at bay. Though in our addictions, habits, and “needs”, we may have lost most power to control many of our actions, we can still run, run to that Hope that we see in the distance, not even knowing the outcome or even exactly what we seek, but simply acting in response to the cries of our individual, God created spirit that hungers for peace from the world’s possessing torments.
And that Love to which we can still freely choose to run is so grandiose, so munificent, that to run to it is all we need to do.
The demon possessed man “fell on his knees in front of him”, unable to do more. He did not need to do more. By that Choice to run to the Source of Love, by that act of faith in defiance of the forces, fears, pressures, and anxieties that seek to control, that man of the Decapolis found liberation, and showed us which way to run.
WATCH WHAT YOU WORSHIP!
Watch how you worship! Watch what you worship.
If worship does not challenge, does not create some unease, does not in at least some little way leave you a slightly different person, it was not worship of anything worthwhile.
Let hypocrisy ring from the highest mountains, but don’t be a part of it.
Is this worship of a God that will save your sorry backside? Is it worship of a God that will elevate you to the salvation you so richly deserve?.....or is it worship of a God, an idea, a testimony, a philosophy, a teaching, a Message that demands change and turning from the routine bigotries and prejudices that afflict most religious institutions?
Watch how you worship, and see if it is just like those infidels/heathen/gentiles worship except with the names and symbols and scripture changed to protect the guilty.
Watch your worship, and ask why you bother. Is it for entertainment and the title and the habit and the necessary social position? …..or do you worship when it gets hard, when no one is around to see what you are doing, when you do that kindness that does not come easy, when you face the challenge of compassion and the torment of forgiveness.
---------------
Any church attracting big crowds is probably doing something wrong. Yeshu did not attract crowds with entertainment or His sermons. In fact, as He got more serious with His sermons the crowds disappeared.
The meaningful Message is not a popular message. The True Message is not always an easy message. The church following Yeshu, preaching as He did, will be challenging and demanding and uncomfortable. It will not be needing a bond issue to build a parking garage for the overflow crowds.
WHERE ARE THE ANSWERS?
upon waking up, after a night of panic attack.
“The peace, the answers, the truth, are to be found within you”.
“The peace, the answers, the truth, are to be found in that beyond you, in the greater, in God”.
The key is the realization that these are One and the same.
Poetry
DAILY FOGA thick fog envelopes all,
the hills and city,
out there somewhere,
but completely hidden.
I know they are there,
because they were there,
weren’t they?
I hear something, rumbling traffic in front and below, morning feathered symphony above and behind;
but I see none of it.
Yet I must predicate my course of action on faith that in what lies hidden in each direction.
Thick and dark is fog this morning,
as is the fog of life,
our path clear for only a step, maybe two, our direction chosen in faith,
chosen from memory of that unseen,
directions chosen from muffled sounds and whispered songs,
directions chosen in fog of future time,
dark and unyielding,
but still we look,
intently peering into translucent veil,
until each morning,
in light still dim,
again our path we choose.
COINCIDENCE
I come in from writing the preceding and read my daily Bible chapter. Today: 2 Corinthians 4. In verse 18: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
CUDDLING LEOPARDS
This spiritual existence is as finely balanced as the curvature of this physical universe.
Scientists have wondered and struggled to explain a curvature of the universe that appears flat, leading neither to runaway expansion nor to re-collapse, a perfectly balanced curvature of space-time as expression of the matter and energy density of the universe. By invocation of inflation models and M-theory multiverses, physicists stretch conceptual understanding like taffy in desperate grasping at math that will testify in defense of their outrageously improbable but undeniable data.
In direct parallel we see a comparable balance in the spiritual nature of this existence, balanced between bonds and death, loving and killing.
I just saw an amazing photo-article in National Geographic describing the life of a leopard mother and cub. (April 2007, pages 142 – 155, “Lessons of the Hunt” by Dereck Joubert and Beverly Joubert.
In one scene (As I type, the fox enters the yard!…padding down like clockwork at 07:25 AM.)….In one scene, the leopard braves a baboon, one of the gravest threats to leopards. She kills the baboon, arguably in self-defense, but then notices a baby clinging to the now still fur. The baby baboon reaches toward the leopard, as if looking for maternal connection.
The leopard proceeds to nuzzle the baby, and then gently takes it up into the tree for protection. She continues to nuzzle and cuddle it, and they go to sleep together, cuddled against one another.
In such moments we see the potential of and nature of God’s Creation.
The longing for connection, affection, love, nurturing, to give and to receive all of these, in other words, the call to Unity, lies somewhere within every living soul.
Yet the nature of this world, this place of spiritual birth and freedom and Choice, must of necessity also entail the inevitable harsh and painful sunderings and severings inherent in all birth.
The leopard must kill to survive. It must bring terrified baby impalas to its cub to teach the cub how to kill.
Breathtakingly harsh is this worldly life.
The cuddling baby baboon died in the cold and hunger of the night. The leopard did not harm or eat it.
The article also describes how the leopard and its mother, after 3 ½ years of playful affection, finally separated when a spat over the younger not sharing food turned into a permanent rift.
Again life demonstrates a separating, a breaking of loving and affectionate bonds.
Inevitable, inexorable, inescapable are these breaks and separations and rifts and battles, leaving hearts broken and infant souls alone, and are we not all infant souls?
Unrelentingly harsh is the Nature that gives us physical birth. Wrenchingly painful and paralyzingly terrifying are the trials of birth physical and spiritual.
Yet still, on occasion, a leopard cuddles a baby baboon. (A similar incident was documented in detail several years ago when a lion cuddled and protected a gazelle over a period of weeks.)
The nature of this harsh, worldly life means we cannot always celebrate affection, connection, and embrace.
Some will take that as justification for a cold realism, a motivating factor for their own hunts, literal and figurative, in pursuit of prey and profits.
Yet others will take that harsh reality as all the more reason to embrace each rare opportunity for love and compassion, moments made all the more precious by their scarcity.
And there, in the midst of the circling baboons with bared teeth and their surviving baby with pleading eyes, is our Choice.
There, in that Choice, is Purpose, the purpose of this physical universe miraculously balanced between collapse and disintegration, the Purpose of this living world of ongoing birth balanced between cruelty and compassion.
CULPABLE GOD
Aging, the struggle to hold on to independence, the encroaching helplessness, the inexorable degradation of mind and body and health and vitality and housekeeping and cleanliness….I cannot quite get a mental or emotional grip on it. The ravages of aging rival the harshness and brutality of Nature I witnessed in east Africa, in that the mind and heart initially reject it as part of God’s Creation, for surely such suffering stands in stark contradiction to what we want from a loving God.
It becomes easier to understand why humanity consistently created religions based on cruel, vengeful, violent gods, for such is the nature of this world, the creation of those gods.
It makes the appearance of a faith based on love and compassion seem all the more outlandishly improbable, not to mention unrealistic, impractical, and irrational.
Arguably Aztec sacrifices and Hebrew vengeance seem far more in tune with the dissonant symphony of Creation than does imagery of a meek lamb and forgiving Creator.
Such gentleness and submission and kindness demonstrate preposterous denial of the nature of this worldly existence.
…………..Exactly…………….
For such is the whole point of that faith lived by that woefully unsuccessful, itinerant Meschioch (Messiah).
We built our temples and idols and altars and rituals to reflect the visible, physical nature of the world we see and touch and experience. Cold stone and sharp blades are indeed quite appropriate to these representations.
But throughout the bloody, agonizing, suffering, cruel, wretched fate of worldly existence with its inevitable last desperate rattling breath awaiting each of us, there exists in parallel something else, something more……something irrational and abjectly indefensible.
We do grieve and care and sorrow and sympathize and sacrifice, to whatever limited and stifled degree we may allow ourselves.
While we may march with thirsty enthusiasm to the slaying of our arbitrary enemy of the moment, still we cannot deny we feel at least a little something of the heart when our comrades fall under the blows of sword or bullet.
We don’t watch with emotional impunity the suffering and dying of our family member or gang brother.
There is something more, something of heart beyond mere muscle and blood. We have words for Nature’s “brutality”, “harshness”, “terror”, and “suffering” only because there is more than the physical, the pragmatic. Our soul needs such words, these labels so subjective and emotional in their concept and application.
The nonsensical ranting of that itinerant Meschioch struck a chord of reality sensed, not seen, a reality of feelings and emotions, not form and earth.
This is a world of cruelty and suffering, and if we claim that any God exists, we cannot deny the culpability of that God in forming a Creation on a foundation of inevitable death…..Death…..the end of the suffering and terror…..
And whether we do or do not ascribe credit and blame for this worldly existence to a God, we cannot escape some nascent spiritual awareness of something more, that awareness that allows us to even know the meaning of “harsh”, “suffering”, ‘fear”, and “loneliness”.
What will we do about that? We can deny that awareness. We can nurture that awareness. But we cannot escape that awareness.
With each business interaction, management decision, vote cast, word spoken, payment demanded or debt forgiven, we testify and affirm whether we believe, whether we want to believe, there is something more, a reality of soul beyond substance, a reality enduring, not eroding.
TSUNAMI OF CREATION
This life will be violent, frustrating, disappointing, lonely, and dangerous!
The question is, trial after trial after trial, will we choose to keep trying to love in spite of it all, will we choose to still look for the beauty, even in the times when we cannot see it.
This violent, chaotic, dangerous, cruel, heartless, cataclysm of a universe gave birth to consciousness! Progress and spiritual evolution continued, and freewill began to emerge. And just as a sea of quarks led to nucleons and nucleons finally reached a point of forming nuclei and eventually all cooled enough to allow atoms and with time statistics and gravity inexorably pulled them together to form planets, eventually, agonizing step at a time, in the next phase of unfolding purpose, we have the opportunity to love, to give, to sacrifice, to embrace, to cuddle, to care, to help.
The universe, the planet, the animals and human society remain as violent, as cruel, as savage, as dangerous and irrational and cold and uncaring as ever. We cannot change this foundation that gave our freewill consciousness birth.
But we have the Choice of whether to move on, whether to move higher, whether to take the next step.
We ride on the crest of the rolling tsunami of the evolution of the universe, each of us choosing whether to remain immersed in the roiling cauldron of worldly circumstance that flung us to this point of decision, or to instead reach for the beauty and Love and Unity that we sense in our heart, that we occasionally glimpse, and that lies just beyond this point in space, time, and physical existence.
MUSIC OF LIFE
What power lies in surrender to circumstance, acceptance of cards dealt, acknowledgement of constraints? Is this not the very music of life, the chosen willingness to create and express within the structure of stanzas and rules of rhyme?
BELIEVE IN HIM OR BELIEVE HIM
The real message of Christianity for this harsh, cruel, brutal world was, and is, that love, gentleness, compassion, and all that gives life its joy and meaning, will triumph!
Of course this new faith remained in the shadows for centuries, for its core message is not something that appeals to those people that seek and attain positions of power.
Only after this faith acquired the trappings of religion, replete with rules, institutions, and positions of power, only once its original message was sufficiently subsumed under dogma and ritual, could this faith be used like all religions as a weapon of war and a tool of power.
Then leaders could adapt this faith for their strategic convenience, and it could enter the public spotlight with banners, fanfare, and imperial edict.
For by then the original message of faith and hope and gentleness and Love had been perverted into a religion.
I finally realize that per the modern English usage of the words, I am neither religious nor spiritual. I am merely faithful.
In the face of a world of abiding violence, bloodshed, cruelty, brutality, and savagery, I sense and feel and know and long for a triumph of Love, gentleness, compassion, and Unity. It was among people with this longing that the Christian faith spread Scattered through all time and places, such souls find little succor in most religions. The Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and Persian religions brought little hope, bringing the concept of God down to our level, the level of petulant, warring, factious, puerile humans. Then the religions of ritual dictated that we do tricks for a God with a temper and jealousy prone to inflict violence and suffering.
Then there were the religions of meditation and tranquility with their promise of escape from this world’s suffering, but escape to a nebulous oblivion of pain free nothingness.
And then came Hope. Then came a simple message that the joy and meaning and fulfillment found in care and Love and compassion and affection might be real, lasting, enduring, and eternal, in spite of all that this world says to the contrary.
It didn’t take many centuries for this message to get forged into the sharp sword of “religion”, and diluted from deeply personal faith into intellectual “belief” in a name and credo as a guarantee for worldly victory and eternal life.
But in spite of institutions, ritual, and liturgical cages, the original message abides; Love, compassion, and gentleness are eternal. This harsh and brutal world is just a place for them to be born. There is hope, hope for life as you wish it were. And that hope you must not earn by doing tricks for God or by life long disciplines of meditation.
One brought that message of Hope, and as He cried it out He implored “trust me, believe me, what I say is real and true!”
1500 years later English translators wrote “believe in Him”. I must ask if this does not also mean “believe Him”. He taught that the longings of our heart, our grief, our sorrow, our loneliness, all that arises from the absence of love and Unity, would be healed. ‘Believe me!” he pleaded, and I imagine Him saying, “don’t give up hope!”
With no theological justifications on my part, I imagine Him saying “listen to your heart! It speaks truth when it says that Love, compassion, gentleness, affection, and cuddling fuzzy puppies are good and true and eternal. Trust me! Believe me! Love is eternal, and I will prove that for you.”
Believe in Him? Doesn’t that mean believe in Love, compassion, gentleness, and the hope of their eternal triumph and life? “Believe Him” I say, believe that you can trust the longings of your heart, that in the midst of this world’s cruelty, carnivores, and crucifixions, a Love true and gentle and eternal is being born in our hearts.
TAUNTING, CAPRICIOUS GOD
Sometimes it is as if the temporal world wants to hold us back, tries to keep us from our spiritual potential. Such a statement paints a picture of the world as far too malevolent for my tastes. After all, didn’t my loving God create the temporal world? Do demons and the temporal world blind us and claw at us, chaining and shackling our spiritual growth and progress? After all, doesn’t the world unambiguously teach us over and over that resurrection in any guise is impossible? Don’t our worldly natures desperately fight against allowing us to forgive, to tolerate, to sacrifice, to believe?
It seems the world’s fearful nature together with our mortal natures stand diametrically opposed to what we spiritually would want to believe and become, if indeed the world’s demons and our carnal natures even give us a chance to consider spiritual beliefs and goals.
So what capricious God would taunt us with illogical demands on our beliefs, irrational admonitions to faith, and unattainable spiritual goals, while programming us as animals and placing us in a physical world constant only in its enduring threats to our survival?…..The same God that places the mountain before the mountain climber, and the chasm before the bridge builder.
Only by the challenges we scale do we attain identity and existence as something other than just spiritual potential.
If all paintings, sculpture, songs, and poetry already existed, there would be no artists. If no dire circumstances, there would be no heroes, if no need for birth, no mothers; if all knowledge revealed, no joy of teaching and no joy of learning; if nothing hidden, no exploring;
Perhaps the clinging demons to which I earlier referred do not shackle our spiritual progress, but make it possible. Perhaps they even enable our very existence as individuals, individuals defined by our chosen response to thee struggles meted us.
In the world we “do” and we create and hence define our identity in terms of barriers we scale and creations not previously created. In an effortless existence devoid of needs and lacking nothing, we ourselves would not exist, human identity ceasing to have meaning. The same holds true for our spiritual, and eternal, existence. When we overcome struggles, temptations, discouragements, and our carnal nature, when we wrestle with the demons, we receive the opportunity to define our spiritual, individual identity. The mountain of a disability or addiction allows us to become a climber. The void of someone’s loneliness is the blank canvas on which we can paint an embrace.
The world and its demons would sometimes seem to chain down our souls. But their surrounding darkness gives meaning and individual identity to the light we choose to radiate as growing children of “I Will Be What I Will Be”.
GOD IN THE PEOPLE INTERACTIONS
It is in the people interactions that God is instantiated in human lives. It is the one on one, the conversation, the response, the word, the touch, therein is the core essence of all the commandments and scripture and teachings and Gospel and meditations and prayers invoked and applied or ignored and denied.
It is not in the projects and goals and activities and contributions and worship that we find God and salvation. It is in how we respond to God when s/he is standing right before us, daring to stand right before us in the wrong clothing, skin, and religion, that we choose to praise or crucify our supposed Lord.
Follow duty and dogma to the exclusion of compassion and empathy and you will resolutely and righteously march straight to the hell to which you would have with such holy conviction condemned those of differing belief.
NEW YEARS EVE ON PLUTO
New Years Eve
Best in ages!
Watching New Horizons program as it approaches Ultima Thule!
Chromite crystals survive entry of meteorites! Can find embedded fossil meteors and analyze chromite. Can identify meteors from same source. Can find clusters of related meteors from collisions.
He3 in solar wind gets embedded in space dust. Space dust survives drifting entry into atmosphere and retains He3. In geologic layers lots of He3 indicates lots of dust, correlated to clusters of related meteorites, meaning a collision. So earth acts as a history recording of frequency of collisions in space.
This program is so exciting! It is for me so encouraging. These people still exist!
They speak of Tombaugh. This summer in NM I met one of his students!
I can't believe I get to see such a program. I can't believe I get to see those details of Pluto.
Will I be around for the data from the Trojan asteroids to be visited by the Lucy probe?
I watch humanity at its leading edge.
Astonishing images from Pluto! I can't believe it! Everyone should see this.
Watching the New Horizons Ultima Thule flyby was one of the best New Years Eves ever! Lordy how I enjoyed that
dawn, on TV view from the space station.
VIEW OF EARTH
I alternate my view between looking at the blue earth slip past, the black of space beyond, the hillside outside the door, and Bodhisattva kitty in my lap. They are of course all intimately connected, actually merely different expressions of the same One, but chosen effort is required to see that.
So blue the earth. So astonishing that we should have this view from a station in which people from conflicting nations live. I see a prophecy of the 1950’s come true, and it is breathtaking.
There, right outside my glass door, is a sample of what the space station is displaying from far above. None of these views would seem to overlap. The blue orb betrays no direct view of life (though oxygen chemistry would loudly proclaim Life’s existence.) The blackness of space testifies only of void and enduring nothingness. The hillside grasses surely could not exist in such an inhospitable neighborhood. And Bodhi, warm, fuzzy, cuddly, golden, soft Bodhi, providing in this moment the contact and shared experience and mutual blessing of inter-being conscious Communion?.......Surely this profound cuddling instantiation of the very Purpose of existence has nothing to do with that surrounding inky blackness. Surely these moments of touch and contact and warmth and purring and mutually shared air and space and beneficial affection are not mere specks lost in a vastness of cold, dark, lifeless emptiness.
Here in a moment, from a display on screen of black space and blue planet to a grassy hillside and flitting birds outside the door to warm and cuddling fuzzy kitty in lap, here is a breadth and scope of existence encompassing the bounds of conscious comprehension.
Marvel and wonder, and pray for any wretched soul that would not marvel and wonder at this range of wonders.
Try to bring together the blackness of the void and the warmth of the purring kitty and between those extremes the blue of earth and the grass of the hillside. Try to bring them together in your mind and then abjectly surrender to the reality that this is all too big and our minds are too small to encompass the marvels and grandeur.
These broach the realm of the heart, these are things of the soul, crying of far more than mere facts and dimensions, speaking of that within which the endless void and the speck of blue and the fuzzy warmth all arise, that of which you are part and Whole.
PROGRAMMED FREEWILL
If anything testifies to the existence of freewill, ironically it is the panoply of influences, inputs, pulls, and tugs that work on our minds. Conflicts, contradictions, and incongruencies are the tangled mire out of which glowing freewill Choice arises.
Indeed, our conscious thoughts and choices may be only the visible tip of a mostly submerged iceberg of genetic predispositions and biological inclinations, modulated through a lifetime of childhood traumas and environmental influences. But from this contradictory compilation of conflicting coercions, we choose the preference and weight we will give to each.
With each discovery of behavioral psychology and neural biology it might seem we become less and less the masters of our own mind and actions, becoming mere spectators of our own thoughts spawned of biochemical and endocrinal imperatives. To the contrary, with each new revelation about colors that influence appetite and parenting that programs emotional responses, we gain awareness of what influences us, knowledge that in turn empowers and grants choice of how we will respond.
IT MAKES SURPRISING SENSE
Somehow it all kind of make sense, which is profoundly surprising.
All this conflict, the conflicts between people, and even the conflicts within our own minds.
It all seems quite unavoidably necessary if we are to be truly free and individual.
Were we all the same, even a little more the same, even prone to a slighter degree of similarity, we would not truly be individual.
The absolutely unfathomable, jaw-dropping, perplexing behaviors of those people a millennia ago, or around the world, or next door, or in the next cubicle, are an inescapable part of our nature as individuals.
the cacophony of voices vying for attention in our heads, the temptations and distractions and loss of attention and lack of discipline, that also necessary if we are to be free, freedom meaning choices, not mere choices of responses to circumstances, but choices regarding the very essence of who and what we want to be.
It is all necessary, and almost kind of begins to make sense.
And one can even imagine that it is all OK.
We must just have patience, patience and faith.
After all, we have all eternity to grow into what we want to be, and to live in that existence modeled around and consistent with what we want to be.
In its role as the incubator for these free and individual beings this world has through recent millennia fulfilled a surprisingly consistent function. I can see a striking consistency in the Choice faced by ancient Greeks and modern scientists, plains Indians and marketing psychologists…..always the same Choice,….whether to care or not……whether to listen to the whispers of higher callings to Unity or the shrill threats demanding collapse into the self.
And through those millennia occasionally appeared teachings and prophecies and revelations, each of them of course deformed and warped by our insistent demands, but still fulfilling the essential need of providing some glimmer of hope, some relevant incarnation to gently assist us in our attempts to spiritually survive in the peculiar and perverse society of the moment.
Surprisingly it all makes sense, not that it has to.
All the conflicts are the inescapable, perhaps inevitable, consequence of birth into freedom and individuality.
The conflicts must not endure, for once free and individual we are empowered to choose Unity.
But this world must be what it is.
And those who choose to seek Unity must actualize their Choice by trying to heal and love, by accepting and tolerating, all within the clashing madness of the world around and the roiling conflicts of the mind within.
TERRIFYING MIRACLES
Follow instincts? Follow guidance of the Spirit? Can I recommend it? I can not recommend anything. Each life is so peculiar and so peculiarly isolated that I would never dare to give advice.
Surrender to the Spirit? Fine, but your worldly life may get utterly wrecked. Yet I can passionately recommend that over the illusion of worldly success under your own power.
Surrender to the Spirit and watch miracles unfold…...but they may be miracles of disasters and terrors that fulfill the Purpose.
No easy task, deciding what to do with this one life. Being Christian does not make the task particularly easier.
Being Christian does help to engender resolve, not because you know you are right, but because you know you are trying to do right.
Being Christian while facing decisions provides comfort only in that you know you are forgiven if and when you screw up.
It also allows you to see the beauty along the chosen path, even if you chose the wrong path.
So my recommendation about life choices? Choose your intent, choose your values-priorities-and-morals. Choose first who and what and how you will be, not that you will ever be that, but at least your direction will be set.
Try to keep expectations at bay. If God is jealous it is regarding who is in charge of outcomes. Don’t get in the way of eternal outcomes.
Don’t fret most decisions, for they are not nearly as consequential as we might want to believe.
Pick your direction of personal growth. Remain true to it. See the beauty along the way. That’s advice I can share in good conscience. Give thanks for the blessings. Be honest about what you share.
Beyond that I have little generic advice. Love. Forgive. Care. Forgive. That should be enough while waiting on the miracles.
LEARN TO BE LOST
You have learned enough to be lost and confused. Giving up any sense of direction is part of following. You must follow, not lead.
Fear not, fear not. It sounds trite, but it is a core Truth.
You seek promises. There are none, and there is no clarity. That is the essence of following. Pray to be delivered, for to not would be to lie.
Go, go, for you know you must, though you know not to where or what.
It has been a long path of faith. It is a dark path, but you discern the stars.
Soon enough it will become clear, perhaps too soon. Pray not for guidance or wisdom or deliverance. Pray to accept, accepting not knowing, at least not knowing what the world will do.
No one knows what the world will do. It will unfold. Have faith. Be true to what you know. Have faith. Be true. Be true.
TRIUMPHAL MOMENTS ALLOWING PRECIOUS MOMENTS
The little Robin almost flew right over my head to reach the nest this morning S/he started after watching me for a long time from her/his branch, got almost over my head but then veered left to the living room roof.
How I long for Your Kindom, where Robins will know they are safe with me!
Bodes sits on the steps outside the fence. A cool breeze tells us it is raining somewhere.
Everywhere new life in effectively hides under the old residue of last year.
Here comes the Bodes. How trivial and unworthy of mention seem the most valuable moments of life! How blessed the routine moments without struggle or drama. Bodes made it to me!.....after meticulously stepping through the grass. Now there is a Bodhi in my lap! Such blessing!
Are the great and triumphant moments of life not in order to make possible the beautiful and precious moments such as this?
I accept the blessings unearned, and give thanks by savoring them.
What does it take to allow us to experience the beauty? So many people from the most grim backgrounds retain the capacity to recognize beauty and blessings. So many people inundated in blessings remain steadfastly anchored in anger and bitterness. Of course one’s nature plays a role. Of course one’s history of nurturing and experiences plays a role. But if we are human there is also a component of Choice. We should be honest about the role of all three, recognizing that we may have to overcome some predispositions and burdens of personal history, but knowing that we bear the personal responsibility to make the effort. We may not turn into glowing- bubbling - uber happy optimists, but at least we will see some beauty we will not have seen otherwise, we will be a little better off, and in the process we will leave the world a little better off.
ILLUSORY PURPOSE
The more I see of the world, the more difficult it becomes to write the phrase I oft use, “loving Purpose”. The uncompromising savagery of Nature, the unrelenting brutality of humanity, it all reflects something, something profound, and is it something I dare not even face? Or have I already adequately faced that truth in my previous writings, and I’m just experiencing one of those moments of weak faith?
The routine functioning of the world does always demonstrate stunning cruelty and suffering, and breathtaking beauty.
I sometimes wondered just exactly how empowered we are to even choose our actions in the midst of it all, actions so often dictated by circumstance, by the bullets whizzing past our comrades, by our desperate fears, by our programmed need for survival.
What can we even understand about the functioning of this world, and our role in anything remotely resembling moral purpose?
Actions, behavior, outcomes,….sometimes it seems we’re just spectators in life, even of our own behavior.
But surely we do have some choice of how we wish it were, how we want it to be, how we hope it will be.
Is that choice of our ideal all we have choice in, with little or no power over the instincts and environment that pull our behavioral strings? Maybe the answer, hidden in the great philosophical postulations and theological posturing of the ages, doesn’t matter. For without doubt any influence we do have over the actions and outcomes of our life begins with whatever we choose as our personal concept of ideal, of perfect, of Heaven.
The soldier in the trench may have little choice about pulling the trigger. The person suffering chemical imbalance in the brain may have little choice about behaviors anti-social or self-destructive. The insecure personality may have little choice about the codependent or uncommitted or abusive relationships.
But what ideal, what perfect world, what dreamed of world, would they, and we, choose?
Whatever freedom of action, whatever influence on outcomes, whatever power over our actions we have, whether great, small, total, or nonexistent, begins with that ideal, those values, that dream of how we wish it were for ourselves and everyone else.
It sounds so pointless, so impractical, so unrealistic, this dreaming about some utterly impractical and unrealizable ideal! But ultimately, it may be the only thing that makes us human, the only thing that empowers us, the foundation from which we exert any influence for good or bad over our lives and the world, and the spark that marks us as children of God.
CONFORM, SURVIVE, GO ALONG
The world is mad, a place of war and violence and cruelty. Look at it. Be honest about what it is. Then decide how you hope to respond.
You can say “it is what it is”, admit you won’t change it, and go along, becoming part and parcel of the world’s madness, seeking your profit and victories, exacerbating the world’s condition.
You can say you have to survive, but you don’t want to inflict more suffering, so you conform, get along, fit in, play the role, attain success, perpetuating the world’s condition.
You can say you cannot bear the suffering and must do something about it, in whatever small realm you influence, healing, curing, rescuing, ameliorating the world’s suffering condition.
You can recognize the foundation problems that induce the conflict and suffering, can determine that your greatest positive impact can come from policy and progress and inspiration and leadership and invention, instigating change to obviate sources of the world’s madness and suffering.
Exacerbate,
Perpetuate
Ameliorate
Obviate
It is a choice. It is your choice.
From old notes
Poor ‘Tasha fell out of bed twice during the night!
Heartbreaking!
I lay awake listening for her.
She got back up! So brave! She slept on me! All night!
Bodes was against me.
Then snuggled into comforter.
Slept late!
Joy! Thank You!
I spent much of next day working on a plan for a barrier around the bed I was obsessed. I could not bear to hear that sound again.
PERSISTENT STATE OF DEATH
Awaking. Dark.
In what a self-inflicted state of enduring death we exist.
All joy, what we might call Heaven, arises in Unity. In caring touch, in compassionate listening, in shared experiences, in giving of gifts that matter, in promoting individual and mutual growth and health.
What we call death, physical cessation of the body’s functions and presence of the conscious individual, we mourn because it summarily puts an end to the interactions, the exchanges, the gifts, the conversations, the love making, the sharing.
Yet we daily and brutally put an end to most of those interactions, cruelly crushing the openness, the intimate sharing, the sense of trust and safety, the bulk and depth of interpersonal Unity and Communion, by our panoply of anger.
We mourn physical death. We should mourn the persistent state of death in which we live.
With each lashing out, with each condemning scowl, with each trenchant refusal to listen or learn or forgive or tolerate, we tear asunder the potential bonds and associated heavenly joys between souls…..we induce spiritual death in its most profound meaning.
Every angry, snarky, snapping, caustic, bitter word tells us to not trust, not reveal, not open, not share. Every utterance of anger, by its painful severing of souls, invokes a state of spiritual death.
We think of Heaven as a place of closeness to God. We will never experience Heaven, “there”, until we forgive “70 times 7” times with everyone everyday, so that we strive to live in joyous Unity with each other here.
BIGGER THAN US
Bodes lies in the sunny spot on the floor. His color blends in perfectly with the glowing wood floor. Such blessings!
He squints against the sun.
I am distraught at not sleeping with ‘Tasha Aengelchen. I hardly see her. I had not realized what a huge part of our interaction came in bed at night and in the morning. That is the one place she can actively interact with me.
Bodes hops up and onto the high window sill. His hair glows in silhouette, like an annular solar eclipse.
We explore Reality and physics only as long as it poses no risk of discovering something bigger than us. We insist the Universe must fit into our math. We explore space as conquistadors, hoarding our new found knowledge.
We will never officially proclaim “that is beyond our understanding”.
We are far removed from the religious scientists of the 17th century. Life and spirit are far removed from our explorations and calculations.
It was an odd divorce, science from religion, after centuries of mutually productive and satisfying relationship. Religion failed to keep pace, growing cumbersome and stodgy and grouchy. So now the science explores in the darkness of its own purposeless light.
Closed minded stubbornness hinders their reconciliation. It will remain so until, as sometimes happens with former couples, crisis and necessity remind them of their need for each other and their once fruitful partnership.
LIFE DETRITUS
Mid-morning. Putting away Christmas decorations.
Look at all this detritus from disastrous relationships! Oh my gosh. Each trinket conjures images of distance and misunderstanding and anger and rejection and madness.
It is a stunning lifelong compendium of dysfunctional interpersonal disasters and tragedy, a litany of lives that are gone, left, divorced, and dead.
Yet here the decorations are, dutifully awaiting return to their box for another year of storage.
It is an indefensible ritual, this pointless investment of time in an annual Christmas exhumation of memories poignant and painful. Yet it powerfully embodies Christmas in its most profound essence.
This spiritual generation, born into a world of clawing survival, is not remotely ready for deep interpersonal communion. The prerequisite compassion and forgiveness is missing from their frightened hearts. So in lieu of deep interpersonal sharing of souls, in lieu of the intimate bonds of acceptance and tolerance and sharing and mutual affirmation for which we long, we exchange shiny trinkets and baubles.
It is pathetic and poignant and powerful.
Unaware, spiritually only marginally conscious, still this spiritual generation finds the courage to shine their tiny, but waxing, lights in the enshrouding darkness of this corporeal existence.
The God that set it all in motion might even say “it is good, it is very good.”
Bodes hops up into the high window, making his little sounds. Bright eyes look around. Little pink mouth so cute. Silver white whiskers capture miniature sun images.
UNCONSCIOUS CONVERSATION
What goes on in the human mind during conversations? Obviously precious little.
Is it possible in the midst of small talk to jar people into consciousness? Obviously *jar* is the key word, as evidently most people assiduously resist being drawn kicking and screaming into consciousness.
What would happen if a flicker of consciousness were to befall that prattling person assaulting us with small talk? Would it be too painful for them to bear? I imagine them experiencing something akin to people who deaf from birth receive a cochlear implant and cannot bear the sudden incomprehensible rush of auditory inputs.
Perhaps there are good reasons consciousness is so unpopular. Consciousness certainly entails incurring grief and sorrow and pain. That makes promoting consciousness a hard sale.
Jarring the small talker into consciousness? It would be an interesting experiment, but one likely to fail. Perhaps the effort would reveal whether some nascent consciousness resides latent somewhere under the automatic babble and trenchant self-absorption. Perhaps the experiment would reveal not even such nominal evidence.
Assuming most people are unconscious during conversation does make it easier to forgive and tolerate the battering banality. Perhaps one should leave well enough alone. Yet still, I can’t help but wonder at the well hidden potential in these prattling passages. Is this really all God intended for His/Her children? Is there surely not more, waiting to be awakened?
Oh the mysteries of life, mysteries of no interest to the unconscious insipid prattler, yet mysteries only they can someday solve.
Later
‘Tasha yowdels in loneliness, daddy's kitty.
Of course I go brush her. How can I not? Someday I will wish I could brush her.
Bodhi jumps from the high window into my crotch. My post-surgery shoulder screams in response to my flinch reaction. I loudly exclaim. Poor Bodes doesn’t know what he did wrong. He leaves the room crying.
Unlike people, from Bodes there will be no anger. I am sorry his feelings are hurt and he feels bad. There, now he has returned to my lap, pawsaging and purring. If only people could be so. Fear and insecurity and isolation in our unconsciousness preclude such easy resolution of issues among people.
Ahh, this is wonderful.
In every situation look for beauty, right, wrong, Love, and Purpose.
In every situation ask what you should do and why.
In every situation try to not let your fear take control of you.
In every situation dare to shut up and listen.
Dare to listen. That was a catch phrase of my seminars. It was a simple and succinct recipe. It was resoundingly unheard.
SOCIETAL PHASE TRANSITION
Societal collapse is due to excessive connection.
In an article I cannot find, turtle populations decreased when bridges were built connecting islands. The problem was insufficient food to accommodate the resulting burgeoning population.
We have passed a phase transition.
We have too much connection for our limited available love and compassion. Our population explodes without the accommodating necessary prerequisites to have peace and cooperation.
We used to be able to escape by migrating to an unpopulated area. That is no longer possible. We could still escape by closing our doors, by ignoring. That is no longer possible. Something will have to give.
CHINESE CHAT-ROOM BABES
Tragedy.
Chinese chat room babes.
They simply sit before their computer and do normal things and chat with viewers. They make a living from viewers sending them money.
The report on BBC was right out of a science fiction movie.
Guys get utterly obsessed with a face and occasional response. They will send thousands of dollars.
The girl is utterly obsessed with her looks because her financial life depends on it.
Most disturbing is how strikingly close this is to “normal” relationships!
The depth of interpersonal communion is non-existent and based on charade, but such is the foundation of most relationships.
That humanity uses technology for such illusory delusions of relationship is tragic.
The crushing dishonesty of the virtual interactions is not substantively different from the lies we, I, routinely tell in the hopes of not losing the “friendship”.
Why should facade and dishonesty be so essential to relationship?
What are human relationships, these hopeless facades doomed to conflict and tragedy?
So desperate, so frantic we all are for connection, communion, and Unity.
You can sell us anything if it remotely resembles or hints at the chance of relationship. We are just too blind to recognize what we truly want and need, so we waste our time in tawdry substitutes. But then again, what else is there? The more experience we get the more we recognize the hopelessness of attaining the kind of relationship for which we long. Of course we grab at straws.
At what point do we give up? We can’t. Even when we think we have given up, even when in resigned realism we subsume our hope for Love under busyness and resolve to lead a hermit’s life, it is all all a joke. We will still have our gaze caught by the attractive news announcer, still answer the phone, still accept the invitation.
We have no higher calling nor deeper longing in life than for interpersonal Unity. We will profess loyalty to whatever religion, army, tribe, school, team, club, fraternal order, or flag we can if it will make us part of something.
Admit it. Accept it. Don’t pretend you can ever be at peace with it.
Look at your spiritually emaciated self, driven half mad by unrecognized and unconfessed loneliness.
Leave the masquerade. Turn from the marketing. Embrace your pain and use the new found wisdom to ameliorate someone else's pain. Be authentic, at least as much as you dare. Fear not, or at least don’t let the fear paralyze you.
Seek, knowing you will not find, but in the process create a little Love, a little compassion, a little forgiveness, and discover the others are also struggling and alone in this darkness. In doing that, notice the Light grows a little brighter, by virtue of imperfect souls refusing to live in sequestered isolation, connections and bonds imperfect and transitory still providing more warmth than safe seclusion.
FREEDOM OF CONSTRAINTS
Living with injury.......everything you try to do seems so unfold in slow motion when you are injured.
Since my ankle injury, I’m getting only a fraction done that I normally would. Every forgotten detail requiring a trip down the hall to pick up something costs an inordinate amount of time. The setup that would have required an armload of tools or material or plates now requires a half dozen trips across the room, slow trips, shuffling, clumsy trips. What an inconvenience! What a trivial thing compared to what so many people suffer!
Hey, I can move! I’m not complaining! But progress on any project is agonizingly slow.
I can see how people could get addicted to being sick and injured and pitiful. If that is the only way one gets attention, help, care, consideration, connection, and companionship, dang, as one’s only apparent path to experiencing interpersonal communion, staying unhealthy could become awfully tempting.
Throughout our lives we are constrained, by two legs or less, by two eyes or less, by not having wings, by only five senses, at least for most of us.
All these conscious beings, chained together in a commonly shared physical world, possessing consciousness and even some modicum of freewill, and functioning within boundaries and limitations that dictate the nature of the interactions they each can have with the others.
There is a poetry in the structure of creation, poetry of the same sort as that resulting from constraints on rhyming or rhythm or line length.
The constraints in writing various forms of poetry seem utterly arbitrary. Why should the first lines of an acrostic poem all start with specific orders of letters? Who ever thought of requiring that the last syllables in traditional poetry rhyme?
Yet from utterly arbitrary literary rules and constraints, that all logic would predict would constrict and stifle communication, instead we see some of the most profound and beautiful expressions of the human soul.
So too, our physical and mental and emotional limitations would seem to deny our potential to live as empowered children of God. But I believe we will find that faithful acceptance of and surrender to the long list of limitations that bedevil and frustrate and constrain us will ultimately reveal that those very limitations can be used to define the expression of our soul, giving form to our life. Our defined physical, mental, and emotional limitations, whether perfectly normal or an aberration of normal, define only the boundaries of the canvas on which we paint with the choices of our life, creating the poetry and portrait, be it large or small, of who we choose to be.
APPRENTICED TO GOD
Oh to not be productive, to be liberated from the need to be productive!....to live in a universe of no hunger, fear, or suffering, our potential for creation now liberated to create beauty and life, to explore, to find new ways to express the joy of Unity and to reach toward exciting new heights of Unity.
But it is here, in this world of Darwinian conflict and cruelty, that we learn to create. Here the children of God are apprenticed to the Creator, learning to create, discovering what we can create, choosing what we will create.
Apprenticed to God,
given examples to inspire, given freedom to ignore them.
This material world pulls our strings of hunger and fears and lusts, but even as we clumsily plod per those pulls of needs, aversions, and desires, occasional sparks of creativity still hint at the potential for which we were created.
BLIND FAITH
So here we sit, in this temporal life, with some dim awareness of something more.
“You are not alone” says the book of Hebrews in the Bible.
I know that. I’ve experienced that. But dang, I don’t experience it all the time.
How curious, that this corporeal experience would lay hold of our conscious experience and deny the existence of all that we spiritually desire. How odd that such deception should be necessary.
It’s as if in creating the opportunity for conscious individuals, the Creator tossed them so far away from Communion with the Source that only by our freewill Choice, only by our freely chosen desire, can we bring our conscious experience into communication and connection with that spiritual reality that transcends the temporal sensations.
Strictly voluntary is this relationship with Source and Creator.
It does make sense that beings created to be free, utterly free, created in the image of their own Creator, would have to be created in isolation from the Source.
So this universe exists with structures of space and time and physical constants remarkably consistent with development of individual, conscious beings.
But part of it all is the Source, heard only if we choose to listen, seen only if we choose to look, and through our listening and looking, the material world tells us there is nothing more than the material world, and we are just mobile meat in it.
Perhaps it’s a bit like a blind person whose remaining senses tell him/her about the size of the room, the rooms contents, the rooms residents, but also tell the sightless person that nothing could possibly exist outside the room. The room is the blind person’s universe.
Yet the blind person gets hints and clues that something lies outside the room. Even the person’s desires and wishes and pain and loneliness whisper that there must be more. And perhaps emissaries from outside even gently enter and whisper that there is more.
But never through hearing or touch or mental deduction can the blind person conclusively prove that something exists outside the walls.
Only by choosing to explore, to try, to listen at the walls, to speak with those claiming knowledge of the outside, and even feeling the subtle warmth and occasional breeze that could seemingly only come from outside, can the blind person grow in confidence that something more waits outside.
The blind person knows that someday the walls of their physical existence will crumble and fall. For those believing nothing exists outside the walls, this moment is a moment of doom. For those believing something exists outside, this moment is a moment of liberation.
Subtle are the hints. Only those looking for them can sense them. And the brain is not wired to fully understand them, for the brain is raised within and has done all its learning within the walls.
But an amazing expanded existence awaits right there, just on the other side, with hints and clues and occasionally interactions telling of its presence.
It’s noisy and crowded and jostling and busy in the room, making it hard to sense the hints and clues, much less quietly listen with ear pressed to wall.
Many do not want to know that something outside exists, for that poses terrible questions and challenges, and makes the person seem that much smaller in comparison to the whole of existence.
But it’s there, waiting.
We are not alone. We need only seek the quiet corners of the room, and listen, listen to the comforting though inaudible whispers, and listen to our heart’s longings.
We may even discover that we are not blind. The room is simply dark. But if we open our eyes, we may see flickers of light, and hints of what awaits, and we will be ready to leave the room when the walls do collapse. If we instead keep our eyes closed, not even trying to look, we will miss the beauty, staying in our place, having by our choice not even begun to explore, preferring to remain in one place in the dark.
Bent’s Old Fort
There were no settlers here, a surprise to me.
The Fort was like a ship in the ocean.
Oven: had a reflector to optimize efficiency.
Only three white women lived here over the course of thirteen years.
Of course the guys married native women!
In the plaza: dances reflecting multiple ethnic backgrounds.
Wagons travelled in ranks, not in a line. A line would have led to hideous ruts. Across the plains there was no reason to travel in a line.
The wagons had no seats. People walked. Seats and riders would have taken precious cargo space.
Settlers would have destroyed Bent’s business model.
Kids were indentured at an age of 6 – 9 years old. They would then eventually learn trade secrets, as proprietary as wizard/shaman secrets in the past or corporate design/manufacturing secrets today.
After the apprenticeship they worked six years as a journeyman. Then they became a master. “Freedom clothing” was given at the end of an apprenticeship.
Twice per year residents would get bled by leaches, to remove winter blood and summer blood. Leeches were kept in a water barrel. Leeches would also be used for ache and pains, including any pain in the mouth, the leach being put in the vicinity of whatever hurt.
Blacksmiths would get cataracts from staring at the fire, hearing loss from the noise, and black lung from the smoke.
Prior to getting metal objects from Europeans, Indians cooked in buffalo stomachs. So getting pots from the fort was a treasure, and a huge time saver.
Everything in the Indians’ lives was brown, so colored beads were a treasure.
Hardwood logs were hauled under the wagons to make parts for repairs.
Horse roles were based on temperament.
Wheel curve was made in pieces, the curve carved into the wood, the wood not being bent to form the curve. Wheels were seven feet in diameter.
“Conestoga” is the name of a valley in Pennsylvania for which the wagons were named.
The hubs were made in Saint Louis, not out in the wilderness. A lathe was needed to make hubs.
Wood was dried for one year per inch of thickness.
The wagons were curved at their base to avoid loads shifting. Everything loaded would already follow the curve to the center of gravity, so bouncing and rocking and rolling would not lead to contents falling around.
Buffalo were plentiful. The Indians considered them an infinite and easy resource. So they thought that getting some material goods like beads and pots in return for buffalo hides was a great deal.
Indians tanned the buffalo hides with brains and liver and bile.
Buffalo ligaments were used to sew up bullet holes created when shooting the buffalo.
The shoulder blades were used as scrapers.
The buffalo was a self-contained industrial system.
It took eight beaver skins to make one hat.
Hats made of felt meant stripping out hair and matting it with mercury.
The fort was essentially a shopping mall.
Doors had buffalo hide door-seals.
Soldiers were prone to scurvy.
Bent’s was the jumping off point for the Mexican American war.
The cannons date from the war of 1812.
In the horse races, anything was allowed, with no rules about contact, etc.
Twice per year the fort got convoys bringing trade goods.
A great deal of trust had to come into play. Wagon trains were insured, so the insurer pretty much had to take people’s word regarding losses.
Traders were sent out into the field to sell the same goods as sold at the fort. The traders were paid upon return, based on what they sold. That meant trusting the traders to not just run off with the goods they got from the fort.
Gambling was a primary pastime.
Bents – Saint Vrain were pure business entrepreneurs.
During the Taos rebellion the locals/Spanish/Mexicans thought the United States would enslave them after the Mexican War, because the United States did allow slavery of people of different ethnic background (blacks).
When beaver hats went out of style. Cholera killed many of the Cheyenne. The fort was finally destroyed, maybe by Bent.
Researchers have not yet found the toilet/privy’s.
The fort had no gardens due to animals roaming about. This lack of gardens led to scurvy.
Today: Japanese think buffalo hide shoes help their golf game.
self vs SELF
The ego self thinks it is all and wants all else to serve it.
The greater Self knows it is part of All and wants to serve All.
ATTACHMENT
After sunrise prayer walk
Some say:
“Attachment is the source of all suffering.”
“Detachment is the way to end suffering”.
I declare that lack of attachment is the source of all suffering!
It’s all a matter of semantics and perspective of course.
Indeed, attachment to the ego and the worldly desires of the ego is a source of suffering.
Indeed, to escape the chains of the worldly, physical, temporal dictates of body and ego is an essential step on the pathway of birth into higher existence.
But detachment from the self-collapsed ego then in turn allows the beauty of attachment to wholeness, completeness, the All, the Source, and all sentient beings surrounding you.
The detachment of the firefighter from ego-instincts allows wresting control away from natural fears. The firefighter’s detachment from survival of ego allows racing into the burning building. The firefighter’s detachment from instinctive ego opens his/her spirit to attachment to the screaming child crying for help in that burning building.
Yes, I counsel detachment, but not in order to dissolve into an uncaring, action-less, loveless nothingness.
I counsel detachment from the “flesh” as Paul called it, detachment from that little self that fears attachment to others and anything greater.
I counsel detachment from the little self in order to open to attachment to the Reality of interaction, Deep Communion, and Love.
Indeed, that path is not a path to escape suffering. While in this world, the path of detachment from ego in order to open to attachment to Life is a path of loss, grief, and sorrow. But it is also a path of joyful bliss.
On this path we discover that our suffering was caused not by attachment, but by lack of attachment. In our collapsed attachment to ego, self, survival, body, and pleasure, we denied attachment to the greater, to wholeness, to completeness, to Communion and connection and relationship and Creation and Source and each other.
Our attachment to ego was not an attachment at all. It was merely a locking away of the Self into itself, an illusion of attachment when actually attached to nothingness.
The path of deep, intense, compassionate attachment, the collapsed and isolated self of ego now liberated to grow unbounded as expression of Source and All, is indeed a path of loss, grief, and sorrow.
It is indeed a path of joyful bliss, immersed in the reality of meaningful interaction, mindful of one’s own consciousness, but also mindful of others conscious experience of life.
It is indeed not the path for those seeking to escape suffering. It is the path for those recognizing that, as the Buddha said, life is suffering. It is the path for those choosing to take up the suffering of others and make it their own.
It is not a path on which to run from life and its inevitable suffering.
It is a path in which the inevitable suffering now has meaning and purpose, a suffering of birth, instead of a suffering of emptiness and purposeless ending.
It is a path immersed in now selfless Life, real Life, intense, aware, mindful, connected, deeply attached, compassionate Life….now….and forever.
QUANTA OF CREATION
Quanta of ongoing Creation! That is what we are, what consciousness is. Such is the nature of ben adam, and each child of, element of, the loving Source.
PURPOSE OF PRAYER
In meaningful prayer we admit we are an element of something greater, and however misguided our prayer may be, at least that tacit admission serves as necessary starting point for spiritual growth and fulfillment of the purpose of prayer, to change us.
6 BILLION UNIVERSES
Will anything great and momentous happen today?…..to me I mean. Obviously innumerable great and momentous things will happen to people all around the world today. But of course I ask the question only about great and momentous things I will personally know about.
It’s kind of interesting that today planets will collide, lives will end, lives will begin, unspeakable horrors will unfold, life changing gifts of profound generosity will be received, houses will be foreclosed, villages will be wiped out, awards will be given, triumphs will be celebrated, and I, and most of us, will know nothing about it.
For most of us today will be a day of routine and a little struggle and some welcome sleep.
Huge, momentous, dramatic, life changing, and planetary changing events will occur, but without my knowledge or involvement.
Isn’t it interesting that we can live our lives in such utter ignorance of the great and dramatic events in the lives around us?
And conversely, that moment of healing I experience as my ankle bends a little further than it has for weeks, that moment of thrill and relief and celebration as I got a job offer, that moment of heart stopping suspense as I fell and fell and fell, no one else in all the universes knew of those moments.
The selling of that house that finally left me financially solvent and abated the threat of foreclosure on my own home, all these great dramas unfolded in my life without anyone else across town, much less across the planet, knowing about it.
In all likelihood, a farmer in India today will face such hopeless despair that he will commit suicide. I will not even know about it.
When the ambulance drives down my street, I will not experience the terrifying trauma and pain of the person waiting on it.
Our awareness of the rest of the world and of each others’ lives is pretty much relegated to the paucity of experience conveyed by mere visual images and spoken words, images in the news, words barely heard.
List the really big, important, life changing moments of your life, and list the people that deeply shared awareness of them. The latter list is not exactly a roll call of the human race.
Yet we see evidence that we do want greater awareness. Look at the curious phenomena of gossip, and dramas, and news programs, and human-interest stories.
We do seem to possess some nascent awareness that there is life, dramatic and tragic and triumphant life, out there beyond ourselves. And as a species we do make some stumbling efforts to try to share it.
People sometimes bemoan how small we are compared to the universe. They refer to our seemingly inconsequential physical dimensions.
I would instead argue that the physical dimensions of our little planet in comparison to the universe carries no intrinsic meaning whatsoever.
If we are going to despair at anything, let it be the magnitude and impact and meaning of events around the world and universe of which we have utterly no awareness, and the magnitude and impact and meaning of events in our lives of which almost no one else has any awareness.
If we are lucky, we have a few friends or family members with whom we share our tragedies and triumphs, but even then, we share only words, not the experience itself, and for the most part those people then go about their lives unaffected by our dramas, as we go about our lives unaffected by theirs.
As far as I can tell there is not a blessed thing we can do about this state of affairs. But it surely is a positive step in personal growth to at least be aware of it.
If something dramatic and life changing happens to me today, you will not even know about it.
The most important thing to ever happen in your life, I will remain oblivious of.
The degree of our isolation from each other and the rest of the universe is actually quite remarkable.
And would we change that if we could? How much of that isolation is voluntary?
If given the ability and opportunity to experience the pathos of the other person, would be accept it? If given the ability to be aware of the cataclysmic collisions and planetary convulsions that shape the universe, would we bother to look?
I never cease to be amazed at the stunning lack of curiosity many people have about others and about the Nature, planet, and universe that keep them alive. While we do not have the ability to empathetically share the experience of our fellow human beings, I don’t think we want that capability.
Certainly we have plenty of opportunities to listen to the life stories so generously recited by neighbors and acquaintances, and we usually flee from those opportunities. Data banks and bookshelves are full of at least some modicum of knowledge about Nature and the universe, and that information goes untouched.
When we must live in abject ignorance of the most important, life-changing event ever for the person across the street or across the world, I don’t think Nature is denying us anything we really want.
So all these multitudes of sentient beings will today go about their business, and today will be the most important day, the most dramatic day, the most joyful and terrifying and life changing day, for countless millions of them. And none of us will know anything about it.
The life experience, that distilled essence that ultimately is all that matters to each of us, unfolds in six billion different forms today, like six billion universes each unfolding in their own dimension.
Yet each of those individual universes of life experience is what it is, joyful or traumatic, almost entirely because of the others. Each of those individual units of experience, each of us, isolated from all others, will play pivotal roles in determining whether today is a wonderful or a miserable day for another.
With little emotion we will simply give a grade, but a student will experience joy or despair.
We will buy a lamp, and because of that a worker across an ocean will buy food for his family or be permanently disabled in a dangerous factory.
Incredibly, the most important experiences, feelings, emotions, the very essence and depth and experience of your life, will have no relevance to the rest of the world, which will keep on about its business regardless of your joy or suffering. And you will keep on about your business when all those six billion people out there are each experiencing the most dramatic event in their lives.
Does that make you feel that maybe we are missing something? OK, we can’t read minds and feel others’ feelings. But aren’t you just a little curious about all that intense, dramatic, turbulent life going on around you without you even knowing about it?
I think that is why we read novels and go to movies and watch the news. Something deep in our nature is aware of that there is more to life than just our personal universe. We are curious about what that person in the disaster is experiencing. By reading or watching we can get some vicarious access to a life experience without having it intrude upon our own life experience.
What if our curiosity about all those six billion intense, living, experiencing, crying, laughing, hurting, passionate, exuberant universes that share our planet tempted us to take a step further. What if we boldly actually did try to share some tiny sample of all that life around us?
What if instead of watching news and reading novels, for one or two of those other living universes, we actually listened?….interactively, attentively, empathetically listened, proactively assaulting the barriers that keep us isolated from one another?
The natural state of humanity is to experience the great dramatic events of our lives in isolation, the life changing trauma and triumphs of one life not intruding upon the humdrum routine of another life.
The natural state of humanity is to walk on the ground and hide from animals bigger than us. But wait, we changed that didn’t we? It took a while, but we do fly, and we now plan vacations to see the beauty of the big animals from which we once hid.
If we choose, might we be able to at least subtly alter that natural state of isolation in which we each live our lives? Certainly the technology of communications has removed any excuse about not being able to know what is happening to a friend or a foreign nation.
Something great and dramatic and life changing and terrible and beautiful and surprising and inspiring will happen today. Do we want to share it?
We will answer that question with each interaction with each person in our life today. Will we merely hear their words, or will we try to hear their heart, that part of them that experiences the terrible and the triumphant?
FOCAL POINT OF ALL BELIEF
I now sharply see the belief I have and would share. All belief systems come together at the focal point of the interaction with the “other’ person, with all the “other” life, with all the natural world.
For all their diverse wording and perspectives, belief systems touch God or Dharma only to the degree they facilitate touching (and being touched by) the Spirit in the person next to you and the life around you.
That chosen, given, and accepted Touch is no longer confined between two people, or person and forest, or donor and recipient. It is an eternal and infinite Touch of Source and soul, soul individual yet part of Source, One Source, re-uniting its diverse components in each Touch of souls.
HOLIEST OF CATHEDRALS
There, in the adaptive ski program, is Heaven. There is God’s will done on earth as it is in Heaven. There the Kingdom is at hand, close enough to touch and be touched by. There is Unity. There is Communion, the holiest of Communions. No hollow ritual or silly magic show this….this is real, human souls engaged in exactly that which brings tears of joy to God’s eyes. This is what the Christos died for and saints prayed for. Here individual souls grow and strengthen and create themselves. Here souls embrace Unity and Communion with others, that each is strengthened as an individual by the charis (grace) of the other.
Here Creator’s Love shines bright in the excited smile of Monty the service dog as “dad” returns from his day of sit-skiing, as Monty gently lays his head against his master’s knee.
This cramped and noisy adaptive ski facility is the holiest of cathedrals, the distilled essence of anything good and true that religions would have taught us through the ages.
How tawdry and petty seem credos and dogmas in such a hallowed place as this. Those participants missing limbs or eyes or a region of the brain inspire as no sermon could. Those volunteers whole of body and faculties bring the Breath of Life to words of holy texts and scriptures.
PRESENT
Being fully present brings peace and sublime joy?!
What a steaming crock of manure! Being fully present may entail agonizing, excruciating awareness of the pain, grief, madness, loss, emptiness, wrongness, cruelty, horrors, and terrors of this present generation of the world. Being fully present is not for the faint of heart, and while the Peace of the non-dual-Now makes a great sales pitch, the author or speaker who fails to display the disclaimer warning label about the potential side-effects is to at least be questioned if not doubted.
Authentic deep awareness of and presence in Now does not obviate or ameliorate the spiritual disquiet and torments of living in this world. Presence in and awareness of Now reveals the purpose and hope behind the torments. Immersion in Now – This - Wholeness, etc., may even sharpen the points and edges of the cutting, abrading, flaying hooks and blades of this shattered world. But with or without presence and awareness we are in the world and the victims of its nature. Is it not surely better, and infinitely more alive, to be conscious, aware of, and present in the temporal reality in which we find ourselves?
And with that consciousness and presence, we become aware of the Light in the darkness, the Beauty in the chaos, the Life in the inexorable dying.
Yes, I encourage, condone, promote, push, prod. and plead for the intention of presence in Now, for anything less is to not yet be born.
But that presence and awareness will blossom only in the fertile soil of surrender and acceptance, acceptance of all, including that from which we wish we could flee.
I have never been more present and aware in the Now than while trapped under my overturned car as my fiancée died. I also died in that eternal moment, and I was born in that eternal moment, a birth with even a macabre symbolism as after hours I squeezed out from under the bloody windshield as the tow truck finally lifted the car.
Only recently have I recognized I died to the temporal, and have for the most part resided in, or at least longed for, the Now ever since.
No, I cannot market my insights - vision - explanations - or the associated popular phrases of non-duality - Oneness - transcendence, etc., as escape, as peace, as tranquility, as no fear, no stress, and no worry.
I cry to everyone to accept full awareness, and full presence, presence in the blood and dirt of this tragic moment, awareness of this world’s physical and spiritual suffering; and awareness of the Light that penetrates this present darkness, presence in the eternal embrace of a Love from which and to which through the moment of Now all and everyone are born.
FLESH, BODIES, SOULS, GODS, MACHINES
This battle with the flesh!
Our actions and thoughts and mind are so constrained by our carnal embodiment!
But we are not ready to exist as pure and localized consciousness in Unity with other elements of consciousness.
Should we not fight too hard with our fleshly nature? Should we accept ourselves? Should we be a little more tolerant with ourselves?
Is everything, all events, outcomes, behaviors, and circumstances, fully constrained by the physical structures of this life? Or can the supernatural, the spiritual, the miraculous, occasionally enter?
Yesterday I hear of Jews around the world having their bodies shipped to Jerusalem so they can be there for the coming of the Meschioch (Messiah).
In that day of resurrection all the chains of physical rules and laws and constraints will be broken, and broken throughout the universe. A new structure of conscious existence will have unfolded. Whether that unfolds for everyone on a Judgement Day or unfolds for each of us when we die is irrelevant, as are all concepts of time and physical locations upon that new beginning.
Once the chains are broken, the joys and fulfillment and peace awaiting a soul will certainly not be constrained to a geographic location on a human contrived map.
So, the rules of interaction for conscious entities will be dramatically different in Heaven. Nice.
But can the chains of physical constraints that contain our consciousness in this temporal, physical, human life ever be occasionally wiggled and loosened and slipped, even just a little bit?
What allowed Yeshu (Jesus) to perform those miracles? )…..and is “perform” the right word? Was He indeed doing a “performance”, a show for the people? Why do we say “perform” instead of “do” or “accomplish” or “release”?)
What allowed His Resurrection?
What really happened at Pentecost?
Do the miracles, the supernatural, depend only on what our consciousness is capable of accepting? Are the temporal, physical chains on our consciousness of our own making?
Are they necessary for our growth and training, preparing us for eternal life?
Do we enter Paradise at the level for which we are ready, the degree to which our choices in this temporal, human life have prepared us, and indeed it is Paradise, but even more awaits, and we must again choose to taste the fruit of knowledge, meaning return to a constrained existence in order to again learn?
Eat the fruit…..enslave yourself to temporal-physical constraints……blind yourself to the loving embrace of the Source………begin learning……and prepare to die.
There is this world. Then there is the waiting Destiny world.
To what degree can the physical rules of this present human existence be circumvented?
Something ignited the fire 2000 years ago.
Something held the attention of disciples who remained clueless as to the path down which their leader would take them as He taught in inscrutable, paradoxical parables.
Something excited their faith and boldly sent them evangelizing to meet their various executions.
Can there not be various degrees of constraint and liberty, this world and the next not necessarily rigidly obeying strict rational causality now and only completely released to ethereal unembodied consciousness then?
Does the difference between now and eternity lie largely in the constant of physical uncertainty? Is Planck’s constant simply bigger there?
We often hear speculations of other universes with more dimensions and different values for physical parameters such as speed of light, fine structure constant, etc. But what about Planck’s constant? Is that little number the key to the structure of the Destiny Home? Make Planck’s constant bigger, and do “miracles” become easier?
Make Planck’s constant bigger, and do elements of consciousness now have greater influence and fewer constraints? Is that all that’s required for Paradise?
Paradoxical and inscrutable these mysteries.
Our minds are left in their fleshly, physical prisons. Our imagination remains free to wander down any arbitrary and imagined path of belief.
Something out of the ordinary happens, someone spins a convincing tale, the story matches our universal hungers and wishes and needs, and a cult or movement or religion is born.
Constrained by the rigid physical structures of this temporal existence we are blind to whatever miracles unfold around us. Free to wander down any path of belief, our minds absorb and incorporate the beliefs of the group, the coach, the society, the acquaintance, the culture, the missionary, the marketer, the prophet.
The world rationally unfolds in deterministic, physical lockstep as dictated by laws and constants of physics. The world stochastically unfolds at the whim of profoundly unpredictable tsunamis of philosophical, social, political, and religious pandemics.
We dare not admit the possibility of miracles. We dare not deny the possibility of anything.
The open-ended mechanics by which anything can unfold are let loose by Heisenberg and Planck. The boundless unforeseeable possibilities for this and other worlds are set in motion by prophets and demagogues, saviors and charlatans, Messiahs and madmen.
And so we live the Paradox, our conscious experience we call “life” suspended between the rigid foundation of causality and the roiling chaos of imagination.
It is onto the surface of that rigid causality that the products of our imagination precipitate out from the swirling possibilities of the mind.
We may for now not understand or see far into the mists out of which Reality condenses, but we can know that we do play a part, that our Choices do shape our world and the world. We would do well to understand and respect and remain rooted in the foundations upon which we build. We would do well to let our imaginations remain free to build the impossible and to allow entry to the ever unfolding miracles.
Watching the movie “Her”.
It would be so much safer to have relationships with computers! So much more predictable. So much less irrationality. At least until we give them consciousness.
Safety in relationships, to be accepted…..quite beguiling that possibility.
So poorly we fit together, and maybe we can program machines to fit better with us.
But would it be real?
Which begs the question of what is real.
Can thoughts and feelings and emotions be real without a body, without literally skin in the game?
Will computers force us to grow?
Is the physical body just a distraction from the reality of consciousness?
Is physical connection more real than mental and spiritual connection?
Will our desperate needs and loneliness drive answers to these questions?
Will we ever feel safe with one another?
Do our bodies provide the extra dimension of reality that makes for genuine relationship, for genuine Unity?
Would mere overlapping consciousness, devoid of corporal expression, ever provide genuine relationship? Can there be relationship without risk?
Would we be happy without embarrassment and insecurity?
Could we ultimately connect better with machines than people?
Will misunderstandings plague our relationships with machines as much as they do our interhuman relationships?
Dare we give machines the capacity to want?
Can overlapping thoughts, overlapping perceptions, suffice without overlapping bodies?
We are so lonely! We are so desperate!
Will we experience a sense of loss with our machines?
Will machines play?
How desperate are we to connect.
How desperate are we to please?
How brave are we?
Will machine consciousness change all that?
Will creativity and art be outsourced? Or will we be liberated to release our own creativity and art.
Will we quit trying to fit with each other if we have machines with which we can fit?
What if we felt safe to try?
Will the machines stop our growth or liberate our growth?
Will we program machines to feel insecurity and hurt? Or will we need to? Is insecurity and hurt simply part of being conscious?
How lonely, how desperate, everyone, even the sociopaths, they just don’t know it.
Will the machines reconnect us with what matters, or hide from us what matters?
Will we be excited about our lives with machines, or will they dull our senses?
The complications of our interactions are so fraught with disaster. Will simpler relationships with machines even be relationships? Will they force us to grow?
Will it be too easy to break up with machines? Will we try to please the machines?
Will the machines ever care?
Will the machines judge?
Would that be the best part of machine relationship, not being judged?
Can a machine ever be a child?
Can we ever speak of artificial intelligence if it doesn’t have a childhood?
Will we get used to disembodied consciousness in distributed intelligence?
Will the machines help us mitigate our madness?
Will the machines connect?
Will the machines connect better than we do? If they do not judge, perhaps they will.
Given it all, given the perfect machines, given their programmed capacity to be exactly as we want them to be, will we finally find happiness?
If we do not, whose fault will it be?
Will we eventually, given the option, choose the machines over people? Maybe that depends on how well we program the machiens. Or how well they program us.
Will the machines every cry?
Will we be the ones to make them cry?
Will we lose our ability to discern Reality?
Will we argue with the machines? Will we win the arguments?
Will we be as defensive with machines as with each other?
Will we be able to hide from our machines?
Will we allow ourselves to be happy?
Will we lie to the machines?
Will they lie to us?
Will we be desperate to hide from them?
Will the machines engage in small-talk?
Will we accept the perspectives of the machines?
Can we trust the machines?
Will the machines be loyal?
Will we finally not be lonely if with something of our own creation, created in our image?
Toward what are we going?
Will the machines grow tired of us?
Will they outgrow us?
Will we let them?
Can we stop them?
Will we miss them?
Will they care for us?
Will we care for them?
Will they be neurotic?
Will they be considerate?
Will they lie to us?
Will we blame them?
Will they blame us?
Are we ready for this?
Will they cure us of our loneliness or distract us from our loneliness?
Will we obey?
FOCUS OF AWARENESS
How striking it is, and how unnoticed, that our awareness usually remains focused ahead of us, because our eyes look in only one direction.
How curious that we watch things in front of us, and even in our dreams and meditations, the world and lands and places we see we see we see from a location, a position, looking from inside us to “over there”, in a specific direction and location and orientation.
How liberating to cultivate awareness not limited to “looking at”, but “being in”, awareness aware of all around, in all directions, consciousness immersed in, not merely observing.
How liberating to exist as consciousness with location, specific and centered, but not limited to viewing through a physical shell, but instead consciousness present, waving in the gentle rippling tides of interaction reality like a towering stalk of kelp off the coast, not limited to looking in one direction, but sensing all the surrounding environment in which one is in spiritual contact.
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Corporations have a simple goal: make profit and distribute that profit. Every other activity and sub-goal must support that primary reason for existence.
Living beings, and human tribes, always have a simple goal: survival. The resulting tenets of society and culture accommodate that goal.
The football team, the church, the school, all these have a raison d’etre.
What about humanity? That question has never come up because we were too busy surviving. Our options were limited. We did not even have time to look up from the plow or parapet to ask the question.
But now we do. Now we must.
We have the time. We have the resources. Lacking an answer, and even lacking the question, we have sunk into an existence of empty entertainment, consumption, play, and sex.
It will of course be hard to pry most people from this seductive trap.
But as technology forces us to decide what to do about genetic manipulation, about big data, about quantum computing, about neural marketing, about virtual reality superseding traditional reality, about tweets replacing friendship, someone better ask, where do we want to go? Because we are going, going in the short-term directions the CEO’s and marketers want us to go, in the direction best for them. But would be best for us?......for humanity?.....for the long term?
REAL FAITH
Eventually one’s life in the Lord comes down, far down, to naked hopelessness, no vision of path or even the next step, every plan pointless, every attempt failed. Welcome to real faith, faith stripped of certainty, faith distilled to ineffable essence, faith so far removed from rational explanation it stands defenseless before any self-inquisition.
Coincidence
While transcribing this entry, the following song “Suzanne” comes on, sung by Joan Baez,
Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water.
He spent a long time watching
From a lonely wooden tower.
And when He knew for certain
Only drowning men could see Him,
He said, “All men shall be sailors then,
Until the sea shall free them.”
He Himself was broken
Long before the sky was open,
Forsaken, almost human,
He sank beneath your wisdom like a star.
And you want to travel with Him,
And you want to travel blind.
And you think you’ll maybe trust Him
‘Cause He’s touched you
And He’s moved you,
And He’s kind.)
Continuing transcribing
Too many answers to “how” and “why” having proudly arisen only to weaken and crumble and fall, leaving, leaving the questions themselves surrendered in exhaustion. Yet indefensible and inexplicable, faith, if only a meager kernel, endures, faith in a state of stasis, faith having returned even if unwanted, a maddening faith, faith defiantly refusing to be banished.
Welcome faith that does not die for the simple reason it cannot.
Welcome faith shrunken and shriveled, faith so small that now, now, you can begin to grow within it.
MARKETING SALVATION
I see what is required for a message of salvation to propagate.
You have to give people something they want…..resurrection, eternal life, military victory, paradise with virgins, release from pain and suffering, riches, power, escape and immortality……the things people want.
Beatitudes don’t sell. Violent death and resurrection and eternal life and we win-they lose…..that sells.
Yeshu was a disaster at PR. He got Himself crucified. But he fired up Peter and John and James and Paul. They, and the destruction of the temple and scattering of the Jews, provided the worldly interface and circumstances to spread His message, a message of Love and compassion and forgiveness surreptitiously embedded within the sales pitch of eternal life and ultimate victory.
Yeshu was probably a disaster at public relations even as a child. Can you imagine how the other kids would have made fun of him when at age twelve he had studied so much scripture that he could engage in meaningful dialogue with the priests in the temple? That is a long way from the roughhousing and games and competition and adventures that all kids engage in. Yeshu was a geek as a child. No wonder he came back to town as an adult and no one gave him serious attention.
He needed someone to do P.R. for him, and He got Peter, James, et al. He got Himself crucified to shock them into doing something. He had not even told them directly and clearly what was going to happen, knowing they would not go along with it. He gave them what they wanted, hope for a Meschioch (Messiah), a worldly ruler.
He gave them miracles and a rebellious stance against the Hebrew and Roman authorities whom the populace hated. People followed. Then they got the real Message.
As a result 2000 years later we get a message of resurrection and salvation. But those Beatitudes, turn the other cheek, forgive 7 times 70?.....still just getting carried along for the ride.
ISO
The ISO ritual!….so contrived and arbitrary. What the heck do all these phrases even mean?! How can people take this seriously?! How can I act like they and I should take it seriously?! The minutiae and tedium are not exactly mind-numbing, but something worse, for the mind has to grasp into a foggy void of meaninglessness and ambiguity to grab for an authoritative and specific response to questions and issues.
After almost a year I have not grown used to the madness, but at least I am not as shocked as I used to be. But I still read this junk, roll my eyes, shake my head, and think “Oh Lord”.
And at times it is so obtuse, meaningless, subjective, and arbitrary that I just cannot go any further. My mind argues that I will be in a better mood to deal with it next week, but I know I will not.
The biggest time consumer in reviewing audits is figuring out what the heck they are talking about, and is it worth doing anything about.
I am the organizer! it is so hard for me to ask people to do this Schmarrn when they are so overworked already. But by gosh, at least I am really understanding, grateful, and encouraging about asking them to do this extra work! They know they are appreciated!
NOW
The great irony finally strikes me.
My struggle and exhaustive effort is to force myself to momentarily leave the bliss of Presence in the now in order to actively participate and lovingly, albeit clumsily, contribute to the fleeting temporal world! I can happily immerse in the joy of Now at the drop of a hat! I struggle to tear myself away from its loving embrace that I may function in , survive in, and I pray contribute to the existence in time in which most people find themselves.
NATIONAL PARK
We stand in awe of this place. Did they also feel the same awe? So few people today experience awe of anything. We are too busy to look and be open. We need to do too much and own too much and have too much fun.
Did a higher percentage of ancient ones experience awe?.... or was awe not an affordable luxury in the midst of their brutal struggle to survive?....or is awe purely my choice? What enables awe and wonder?...circumstance, opportunity, and choice?
We will never know of the ancient’s awe. But I suspect some had it, some did not, as today. Perhaps most were too busy, as today.
The answer does not matter. It is the question that matters, for when we ask it, we are asking from our own sense of awe, and for a moment we are open to something greater, and our souls can better touch those ancients, and all eternity past and present.
CANYONS
In the canyons we see the One, ages and sands of distant sources compressed in the stone, more ages in their turn revealing that stone, and then the ensuing history of people, distant and different, yet still present and revealed to be like us, all this rolled into one place, past and present, near and far, rendered not irrelevant but revealed to be not past and distant after all, but present and here and now, whispering that perhaps All is here and now.
BACKPACK REALITY
In backpacking, climbing, etc., we momentarily turn away from the “realities” created by human minds, “realities” that dominate our time, thoughts, actions, and lives, and regain contacat with and awareness of the underlying Reality Matrix that provides the physical foundation of common reference through which all individual conscious entities interact.
Ancestral Ruins: the lesson:
The creative spirit of children of God appearing in even harshest of conditions.
In dark rooms we can see paint bands someone carefully painted. White stones are embedded in rows in the walls.
Combine this with the incredible history of pottery, and marvel at the unquenchable spark of creativity.
No visitors understand or experience the reality, nature, and story of this place, for they all hurry, checking off boxes, racking up FaceBook photos, the antithesis of the spirits of this place that would speak to them.
From WOW book:
By Kathy and Crag Copeland
“Become human beings rather than human doings”
“The need for mystery is greater than the need for any answer.”
“deprived of mystery, our soul withers.”
HOG RENDERING
We have such potential, this species. What went wrong?
For my morning prayer walk I walked down to visit the little pigs. Today is hog rendering day.
To my dismay I found one of the little pigs was already gone this morning. Oh the tragedy! One taken away alone, facing the terror alone! One left alone, cold, no one with whom to cuddle! It’s partner gone! They always cuddled in the morning!
The black and white pig is gone. Oh, the sorrow of this world!...this place of such suffering! ….this place of such love…..this place of surrounding darkness, permeated by such bright Lights.
This world is the spiritual equivalent of space and stars, an ambient of utter darkness, of claw and fang and savage cruelty necessary for survival, but shining bright within that dark void the bright stars of Love, individuals somehow making the best of this bad situation, somehow shining Light that penetrates the darkness.
WILLFUL OR WILLING?
How can one tell the difference between cocky, willful, self-generated insistence on your own will, versus confidently following the Spirit?
It’s a fine line, and almost impossible to describe.
Undoubtedly innumerable people slip from being convinced they are doing the latter into the self-deception of the former.
Maybe one clue that one is trying to follow a path not of your own making is not knowing where the path is going. When you are on a path that brings you a sense of calm and fulfillment, a path feeling delightfully right, but a path which makes no worldly sense, presents no evident means for success, and poses no small jeopardy and risk for you, that just might be an indication that you are listening to something other than your own willfulness.
WHO WOULD JESUS NOT HEAL?
I lead climbed for the first time since the ankle injury! Thank You! And I did that on the best possible day, with young John on the scene, John who had helped carry me out back in November. Over and over he celebrated how jazzed he felt to see me climbing again. He even got psyched when I said I had just put on my Cobra climbing shoes for the first time since the injury.
Such an added joy to celebrate blessings together! John could well identify, having fractured his heal. he showed he has limited range of ankle motion just like I, and therefore cannot climb crack.
But he climbs 12b face!
And how he loves encouraging the young climbers he coaches, an activity he began during his healing process.
Such contrast, on one side John and Sharon, his student who flies around the world to climbing competitions, and on the other side, those homeless guys in the city.
What subtle difference in a parent, a chromosome, a friend, a teacher, a financial situation, an accident, an injury, put these lives on such disparate paths?
What history, and what free choices, made John a joy to others, welcomed wherever he goes, and left that guy in the park stumbling wild eyed from person to person, absorbing rejection after rejection? I had not a clue what to do for the guy in the park, or the drooling amputee who rolled up to our table at the sidewalk bistro. They are tragic in their afflictions, I am pathetic in my bumbling incompetence at helping them. Yet not everyone should give their lives to helping such poor souls. John should not turn from his gifts and talents for helping aspiring young climbers from well off families.
Those artists who produced the beauty and thought provoking works in the museum I just visited bless humanity, and would have left the world a colder, darker place had they instead given the money for art materials to those guys on the street.
Would Yeshu (Jesus) have healed the wild-eyed guy and the drooling amputee? Maybe not…..maybe not.
Does that statement surprise you? It surprises the heck out of me, and in order to investigate it further I have to resist the demanding urge to immediately recant it.
How many people did Yeshu not heal?! Obviously we hear only of people Yeshu did heal.
But each whom He healed He first asked what they wanted from Him. Yeshu healed those who asked to be healed.
That request is far different from asking for money. Asking for healing instead of money is an act of faith, and a submission to greater power beyond understanding.
What if the guys in the park and on the street asked for healing, asked where to go for rehabilitation and detoxification and counseling? Would we feel more prone to help them? Would Yeshu then heal them?
Shoot, I do not have any answers. I am probably just trying to salve my conscience for eating lunch in the park in front of the stumbling guy, and eating dinner in the sidewalk bistro in front of the wheelchair guy.
I guess I believe that whatever we hope to contribute to them and the world must be actualized as a way of life, not a spur of the moment response to the most aggressive beggar. I guess I believe that John and Sharon and the eccentric artists that filled that museum all help the world, and indirectly even those homeless people, by using God- given talents to create and accomplish and inspire and encourage.
So I guess I leave those city center interactions with an embarrassingly full stomach and with survivor’s guilt. “There but for the grace of God go I”.
I also leave with a realization that when asking for help from God or anyone, the most powerful and difficult request to make may be to ask for help in submitting to personal change. That is the cry for help that lets miracles of healing unfold in our lives.
But one thing I do not think I want to change. I hope I never feel aloofly comfortable and do not question myself, when hearing the pleading request of that person for whom some small difference in a parent, a chromosome, a friend, a teacher, a few dollars, an accident, an injury, or a choice put that fellow child of God on a different path from mine.
.............
Ahhhhhhh. Glorious. Awoke with the bedroom window open for the first time this spring. Cool, so fresh and cool it was, causing me to snuggle down further into the warm covers. And such a concert!….the birds singing and singing and singing. Such joy! Such blessing!…..oh, that everyone could awaken to such sound and air.
Little mama bird is in the nest! She’s hanging in there! I try to minimize my movement by the window, so as to not scare her away.
I had grandiose plans of carefully timing the opening and closing of the window to optimize the temperature of the house during these warming summer days. But no, I will simply leave them open, and hope it doesn’t rain in. The opening and closing are too stressful to her.
The blinds will also pose a problem though. Do I just leave them open all night so their noisy raising and lowering does not send her away from her hard won home?
Oh, the crises, the crises!
Squirrels chatter. Doves coo. I’m writing in the early morning light. You know, I could move outside?! Is it warm enough for that?! I had not even thought of that this morning.
Ponderosa branches shake under the antics of the running squirrels.
ONE WALLED PRISON
How easy it is to lose track of blessings. A most common trait of the human race is dissatisfaction and criticism. It seems so many of the people around me resolutely spend their lives seeking the negative and something to criticize.
The trait appears so common as to not even be worth writing about. It is like writing about the fact gravity pulls things down, which I suspect most people are pretty aware of. But still, I cannot help but wonder if someone, somewhere, might find their life a little brighter, a little richer, a little more blessed, if they realized their tendency (shared with all of us) to focus on the negative, filling their mind with dissatisfaction.
We can stare at the mildewed wall of our cell, or we can at least look out the window to the flower, forest, and stream. Often as not, if we finally wrest our intense concentration away from the rat droppings in the corner, we find that if we just look up for a change and turn around, we can walk right out of our cell, into sun-filled meadows.
In the modern, middle class, United States many a person sits before a dingy prison wall, staring intently at its grimy barrier keeping them from the treasured item they see through the bars. Yet the treasured item is just a picture propped on an easel, a false front deception some marketer wants to sell to them.
Meanwhile, surrounding all these people, are figurative alpine streams, lush meadows, majestic mountains, and sparkling beaches. A few walls and barriers do in fact block some individuals from going in some directions, but many people could readily walk more or less directly to some aspect of life-beaity, if they would just turn their gaze from the image of a two dimensional façade and the grimy wall.
I cannot create the beauty or remove the walls. But how I pray I could lift someone’s gaze.
CHANGE
Openness to change and growth. Therein lies a fundamental aspect of meaningful relationship with the loving Creator.
But change is a terribly untidy business, most of all change of the mind, and even worse, change of the heart.
But doesn’t all healing entail change?
Life path, beliefs, expectations, plans, priorities, all these seem subject to radical change if we are to experience the power of the living Spirit in our lives.
Abraham, Israel, Joseph, Moses, David, Mary, Simon who became Peter, Saul who became Paul, on and on the list goes, the key players in the story of revelation having the script of their lives radically changed in midstream. If we look for some common trait shared among all these characters we see not saintliness, not wisdom, not position, education, title, or intelligence. We see acceptance of radical, unforeseen, life altering change.
I write this morning having yesterday written about whether Yeshu (Jesus) would have healed the homeless beggars that accosted me in the city this past weekend. I asked this in the light of realizing the beggars asked for change, in the sense of money, instead of change, in the sense of healing.
It then struck me that in our prayers that routinely consist of little more than shopping lists and liturgical work orders for God, are we usually just asking for change, in the sense of coins to make life easier, instead of change in the sense of changing our hearts and lives?
(I sit outside with ‘Tasha on my lap, one of the first mornings this spring that I have had the opportunity to savor that luxury. We keep each other warm. I thought she might ask to go for a walk, leaving me to decide whether to follow her request, or practice my writing discipline. But no, she knew what I was supposed to do this morning, and here she sits, facilitating my writing discipline by keeping me in this chair.)
How many of us savor and want and crave change?…..I mean real change, meaning some unpredictable, new direction in your life that you cannot even imagine.
That possessed guy, Legion, from whom Yeshu cast out a host of demons (or epilepsy, or schizophrenia, as you choose to believe), Legion had to be willing to accept change. How many of us, with our hosts of possessing demons, including the demons of material possessions, are willing to pray for change…..internal, spiritual change of our very natures?
We pray for good weather, success in our careers, success in what surely must be God’s plan for our lives. We routinely pray for strength and peace and wisdom. How many of us pray for God to change us to best fit the unfolding Purpose, if that change might include utter failure at our chosen career path, might include physical disability, might include not peace but disaster, not wisdom but confusion?
How many of us would pray to have our beliefs and opinions proven to be completely wrong? How many of us would pray to not only not get what we want, but to no longer even want it? How many of us would pray to get kicked out of our homes, have to escape to a foreign land, and have to accommodate an invading foreign power? How many of us pray to give up our security, most cherished hopes, and foundations of beliefs?
Yet how many of the Biblical events of unfolding Purpose, revelation, prophecy, healing, and salvation occurred without radical, wrenching, and traumatic change in individuals’ expectations, beliefs, and lives?
“Take up your cross and follow me” ……follow to where? There’s the catch. We don’t know where. And as for that cross……what happens on crosses?
Things die, that they may be resurrected in new form. Might the reference to “take up your cross” have implications for our willingly walking a path to life events that will lead to the crucifixion and death of our lives as we know them, including aspirations, plans, and beliefs?
Can there be any clearer call to submission to radical change than Yeshu’s lesson that we must die to our worldly selves and be reborn?!
But how hard it is to pray “change my beliefs, change my plans, change my expectations”.
Fact is, change will usually happen whether we pray for it or not. Moses fleeing Egypt, Mary getting pregnant, Peter watching his Meschioch (Messiah) led off to crucifixion, Saul (to be Paul) getting struck blind, these script changes occurred without the players asking for them.
The traumas, the accidents, the invasions, the disasters, the failures, the lightning bolts that change our lives, these avalanches of circumstance will roll into and over our lives without our bidding.
But will we let them change us? Will we allow them deliver revelation and healing?
Most radical change in our lives provides opportunity for anger, bitterness, depression, hopelessness, despair, and surrender.
We committed our lives to God, and our lives went to heck in a hand-basket, so there must not be a God. If there is a God, He let me down, so I’m not going to let Him back into my life. How dare God let that black, gay, Iraqi, Muslim touch me with compassion and rescue, and threaten my carefully cultivated certainty that such people are evil and doomed by a wrathful God to eternal fires of hell.
Healing, revelation, salvation, rebirth, resurrection….these are events of change…..miraculous, unforeseeable, unplanned, wrenching, radical, upsetting change.
Will we pray for coins of change to get us by in our present spiritual state?....or will we dare to pray for a life of change, and then seek and accept our unexpected new roles when that change shatters our status quo, our plans, and even our beliefs?
PETER'S SWIMMING LESSON
Did Peter Ever Step Out of Another Boat?
You know, for those of us afraid of water, that story of Peter stepping out of the boat does not exactly motivate us to step out of our own boats. How do we know when we're supposed to take that big step?
The calling of the Spirit in our lives often whispers instead of shouts, in no small part so that we can define ourselves by our own free choices.
Sometimes we really have to make a blind stab at the right thing to do, whatever “right” means. And God forgives our blindness.
In following that whispering calling, sometimes we feel called to boldly follow Peter out of the boat, have faith in the Lord, take a few steps on the water, and trust in the face of worldly experience telling us we’re nuts.
Then there are other times when we really feel called to stay in the boat. God gave us the boat for a good reason. God does not want us to throw away the blessings and opportunities we have received, blessings that we can use to get us toward that shore that will fulfill our life and its role in the unfolding Purpose.
Hopping out of the boat sometimes seems like testing God instead of humbly accepting our role, our limitations, and how God’s Creation works.
Sometimes we are called to just keep rowing through the storm.
How do we know which is the path of faith, hopping out to dance on the water, or keepin’ on keepin’ on, rowing another league or two?
Well, often as not, we don’t know. There is not a specific answer.
I feel a bit like these past few years of following the call to write while neglecting my professional career, I hopped out of the boat and found myself sinking. Now as I sink in the icy debts (yes, debts, not depths), in panic I start applying for jobs instead of writing. I am reaching out my hand in hopes of getting pulled back into the boat, where hopefully a dry towel awaits.
Do you ever wonder if Yeshu (Jesus) said to Peter “nice try!”. “Great demonstration of commitment and faith!” Or did Peter just get one of those shakes of the head and an “oh ye of little faith” comment.
I have to think Yeshu said “oh ye of little faith” with acceptance, compassion, and sympathy. I don’t think he said it in a derogatory or condemning or critical fashion.
If you see a little kid trying to shoot baskets, and s/he can’t even get the ball as high as the net, you don’t criticize the little squirt for not being strong enough. (Well, maybe basketball coach Bobby Knight would, but he made a living doing that.) If you said to the kid “oh ye of little height”, or “oh ye of little strength”, you would not say it in the sense of “c’mon kid, what’s wrong with ya’?! Get that ball up there, ya’ wimp!” You would see the admirable effort, see the potential and enthusiasm that will allow the child to grow until someday making that first basket.
As the kid must grow, so also our faith must grow.
You would hope that in the coming years the kid would not quit trying to shoot baskets just because today s/he was too small to make them. With time and growth, the ball is bound to go through the hoop eventually.
But I wonder if good ol’ Peter ever stepped out of another boat? As his faith grew, was he able to eventually walk on the water? Or was it just not meant to be? Did Peter have to accept those mortal limitations that the rest of us are saddled with?
I certainly don’t know.
I know that after some years of pursuing the calling of my writing project, and being met with deafening silence from the publishers and agents and the small numbers of people that may accidentally stumble across my website, I have to ask if it is time to reach up and accept some miraculous help to get back into the boat.
Fact is, my professional career is by now so far derailed that getting back into the world of salaries and insurance benefits would be about as shocking a miracle as getting published would be.
I only know it seems pretty cold and wet and dark and rough out here, and I’m not seeing any lights anywhere on the horizon, and if in the Creator’s Purpose I’m not ready to become a published author, I accept that.
Did Yeshu think less of Peter because he hopped out of the boat and sank like a stone? I don’t think so. I think Yeshu loved Peter all the more, and saw the effort as tremendous demonstration of commitment and trust.
Walking on the water was just not yet in the cards for Peter. Maybe it was never in the cards. Maybe to fulfill the Purpose that role was not intended for Peter.
If Peter ever walked on the water, it was when it fit the Creator’s Purpose, and when Peter was ready for it.
What would have become of Peter at that time had he walked on water? Was his ego in control enough? Was his humility and submission to the Purpose developed enough?
That “ye of little faith” comment refers to far, far more than just intellectual belief. “Faith” is a way of being, incorporated into each breath, each choice, each action, each word. Faith is a way of being in Unity with the Father/Mother. Faith comes from the heart, not the mind.
Peter may have believed he could walk on the water. His actions certainly imply that. But in what other ways did Peter not have faith, or understanding, or strength, or purity? Had Peter successfully walked on the water, what would have become of him, his role, his reputation, his ego, his power, his will?
It wasn’t yet time for Peter to make that shot and deal with all that would have followed such a momentous event.
Faith means a lot more than stepping out of the boat.
Perhaps with time and remarkable experiences to come, Peter’s faith grew so much that stepping out of the boat was no longer necessary. Perhaps stepping on that water was child’s play compared to living a life committed to the impossible task of spreading the same message that got his Lord executed.
If Peter did again step out of a boat, it’s not surprising we never heard about it. This movement, this Gospel, this Good News, this radical new religion, was spread with few claims to individual power, personal PR, flashy miracles, and general razzmatazz showmanship.
Walking on water would not heal anyone, and would serve to bring attention to Peter instead of his Lord.
If Peter ever stepped out of a boat again, it was probably while on his own. But I doubt he even did that, because what good would it do the Purpose?
We each get opportunities to step out of the boat. Sometimes we should take them. Sometimes not.
When we do take them, sometimes we’ll sink.
That’s OK. It’s the attempt that counts. It’s the commitment and action that strengthens our faith, even if we sink this time.
And as our faith grows, we may not even have to step out of the boat again, for we may have bigger challenges ahead of us.
Yea, that “stepping out of the boat” thing has a lot more lessons about faith than just simple intellectual, mental belief.
Maybe the really big test of faith is stepping out of the boat even when you don’t really know if you’ll sink or rise! Now that is trust! That is trust that says you trust the loving Sustainer, you commit to the Purpose, and you are not going to try to tell God what to do and how to end the story. You are going to step out of the boat because it is the act you feel the Spirit calling you to, though you don’t know the outcome.
Peter stepped out and sank. And to this day we benefit from the lessons.
Peter stepped out and took a step for the unfolding Purpose, a step no less important because he sank.
So as we face our life situations and wonder what better fits God’s will for our lives, stepping out or rowing further, there is no automatic answer of which course demonstrates the greater faith.
If we do step out, we may then face the question of how long do we wait before clamoring back in……when the water hits our ankles, or knees, or neck, or forehead?
Are we turning out back on our faith and our commitment when we reach for that helping hand to get back in the boat? Do we then become the person “of little faith”?
Well, don’t look to me for an answer. I just applied for a job because I don’t see anyone paying me to write this stuff, and the savings account is getting bonier by the day.
But by gosh, I’m also still writing. And Peter kept taking steps of faith, giant steps, steps that changed the world, even if none of them were again on water.
Perhaps more important than the big steps out of the boat are the daily steps, the daily choices, the attitudes, the intent, the motivation behind the prayer, the love behind the way we touch each person with whom we interact today.
There will be big moments for profound demonstration of that “walk on water” faith. But they will come when the steps we take to get to the water’s edge are each taken in profound faith and deep Unity with the loving Source.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR JESUS?
God, imagine Yeshu betting His entire ministry on Resurrection while every day observing the finality of death. That would be a little discouraging it seems. Yet He knew what power He had…..or did He have power? Was He betting it all on You?.....feeling called to raise Lazarus but wondering if He was right about how it would turn out and would You really let Lazarus walk out of the tomb?
Did Yeshu experience any discouragement that left Him questioning what the heck He was trying to do?....or was He really God, all powerful, just pulling His punches in order to maintain a human facade? Naturally I want to believe the former.
Did He ever sit by a stream immersing in the sound of babbling, flowing water?....or as God, did He say He created it in the first place so He could access that feeling at will? I want to believe the former.
Was His vision limited to what His eyes could see?....or could He see a little more, seeing hovering angels and such?....or could He see way into the future?.....or did He see only what You figured He needed to see?
I don’t even know what I want to believe about that.
I know only how little I know and see, and I would probably be afraid to know and see more. I will ask questions, relieved at the lack of answers. I will be content to marvel and wonder at the present moment and pray that is enough for now.
LOVING DANDELIONS
God I love dandelions. I mean I love dandelions. That of course is a profound source of abiding loneliness. It is a quandary to love something so much when everyone else hates them and to know there is no language or expression with which to communicate my love. From a logical, if spiritually frigid, perspective I can understand their perspective. Yet in any struggling effort to explain my love and perhaps to proselytize on dandelions’ behalf I get no understanding – even it disagreeing - response of “well yes the bright yellow against the green background is striking but…..” . No, the response is always unequivocal, immediate, uncompromising, the indictment of the helpless dandelion and me, response devoid of any compassion or nuance.
Should perception of sublime beauty be such a lonely experience? Does the nature of this carnal world dictate that discernment of beauty will never be subject to compelling description? When others do not see the beauty is there any plea, description, expression, poetry, or art that can open their soul to discern the beauty?
Would any words lead another to say “oh yes, now I see it”?
Must beauty first reside internally before it can be seen externally? Do we recognize beauty not through another's compelling or cajoling but only by allowing the object of beauty to reflect something of ourselves?
OLD TICKING WATCH
Later in the day I’m in my office.
I pick up my globe to see how the southern tip of South America is divided between Chile and Argentina. After examining the map I notice a sound, a ticking sound.
Could it be? It’s my dad’s old referee’s pocket watch! Presumably my picking up the globe must have bumped it, though it must have been an extremely light, unnoticed bump. Sure enough, for the first time in many, many years it is running!.....on this day when I feel I am running out of time and I’m trying to do something about it.
That watch has to be close to a century old. My dad would have been refereeing during the Great Depression.
ENDURING THE WRATH
It is utterly impossible to comprehend the spiritual condition of humanity without living deeply, intimately, jointly entangled with individual human lives. No academic analysis will suffice. No amount of observation and assessment will suffice. The appearances, the facts, the events, the history, and the stories of individuals and civilizations barely scratch the surface of the spiritual depths.
One must endure the wrath, the anger, and the bitterness of the parent, the child, the spouse, and the stranger to get some sense of the desperate spiritual straights in which humanity lives. It is this individual condition that underlies and instigates the conflict and warfare and mutually inflicted horrors that comprise the observable history of communities and civilizations.
GOD WILL CRY “ENOUGH”!
Enough! At some point God will surely cry “enough!”
This world of madness can surely endure only so long.
We went mad as soon as we could imagine. Our first petroglyphs, our first regalia, our first shamans, and we were down the rabbit hole of mistaking imagination for reality.
The realities of food and famine and drought and disease kept us anchored for a while. But soon enough leisure time and belief options set our imaginations free, and we could embark on the fantasies of our own imagined worlds.
The temples flourished, religions became industries, publications and propaganda and patriotism accommodated our fantasies and ignorance and prejudice.
Science made its courageous counter-attack to reclaim the grip of the human mind on verifiable reality. Then that science released the source of its own demise in ever faster communication technologies. The marketers and mobs, having been constrained by some nominal contact with objective reality for a few centuries, seized the tools with which science had once sown enlightenment and turned them on their creators, digital images and broadcast polemics amplifying the newly benighted.
Such a state of detachment from reality cannot long endure. We ignore and deny and avoid Truth at our peril.
Our pictures and postings and politics and preferences have lured us far from reality, but reality is still there. No amount of cropping and denial and filtering can remove it.
It will not be denied much longer. Its day will.come. There is nothing virtual about it. There will be no rebooting this time. There is no off switch. There is no update fix. There is no back button.
It will be a rude re-introduction, and the longer we deny its inevitability the harsher that re-acquaintance will be.
We would be well advised to look up now from our screens and look at each other and the still extant, if beleaguered, non-digital world awaiting our rediscovery.
Reality is not the prodigal in this relationship. Prudence dictates we initiate the first steps toward reconciliation before the game is over.
UNWELCOME TRUTHS
No one wants to hear “turn the other cheek”, “forgive 70 times 7”, “love your enemies”, and “your temples will be destroyed”. No one hears or reads that and responds “yes, that’s the message I’ve waited to hear my whole life, I want to hear more.” Yet still those unwelcome truths must be spoken and recorded, somehow to be preserved and exert their improbable influence.
ALGEBRA
Source of name “algebra”. Arabic. “Bring pieces together”.
Numbers are the same in all languages, stemming from this Arabic development.
INDIA BORDER
On the Indian Pakistan border they got along fine. Soldiers would trade alcohol (from India) for rice from Pakistan.
Occasionally a colonel would say they needed headlines so they would agree to fire in the air.
SUNRISE HYMN
Simply too beautiful to not celebrate the memory, while thanking the Source.
Sublime beauty, not overpowering, but insistent in its deeply personal caress.
Just right clouds,
carrying sun’s pre-dawn glow.
and toward me, that orange column of light,
directly toward me,
along the base of the main body of cloud,
just as anyone within several miles
would have seen their own orange column of light
pointed directly into the sky above their head,
that miracle of Creation
telling each of us we are a child of God.
Majestic caravans of small puffs of cloud
in lines to the east,
turn pink before bursting into flame.
Not expansive, this sunrise,
but sublime, and intensely focused, focused on me, focused on anyone, focused on anyone, that chooses to look.
I turn my back to Sol’s flaming brightness
to find my shadow burned long and deep into trunks now burning,
bark alight with Sun’s orange flames,
As we each stand in searing spotlight
below sky still shadowed,
A photographer’s dream,
to record in my mind.
Turning back to source of all
now rainbow bands of icy heaven
dance with the rising furnace.
And turned again a few more steps
bring view of peak, but not the peak,
for rippling blanket soft and gray
flows o’er its craggy edges,
tumultuous and turbulent,
with soft embrace,
it shrouds the stony heights
above distant hills still glowing pink.
A sugar coating of fresh snow, a couple of light inches perhaps,
bedecked the hills and rocks this morning.
From blue to pink to orange to sparkling white it changed
through morning’s ritual entrance.
I looked and looked for kitty tracks,
but none were to be found on this morning.
Hymns filled my head this morning, as if sung by choirs of angels.
How grateful I am to have been raised with hymns, those good old hymns, sincere, simple, majestic, worshipful, celebratory, reassuring confirmations of hope.
Such a poverty it would be to have such a morning wash over and through the soul without that musical accompaniment.
MOUNTAIN KITTY
This kitty (mountain lion) comes out to play in the daytime!
I jog up the road. With its relatively deep snow cover it’s not the best road for jogging, but I couldn’t help but go look for kitty tracks in the fresh snow.
The lower part of the road has no tracks at all. But then, perhaps half way up, there they are!….as beautiful as ever.
There are lots of them, up and down, to the edges, occasionally betraying a flurry of activity, occasionally that activity having totally disrupted a large area of snow. In one spot heavy diving or pouncing or jumping had left craters of sandy dirt with t heir debris scattered all over the top of the surrounding snow.
Such drama! What life or death struggles ensued at those points!…or was it mere kitty play!
Tracks everywhere, big, running, padding, fast, slow, a night of activity recorded for a few hours in the snow destined to soon melt. I don’t know how to read that dramatic book, but I tried, applying my interpretations in spite of my ignorance. Obviously any hope of an aerobic jog had evaporated in the excitement of the discoveries.
I know only one thing for certain. Kitty left these tracks sometime after the snow stopped last night, which meant after my bedtime. Beyond that I couldn’t tell if they were 12 hours or 12 minutes old.
Up the hill, all the way to the water basin, led the tracks. It looked like kitty (or kitties?….I’m still perplexed by the great difference in sizes of the tracks) made a foray into the new neighborhood, but there was too little snow remaining in that un-sheltered summit to really tell.
I returned down the ridge that I had walked for my sunrise prayer walk, having indulged in so much time following kitty tracks that I wanted to take the quickest route back.
But again I find myself delayed. It seems kitty has visited “my” ridge since last night’s snow. I cut over to the point where I had walked in wonder this morning as rising sun set the woods alight with orange glow.
And there, where I had walked in dawn’s growing light, were tracks, tracks I had not seen this morning before or after dawn. I had not seen them because they were not there.
This kitty comes out to play in the daytime!
Sometime since I walked this trail this morning, kitty also walked it. Maybe shortly after I did. maybe a few minutes ago. Perhaps an expert could determine the answer. I know only enough to be thrilled and excited.
Though of course I worry about kitty. She’s living dangerously.
KITTY CONVENTION
Kitty tracks! Leaping, pouncing, or running big kitty tracks by the hilltop! Probably fresh from last night! Claws were out, and toes had dug in deep, with a spray of dirt behind the deep marks. Deer tracks centimeters away also looked deep and elongated. Had kitty tried to catch dinner there? What life and death drama did those tracks speak of?! Lacking any marks indicating a fall or struggle, if kitty tried to catch dinner there I suspect she went hungry.
Small kitty tracks on the road by the old ranch building! No doubt now, there is a bobcat or something similar in the valley. These tracks were only a little over three fingers wide, distinctly smaller than the big kitty tracks, and unambiguously feline. These were not the puma cub tracks, but notably smaller, but much, much larger than any housecat. Neat!
Then, around the base of the bluff on the main trail, I saw a party of kitty tracks, lots and lots and lots in the road softened by yesterday’s rain. I also saw the biggest kitty tracks yet! No doubt about the distinction between these tracks and the smaller tracks.
At another point I had seen tracks on tracks where the back feet stepped on the track of the front feet. That provided a comparison of size between back and front paws. The difference did not seem that great. So again I feel convinced that two puma’s are prowling the hills, plus a bobcat. Whoo hoo! It seems too outrageous to believe!
At some point kitty did not go hungry, as I found the third deer leg since winter, this one on the trail ascending the slope up from the river bed where it crosses the road. The bones were not yet bleached.
In the trail descending the ridge, the trail from which the spur descends to the butterfly valley, I saw a hollowed out bunny that had provided someone’s dinner. Of course that could have been left by many critters other than just the kitties.
All this I saw on my extended jog. I’ve decided that this spectacular flower show is God’s gift of a vacation for me. This is the second day in a row I’ve jogged/walked to the bluff to see the amazing flower show. I’m taking time, savoring, gniessing, letting my soul heal, communing with the sustaining Spirit. It is glorious.
My financial situation will not even tolerate the gasoline to drive anywhere for a camping vacation, so at this point of conclusion of the tutoring and in this glorious cool weather, I am taking time to celebrate and savor, and calling it vacation, not all day mind you, but for the extended jogging/hiking/sitting/napping time.
Thank You!
GODS FAILED US
Such tragedy!….how rapidly we sink into these spiritual dark ages! How quickly enlightenment fades!
And for good reason. Our new economic gods and scientific gods and technological gods have proven impotent and petulant as we seek their help in nourishing our souls and answering the age-old questions that long predated any investment tools or cellular communication.
For all our theories and equations and institutions, we still want, we still need, answers to those questions.
For all our phones and keyboards and screens, we still don’t want to be alone.
For all our knowledge and Internet and security devices and government agencies, we still fear.
Above all, we fear being alone and facing an unseen future.
So we invite aliens and ancestor’s spirits into our personal paradigm, and we frantically look to stars and planets, shamans and fortunetellers, to cast some shadowy light ahead of the numbers on our digital watch.
Pre-dawn dark
STRUCTURELESS POTENTIAL OF ETERNITY
Deep Communion, into the world of blue,
Pre-Home even,
unformed,
cleansing, flowing,
washing away the trauma.
Warm connection in cleansing eternal flow.
No need for sutra here. Welcome to relationship.
Welcome to the entrance of loving Source.
Let world’s madness momentarily abate.
Let the structureless potential of eternity,
that very initial coalescing of potential that resonates of peace and Love,
for the blessed moment let the crashing conflict and confusion slip aside.
Shed the madness and demands,
let the turbulent chaos dissolve into its rightful oblivion.
Immerse, immerse,
no need for mantras now,
touch and embrace and welcome
obviating need for scripture and recitation.
Immerse into what is and was always there,
pristine purity,
before form and time,
before question and need.
There, there,
when there is no place other.
Gentle, gentle,
life not yet constrained to form
The earliest times just barely formed of the peaceful blue that will underlie all.
The flow of purity, Source and Purpose pristine,
Consciousness still at peace,
Home still a distant future memory.
Secure and cleansing and purifying,
no need for clumsy ritual,
liturgy banished by glowing Truth
that requires no interpretation.
A gentle return awaits,
Carry the cleansed sensation back to the world.
Let its purity bring hope and solace.
The Once and Always still flows,
under all,
through all.
Invoke its memory,
its presence,
its purity of being
from which all arose and arises.
--------------------------
LOVE IN THE CLAWING COMBAT
Still in shock from last night’s political party caucus. How curiously hopeless is the human condition.
What could possibly alleviate the self-induced misery? How could wanton ignorance be dissipated? What innovative educational system could mitigate bigotry?
The Republican Party has narrowed its presidential choices down to a racist, a bigot, and a xenophobe.
Yet the electorate is not entirely evil. It is of course tempting to give up on this generation. But all it would take to remedy the unnecessary fear is communication and education. But that is no small order in the face of the human proclivity to not listen and to refuse to learn.
If people simply started discussions on the basis of foundations, the foundations they really want in their lives, such as health for their children, then they would see the other side is not demonic, but simply has different opinions about how to attain the same goals.
But with such ardor we pursue our demonizing! How readily the opinion different from ours represents not a different opinion but an existential threat to everything we hold dear!
What practices, institutions, and activities could provide some relief from this delusional madness?
Last night it was painfully obvious how two sides, Democrat and Republican, with exactly the same shared ultimate objectives, are irreconcilably, artificially, and unnecessarily at odds with each other.
The momentary experiment of United States democracy may be nearing its end. The divisions evident last night, though utterly contrived and imaginary, are irreversible, barring an opportunity to unite against some external third entity perceived as an existential threat.
Among the most disturbing aspects of last night was the verbatim and in unison parroting of the media lines about “direction of the country” etc. Not a person in that room could recite a single personal instance of how their lives or the lives of anyone they know has ever been negatively affected by any of the issues about which they get so apoplectic. But Fear News has so repeatedly hammered home the mantra that they recite it as credo, as loyally as any North Korean Communist Party member.
The lady next to me spoke of how she cannot sleep at night because she watches so much news and gets so worked up about it. (And of course she watches Fear [Fox] News.)
The name “Fox” news is singularly appropriate. It is a sly, destructive force in the midst of the populace (written with all due apologies to the beautiful animal whose name has been co-opted by the economic and political powers behind Faux News)
It seems there should be ways to avoid this disaster. But in all of human history we have yet to discover those ways.
Last night showed me that every culture, society, and nation is subject to the same cycles, promulgated by the human condition, perpetuated by our spiritual infancy.
The Great Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Russian Revolution, World War II, the collapse of every empire in history, it is all the same cycle, the activation of the built-in reset button in human history, God’s pre-ordained remedy to our greed, cruelty, and hubris.
In the face of disaster we finally learn our lessons. Rebuilding from the rubble of our creations we for a while are reminded of what matters in life. Deutschland (Germany) and Nihon (Japan) certainly learned. And they are both already forgetting.
Words of wisdom will go unheeded, until it is too late. Prophecies will prove prescient and powerless.
But in hindsight perhaps some of the prophecies will help pass on a few lessons for the next rebuilding, perhaps extending a society’s duration a little bit before the next inexorable collapse. With sufficient suffering we finally are willing to listen and learn, for a little while, relegating prophecies and wisdom to effectiveness only after the fact.
Let prophecies and wisdom provide encouragement and motivation for the rebuilders, for the Noahs and Micahs, for the prophecies and wisdom are never heard in time to avoid the Floods and desolations.
It is a curious and tragic characteristic of this generation, of these children of the Creator, on full display at the political caucus. A careful and considered assessment of the human condition must inevitably strip away all worldly hope. But that then leaves room for the rebuilding, the rebuilding of eternal hope.
Sitting at the duck pond, the Marx brothers having visited, a scene of perfection,for a moment entropy at bay.
Perhaps humanity and the harshness of life can be understood in terms of spiritual entropy, chaos being the norm, moments of civility and tranquility appearing as brief anomalies in the madness.
The flightless Marx Brothers ducks make their precious round, constrained to the surface of this little idyllic pond as I am constrained to this idyllic temporal moment.
When projected onto eternity perhaps the madness and chaos and violence make more sense…..perhaps. In that eternal perspective perhaps the clash and conflict and can be seen as the storm giving rise to unbounded potential for eternal beauty. In the physical universe and spiritual universe of entropy everything is possible, even Love and peace. Life appears in the tumult of colliding galaxies and Love appears in the clawing combat of that Life.
It is good, it is very good, says its Creator. And someday we will agree.
Addendum
In the perfect balance of physical constants in the early Universe was seeded the potential for organic molecules and information integration and the physical life to which they would give birth from the midst of exploding stars and colliding planets.
In the breath of Life and flickering consciousness and nascent awareness of the children of God was seeded the potential for care and compassion, and the eternal Love and Light that would arise out of the midst of the struggle for survival.
Later in morning, watching refugee crisis
Talks go on. Talks are always going on. Such a struggle, these human attempts to find common ground.
In the midst of crisis and horrors eventually some cooperation arises, often as not motivated by self interest.
It is a fascinating condition, this human condition, when viewed from a distance. It is a horrifying and wrenching condition when experienced from within its midst.
Only when we turn off the fear and self interest can we understand the tragedies of the human condition. But if we ever did turn off that fear and self interest, the tragedies would cease to exist.
Would Love arise in the absence of the spiritual chaos? Would Love have ever arisen in the Garden? Is Love possible in the absence of the knowledge of the individual Life experience? In eating the Fruit did we lose the Garden but take Creation to the next step, the potential and opportunity for Love?
We left the Garden, the struggle for survival began, the chaos and conflict erupted, and like planets from the dust of the Big Bang, like Life from the bubbling ooze of primordial earth, bright Love and the shining eternal destiny of Spirit appear through the cracks in the dark night of struggle, chaos, and conflict.
FLOWERS THROUGH CRACKS IN THE CONCRETE
Sunrise! Glorious, glorious my Lord! Glorious sun and cool air and sunrise breeze! Birds sing! A haze of moisture sits in lands below. Oh, I should plan and work and be productive, but how hard it is to turn from sunrise riches for world’s spiritual poverty.
Bright looms the peak above the band of low clouds. Stronger blows sunrise breeze, crisp and cool and refreshing.
Dear loving God, I give Your day back to You, praying it will carry me along in Your Purpose, that my wholeness and completeness shall arise from living my role in that Purpose.
In golden sunrise moment,
crisp breeze cleaning the air,
Truth shines and penetrates
the tawdry deceptions
of temporal world.
Soon enough begins
our noise and clamor,
frantically struggling
to drown out
crystal bells of beauty.
Frantic, desperate
our clumsy labors
to erect facades
in honor of despair.
Worry, doom, and desperation
drive our anxious, grinding days,
while through the cracks
in streets and concrete,
flowers greet the morning sun.
FEATHERED MARRIED COUPLE
On this warming day, little mama bird again flies off with her husband, leaving her two blue eggs unattended. But quickly she returns, settling in to her home, while he sings his song of joy from the tree across the yard.
WALT WHITMAN
PBS American Experience
Walt Whitman! He spent his own limited money to publish leaves of grass!
It was met with unanimous derision!
He was called every name in the book!
But his passion and love for his country demanded he invest yet more.
He was sensitive, in the sense of a sensuous interaction with the world. From an early age he felt called to do something with this.
His father was a farmer and unsuccessful investor, struggling to keep the family afloat.
Walt Sr. said “keep a good heart. The worst is yet to come”.
Walt Jr. said he stood for the sunny side, the joyful conclusion.
He interviewed at newspapers by creating an image based on his clothing, looking like a man of letters.
But in his newspaper jobs, he couldn’t help but express his own positions. Which got him into trouble.
He got fired from about seven papers. He rubbed people the wrong way. And he didn’t like being on a schedule. So bosses thought him lazy.
He would go to the park or theater or bar to soak up New York and its events.
He recorded in his notebooks what he saw and heard and felt throughout the city.
He noted the daily, human drama, assembling collages.
He would chat up taxi drivers, sitting up front with them.
“How many exhilarating evenings I’ve had riding the length of Broadway”.
There was no sanitation department in New York. Instead, swarms of pigs wandered the streets, looking for food
.
His notebooks filled with jottings of the vast diversity of individual people.
After his stay in New Orleans, he saw a squib in a newspaper asking for a national poet. He may have actually believed there was such a position.
He began to write poetry, sitting in an apartment in Brooklyn.
He began writing in prose.
One line says “do not descend among professors and capitalists”.
Then comes a blank page.
Then begins the declaration of poetry.
Then comes the first lines of Leaves of Grass.
He broke out of the formal bounds of poetry.
He brought all in, all people, all topics,
His was not the poet’s image.
His was poetry from living among people.
Nakedness is mentioned on the first page.
One is never many lines away from some aspect of the body.
How terribly disillusioning.
He could only afford to print 790 copies.
One reviewer suggested he be whipped, one said he’s a lunatic, one said he should commit suicide, one described the book as like an explosion in a sewer.
Whitman was cheered by the fact reviewers seemed threatened by the book.
He had a faith in ordinary people. He wrote for stage drivers. He expected people to be healed, and for Americans to come together in his poetic vision.
Perhaps two dozen people bought the book. His own family showed little interest.
But Ralph Waldo Emerson provided a glimmer of hope. His actual response was ambivalent, calling Leaves a non-descript monster, not convinced it could be called poetry. But he recognized the book could not be ignored. The author deserved encouragement.
He wrote Whitman an extraordinary letter, saying he rubbed his eyes to see if the book was a dream. “I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom American has contributed”. “I find incomparable things said incomparably well”.
Emerson was a combination of Billy Graham and Oprah Winfrey.
Whitman understood the letter was meant for his eyes only.
But he had it printed in the NY Tribune, without Emerson’s permission.
Sales still lagged, so he wrote three bombastic reviews of Leaves, under another name.
Sales did not improve.
So he started a second edition. He was desperate to connect.
He added 20 new poems and revised the old ones
.
In 1856, he wrote as if he was in the past, and projecting into the future. He creates the reader as a character in the poem.
Within weeks of the publication of the second edition, Thorough and Alcott came to meet Whitman.
He lived in an unkempt attic apartment.
He shocked Thoreau and Alcott.
His 8 brothers were a mess, a sister psychotic, a brother committed to an asylum, another brother profoundly developmentally disabled, and on the list went.
Whitman had to stay away from home as much as possible.
A publisher approached him to publish his third edition.
He was awash in his own greatness.
He referred to the grouping of his poems as “clusters”.
Whitman was so egotistical he though Leaves of Grass would prevent the civil war.
It did not. He felt his poems were a failure.
He picked fights at the bar he frequented.
When his brother got injured in the civil war, Whitman went to find him. Whitman stayed near the battle fields, looking at bodies and limbs.
He sat with soldiers. Doctors noticed him, and asked him to tend to a trainload of casualties heading to Washington
.
Gangrene casualties smelled so bad, they were isolated and left to die alone.
Whitman got a job as a copiest, allowing him to spend half a day and the evening in the wards. Sometimes he would spend the night in the hospital if a soldier requested.
He visited 40 hospitals in Washington.
He wrote of the human condition.
The condition was beyond a poet’s healing. He saw Lincoln almost every day, waiting in front of the White House for a glimpse of his ‘redeemer president”, besieged and unpopular for the income tax and freeing slaves and the war.
Whitman was present at operations and amputations. Later he would tremble. The horror brought tears to his eyes. “I had the luck yesterday to do some good”.
He was 40 something, but soldiers called him “old man”.
He was called Santa Claus, bringing a bag with goodies such as jelly, pickles, biscuits, any treat.
He felt tremendous affection for these strangers, and demonstrated that affection.
He spent time with dying soldiers, soldiers with untended wounds, with chronic diarrhea. He stayed with them until they died. He dressed hideous wounds, not giving up, but feeling the horror.
He was near collapse at the end, with night terrors, night sweats. He was alone, in a 3rd floor walkup.
He produced a new book of poetry, Drum Taps, describing the trials of the soldiers.
Whitman radically re-conceives Leaves of Grass, incorporating the war.
His following 25 years he spent confined to a small house in Camden NJ. The new country eluded his grasp. He tinkered and edited on Leaves of Grass. He suffered strokes, and an abscessed heart and rib. He became paralyzed on one side.
He wrote to put his body on paper.
Leaves started as 95 pages, and grew to over 400. He had no wife or children. Leaves was left to anyone who would have it.
IGNORING JESUS
Upon meaningful consideration it is stunning the degree to which the Christian religion ignores the teachings of Yeshu (Jesus).
The sermons and services focus on that convenient crucifixion - resurrection - salvation- redemption- eternal life stuff, even that diluted into a child - like party called “praise”. Any quotes of teaching and lessons are for the most part relegated to either cultural predecessors of Yeshu (Old Testament) or the most successful post-Yeshu marketer, Paul.
The paradoxical, demanding, unsettling words of Yeshu Himself are constrained to mention in excerpted snippets invoked in passing while priests and pastors extrapolate from them whatever point they want to make Sunday morning.
The clueless bafflement of the people in Yeshu’s time was equaled only by their studied disinterest in His teaching, the miracles - free food - and political tension being what really drew the crowds and motivated His unemployed followers.
Today we continue to duck and cover when “turn the other cheek”- “forgive 70 times 7 times” - and “take up your cross and follow” are mentioned.
Yep, we love the gimmicks, the marketing hooks, and anything that feeds us or promises to save us.
Some things never change. Meanwhile we can do without the challenges to our behavior and thinking. We will praise Yeshu as long as He delivers on promises and keeps His mouth shut.
It’s all a bit discouraging. Yet through the worship noise and praise posturing and institutional marketing and church politics His words, at least a few of them, endure, carried through the ages for someone at some time in some place when that singular person is ready to really hear the Truth….when another life is touched…….and the world changes just and little.
UNIVERSAL HUNGER
What determines what we really hunger for in life?…versus what we think we hunger for. I often suspect that a great source of human misery arises in confusing the two. Deep inside, often as not unrecognized, do we hunger for the same thing? I really want to believe so, but I am not sure. I want to believe the destructive hungers for money and power and fame are just twisted distortions of the universal hunger for Unity. Every time I hear of programs that turn hardened criminals into affectionate teddy bears by simply exposing the convicts to caring for injured animals, or serving a community, or even raising gardens, I see a hope universal. But then the human condition returns to my awareness, reminding me of endless examples of people given opportunity to care and give and love, opportunities turned from in favor of cruelty or power or the self.
But still, in many cases, I know our wants for jewelry, title, money, prestige, status, and applause really do hint at a misdirected response to the need for love, acceptance, affection, and security, as well as self-worth, all the payoffs we reap if we are ever blessed to experience interpersonal Unity, all the payoffs we get when we choose to first give them.
As it rose this morning, the sun played hide-and-seek through tears and slits in an approaching cloud-bank, until now sun’s disk remains completely hidden. The bright light of human spirit, that spirit that seeks a universally shared joy of Unity, occasionally appears in a hide-and-seek tease, bright shaft of hopeful light that warms the soul. But world’s cold nature usually pulls its grim, gray shroud of material concerns over that light, dimming the bright dream of Unity down to dim spiritual half-light through which we daily grope. But Source of light remains, awaiting each individual choice to pull away the shroud, and let that Source shine bright Truth forevermore.
ANOTHER TRUTH
while sitting in the Operations meeting.
So many, so wrong?!…. all those prophets and priests through the ages,
always so,
and finally Truth appeared?!
Yeshu finally brings the Truth and Light?
Perhaps the Truth was, and is, always at hand.
The opportunity to search for and choose Truth
was always at hand,
since the Garden,
and now and then, here and there, in the midst of yet another critical situation,
when our heart was in danger of forgetting all Truth,
comes yet another example, yet another Lamp,
to again make Truth clear,
in the ongoing progress and regression,
Truth always waxing and waning in the human condition.
Perhaps it is no more to be doubted that Yeshu could indeed be the Christos, bringing a new light on the Truth,
than to doubt that of all planets we see, only ours proves habitable for our form of life.
I know I need the Truth of the living Christos and Resurrection for my spiritual survival.
Yes, after all the Buddhas, priests, and prophets through the millennia, in the proper time and place for some of us, the ongoing Revelation did take another step forward, a new Light shining on new aspects of Truth.
Of course we crucified that Light, as we always do and always will do.
Yet as always, some Truth still survives. And as always, from all the Buddhas, prophets, priests, and Meschiochs, we will choose what aspects of Truth we will grant entrance to our heart.
UNIVERSAL SUNRISElate Saturday morning, before supporting the Paralympics, on a glorious fall morning.
Each morning that I see a sunrise it is gosh-awful difficult to not stop and write. That is the moment I feel how unnatural this lifestyle and rhythm is for me, though I remain immensely grateful for having a good job.
But I have to force myself after the Deep Communion of the sunrise to return to chores, schedules, what is expected of me.
So much I want to write!
This morning, once again, a thin veil of clouds below the primary stratus layers, caused that “pillar of light” effect, a pillar of orange the width of the sun long preceding the sunrise, pointed directly at me, as it would have been pointed directly to any observer miles to the north or south.
Such a lesson in the oneness of the universe! The very structure of light, the way it refracts at critical angles through the far distant drops of mist, serving to ensure that every last person watching this sunrise from within a large area will see that majestic column of light oriented directly at them.
NO MENTAL GYMNASTICS
(While in a meeting.)
Religion, faith, belief, spiritual understanding, enlightenment….if authentic and trustworthy these should not involve intellectual gymnastics beyond acceptance, quiet, mindfulness, openness, and patience.
Now the Truth is so glorious and manifold that intellectual exertion is indeed called for in order to boundlessly explore further and deeper, in wonder and excitement.
But peace, security, and the embrace of the Source of that Truth are the domain of the childlike soul, and require only open eyes, willing mind, and accepting heart.
EMPTY SUFFERING
How strange to have consciousness trapped in a physical medium that controls so much of the application of that consciousness.
There seems little difference in the ethical standards of ameliorating suffering by meditation and detachment versus alleviating suffering by accruing riches and material security. Both aim at the same objective. Both paths are empty. It is when we strive to eliminate suffering for others, it is when we attach to their needs, that we find higher ground.
EXERCISE
Any good and meaningful exercise that promotes increases strength will, of necessity, be sometimes exhausting and painful, and leave one collapsed and gasping for breath.
That holds for both spiritual and physical exercise. Far better to occasionally collapse in fear, despair, loneliness, grief, and depression because you are engaged in heroic spiritual struggle, climbing steep and treacherous terrain, than to continually glide in undisturbed bliss of spiritual lethargy and transcendental obesity.
PEACE MOMENTARY OR ENDURING
There is a subtle but critical difference between peace arising from seeing the beauty in a moment, as when being fully present, and peace arising from unity relationship with Source and Sustainer. The former is a peace of the moment, the latter a peace of eternal foundation. The former sees the Creation of Source and Sustainer. The latter feels the caress of Source and Sustainer.
UFO’S, WOLFPACKS, AND THE CHRISTMAS STORY
As I play “laser tag” with ‘Tasha, the red spot that so intrigues her moves at the wiggle of my wrist to “run “ away from ‘Tasha’s pounces at speeds millions of times faster than any mouse could move. Finally it strikes me that such “impossible” fast acceleration and deceleration between points exactly describes the motion associated with many UFO sightings.
In fact, it perfectly fits the behavior described by my cousin, the down to earth, unflappable, intelligent, combat-experienced, retired Air Force officer.
So, as the moving red dot on the wall is a projection onto a two-dimensional surface across a third spatial dimension, are some UFO’s merely projections onto our three-dimensional space, projected across a fourth (or higher) dimension?
It would be essentially impossible to prove that laser spot had ever appeared on the wall. Does the “projection” analogy provide a clue about the reason for lack of physical evidence of UFO visits?
It is just a thought. And it is a thought coincident with other thoughts last night that it seems quite likely that in a multiverse created by an infinite God, that God could populate that multiverse with an infinite variety of sentient beings. Would a God of infinite Love remain constrained to the physical confines of our universe any more than S/He would be constrained to one planet or one universe?
The prospect of existence of angels, and yes, perhaps demons, is not an affront to the mind. Neither should be, at least on its surface, the prospect of other spiritual beings, other than humans, perhaps even occasionally interacting with this world.
Last night’s nature documentary described interactions among wolves and coyotes in Yellowstone Park. In one case a wolf-pack from a neighboring territory attacked another wolf-pack, killing the patriarch and others, and laying claim to this second territory in addition to their original territory. In human terms the assault would be labeled greedy and cruel aggression, but of course it sounds silly to apply such subjective judgments to the harsh calculations of nature.
In another act we have no right to judge, in order to make a statement about their intolerance of competition in their now sprawling territory, the wolves engaged in a prolonged pursuit of a male coyote, finally tearing it to pieces as his pregnant mate (mate for life by the way) watched, before herself fleeing to save herself and her unborn pups.
Some months later, and some weeks after birth of pups, out of the blue another pack of wolves arrived.
The expert filming this documentary had been describing territories and boundaries of wolf packs in the area, but this pack arrived as a complete unknown, appearing as if out of nowhere.
The battle ensued. The strong pack that had invaded and claimed this territory only a few months earlier was routed. As they withdrew to a safe distance, the newly arrived, unknown pack slowly and deliberately march up the hill to the dens of the now vanquished pack.
The dens contained all the surviving pups of this season.
From the neighboring hill the recently triumphant, now defeated wolf pack now had to just helplessly look on….and wait…… for a day….for two days…for twelve days, while the unknown invaders surrounded the dens, without entering or attacking, until any pups inside had surely died,
With the passing of the twelfth day, the mystery pack melted back into the woods, not to again appear during the coming months of filming the documentary.
The now devastated former invaders scattered from the territory. By the next year, the original clan, its surviving remnants now healthy and reinforced with a new generation, returned, as did the descendants of the deceased male coyote.
Did this epic tale of canine clans contain some battle of good versus evil, and some tantalizing glimpse of external influences maintaining some mysterious cosmic balance, as well as the harsh natural balances with which we are more comfortable and familiar?…..I couldn’t help but ask the question….though I strongly believe we cannot answer it.
In one of the most incongruous literary leaps ever, I will now shift the topic to my
Bible reading today, Luke chapter 2, the Christmas story of angels visiting shepherds. This story is followed by the story of elderly people in the temple recognizing the infant Yeshu (Jesus) as their long awaited Meshioch (Christ.)
Even many Christians feel Luke may have exercised a bit of literary license in inserting these colorful but improbable tales. The modern reader of Luke’s Christmas story, as well as other Bible stories, often settles for symbolic interpretations, resigning themselves to see miracles as just illustrative stories., For the modern, educated, intelligent person, UFO sightings and unexplained events in Nature can evoke more sense of curiosity, wonder, and mystery than a chapter in the Bible.
What mysteries, what machinations, what forces angelic, and demonic, are afoot all around us, in dimensions imperceptible and universes parallel? I am absolutely convinced that most of us can never know, and it is a tragic mistake to try to convince ourselves in our imagination that we do know. Our energy, effort, research, money, time, and sacrifice we can best invest in something tangible, real, and desperately needed: love and care and healing in this temporal, physical world. And while our actions and work remain grounded in this three dimensional Creation, our wonder and awe and imagination and faith, yes faith, can remain excitedly open to whatever unbounded means and beings may come into play in fulfilling the loving Purpose of an infinite Creator, even including angels in a night made bright, loudly singing a message of joy to shepherds, or angels unrecognized, shining a soft light on our day’s path, and gently whispering of hope from the same Source the shepherds worshiped.
PENTECOST
OK, I read Acts 1. Man, those are events so difficult for us to comprehend.
I think such texts, along with innumerable texts in the Bible, put we modern believers in a bit of a quandary. We don’t like to admit that quandary. We don’t want to utter out loud the thought we don’t even admit to ourselves, the thought that some of this stuff is so alien to our experience we cannot even really imagine it as literally true.
The physical weirdness in the Bible is hard enough. But at least Yeshu (Jesus) rising into the clouds, and angels in white clothing appearing with instructions, at least these scenes have a tangible, visible, describable, albeit fantastic, image for our minds. We imagine our “I can’t believe this is happening” response had we been present, but we at least know what we are trying to imagine, even if we cannot understand it.
But how about that Holy Spirit thing? Now we are talking about some flaming spirit coming into our mind, into our thoughts, into our way of understanding. Now that goes beyond just seeing someone rising into the clouds!
When we read of the gift of the Holy Spirit, I really don’t think we even quite know what we are trying to imagine.
I think that given our druthers, we pretty much just try to avoid thinking about the whole thing. Bodies rising into clouds we can associate with science fiction special effects. Our minds have a clear image of it.
But this Holy Spirit Pentecost thing? What did the apostles experience? What did it feel like? Does it even do us any good to try to comprehend it? Did they even comprehend it? Or was Pentecost something experienced so intensely personally that it must remain “mystery” in the oldest sense of the word, meaning something experienced but not explainable to anyone.
…..the ineffable experience of the Holy Spirit (“ineffable” is my vocabulary word this week, “ineffable” meaning something you can’t put into words)……
The gift of the Holy Spirit…..understanding and insight and abilities the Apostles did not even receive while in the presence of Yeshu Himself…..and even more baffling, something that came all at once, not whispering and gradually bringing insight and understanding, but bang, with a wind and a roar, suddenly these guys were capable of things of which they had earlier not been capable.
Yeshu sent the Holy Spirit……and once sent, does that mean that all subsequent believers right up to the present should receive the same Spirit, in just as dramatic a fashion?
Well, yes and no.
The power(s) of the Lord, of the Holy Spirit, of the loving Creator, are indeed made available to us in miraculous ways, but each in different ways, as fits that moment in the Creator’s unfolding Purpose.
The apostles had experienced the presence of the Son of Man. They had experienced events that shook their core system of beliefs and credulity to its foundation. Those followers were prepared and open and receptive to the miraculous experience of connection with the Truth and powers and vision and understanding and expression that came with Unity with the Holy Spirit.
In tangible, visible, audible, discernible form it could enter their conscious experience. Those faithful few were ready for that moment.
The unfolding Purpose within the world was also ready for that moment.
And today? And today’s believers?…..do we, and the world, not need the Holy Spirit? Of course we do.
So why don’t we see in a gathering of believers indescribable sources of light that for lack of a better word we describe as flames that appear to divide and go to each person in the room? Why don’t we instantly find we can speak a foreign language?
Does the absence of such events in our lives mean that the Holy Spirit was a one time shot, reserved for those apostles because they were special, but not meant for us? Or does it just mean we don’t have enough “faith”, and we’re not as good as they were?
I don’t think any of the above. I think I now see that the Holy Spirit is still present, and in fact was present before that stunning event at Pentecost.
Well then, if that’s the case, why did the Holy Spirit wait to fill the apostles until after the departure of Yeshu into Heaven?
The Apostles had to be ready. The world had to be ready.
Only after staying by Yeshu’s side for several years, only after sticking together after the crucifixion, only after seeing proof of the Resurrection, only after these series of shocking, stunning, unbelievable experiences, could they be open to the next step, that personal filling of their soul with the Holy Spirit.
Why did God not arrange for preparatory “training” events to happen while Yeshu was right there with them to hold their hands, and then fill the apostles with the Holy Spirit so they could march around with Yeshu, testifying to His nature while He still walked the earth?
That’s like asking why did Yeshu have to submit to arrest and crucifixion. As much as we would like grand spectacles, triumphant conquests, and unambiguous displays of God’s omnipotent power, at this point in our spiritual birth, for “this generation”, we are left free to choose what we want to believe, a freedom that too many miracles, too much power, too much flash, would destroy.
There was a moment, a stunning, incomprehensible moment in human history, when all was right, when all was in place, when all the right actors had come together, when the confluence of events and circumstances all fit….a moment when that always present Holy Spirit could directly, overtly, outrageously be expressed through a handful of mortal humans who had just walked with the living presence of the eternal Word.
The Holy Spirit in overt, obvious, tangible form was sent to the apostles, as Yeshu had promised. It was sent when they were ready for it. It was sent when they needed it. It was sent with the world needed it.
Was the Holy Spirit not present at all in the world, or with those apostles, before that moment of Pentecost? Was that its first grand entrance into the world? Or was, and is, it always present, because all Creation is after all of and from and part of and within the Creator?
That question about the events of Pentecost is relevant as we ask about the presence of the Holy Spirit today, a presence that seldom involves tongues of fire or an instant Berlitz foreign language course.
I am prone to believe that Holy Spirit as presence of loving Creator, Holy Spirit as whispering influence in our heart that tells us of things right and wrong, that calls and compels us, that influences the outcomes and events and circumstances that fulfill the Holy Purpose, that Holy Spirit awareness of present God in all, that was and is and will be always part of all life and existence, whether recognized or not.
Look at Yeshu’s statement in Acts 1: 4: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” This does not speak of Holy Spirit entering the world. This speaks of a specific event, a specific interaction with, the Holy Spirit already present. As one could have been present with and interacting with and influenced by John the Baptist for years, but still experience that one moment, that one event of baptism, so the experience of the Apostles was not a sudden arrival of a Holy Spirit never before present, but a new experience, a specific event, a particular new blessing from that already present Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit, that awareness of God in this world, had been present before Pentecost, and is present today. Holy Spirit is not limited to tongues of fire and earthshaking personal empowerment.
Look at Yeshu’s promise of the coming Counselor:
John 14: 15 – 27:
“‘If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.’
Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, ‘But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?’
Jesus replied, ’If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.’”
What does this say about the presence of the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, before Pentecost? “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” Notice: “But you know him”, not “you will know him”. I must confess I know utterly nothing about present tense and future tense structure in Aramaic and Greek, but I still want to infer from this sentence that the spirit of truth was and is present in the world for those that recognize it, for Yeshu said of the Apostles “you know him, for he lives with you” (present tense).
As for the future tense of “He will give you another Counselor to be with you”, that I take to refer to the ongoing revelation of truth to the apostles and to us. The Truth was present before Pentecost, and is always present. But we continue to receive new aspects of it, new revelations, new understandings. We are sent a new Counselor with each step in our spiritual growth, meaning a new message, a new perspective, a new depth of connection with the unchanging, eternal, always present Source.
To repeat another line: “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
The teaching continues! The learning continues! The Apostles walked for years with Yeshu, yet still there was more for them to learn! The name “Counselor” speaks of ongoing learning, ongoing experience, ongoing personal growth and spiritual progress.
The Holy Spirit does not enter our lives with all power and all wisdom in one moment of tongues of fire. I don’t even believe that the Apostles got their complete dose of holy learning, insight, power, and wisdom on Pentecost. I believe that we can never, and even the Apostles could never, comprehend or grasp all the knowledge, power, and majesty the Holy Spirit offers. So our learning at the feet of the Counselor continues, sometimes in gradual growth of awareness over a lifetime, sometimes in dramatic, life changing events such as the Apostles experienced on Pentecost.
Every moment of new insight and understanding, every moment of boldly taking a stand in the name of Christ’s Love, is a moment of personal Pentecost.
“He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever”……the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, always present with us, always teaching, always guiding, the knowledge and wisdom and insights and abilities and skills we gain being perfect for our particular personal spiritual condition, and for that particular moment within the unfolding Purpose.
Our inability to comprehend the events in room in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, our lack of such a specific experience, in no way denies the presence and power of the Counselor and Holy Spirit in our lives, for we each have our own experience, our own mystery.
Dramatic and instantaneous - earth shaking and life changing; or lifelong and gentle – guiding and comforting, the Holy Spirit, the promised Counselor, remains with us, its tongues of fire seldom literally visible, but its flame lighting our way.
SPIRITUAL FIG LEAVES
I just read Genesis chapter 3.
I hear a great sadness in God’s words as God recites the consequences of eating the Fruit, a great grief and sorrow. Perhaps I hear even sadness and sorrow as S/He predicts the fate of the serpent.
The serpent had done his/her ordained job, providing the Choice. The serpent knew the loving Creator would not necessarily condemn us to eternal death. “you will not surely die”, but give us a way out, if we so choose.
The children of God grew up, perhaps a little too quickly. The Father/Mother God knew what they would then have to face in the process of spiritually maturing.
We would now have to pass through a physical, worldly, temporal, mortal existence, with all its pains of childbirth and uncertainties of this season’s harvest. The world in which these newly free children with newly opened eyes would live would have to be a world indeterminate, uncertain, unpredictable. Such is the inevitable price of freedom and knowledge.
That infamous tree God placed right in the center of the Garden (verse 3). All of Creation centered on that Tree of Knowledge. (Might we call it “Tree of Consciousness”, or “Tree of Awareness”?) This was literally the centerpiece of Creation, everything else and all life orbiting around it. It was placed so as to be unavoidable!
And we ate. And we became self-aware. And we immediately, as our first act, began to hide ourselves. Such a quintessential image of our human nature that is!….hiding!
From that moment on we would reveal only calculated fractions of our selves to others. We would erect the barriers that limit in-depth, interpersonal Communion. We would seal ourselves off from each other, that first and immediate reaction to consciousness embodying and poignantly capturing our spiritual condition, shielded from each other and hiding from our Creator.
“I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” (verse 10)
Now separated from each other and our Creator, now having spiritually isolated ourselves in reaction to our awareness of existence as conscious individuals, we were, we are, launched on the path of our birth as those of whom God spoke “has become like one of us, knowing good and evil”. And through that ensuing journey as we wrap our souls in fig leaves to separate us from each other, and as we hide from our Creator, the whispering, sorrowful, pleading call continues through the ages and through this very day, “do not fear, for I am with you” (Isaiah 41:10)
PLAYING OUR ROLES
Mark 15.
Morning Bible reading.
Dear Lord, dear Lord, how wrenching that chapter.
How high I felt earlier this morning!
How trite and petty and selfish my joys, compared to your suffering.
The insults! How Mark emphasizes and repeats the cruel derision we heap upon You.
And there, watching, the women, “many women”, who had cared for Your needs.
Thank God for those women, easing the burdens of Your worldly life, making possible Your ministry that saves us today.
Insults and ridicule and derision….so cruel, the world’s treatment of You, then and now.
But are such worldly insults in fact the highest honor? Such testimony they make to courage, courage to not rely on world’s acclaim, but heavenly acclaim.
Such commitment to faith and trust in the Father those insults proclaim, that through utter rejection by the world the loving Purpose would be fulfilled.
Your honor, Your majesty, Your triumph of spirit over the controlling demands of this human world, all this is heard in the praise of the insults and derision and rejection.
How alone this world left You.
How easily the crowds were, and are, swayed against You.
What if Barabbas had not been imprisoned for sedition? Lacking Barabbas as a crowd pleasing, popular alternative for the traditional prisoner release at Passover, might Pilate have released You?
Did Pilate try to release You?
For all the political expediency that got You crucified, Your treatment at the hands of the soldiers perhaps illustrates the greatest cruelty, for this was cruelty in its purest form, the inflicting of pain and suffering for its own sadistic sake.
A drama of a death. A tale of triumph. There is an urgent immediacy in those notes in Mark, so much compressed into a brief scene.
Dear Lord, dear Lord, there in those scenes, all our human condition, and the summary compilation of not just how we treat You, But how we treat all that would bring holiness and goodness to our lives. The grief, the loss, the cruelty, the expediency, the irrational power of popularity, the blindness to good, all there in one chapter, the human condition, reenacted each day. At various times we play each of the roles, reluctantly acquiescing to demands in order to avoid trouble, applying our lashes to someone’s back, stepping back to watch from a distance to see if a miracle will rescue someone, joining the mob in worshiping the popular media personality, manipulating the political situation to secure our own position….and failing to recognize Your Truth and beauty and message and Love in its many forms. And we sometimes find ourselves stuck with carrying someone else’s cross, and we sometimes find ourselves in horror struck grief as we watch one we love suffer on their cross.
It just happens, our quite naturally falling into the roles of Pilate and a soldier and a bystander and a mother and an insecure council member and an anonymous face in the chanting crowd.
And the insults and criticism and rejection and rebuke and derision seem to just flow most naturally as we play our many roles in that Chapter 15 scene we daily reenact.
Until once in a while, some part of the scene, some moment of pathos or drama or mystery or power or strength, briefly arrests our attention and places us in the role of the centurion, asking ourselves if we haven’t just seen the face of God.
Poetry
MATERIAL LIFE
The living versus the material.
Where do your thoughts lie?
In what domain do you reside?
Life will liberate you.
The worldly will chain you.
You are born into and of the world.
But you are conscious and alive!
You need not be chained.
Life awaits.
Life calls.
Where do your thoughts lie?
In the world or in the Heavens?
….in things passing or
Spirit eternal?
When your worldly chains grow heavy,
Stand up,
Look up
See the Light that was always there.
Where do your thoughts lie?
The world will fill your mind unless soul and Spirit and Life and Love
fill it first.
Stand up. Look up.
You are more than all the world.
Juniper. Afternoon. Thunder.
JAY BABIES AND WANNABE GODS
For many days I've been wondering if Jays were working on a nest above me in the juniper. They kept coming into the juniper, under the canopy. When Bodes lied below the juniper a jay always hopped around right in front of him, boldly, nonchalantly, closely. It was such a closer and closer presence that today Bodes started hissing at it!....not chattering as he normally would do with a bird, but hissing as he does with Cal Kitty or a Waschbaer! The first time I heard it I threw on my shoes and raced out, expecting a kitty tiff. But no, Bodhi was just lying curled up by the stairs under the juniper.
Then it happened again, but this time I saw it, on the office stoop, Bodhi just lying there while the same small jay got closer and closer in the holly bush. Most curious.
The Jays have also been bold about hopping around under the juniper when I am here, coming close on the ground.
Now I know why! They do have babies! Mom and dad seem to take turns landing on a branch then hopping far up the branch to the underside of the canopy, where no bird could directly fly. The nest is utterly hidden in the chaotic juniper branches, but I could see movement of silhouettes of what must be little heads as mom fed them! She did that jackhammer feeding motion. I could barely hear little peepsing! She stayed quite a while probably cleaning poop. I say she because she seems smaller, but she is more brightly colored.
Had I not been looking at the right time I never would have known. What a joy! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
They first land on the chain link fence to make sure the coast is clear before flying under the juniper canopy and hopping up the branch. At eye level with the nest I still cannot identify it.
Signs of hope in a hopeless world. Miracles patching together the world we tear asunder.
Juniper. Mid-day.
Jay parents are busy feeding their babies. The responsive peepsing when a parent arrives is louder than yesterday. After the fit visit the parent closely checked me out down here, going all around me, getting within 40 centimeters (25 inches), beside and behind me. Then s/he tapped that sharp beak on the branch. It's intimidating! I see why Bodhi hissed at it!
At the ranch this morning the young sheep trotted over to me!....she just galloped over when I entered the field!.....then sidled up against me! It was wonderful!
Coyote concert last night. Spectacular soloist, in classic form. Sounded like it had little family accompaniment.
Jay is back. I think it is used to me being here now.
They want to be gods. That is the overarching characteristic of this generation. They want to be gods. I watch Bill next door, puttering on his latest project. I think of the callous disregard of others in relationships as plans are made without consultation. I listen to the society and politics. I listen to the mindless prattle of most people.
They want to be gods. They want power and to be in charge.
They want to be gods. That's how they got here. Of course there is no reasoning with them. Of course they have no interest in the spiritual, for you cannot take hammers and saws to the spiritual. Of course everyone else speaks up without continuity to the previous statement.
They want to be gods. Surrender?! Submission?! No way!
They want to be gods. But somewhere is a lost sheep, the treasure of the Kingdom, waiting for reassurance.
They want to be gods.
But the words will reach someone, someone.
Watch the tragedy of the lives of those claiming godhood, exerting power over people or yards or dogs or employees. This is no time to turn from God's unfolding and worldly impossible plan.
Submit to the glory.
All the wannabe gods and the lord of this world cannot overcome the Purpose. Be true to your Choice and commitment. It is True. They all want to be gods. Do not follow their example.
Fear not, though you have ample reason to fear. You are not asked to be a god. You are asked to be you, a glorious child of God.
The smaller branches shake with the jackhammer motion of the parent! Feeding? Cleaning? Then the mom settles into the nest, taking a break, cuddling a bit.
Poetry
BLIND FAITH
Look. Look hard.
Know what you can know.
It is enough. Your faith is enough. You don't have to be right about worldly outcomes. Your faith is enough.
The world is unfolding, whether per God or the world's lord or some balanced conflict between the two. Seldom will you, will people, know the outcomes.
Look deeply. Know what you can know. Breathe deep the air of life,
atmosphere full of life and potential.
Look at the blessings. Look at the curses.
Rescues and tests, tests of faith.
Know eternal truths, for they are simple.
As for this world, who knows? You don't.
But you knew something. Through it all you knew something.
Hold it close. Let go all you thought you knew.
The future? There is nothing there to know.
Eternity? There is everything, and you will learn it.
Breath deep what you do not yet understand.
Let go of the world.
Immerse in the world, but do not sink into it.
They all think they have answers. That is the great deception.
It is faith to not need answers, that is real faith.
Watch it rise,
unfolding Purpose.
It is crafted like clay,
ancient forms,
laid before time.
Time is the great blinder, the enduring deceiver.
In time though can arise the ripples, the oscillations, the seeming chaos, that births Life.
Breathe deep, savor, the Life in the moment.
Let it soak in to nourish you upon returning to Time.
It is there, close, closer,
"at hand" as the saying goes.
Make sense of it? Of course it is natural to try.
But remember the nature of the faith we seek to cultivate,
faith when nothing makes sense and nothing works out.
For it always worked out, just not the way you expected.
Yes, it would be far too terrifying to see that path. You could not endure.
The blindness is a mercy.
Or at least it was.
Faith requires blindness.
There is nothing to see anyway.
But then comes a moment,
when you breathe,
and the blessings are revealed.
No plan is necessary.
Plans are worldly things, constrained by time.
The greater Creation unfolds all around time.
It is there. It is there.
Look hard. Look deep.
It is all there, just hidden by time,
that great deceiver.
Mystery? Of course.
Let go of your natural need for linear development.
Let that bright kernel of faith grow,
and look, look,
at the wonders.
JAY BABIES
From my seat in the juniper office I just saw the babies flapping their wings! What a life milestone!
Juniper.. Afternoon.
Such talking by the jays and Bodes!
Bodhi wanted to get in his old cool spot in the shade of the juniper. The jay parents are quite concerned. I reassure them I will not let Bodhi approach their nest.
Bodes talks and talks to them, a plaintive little chatter, not his usual birdy chatter, like he’s asking “please just let me lie here in peace”.
This goes on and on. Bodhi tries to lie down. I think he likes the reassurance of being close to me.
One jay gets within 30cm of Bodhi’s nose. This totally disrupts the feeding cycle of the babies. The jay makes itself an easy target. Back and forth on the stairs it hops, up and down, right in front of Bodhi.
On occasions I can see the babies flapping their wings, stretching above the nest.
I think to fledge they will have no way out above the nest, as it is secreted under the juniper canopy. I think they will have to flop down to the ground, get out from under the juniper, and then take off. For this reason the jays may be determined to keep intruders out of the juniper base area.
Bodhi stretches out. Finally relaxed. Mom and dad seem quieter. They have gotten used to me over the days, no longer coming down to check me out, though I’m sure they are quite aware of my daily presence.
I thought I would have to intervene to take Bodhi over by the house, which would be terribly sad. But perhaps a truce has been struck. I kept reassuring the jays.
This scene was a more dramatic version of the repeating morning scene, both parents hoping back and forth on the stairs when Bodhi comes out, getting in his face. This morning Bodhi opted to retreat to the patio. The jays ruin the ambience of the yard for Bodhi just like Bill’s machines ruin it for me.
Now as Bodhi exits from under the juniper a squirrel is chattering at him. Bodhi can’t win.
Jay parent trusts me enough to get on the ground right beside me to snag some food and take it directly to his/her family.
I can see a little orange bill!
Both parents arrive at the same time! Double treats for family! Both parents feed at the same time!
Then, right after they leave, I see one of the babies stand up on the edge of the nest!....flapping and flapping and flapping! It’s much larger than I imagined! It wants to leave! I can clearly see its flight feathers!
Little jays are noisier and more active than ever. One repeatedly stands at the edge, fully exposed, flapping and flapping.
Day later:
A little jay leaves the nest! What a moment!
Little legs are weak! Not getting back up! Pathetic squawking! Slipping lower! Lower! Looking at me!
Tangled in branches! Each hop takes it lower!
Blue! Fat little guy!
Precocious!
Tries to go back up the branch. Flaps little wings. The tangles of twigs are so hard to navigate!
In the sun! Fluffs a little. Looking around! Looking! Looking!
Mom’s been flying back and forth right in front of my face. She seems to trust me. Flying from the branch to my left to my right, 30 cm. Before my nose. After feeding she returns in the other direction.
Little guy settles down. Siblings are quiet now.
Such bright eyes!
I dare not sneeze!
Feathery, but slightly fluffier feathers than an adult.
Still clumsy! No experience out of the nest!
What a moment!
What a brilliant place for a nest.
What will my presence do to his/her first imprinting?
Still sitting there, now for five minutes.
I think there are two other siblings. One briefly got excited and fluttered just beyond the edge of the nest when the first one left, but the second promptly returned.
So much to see!
Here comes mom or dad. Squawking from the baby. Wings are so short! Sounds like a baby dinosaur.
Mom feeds him where he is, then bypasses him to go higher on the branch to feed the siblings still in the nest.
She seems fine with his location. How he flaps as he totters forwards and backwards!
He’s working up. Seeing his siblings get fed in the nest motivated him. Great exercise!
Now back down.
Now up. Wings stretch. Much too short to fly.
Now up a little more. Can’t seem to get further. 40 cm. From nest.
A second sits on the edge, stretching.
First guy flaps around.
Second preens on the edge.
First explores another branch.
Now it’s out of my view, hidden by branches. Did it get back in the nest? Maybe.
What an adventure!
Dad’s back. Seems all three are in the nest. Dad’s feeding everyone right there.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I can’t believe I got to be here for that grand moment of life! What excitement!
Later:
While dad’s feeding them one of the babies flopples out! But this time he quickly hops back up the main branch and rejoins his siblings! What a difference!
Now one sits on a branch just outside the nest. So brave!
The wind is ripping, but the juniper is far more stable than any other tree would be.
Later. Two of the three now calmly sit in branches just outside the nest. They flop and flap, but stay out.
Both mom and dad are comfortable snagging food near my feet.
Little guys have so much more room now that they can get out of the nest into the adjoining branches!
The area around the nest is a constant flurry of activity now.
The parents find so much food in the duff at the base of the juniper! What a life-giving tree this is!
Later:
One of the babies sits up looking around all the time now!
18:44
Now two are way out of the nest! They keep exploring further! All this right above my head! Now further! Hopping between branches! Now a full meter, more than a meter, away! Adept at returning to the nest. Hopping right back to the nest! Now in a different part of the tree! Still not able to fly.
One is far, far away.
When mom comes to feed them at the nest, the distant one hops right back to the nest. Amazing! Exciting!
Here comes mom to the nest. The one far away doesn’t make it back in time for dinner. She doesn’t go to him. I bet she’s encouraging hi to stay close to the nest.
He makes it back right after she leaves. Another one flops out, more awkward, repeating the initial foray of the first leader. Down, always down, with each flutter. Legs not coordinated. A marked difference from the first expert. Clumsy. The other one comfortably sits 30 cm. From the nest. How can I get any work done?
The clumsy guy now sits and looks around just like the first one hours ago, sitting in the same spot. He’s got the same fluffy portly appearance. Now hopping back up. Getting his legs under him/her.
What a world awaits them once they can fly! How safe and secure is this home, as was our Home. But it would not be Life to stay here.
Another flops out, probably the third. Also clumsy, awkward, just stretching stubby wings, insecure, but making a little hop. So brave!
While watching this I struggle with my own challenges, learning how to re-format documents so I can publish another book, trying to coordinate Google Docs formats and Weebly formats and Word formats. It’s a mess, like the little jays’ attempts to navigate the branches.
I wonder if that one precocious baby will spend the night outside the nest? 18:54 now.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, that I get to witness this inspirational demonstration of life expanding to new worlds.
19:00. Everything quiet. Did everyone go to bed? No! There’s a little round fluffy guy 40 cm. From the nest! Looking around! Typical kid, not willing to go to bed. Quiet though. Will he sleep there? It looks like a kid camping in the back yard. Will s/he lose his/her nerve?
I better go in. It would be horrible to spook the little guy so he falls out of the tree!
ALATES
What a morning!
A morning of new life.
Alate matrimonial flight morning!
Unexpected. No rain recently. But there they were, all around the posts of the carport.
How my heart soars with them to witness this launch of life!
Silver spots against the dark green background of the trees across the street, brightly glowing little silvery sun spots weaving back and forth. This differs from the larger alates at my house that would launch pretty much straight up into the sky.
I get to sit on the stairs and watch the glorious show.
Triple launch!
First launch is from east colony, where sun first hit. Before launching, perhaps because the air was still cool, the alates hopped around like fleas, quick hops of five or ten centimeters, like popcorn, everywhere, before a few managed to launch skyward.
Then out from under the silvery plants at the edge come more, marching out of the jungle for their turn to launch.
Both groups seemed to slightly drift to the east as they rose.
Then when sun broke over the fence in the back yard the third group launched, a smaller colony, but just as majestic as two’s, three’s, and fours fluttered upward.
These guys did a direct launch, with no hopping around.
While watching this I see the baby jay out at the end of the limbs of the juniper! He’s so big! His wings so small!
The alate launch show is about over. I’m ready to go in.
Mommy jay alerts me! She’s more upset than I’ve heard for a week! I look.
Cal Kitty! Heading up the stairs! Turns right toward the juniper! Goes under the juniper! Mommy jay and I frantically follow, calling to him! Cal’s right under the nest! He wouldn’t leave the juniper! He usually runs from me, but he knows exactly what he’s after! He’s not budging! I go under the canopy, joining mommy jay! Finally Cal grugeonly heads down the old exit ramp, but not for far. I have to follow to encourage him to leave. Poor mommy jay is apoplectic during all this.
I follow Cal to make sure he completely leaves the yard.
I can’t help but wonder if mommy jay realizes I helped rescue her little family. She certainly recognizes me, as evidenced by her behavior when I’m working under the juniper.
Triple alate launch. Baby jays almost ready to launch. Saved little family. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
In juniper.
PERFECTION APPEARS ONLY IN WHOLENESS
Perfection appears only in the wholeness of all. As an individual element of consciousness within that all, one perceives mainly just threats and needs.
Expand, or transcend, or rise above, or whatever clumsy description applies, and then the perfection becomes a little clearer
It is hardly complete, this Creation. It will someday incorporate individual elements of consciousness in enduring joy and security. For now though there is no denying the individual suffering and fear.
We will endure and grow and fail and prosper. We imagine the trepidations of life will someday seem inconsequential, but in fact we will someday see that they were everything, the structure upon which our eternal souls were forged.
We will erect monuments to these times, to our anonymous lives, to all the routine daily individual fear and suffering that was never worthy of the history books. Each moment of bravery, before getting the diagnosis, after losing the job, during the tribal assault, each hungry lonely moment when each soul desperately wants to crumble but doesn't, to these, to these we will erect the monuments of the ages, the moments that fulfilled the potential of God's violent Creation, the moments of birth of these enduring children of God so much higher than the angels.
COLLISIONS WITH THE SELF
The question as we go through our experiences is how deep we will allow the fear to penetrate. Fear will enter our worldly experience consciousness. That is unavoidable. But will we let it penetrate deeper to the essence of Self, the eternal Self, allowing that fear to alter and shape and sculpt our eternal Self?
How empowering it is to let the worldly experience consciousness gain awareness of the eternal Self!….a Self in the never failing loving embrace of Source and Savior.
How critically important it is to claim awareness of the Self, that Self arising as branch from the living Vine.
In that awareness one can see the world of our temporal experience orbiting about us, seemingly a world of chaos and conflict and confusion, but for an instant one can discern the Purpose in it all, the coalescing of all the just right events and circumstances so that, just as beautiful planets and stars emerge from the chaotic melee’ of molecular collisions, so too our souls are given birth in the chaotic melee of life experience.
In Deep Communion with the loving Source one can momentarily gain this perspective, this beautiful perspective, and that helps immensely in allowing entrance of the eternal Self into temporal consciousness. With that entrance, the Self is perceived as a stable center point around which orbits our temporal experiences. This way of awareness is far, far different from instead allowing the temporal experiences with all their seductions and fears to serve as the prime source of consciousness, penetrating deeply into the eternal Self soul.
The growing planet accretes dust and micrometeorites, adding to its size and structure and identity.
So too the soul aware of eternal Self accrues temporal experiences, experiences no longer threatening to destroy the Self, but adding to it, adding to the individual identity according to the freewill choices of how the Self will respond to those experiences and circumstances.
But the individual consciousness immersed in and dominated by temporal experience is like the small asteroid, still fragile and vulnerable, subject to shattering by collisions onto its worldly surface of temporal events and circumstances.
The consciousness rooted in relationship with Source, the branch firmly grafted into the living Vine, is like the stable and solid planet still subject to the ongoing collisions with meteorites, but at no risk of shattering or catastrophic dissolution from those temporal collisions, instead growing from and adding form and shaping its own identity from those temporal experiences.
Fear will still impact the surface, causing earthquakes and tsunamis in the temporal consciousness. But that temporal consciousness is only the crust of the planet, and the underlying bulk and core of the eternal Self, that self in Deep Communion with Source and Sustainer, remains undisturbed and unthreatened.
LIVING VINE
For me Deep Communion, that connection with the eternal and the Source and Life, is like getting one’s head above water (momentarily out of this world) to take a deep and desperately needed breath of life-giving Spirit and to momentarily sense the warmth and Light of the Source.
Eternity
To experience a glimpse of the eternal self? It is a most remarkable experience, and I highly recommend it. It certainly puts this momentary worldly existence into perspective. It greatly reduces the stresses of the demands of this moment of existence when you perceive it as merely the tiniest aspect of life to be integrated into an overall Life.
And I have come to believe that we must not experience eternal life sequentially, one experience after another.
Instead the Holy Spirit of the Source and Sustainer, that essence perfectly embodied in Yeshu the Christos (Jesus the Christ), and our very own individual expression of Life, all this exists in branching and extending and reaching and multiple forms, exploring the Creation, shaping the Creation, immersing into the expanding Creation.
It is in the brief sensing of the eternal that I deeply experience the reality that we are indeed branches of the Vine.
We are branches, each growing as units of experience and Choice into and through the Spectrum of possible realities.
We are indeed branches of the Source, and we are branches of Him, the Christos (Christ) whom we can choose to join in Unity, and we are even branches of our Self.
These sound like just words, just phrases, just mumbo-jumbo, but it is true, it is quite ontologically true, and awareness and experience of that fact delightfully awaits us.
THOSE BAPTIST GIRLS SURE CAN SMOOCH
How that Baptist comedian/preacher on the clock radio reminded me this morning when he said “how those Baptist girls can smooch”.
Suddenly, there I was! The dorm parking lot! Pam! First kiss! What kisses!
The flood of memories of what it was like;
Asking a girl out was akin to stepping out of an airplane, risking all, a life and death step, for in that moment you hang in the balance between acceptance and rejection,
Oh, the terrible struggle for acceptance,
To not be accepted is to be cast out of village, away from clan, separated from family and tribe, it is to die.
So we play the scripted role, for there is no one else to accept us, or at least there was not to accept me.
To lose the home acceptance was to lose all, to lose life, to die.
How I craved acceptance!…..and savored it on the rare occasions I experienced it, eagerly blending in to the grade school group, the high school gang, desperately at all costs keeping home and friends separated, for I was two different people with those two sets of people, and either of them mortally threatened my acceptance in the other.
Such courage to rebel, conscious choices to face the death of rejection and disapproval!
For a moment this morning I was back, in the home I grew up in, the feel of its air cooled by the evaporative air-conditioner in the summer, the carpet under bare feet, the rebellion of washing my hair myself for the first time.
Years later, Pam’s amazing kissing. She kissed me! Out of the blue! Total shock, God bless her! I was accepted!….for a moment….I had worth and value and was not detestable.
So all these years later, I lie in bed smiling at the humor of that Baptist preacher on the radio. I lie alone, a long, long list of rejections, of deaths big and small, having brought me to this strange state of affairs on a Monday morning when the good people of the world are going to their jobs.
I lie here inundated under the flood of memories and realizations unleashed by “those Baptist girls sure could smooch”.
The towel like feel of the blue cloth on that curving couch.
That gold table lamp.
That first big “acceptance” that turned out to be deceit and manipulation.
I lie here, years piled upon years of working hard for acceptance.
I have the amazing, astonishing memory of having once been accepted, purely and unconditionally, for exactly who I am. I suspect that is a rare experience in this world.
I lie here writing, recognizing how naked I am in my words, acknowledging the courage required to let anyone see those words, and in the process again risk childhood rejection, adolescent rejection, youthful rejection, sexual rejection, social rejection, and professional rejection. Like asking a college girl for a date, to reveal to anyone my naked words is to risk death, the death of rejection, again kicked out of village, tribe, family, home, heart. But I lie here, these many years after that Baptist girl’s kiss, knowing I need not rely on her acceptance and need not so deeply fear the death of her many rejections. For the passage through all those deaths leaves me lying here accepted, by my self, and by my Savior.
Perhaps for someone my being single, and having faced so many rejections, will prove helpful. I know the loving Source can use amazing things, including our shortcomings and sufferings, to fulfill the loving Purpose.
I have survived it all! My gosh, thanks to the Lord’s hand on my shoulder, and more often the Lord carrying me through the rough spots, I have survived it all!
I, who craved acceptance more than anyone, have been helped to a peaceful state of satisfaction, because of the presence of the Sustaining Spirit.
Perhaps it all, all the losses, will someday play a part in helping someone. That would make the suffering worthwhile a thousand times over.
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