09/06/2019 — 11/05/2019
- 09/06/2019 — Crape Myrtle 2019-09 01 — Charlotte, North Carolina, September 3, 2019, an iPhone photo
Recurring dreams mean
we aren’t getting what the dream is saying
because we have ideas for our life
that are out of accord
with our life’s ideas for us.
It means we are having to grow up
some more again,
and we don’t want to.
Who does?
The whole thing about growing up
is doing what we don’t want to do
as though we want to do it.
We want a savoir
who will make it all just right for us forever.
So we dream up Jesus
and heaven
to save us from the hell
of having to grow up
and do what we don’t want to do
on our own,
by ourselves,
because there is no one here but us.
No one needs a “Lord and Savior”
who will do the hard work for us
and deliver us from the pain and suffering
of having to do for ourselves
what has to be done by ourselves.
Alexis Carrel said,
“We are both the marble
and the sculptor.”
Joseph Campbell said,
“That which you seek
lies far in the back
of the cave
you most don’t want to enter.”
What are you afraid of?
Go there.
Do that. - 09/07/2019 — The Peacock 2014-04 01 — Magnolia Plantation, Charleston, South Carolina, April 20, 2014
What is worth your life?
This is a question only you can answer.
What would you go to hell for?
This is another one.
No one can tell you the important things.
And you can’t think them up for yourself.
You can only realize them.
All of the things that matter most
come to us
as realizations.
As urgencies.
We turn a corner,
and there they are.
We know what is important.
We know what has to be done.
We know what we have to do.
And nobody can knock us off of it.
But.
We can talk ourselves out of it.
All of the wasted lives
that are being lived around us
are there because the people living them
talked themselves into living them
by talking themselves out of the life
that was worth living.
Happens all the time.
Laziness,
lethargy,
inertia,
momentum,
fear
combine
to deliver us into
a life that is so not worth our time.
And, we know it,
but.
What can we do?
What we can do
is ask the question
without the implied but unstated
yet obvious “Nothing.
It’s all over.
We’re helpless.
Crawl back into the bottle.
Take another round of pills.
Sniff.
Snort.
Inject.
Tune out.
Turn on.
Forget about it.
And hope to die young” attached.
“What can we do?”
Asked in the right frame of mind
opens the door
to the life that is left to be lived.
“Here we are. Now what?”
Puts us in the moment of decision,
and positions us to change our world,
which is the first step
to changing *the* world.
If you aren’t going to believe
there is a life for you
that is worth living,
you may as well continue to wish
for an early death.
If you are going to take something on faith
let it be that there is a life for you
that is worth living–
even now,
even yet–
and live as though it is so.
Once you make that leap of faith,
the rest falls into place around that.
It is only a matter of time,
and patience,
and courage,
and persistence,
and dedication,
and determination.
The way to the way
begins in the silence.
Sit down.
Shut up.
Be still.
Be quiet.
Quit thinking.
Be present
with the silence and the stillness,
and the horrors that dwell there.
The Buddha lived through the horrors.
So did Jesus.
So must we all.
In the quiet,
we face the monsters of the darkness.
The trick is to make them welcome
and to not take them seriously–
in a “Yes, yes. This too, this too,” kind of way.
Invite them to have a place
in your awareness,
and return to the silence,
to the stillness,
and wait for what you are waiting for
to emerge,
to arise,
to occur to you,
to come upon you as a realization,
as an urgency,
that cannot be denied,
calling your name,
enlisting you in its service,
directing you to what’s next.
Take that step
and trust the path to open before you
as you start walking–
without writing the script
or trying to line everything out
in a knowing the eternal plan for your life kind of way.
Trust one step to lead to another
without ever knowing where you are going,
and always being amazed at how you got here,
with the wind of the spirit that blows where it will
forever in your hair. - 09/08/2019 — Hail Mary Full of Grace — Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Charleston, SC, April 21, 2014
Here we all are–
whether we know it or not,
whether we “believe in God” or not,
whether we are “religious” or not.
We are all right here,
right now,
in every here and now,
throughout all here’s and now’s
forever.
This is how “it was in the beginning,
is now and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.”
*This* is the Eternal Now
of our life in the world.
We are at the mercy of things
quite beyond our control.
Presidents are elected
who have no business being president.
Wars come along
that have no business being fought.
Disease, drought, flood, fire, famine…
Catastrophe comes in many ways.
And never stops coming.
It is always just around the corner.
And here we all are.
We are left with kneeling in the silence
and bowing beneath the weight
of life under the conditions
in which life must be lived
all our life long.
And it is our hope
and our salvation–
that we will know that,
and do it.
There are 10,000 things
we have to take on faith.
None of them have to do
with doctrines, creeds, dogmas,
ideologies, theologies, isms and religions.
For me–
and you will be different here–
three things stand above all the others
as things we must take on faith:
The Silence,
The Work, and,
The Source
(Which I also think of as
The Rhizome, after Carl Jung).
I see the Silence
as being that which connects us
with the Rhizome,
and the Work
as that which arises/emerges
from the Rhizome–
to claim us,
call us,
direct us
and immunize us against
all of the terrors of the night
(and day).
Our work is to be true to our work,
to our Body of Work,
through “the heaving waves
of the wine-dark sea,”
and the worst that life can do.
Woe be unto those
who are not connected
by the Silence
to the Source
via their Work
in the day-to-day,
moment-to-moment,
conditions-and-circumstances
of life in the world!
We kneel (or sit, or lie, or stand, or walk…)
in the Silence
and bow beneath the weight
of life as it is,
and connect with the Source
that is with us always
to direct and encourage us
in the Work that is ours to do
even now,
even yet,
even so–
without theology,
without doctrine,
without dogma,
without creeds,
just seeing,
knowing,
doing,
being
servants of the Source
in every situation as it arises
all our life long,
believing in the Work
and doing it
anyway,
nevertheless,
even so,
“without hope,
without witness,
without reward”
(Steven Moffat in Dr. Who).
Standing there,
we can withstand anything.
It only takes believing it is so
to know that it is. - 09/09/2019 — Beidler Forest 2019-06 12 — Four Hole Swamp, Francis Beidler Forest Audubon Center & Sanctuary, Harleyville, South Carolina, June 23, 2019, an iPhone photo
A “modern-day” (1919) equivalent
of the parable of the Garden of Eden,
is the song,
“How’re You Going To Keep Them Down On The Farm
Once They’ve Seen Paree?”
We spend our youth
and middle-age
running through
the “Paree alternatives”
(and there be many)
to silence,
reflection,
realization
and the reconciliation
of ourselves with ourselves
and with the work that is ours to do.
Our “salvation,”
if you will,
is our recognition
of the absence of viable options
to the discipline
of mindful,
compassionate,
non-judgmental
awareness
(Jon Kabat-Zinn’s YouTube Videos),
the art of seeing what we look at,
and knowing what is happening
in each situation as it arises,
and what needs to happen in response,
and offering what we have to give
in that cause
to the best of our ability
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
situation-by-situation-by-situation,
day-by-day-by-day,
in doing the work
that is ours to do,
all our life long.
Being true to ourselves,
and true to our work,
and true to the claims,
of each situation upon us
can be seen
as the vital ground of being
it is,
only after the illusion
of “gay Paree”
has been seen for what it is.
We have to have reached
the Age of Discernment
before we know
what must be known
in order to do what needs to be done
and live the life that is ours to live
and do the work that is ours to do.
And that Age doesn’t arrive
until the emptiness of youth’s
ideas of glory
expose Paree to be the Oz
at the end of the Yellow Brick Road,
and what we get for our trouble
is what we have had
all along. - 09/09/2019 — Cedar Island Ferry Sunset 2011-10 02 — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, October 24, 2011
We have changed the world we live in
faster than we have changed
to be able to live in it.
Our inherited propensities are for another age.
We have lived beyond ourselves,
and no longer belong in the environment
we have evolved to fit.
The world once was large enough
to absorb our excesses
and our stupidity.
No more.
Global warming is resulting
in the world’s effort to rid itself of us
because it can no longer assimilate us
into its framework of homeostasis.
We have destroyed the balances
that hold the earth together,
and must pay the price
of our ignorance
and folly.
Our technology–
in addition to melting the glaciers
and poisoning the oceans
and the atmosphere–
has created weapons of war
capable of ending life everywhere.
Our capacity for acquisition
and aggression
comes up against
our incapacity for living
in a radioactive umwelt.
We are not built
for the new world that is on the way.
What do you think we ought to do?
If you said “Change the way we think,”
you would be right.
We have to think about our thinking
by being aware of our thinking
and reflecting on our thinking–
without rushing to judgment,
or jumping to conclusions,
or failing to distinguish among
observations,
inferences
and assumptions.
We have to sit tight.
Be quiet.
Breathe slowly.
Open ourselves to the stillness,
and to everything that comes up
in the silence.
We fold all of it into our awareness,
seeing everything that is happening
and how that relates to what all is happening,
and what needs to be done about it–
denying nothing
but inviting everything into the conversation.
See it all,
hear it all,
hold it all in our awareness
and wait
while connections are made,
and realization dawns,
and the changes that need to be made
become obvious.
What does what we want
have to do with what we need?
How are we frittering away
our resources
for entertainments
and pleasures
that take our mind off our life
and keep us from living a life
that is sustainable
and environmentally friendly?
How does our life need to change
in order to continue to be lived?
How do we coordinate our lives
in order to cooperate
and collaborate
in the work to make life livable around the world?
If we keep living in the immediate future
the way we have lived in the past
none of us will live long.
No, not one. - 09/10/2019 — Heath Springs Gulf 2019-09 03 — Heath Springs, South Carolina, September 2, 2019, an iPhone photo — A roadside, drive-by, museum of sorts, calling forth memories of how things used to be.
How things used to be
failed to prepare us
for how things are,
and leave us completely
on our own
and in the dark
regarding how things will be.
We will have to trust ourselves
to the inner light
to have a chance at all.
GK Chesterton said,
“When Jones follows the Inner Light,
Jones follows Jones,”
as though that is a bad thing.
The catch is that when
Jones follows someone else’s idea
of the Outer Light,
Jones still follows Jones,
in that Jones chooses whom to follow.
Jones is stuck with Jones.
And would be wise to know
as much about Jones
as can be known,
so that he knows when Jones is talking
and when Jones is listening
to a voice that is Not-Jones.
“Know Thy Self” is to be paired with
“To Thine Own Self Be True.”
It takes a lot of practice in the art
of looking and listening
to be able to see and hear.
As things shift from the way they have been
to the way they are going to be,
we make the transition
as smooth and as easy as it can be
by seeing and hearing
what is happening,
knowing what’s what
and what to do in response
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
Joseph Campbell said,
“Reflection leads to new realizations.”
Reflection is the transom
between looking and seeing,
between listening and hearing.
And reflection is more akin to awareness
than it is to thinking.
As we work to deepen,
expand,
enlarge
our awareness of ourselves,
one another,
and the world in which we live,
we are increasing our chances
of knowing what’s what
and what needs to be done about it–
and that is all the edge we need
to do well with what is coming. - 09/10/2019 — Footbridge Chester State Park 2019-08 01 — Chester, South Carolina, August 22, 2019, an iPhone photo
There is being on the beam,
in the flow,
at one with the Tao,
Kairos,
Dharma.
And there is being off the beam,
out of the flow,
at odds with the Tao,
Kairos,
Dharma.
There is being on the beam,
etc.,
but there is no *staying* on the beam,
etc.
We come and go
as the tide ebbs and flows,
as we inhale and exhale.
Movement is life.
Steady,
static,
states of being are death.
Balance is the art
of counteracting loss of balance.
Riding a bicycle
is constraining the wobbles.
Walking is catching ourselves
as we fall.
Dancing is a miracle.
Don’t make too much
of being spot-on.
Don’t make anything at all
of falling on your face.
We have to receive the kingdom
like a child
because children don’t take anything seriously.
The kingdom least of all. - 09/11/2019 — Goodale 2019-08 12 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, August 26, 2019
The eighteenth anniversary of 9/11
doesn’t leave us with much to be proud of
over the course of those years.
I can’t see how we have used the time
to grow kinder,
more compassionate,
more gracious,
more awake,
more aware…
We are not better people.
We are not a better nation.
The world is not a better place.
We have wasted the experience
in cultivating hatred,
dishonor,
rancor,
bitterness,
littleness,
vitriol…
We are more suspicious,
more afraid,
we own more guns,
we kill more of our own citizens,
we have fewer politicians
who are people of integrity and good faith.
Everybody seems to be out for themselves.
Money seems to be all anyone is living for,
and no one seems to know what to do with it.
We are digging a hole for ourselves
in 10,000 ways.
Hiding.
Without hope or direction.
The hole is within.
We have lost our connection
with our heart.
Nothing has heart for us.
We go through the motions of life
without being alive
to the reality of living.
Reality is nothing we care
to spend time with.
We have no vision.
of a life worth living.
We have no horizon.
We don’t believe in anything worth having.
We don’t believe anything is worth having.
We don’t have a long list of things
we would go to hell for.
Things we would die for.
And that is death itself.
Hell itself.
We are into opioids and suicide,
bread and circuses,
escapes and entertaining pastimes.
9/11 exposed us to the truth of our vulnerability.
We haven’t come to terms with it yet.
Don’t know how to do that.
Refuse to look in the mirror
and see what we look at.
Won’t do the work
of bearing the pain
of how it is with us
in order to do what needs to be done
about what has become of us,
about who we are
and where we are going.
We are waiting for a Savior
who is not coming,
and reject all opportunities
to become what we seek.
And tomorrow is always
just another day. - 09/11/2019 — Nation Ford Road 2019-08 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 29, 2019, an iPhone photo.
There is what we want,
and there is what is right for us.
We know what we want.
That clouds the picture,
interferes with our focus,
obscures the way that is The Way,
and allows us to kid ourselves
and do what we want
and tell ourselves it is the right thing to do.
We do not care what is right for us
in our headlong rush toward
what we want for us.
What we want for us.
What is right for us.
Create for us
an internal conflict,
conundrum,
koan,
paradox
that is at the crux
of what is wrong with us.
We have to enter the awareness
of the complexity,
of the chaotic swirl,
of want vs. right
in order to have a chance
of being healed,
and whole,
and well
in the time left for living.
We have to sit before
what we want for us,
and open ourselves to
what is right for us,
and be quiet,
and listen,
and wait.
Here is the guiding truth:
We know when we
are on the beam,
and when we are off it.
We are knocked off the beam
when what we want for us
conflicts with
what the beam is requiring of us,
asking of us,
in the here and now of our living.
When we reach for what we want–
even if it is to stay on the beam–
we are off the beam.
We cannot want and be
centered in,
and grounded upon,
the way that is The Way.
Wanting is the enemy of The Way.
We have to recognize that,
and open ourselves to the conundrum,
the koan,
the paradox,
the contradiction
of what we want for us
and what is right for us,
and wait.
This is what Adam and Eve
did not do in Eden.
It is what Jesus did
in the wilderness
and in Gethsemane.
It is what the Buddha did
beneath the Bo Tree.
It is what all the people
who have ever awakened
and lived with awareness
of themselves experiencing
their life in the here and now of existence,
moment-by-moment-by-moment
have done and are doing–
without wanting.
Just seeing.
Just hearing.
Just knowing.
Just doing.
Just being
at one with the Tao,
the Dharma,
Kairos,
Grace,
“Without hope,
(Because hope is grounded upon wanting
‘Not this! Not this!’)
without witness,
without reward.”
And it is what Jesus meant
when he said,
“Those who would be my disciples
have to pick up their cross daily
and follow me.”
“Follow me into the work
of doing what is right for us–
even if it is also wrong for us–
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.” - 09/12/2019 — Lake Andrew Jackson 2019-08 04 Panorama — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, August 22, 2019, an iPhone photo
Witch hunts were initiated because some women
were stand-off-ish
and a little strange.
And the larger society
is always looking for a scapegoat
to blame for its troubles
and its woes.
Everything is made better
with someone to blame.
We always blame the weak,
the vulnerable,
the powerless,
the feeble,
the lame,
the stand-off-ish,
and the strange.
The stand-off-ish
are often forced to be so
because they are rejected
and denied a place
in society at large.
Single women experience that.
People of color experience that.
Immigrants experience that.
Jews experience that.
Muslims experience that.
Handicapped people experience that.
The list is long.
It is a short distance
from being excluded
to being thought of as strange
to being blamed
for the troubles
and woes
of society at large.
Different-ness
is easily magnified
and made into a fault.
Now only must we work
to accept different-ness,
we must also work to BE different.
We all are different,
and too many of us
permit society to smooth off our peaks,
and round off our edges,
and fill in our valleys
in order to look like everyone else.
It starts in the third grade.
By the seventh grade
there is a clear line
between those who are “the same”
and those who are “different.”
The line gets darker and thicker with time.
Accepting everyone’s differences
begins with accepting our own,
and enhancing them,
bringing them out,
knowing who we are
and who we are not
and living in ways that declare
what is and is not so about us.
Honoring our own tendencies,
and inclinations,
and dispositions,
and propensities,
and preferences,
and idiosyncrasies,
etc.,
defines us
and sets us apart–
and makes us a part of the whole
which is composed of people
who are just like we are
in being different from everyone else.
And no one is to blame
for anyone’s troubles and woes.
The things we suffer
also make us one–
and everyone is carrying a burden,
and walking with a limp.
And everyone could use more kindness
and compassion than they get. - 09/12/2019 — Steele Creek Swinging Bridge 2019-08 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 29, 2019
Our place in this place
is to off-set injustice and absurdity
everywhere they are manifested.
We serve homeostasis in the world
by bringing balance and sanity
to life there.
When life is mean,
cruel,
heartless,
atrocious,
obscene,
vicious,
brutal,
savage,
ruthless
and inhuman,
we stand up
and step forward.
This is where we come in.
We witness the victimization
of the oppressed.
We bear their grief
and carry their sorrow,
and are one with them
in the experience of sighs too deep for words.
We join them in their anguish
and sit with them in their agony,
and raise our voices with the sound
of weeping and great mourning.
We take up the cause of those suffering
to amend what can be amended,
and restore what can be restored,
and address what must be addressed,
and right what must be made right
in the name of all that is good,
and just,
and widely recognized
as how things ought to be.
This is our place with one another
and our duty to all people.
May we live to fulfill it
with all our heart,
and mind,
and soul
and strength–
now and forever! - 09/13/2019 — Goodale 2019-08 13 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, August 24, 2019, an iPhone Photo
“We are all we got–
we are all we need!”
The old football rallying cry
applies to us as individuals
as well as to us as a football team.
We are on our own.
It is all up to us.
In order to manage our life
on our own,
we have to be discovering
who all we are.
There is more to us than meets the eye.
Any eye.
We have depth and breadth
beyond imagining.
We are the doorway,
the threshold,
the portal
to worlds beyond worlds.
We are more than enough
to meet any circumstances
that come our way.
But.
We have to do the work
of aligning ourselves with ourselves,
listening until we hear,
looking until we see–
and trusting what we see and hear
to be the guidance and direction we need
to meet any circumstances
that come our way.
And.
We have to understand
that we-as-conscious-egos
are partners with,
collaborators with,
servants of
our unconscious
(so said because we are not conscious of it/her/him)
Self.
It takes both of us–
all of us–
to be one person in the world.
And we have to do the work
of being one with who we are,
and also are.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
and Ann Weiser Cornell
are helpful guides in this work.
As are Joseph Campbell
and Carl Jung–
but in the old alchemical sense
of “one book opening another,”
you will find what you need
in terms of guardians and guides
when you start looking
for what is helpful
in your own work to find and be
who you are.
Obi wan Kenobi’s advice
to “Trust the Force”
and “Let the Force be with you”
(Though he may have never
actually said those words!)
are operable here.
The work to find and be who we are
is like swimming
in that we have to trust the water
to support us
before the water will support us.
We have to believe it is so
in order to know that it is.
What we take on faith,
and what we are willing
to go to hell for
tell the tale. - 09/13/2019 — Beidler Forest 2019-06 20 — Four Hole Swamp, Francis Beidler Forest Audubon Center & Sanctuary, Harleyville, South Carolina, June 23, 2019, an iPhone photo
Money is so overrated.
All money is good for is paying the bills.
An they have to be the right bills.
When we use money
to pay the wrong bills,
we can’t make enough money
to offset everything that is stinky
about our life.
Then, we need money to take our mind
off our life.
Which is really all money is good for these days.
Money doesn’t help us live our life–
the life that is truly ours to live.
Money entertains us,
distracts us,
diverts our attention
from the life we are living
because that is the really stinky thing
about our life.
That’s where addiction comes in.
Addiction smooths things over,
soothes us
like a Mama in a syringe,
or a bottle,
or some other delivery mechanism.
We have to get ourselves together
with our life–
our real life–
the life that was ours before we were born.
But.
We have no idea where to begin, for one.
And it sounds like way too much trouble, for two.
And we have too much on our plate already, for three.
So nothing can change,
and maybe some kind of miracle
will happen.
Our nighttime dreams have been trying
to right our listing life from the start.
All we have to do is start listening to our dreams.
Our dreams are always showing us how our life is
here and now.
Our place is to enlist our Psyche-Soul-Self
in moving from where we are
to where we need to be.
Back to money.
We think money is all we need,
that everybody is happy with enough money.
But money cannot buy fulfillment.
And we don’t know what would be fulfilling.
But.
Our life knows.
The life that needs us to live it knows.
The life our nighttime dreams are calling us to live knows.
So.
Back to our nighttime dreams
and our Psyche-Soul-Self.
All we have to do is listen–
without being in a hurry to hear.
Without jumping to conclusions
and rushing to fix it.
No Quick Fixes!
Just sit down.
Shut up.
Be still.
And listen.
Practice that twice a day.
Three times a day if you are bold.
For ten minutes at time.
For the rest of your life.
What could possibly be easier?
Nothing!
And nothing is more necessary!
So? - 09/14/2019 — Road Through Fall 2013-11 03 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Greenbriar District, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, November 6, 2013
I walk around with a camera
until something catches my eye.
My eye knows.
I only know what my eye knows.
This not that.
This in this way not that way.
This like this, not that.
My eye knows where to stand, or sit, or lie.
Where to place the tripod.
When to wait until it’s right.
My role is to do the driving
and carry the equipment.
I get to rule out everything
that catches my eye
when taking the picture
would put me in harm’s way.
My eye gets to inform me
when it looks closer
and changes its mind.
In this arrangement,
there is nothing you can do to help,
and there is a lot you can do to interfere.
It’s just me and my eye.
It’s just me tuning in to what my eye is seeing/saying.
My eye doesn’t like it
when I have someone in tow
who thinks everything is a photograph.
Or asks, “Why are you taking a picture of that?”
Or, “How long does it take to take a photograph
of a waterfall?”
I am easily distracted
and lose the connection
with knowing what my eye knows
like that,
and have to honor the link
by stepping apart from the crowd,
and going where I am led.
This makes photography,
for me,
a metaphor for life.
Our heart is our eye for living.
If we follow our heart’s lead
we won’t be too far off the path.
If head takes over
and thinks our way along the way,
we will be lost like that. - 09/15/2019 — Swan Lake 2019-09-13 01 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019, an iPhone photo
AR-15/RK-47 owners own them
to keep themselves
and their families
safe.
I know of a guy
who bought three AR’s
in one week.
Some people can’t be safe enough.
And, while all of these AR/AK owners
are being safe,
Trump is poisoning their air and water.
Destroying the foundations of their society.
Tanking the economy.
And inviting the Russians
to take over the country.
I’m thinking they are missing something
fundamental about safety.
No one can be safe
without being secure.
Security comes first.
Once we are grounded
on the bedrock
of our own confidence
in our ability
to square up to,
and deal with,
anything that comes our way,
we are well beyond
needing an arsenal to keep us safe.
The first step
toward that kind
of security
is facing the reality
of our insecurity.
Tracing it back to its source,
exploring the things
that keep it in place,
investigating its needs
and its fears,
comforting it
while it cries,
listening with compassion
as it unveils its false assumptions
and its unfounded inferences,
getting to the bottom of things.
Everybody wants solutions
that are instant
and fixes
that are quick.
Nobody wants to take the time
and go to the trouble
of getting to the bottom of things.
And that’s why we all
are exactly where we are.
Because at the bottom
it is clear
that we are responsible
for the things we think
about the world we live in–
and nothing changes
until we change
our relationship with our life. - 09/16/2019 — Swan Lake 2019-08-13 04 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 13, 2019
We are all equidistant
from the rhizome,
the bedrock,
the source,
the core,
which has always been called God,
and is manifested
in our lived experience
as the Tao,
Dharma,
Kairos,
Grace,
Synchronicity,
“Wow!”
This is The God Of The Rock
that grounds,
sustains
and upholds
us all–
quite apart from
theology,
doctrine,
dogma,
beliefs,
creeds
and canons.
Living in right relationship
with the rhizome
transforms our life
and the world–
although we cannot exploit it
and manipulate it
to serve our ends
and purposes.
“It rains on the just
and the unjust,”
as the old saying goes,
but the just suffer more
from the ways of the unjust–
and the just can’t let
that stop them,
or even slow them down.
Right-relationship with the rhizome
implies right-relationship with how things are,
and those two things
constitute the work of being human. - 09/16/2019 — Mute Swans 2019-08 02C — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 17, 2019
We are able to live self-transparent
and self-directed lives
only in the company/community
of those who are themselves
living self-transparent
and self-directed lives.
The right kind of community
is grounded upon the individual distinctiveness
of its members–
people who are grounded
in the principles
and in the practice
of self-transparency
and self-direction.
If you don’t have the company
of this kind of community
at work for you
somewhere in your life,
your work in finding
and living
the life that is your life to live
is going to require a lot of quiet time
away from the people
who are built
to keep you from doing that work. - 09/17/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019-09-13 01 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
What do you love?
What do you love about what you love?
In what ways do you serve
what you love about what you love
with your life?
How is what you love about what you love
evident in how you live your life?
I love self-transparency
and self-determination
in the service of self-realization.
My entire life revolves around,
flows from,
leads to,
serves
these things.
Everything I do has self-transparency,
self-determination,
self-realization
at its core
and as its destination.
I live to be integrated
with myself
and my life.
Hold that thought.
We all live the life we are living
with a perception filter
firmly in place.
Our perceptions–
what we see–
are held in place
by our perspective–
how we see.
What we see
is determined by
how we look.
In order to see beyond our perceptions,
we have to see the perspective
with which we see things.
How does the way we see
keep us from seeing what we look at?
What governs our perspective?
The stake we have in the outcome,
in the results of,
seeing.
Seeing things as they are
has implications for our life
and how we live it.
Once we can no longer kid ourselve4s
about what we look at,
we have to live in ways
that take what we see
into account.
As long as we can kid ourselves
about what we see
and what its implications are,
we can live anyway at all.
Once we stop kidding ourselves,
everything changes,
especially how we live our life.
Hold that thought.
Women,
LGBTQ people,
people of color,
immigrants,
the oppressed and beleaguered world-wide,
have a take on things
that men smoking cigars
and drinking single malt whiskey
in a Real Men Only Club
cannot touch.
Put all of this together,
and you have a path
into the next moment
that did not exist
when you started reading this.
Walk it with your eyes open,
seeing everything you look at,
looking at everything. - 09/18/2019 — Swan Lake 2019-09013 05 — (Australian) Black Swans, Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
There is what we want to do,
and there is what needs to be done.
There is what we feel like doing,
and there is what needs us to do it.
There is what we want to happen,
and there is what needs to happen.
Our place is to submit
to what needs to be done,
to what needs us to do it,
to what needs to happen,
in a “Thy will, not mine, be done”
kind of way.
in a “I came not to be served, but to serve,”
kind of way,
and to get up and do the thing,
the way it needs to be done,
when it needs to be done,
as often as it needs to be done,
for as long as it need to be done,
without opinion
or expectation of reward.
When the yard needs to be watered,
we water the yard.
When the dog needs to be walked,
we walk the dog.
When the baby’s diaper needs to be changed,
we change the baby’s diaper.
Like that.
Day in and day out,
all our life long.
The spiritual journey
can also be called
“growing up.” - 09/19/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019-09-13 02 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
We don’t know where we are going.
We don’t know how we got here.
If we know that much,
we know it does not depend on us.
If we know that much,
we know enough to relax
into the Tao,
the Dharma,
the Kairos,
the Grace,
the Synchronicity
that got us here, now,
and see where it goes next.
If we know that much,
we have it made. - 09/19/2019 — Beidler Forest 2019-06-23 22 Panorama — Four Hole Swamp, Francis Beidler Forest Audubon Center & Sanctuary, Harleyville, South Carolina, June 23, 2019, an iPhone photo
When we sit down
and shut up,
and wait quietly
in the silence,
the first things
we are likely
to encounter
are shame,
guilt
and fear,
in no particular order,
and conflict,
contradiction,
paradox
which loop back
into shame,
guilt
and fear.
We have to suffer it through.
Suffering it through
is the sine qua non
of a life well-lived.
It is the fundamental requirement
of the spiritual journey.
“Those who would be my friends
have to bear their own cross daily
and come with me.”
You think the cross was about suffering.
So is silence.
We are where we are today–
individually and collectively–
because we will not bear the cross
of silence.
Too much meets us there
that we can’t handle.
It is only silence–
and we are doing it
to ourselves.
Let it come.
Let it be.
Receive it all
into our awareness
without being sucked into it–
and if we are sucked into it,
receive it as well
into our awareness–
and allow our awareness
to contain it all
without being engaged with it,
consumed by it.
Our awareness has it.
Our role is to receive
what else is there,
what all is there,
and hold it in our awareness,
and wait in the stillness,
open to all that is there.
Acceptance allows what meets us
in the silence
to be what meets us in the silence–
without opinion,
without judgment,
without emotional reactivity
(And if there is opinion,
judgement,
emotional reactivity,
we accept that as well,
and hold it in our awareness
without opinion about the opinions
without judgement about the judgements,
without emotional reactivity
about the emotional reactivity).
We have to acknowledge
and accept
what meets us in the silence
to meet what else is in the silence.
We have to sit quietly
to receive what all waits
to greet us in the stillness.
“That which you seek
lies far in the back
of the cave
you most don’t want to enter”
(Joseph Campbell). - 09/20/2019 — Wood Ducks 2019-09-13 02 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
Jesus came to love, lift up and die for
the people Donald Trump and the GOP
consider to be undesirable
and consign to “the trash heap of history.”
Jesus would not be welcome
in Donald Trump’s
Fascist,
Racist,
White Nationalist,
Xenophobic,
Misogynistic,
Islamophobic,
Homophobic,
Transphobic
world.
Who do we stand with?
Who do we stand against?
Whose side are we on? - 09/21/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019/09/13 03 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
Donald Trump is a teetotaler,
but you would never know it
by the way he acts.
He acts like a man on a binge.
Which leads me to wonder
about his medication
and his brain chemistry.
Alcohol can mess with our judgment,
but it isn’t the only thing that can.
Warnings against operating heavy machinery
are attached to a lot
of the over-the-counter pills
in any pharmacy.
Which leads me to wonder
about Congress’ capacity
for “sober judgment.”
How are drugs and alcohol
shaping our future?
A three martini lunch
could be shaping it
with a sledge hammer
and a wrecking ball.
This track also leads me
to offer a caveat regarding
my reverence for,
and adoration of,
the place of silence in our life.
Silence is no friend for those
into drugs and alcohol.
We have to approach silence
with our critical faculties intact.
Our ego-self has to be operating
at full capacity
in order to partner with our psyche-self
in the work of creating
a life worth living.
We cannot stagger along the spiritual path.
Good judgment and good faith
are a tandem.
We have to be able to see what we look at,
and assess the value of the voices,
images
and urges
arising in the silence.
Alcohol doesn’t do us any favors,
and does interfere with our ability
to be clear about anything.
How much alcohol do you consume in a day?
How much medication do you take?
Don’t kid yourself about how much
it is interfering with your life.
Don’t kid yourself about it being necessary
to take the edge off your pain.
Your pain is your best friend
highlighting areas in your life that need to change–
highlighting areas in which you need to change.
Get to know your pain.
Bear the pain of getting to know your pain.
Trust it to lead you gingerly
along the way. - 09/22/2019 — Swan Lake 2019/09/13 08 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
We like to think
we know where we are going,
but
we don’t have any idea how we got here,
now.
We certainly did not want ourselves here,
now.
We did not say ever,
“I want to be there,
then!”
And plot out the course
and the timing
of our arrival.
Yet,
we think we can do that
with where we are going.
We think we can want ourselves there,
then,
as though our wanting knows.
Wanting only knows what it wants.
It has no concern for what it needs to want,
for what it ought to want.
Wanting cannot want what it ought to want.
It can only want what it wants.
As though it knows what to want.
You would not trust yourself
to what your mother wanted for you,
or your father,
or me.
Why would you trust yourself to you?
Unless there is a you beyond you
who knows what you ought to want
because it knows you
better than you do.
Two yous in one body?
One you who knows what to want,
and one you who only knows what it wants.
And you deciding
which you you are going to listen to.
Three yous in one body?
And you thought you were all alone! - 09/23/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019/08/24 03 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
It all will not fit.
We have to leave some important things out.
Some things have to go.
It’s the parable of the net of fishes
with the fishermen culling out
the rough fish from the market variety.
We have to do that with our life.
We have to cull out
what is working against us
living the life that is our life to live.
“Ooohhh” (Uttered with a high-pitched nasally whine),
we say, “I can’t do thattttt!”
And that is what separates
those of us who are alive to the life
that needs us to live it,
from those of us who are dead
waiting for some undertaker
to make it official.
If booze and drugs are in our way,
they have to go.
If our routine doesn’t have enough time in it
to allow devotion to the tasks
our life requires,
our routine has to go.
A *meaningful* life is a different kind of life
from the one that is “smooth and easy.”
A *meaningful* life is disciplined.
It revolves around
silence,
reflection,
contemplation,
realization,
inquiry,
study,
exploration,
examination,
work,
reading,
writing,
listening,
looking,
seeing,
hearing…
It is a focused life,
a well-considered life,
a life of few distractions,
diversions,
amusements.
We do not know and serve
our psyche-self
without spending time
knowing and serving
our psyche-self.
All the other little fishes
have to go. - 09/23/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019/08/24 02 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
We have to be able to dance
with our circumstances,
with our contradictions,
with the time and place
of our living–
In an “Okay,
here we are,
now what?”
kind of way.
“What can we do
about being unable to do
what needs to be done?”
Being frustrated,
shutting down,
losing it
and quitting
is a worse choice
than sitting down,
being quiet,
opening ourselves
to the moment
and waiting to see
what occurs to us.
We don’t always/ever
(Take your pick)
get the kind of cooperation
we need.
We all could use
more help
than we get.
What we do about that
is up to us.
How we assess it,
interpret it,
respond to it,
decide what it means to us,
positions us to manage
what follows.
What follows hinges largely
upon the way we deal
with the here and now.
If we go out and get drunk,
that is going to have one kind
of future.
If we sit down,
shut up,
and listen,
that is going to have
a different kind of future.
The life that is ours to live
is an extension
of the life we are living.
The choices we make now
set the tone
for the choices
we get to make next.
The present moment
is all we have to work with now.
If all we can do is wait,
we can at least wait
with our eyes open. - 09/24/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019/08/24 01-B — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
Our place as ego-consciousness
enclosed in this body,
in this time and place,
is to coordinate the collaboration,
integration,
and alignment
with our psychic-unconscious,
so that we might unite
and live as one
in the life we are living.
This doesn’t mean using
the Psyche to get what we want,
accomplish our goals
and achieve our idea of success.
It means living the life
that needs us to live it
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
We hand over our ambition
in the service of a good
that is better than our own good,
in a “Thy will, not mine be done”
kind of way
(With the “thy” being
the Psyche’s sense
of what needs to happen
in each here and now
in light of all things considered).
The Psyche is in charge
of who we need to be
and what we need to do.
Ego-consciousness is in charge
of how to do it.
We negotiate the path
Psyche would have us walk,
taking into account
the demands,
limitations,
requirements
and restrictions
of the physical world.
It is “a slippery slope,
a dangerous path,
like a razor’s edge,”
and we guide The Guide,
so to speak,
with our knowledge
of ethics
and morality,
common sense,
propriety,
protocol,
process
and procedure–
negotiating and compromising
our way
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
through the situations and circumstances
that present themselves each day.
The Native Americans
on their vision quests–
and each of us on ours–
receive a sense of their calling
(Who they need to be,
What needs them to do it),
and they (we) are left to work that into
the possibilities and opportunities
afforded by the situations and circumstances
of the reality of the physical world.
It is a partnership all the way.
We listen in the silence for what occurs to us,
and apply it within the terms and conditions
of life as it is lived,
day-by-day,
all our life long.
In us,
the What and the Who
meet the How,
and when we are humming,
focused
and in the flow,
in the zone,
on the beam,
miracles happen. - 09/25/2019 — Bewick’s Swan 2019-08-24 05 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
A countless number of futures
open before us in each moment,
each one contingent upon
what we do in that moment.
Every act–
or failure to act–
comes with a future attached.
What we do now determines–
or strongly influences–
what happens next,
and what we do then
leads to…
Too many of us try to
play the futures market,
not with pork belly prices,
or soy beans,
but with what we think
is the future we want to have.
Stop The Train!
(The train of thought)
And allow me to ask you
the most important question
in the entire library of questions:
WHAT DOES WANTING KNOW?
And the second most important question
is like unto it:
WHERE DOES WANTING COME FROM?
We act like what we want
is the critical key to a future worth having,
to a life worth living.
Remember your first marriage?
How did that work out for you?
How about your second?
Still looking for what you want
in a life-partner, aren’t you?
That’s what wanting knows.
Nothing.
We have an irrational stake
at stake
in having what we want,
as though that is going to be something
worth having.
Even though that has yet to be borne out
in our life.
No matter how often we get what we want,
we are still wanting.
There is never a moment
in which there is nothing else to want.
We can want to stop wanting
but we cannot stop wanting.
We are addicted to wanting.
Wanting drives us through our life
like a mad jockey with riding crop in hand.
Every moment becomes an opportunity
to exploit the situation
for our own advantage,
with our best possible future
firmly in mind.
We play the moment
to beat the odds
and win the game.
There is no game.
There is only the moment
and what needs to happen
here and now.
“In light of what?” is the question.
The good of the moment
is a better answer
than our good in every moment.
When we live to serve our good
in every moment,
we create a future
in which everybody
is fighting everybody
for advantages
benefits,
boons,
and assets…
as though if we can just get
what we want,
we will be happy at last.
But.
Wanting has nothing to do with happiness.
It springs from the desert
of our discontent.
What shall we do about that? - 09/26/2019 — Australian Black Swans 2019/08/24 04 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
The pursuit of wealth
cannot be lived
in the service of life.
The requirements of wealth
are at odds with
the requirements of life.
Wealth destroys life,
and then, sometimes,
donates to benevolent causes
to enhance life
and compensate its conscience
for destroying life.
Donald Trump and his “friends”
embody the love of wealth,
and exemplify the qualities
of greed and envy
in all they do.
They are what the pursuit of wealth does
to all who trod that path.
They are what Capitalism does
to those who serve its ends
under the banner of Profit At Any Price.
When there is nothing better than wealth,
there is nothing but the refuse of the wealthy,
who are constantly looking for more resources
to turn into money
at the expense of everything else.
Wealth as the goal of life
is at odds with life itself.
Life lives to be fully alive–not wealthy.
Where the pursuit of money
and the service of vitality,
libido,
life energy,
enthusiasm,
joy of life, etc.
diverge
is where money is used to buy
vitality, libido,
life energy, etc.
Money can buy sex,
but it cannot buy life.
Wealth is just a splashy way
of being dead. - Beidler Forest 2019-06-23 31 — Four Hole Swamp, Francis Beidler Forest Audubon Center & Sanctuary, Harleyville, South Carolina, June 23, 2019, an iPhone photo
Joseph Campbell said,
“The reason for our discontent
is the failure of the vitality
under which we are supposed to live.”
Our life is supposed to be meaningful.
The world that receives us at birth
is supposed to be a meaningful world.
We have, as a species,
outlived the meaningfulness
of the symbols and myths
which are there to receive us at birth.
They have been meaningless
for generations
by the time we are born.
To have a chance at a meaningful life,
we have to create our own meaning
from scratch.
We can do it, of course,
but it will not be easy.
The work will require
all we have,
and are.
This is now the task that is ours
from birth:
Finding what is meaningful
and building a life centered on it,
allowing that life to take shape around it,
as we live in the service
of what is meaningful
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
all our life long.
We begin in the silence.
Sitting.
Listening.
Looking.
For what occurs to us.
For what calls our name.
For what catches our eye.
We are hidden in all that attracts us
and revealed by all that repels us.
We are found all that we enjoy doing,
and in all that we love.
We find what is meaningful
by sitting quietly with those things
until we see ourselves looking back at us.
Then we live to incorporate them in our life.
Find your joy.
discover where your heart loves to be.
Be what you love.
Do what you love–
and what it takes to pay the bills.
There is your life.
Waiting for you to hop in,
and go for a ride.
The ride of your life! - 09/27/2019 — Great Blue Heron 2019/08/24 02 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
I am stopped–
stunned–
by the amount of work required
to keep me going.
I am sustained by a vast web
of support,
without which
I wouldn’t last a week.
Just think of all that goes into
getting a can of green beans
onto the shelf of the grocery store
just down the road!
And what it took to get the grocery store
just down the road!
And what it took to get the road in place,
and keep it maintained!
Add to the list my doctor and dentist,
my optometrist and ophthalmologist,
the police and EMT’s on stand-by–
and all of the people and systems
that are in place to keep life as we know it going!
What makes us worth their effort?
What are doing in response?
How do we express our gratitude?
What contribution are we making
to the on-going work of being good for one another?
What is our bit?
Our part?
How well are we doing it?
We owe it to ourselves
and to each other
to bring forth
what is ours to give
to the network of life and being
that connects all of us
to each other
and to the planet
which provides for all our needs.
We honor ourselves,
one another,
all others,
and the earth
which births and sustains us
when we live
with all of this in mind,
and are humbled
by the wonder of it all,
by the grace of Kairos,
Tao
and Dharma,
and willingly–
willfully–
take our place in the scheme of things
in deliberately,
consciously
and conscientiously
living to be who we are
by developing our gifts,
genius,
talent,
ability,
daemon,
proclivities
that are unique to us
and share them
in service to all
in a “take what you can use
and leave the rest behind”
kind of way–
trusting that to be enough,
because it is all we can do.
No one could do more! - 09/28/2019 — Two Geese Flying 2019/09/13 01 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
We are all “just lucky to be here.”
Which means there is more
going on with us
than meets the eye.
Any eye.
Our ancient ancestors knew
the visible world
of apparent,
normal,
reality
is grounded upon
and flows forth from
the invisible world
of unconscious,
unimaginable,
incontestable,
reality–
and that the Really Lucky Ones
among us
know exactly how lucky they are.
Oh, and “luck” and “lucky”
are terms that are interchangeable with
Grace,
Kairos,
Tao and
Dharma.
We are all being upheld
and led along
by Invisible Hands.
The Really Lucky Ones
among us
realize that.
There is a sense in which
we can definitely play the Luck Card
to our advantage.
The catch is
that doesn’t mean
what we think it means.
We have no idea
what is to our advantage
and what is to our disadvantage.
“Advantage” from one point of view
is “disadvantage” from another.
From what point of view
are we seeing
when we see what we look at?
That’s the switch
that shifts the tracks
that carry us either
to our fate
or to our destiny.
What does
“Thy will, not mine, be done,”
mean to you? - 09/28/2019 — Steele Creek 2019/08/29 06 Panorama — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 29, 2019, an iPhone photo
I cannot recommend highly enough
the regular practice of interviewing yourself.
Write/type it out.
Sit down with the invisible you
and explore what The One Who Knows knows.
This will focus your self-reflection,
enhance realization,
awareness,
enlightenment,
and develop a process
for putting you in the position
of watching things occur to you
“out of the blue.”
Those are the occurrences
that make all the difference
in our life.
Sit down with yourself
and start asking questions.
Writing it out will give you a record
to refer to
and serve as a guide
for future explorations
for life together
with the you who lives within. - 09/29/2019 — Faires-Colthrap Cabin 2019/08/29 01– Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 29, 2019, an iPhone photo
We have to pay the bills
and we have to know
what we pay the bills to do.
What is worth doing?
What is worth our time?
We live for what?
How much of our life
is spent diverting ourselves
from considering
what we are living for?
Who are we?
What are we about?
What is our ground?
Foundation?
Bedrock?
Rhizome?
Core?
Center?
Heart?
Our life is centered on what?
Revolves around what?
We live toward what?
In the service of what?
Sit down with these questions–
and the questions these generate–
and write out the answers
that come to you
in the silence. - 09/30/2019 — Goodale 2019-08-24 14 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, August 24,2019, an iPhone Photo
The heart of discipline
is being in command
of how we respond
to not being in control.
How we respond
is the switch
that shifts the tracks
that lead
to all that follows
in each situation
as it arises.
How we respond
to this situation
leads to the next situation,
situation-by-situation forever.
We are here
because of how we responded
to where we have been.
The right kind of discipline
is being in command
of how we respond
to each situation that arises
in light of all we can be aware of
in each here-and-now
of our existence.
We will never be in control
of all the things that matter,
and that is a good thing,
because all we know
is what we want and don’t want.
We have no idea of what to want,
of what we should want,
and if we did,
we wouldn’t want it.
We cannot make ourselves
want what we ought to want.
But.
We can make ourselves do
what needs to be done.
We can sacrifice what we want
in light of what we also want,
in light of the true good of all concerned.
We can get up and go to work,
or to school,
when we want to stay in bed
and go back to sleep.
We are not in control of how we see things.
We cannot make ourselves see things differently
than we see things.
We can concede that things can be seen differently
from the way we see them,
but,
we can only see things the way we see them.
And, we can be in command
of seeing the way we see things
in light of how else they may be seen,
and that, alone, may lead to seeing things differently.
We can question our authority and our ability
to know how things ought to be seen.
We can look closer.
We can make inquiries.
We can adopt “the scientific method.”
We can investigate our hypotheses.
We can change our mind.
We can respond differently
to how things are
by seeing how things also are.
We can examine what things mean to us,
and allow their meaning to change
in light of the full implications
their meaning has for us
and for everyone else
and all sentient beings.
We can allow ourselves
to respond differently
to the events
and circumstances
of our life
in light of all things considered.
We can be in command
even though we are not in control.
And that can make all the difference. - 09/30/2019 — Trumpeter Swans 2019-08-27 03 Panorama — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 27, 2019
You hear it a lot,
“Play the hand you’re dealt.”
It also goes,
“Bloom where you are planted.”
I prefer the card analogy.
I like being the player.
I don’t like the idea
of being planted.
Stuck.
Locked in place.
May as well be in prison.
Blooming
or not blooming,
you’re still in prison.
Stuck in the ground.
Deal me in!
The trick about
playing the hand you are dealt
is:
Trust the cards!
Trust the cards
to be exactly right for you!
Give yourself wholly
to the task of playing
the hand you are dealt
to the best of your ability.
If you try to make the cards
serve your end
there be problems.
If you forget exploiting the situation
for your advantage,
to achieve your idea
of what your life ought to be,
and give yourself solely
to the cards,
playing them like they need to be played
in each situation as it arises,
living according to the Tao,
the Dharma,
Kairos,
Grace,
Flow,
in each moment,
there be miracles.
Perhaps not what
you might have in mind
for miracles,
but miracles,
nonetheless.
Trust the cards.
Play for a miracle.
In each situation as it arises.
All your life long. - 10/01/2019 — December Woods 2013/12/29 01 B&W — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Adventure Road Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, December 29, 3013
Once we align ourselves
with our life,
everything else falls into place
around that.
Where we go to school.
How we pay the bills.
Who we marry.
Where we live.
How we spend our time.
What course we plot
through the conditions
and circumstances
that form the umwelt
of our existence.
Our relationship with our life
determines our relationship
with all the rest.
We typically think
if we can get
all the rest
under control,
our life will take care of itself.
What life do we need to be living?
Start there.
All the rest
will take care of itself. - 10/02/2019 — Swan Lake 2019/09/13 08 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, September 13, 2019
What’s at the bottom?
What grounds us?
What supports us?
What are we here to do no matter what?
What is worth our life?
What some people call success,
I call missing the point.
What I call success,
they call missing the point.
Who knows what they are talking about?
They cannot talk me out of what I think.
I can’t talk them out of what they think.
We all think we know what we are doing.
Are we all right?
We are right to be grounded on what grounds us,
and let nature take its course,
and see where it goes.
We owe ourselves the privilege of being wrong–
and live all-out in the service
of what drives us,
supports us,
and gives meaning and purpose to our life.
Pilate and Jesus.
Hitler and Gandhi.
Donald Trump and Reality Winner.
…
Everyone lives their own life
grounded on what grounds them.
No one can be talked out
of the way they are doing it.
What we call good
determines everything that follows.
What is at the bottom?
What grounds us?
What supports us?
What are we here to do no matter what?
What is worth our life? - 10/02/2019 — We all can look at the same thing and we each will see something different. Look at a potato, abortion, a gay person, a grazing herd of bison…anything. What leads us to see it the way we do?
Where does seeing come from?
What is the source of our seeing?
What causes us to see “this” and “that” the way we do?
We cannot see anything apart from the meaning it has for us. Seeing the thing is seeing the meaning of the thing. We cannot see a thing that is meaningless to us. That’s the reason modern art is difficult for us to see. We don’t know what it means. The more meaningless something is, the more invisible it is.
Seeing is interpretation. We interpret something in the act of seeing it. We decide what it means in deciding what it is.
Seeing is evaluation. Seeing is judgment. Seeing is discrimination. For anything to stand apart from its background, we have to be discriminating. We have to discriminate between things in order to know where one thing starts and another thing stops. “This” is “this,” and not “that.”
We can’t seem to help how we look at what we see. Knowing that doesn’t change anything. As I look at this, it is great, wonderful, beyond imagining, though, in a sense, I am imagining the entire concept!
All of our ideas of “the good” come from the source of inference, intuition, hunches, urges, feelings, notions, awareness… We are seized by visions of mythic proportions and directed by a will beyond our will to do what we infer/intuit/sense/perceive/feel/etc. needs to be done—for better or for worse—no matter what.
What is responsible for our seeing things the way we see things?
It takes a lot of looking to be able to see. - 10/03/2019 — Dairy Barn 2019/08/29 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 29, 2019
The Yin/Yang symbol
is an ancient Taoist rendering
of reality as we experience it.
Opposites/Polarities/Contradictions
everywhere we look.
All of the boundaries separating
and containing
Yin and Yang
are composed
of Recognition,
Respect,
Reconciliation,
Integration
and Transcendence.
That is how Opposites/Polarities/Contradictions co-exist.
Not by being locked into
eternal cycles of war and desolating devastation.
The catch is
that it takes a certain level of maturity
on all sides
to bring this off-
to live together
within the tension
of mutual repulsion.
And that brings us to the heart of the matter.
We have created,
produced,
and live within
a culture that is
superficial,
shallow
and immature.
It is based
on me getting
more money
from you
than you get
from me.
And what we do with our money
is spend it,
invest it,
in ways that assist me and you
in the effort
of getting
more money
from you
than you get from me,
and vice-versa.
It is a scheme of living for money,
but what’s money for?
Making more money.
But for what?
For lording it over those
who have less money than we do.
This is all the culture has to offer.
We are not going to grow up in this culture.
Anyone who grows up
has to withdraw from the culture
and create a counter-culture
which values values
like self-awareness,
self-transparency,
self-discipline,
self-discovery,
self-direction,
self-reflection
self-realization,
self-expression–
all of which are contained
in Carl Jung’s idea of individuation.
Jung was quick to point out
that individuation can only occur
in a community of the right kind of people–
which would be people
engaged in their own coming to be,
and sharing themselves
and their work
with their friends and neighbors,
with all being grounded in the principles
of Recognition,
Respect,
Reconciliation,
Integration
and Transcendence.
If you want to help sift the culture
from where it is
to where it needs to be,
work at becoming the kind of person
who attracts the kind of people
who are capable of producing
the kind of counter-culture
that serves the purposes
of individuation
in an atmosphere of Yin/Yang. - 10/04/2019 — Happy Halloween 2019 01 B — Indian Land, South Carolina, October 3, 2019
We cannot help
seeing things as we do–
and we have to
change our mind
about what is important.
Look around.
Things are as they are
because we see things
as we do.
Change the way we see things
and everything changes.
On every level.
From the way we dress
and walk,
to the health of the environment,
to the way nations deal with themselves internally
and with other nations externally.
It all hinges on how we see what we look at.
Sin in all the religions from the beginning
is being wrong about what is important.
Repentance in all those religions
is changing our mind about what is important.
We cannot help seeing the way we do,
and we have to change
the way we see things.
Everything depends on it. - 10/04/2019 — Great Blue Heron 2019/08/24 03 — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, August 24, 2019
Things are the way they are
in our life
because we see things as we do.
When we change the way we see things,
everything changes.
Until we change the way we see things,
nothing changes,
regardless of all of the changes we make
(In terms of spouses,
jobs,
where we live,
what we do, etc.).
Our idea of what is important
and how best to serve it with our life
locks us into the life we are living.
If potato chips,
french fries
and ice cream are important,
our life will reflect that.
Our life is an expression of what we value.
Our priorities are always on display.
How we think about things
has us precisely where we are.
Nothing changes until how we see
what we look at changes.
We have the rest of our life
to teach ourselves
to see things as they are.
And also are.
There is no time to waste. - 10/05/2019 — Happy Halloween 2019 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, October 2, 2019
We create the future
by the way we respond to the present.
Here and now is the doorway
to everything that follows.
There is no moment more pivotal
to what remains of our life
than right here,
right now.
This is the pivot point
for shifting our past
into our future.
How we make the transition
tells the tale.
That being the case,
you might think
we would be more careful
with the present
than we ever are.
We are here, now,
all the time,
yet we never pay much attention to it.
We are always thinking about
what has happened to us,
and where we are going.
When we throw the present away
our life reflects it.
And we pay the price.
We cannot neglect our place in the present
and have a future
that is what it would have been
if we had been present
to each present.
We blow through the present
in one of two ways:
rationally or emotionally.
We think our way forward,
or we react our way there.
Either way,
what we want
is a ring in our nose
leading us down paths
we don’t want to walk
to places we don’t want to be.
What does wanting know?
Does it know what to want?
Does it know how to want
what it should want?
What it ought to want?
What it needs to want?
What it must want–
with all it’s heart?
If we are going to want something,
why not want what needs us to want it?
What needs to be done?
What needs us to do it?
Never-minding what’s in it for us?
Never-minding what we stand to gain?
Never-minding whether it serves our advantage?
This is the place of awareness
in our life.
Awareness is the way
of seeing/hearing/knowing/understanding
what’s what and what needs to be done about it
in light of the best that can be imagined
in the service of the true good of the situation
in every situation as it arises
all our life long.
What needs to happen here and now?
We cannot think or react our way there!
We perceive our way there
by knowing what we know
about all that can be known here and now.
How to do that is what Jon Kabat-Zinn is all about.
He has YouTube videos that won’t cost you a dime.
Watch the shortest ones first. - 10/06/2019 — Steele Creek 2019/08/29 08 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina August 29, 2019
Joseph Campbell said,
“Spontaneously living out
of what needs doing now–
that is the play of children.”
Of all of us when we were children.
Now?
Not so much!
All of our “play”
is governed by
how it is supposed to be done.
We grade every move.
and look for approval
at every turn,
as though everyone is watching,
looking for mistakes,
score cards in hand.
Where in your life
are you free
to play–
to live–
as you did as a child?
To be one with the moment,
dancing in delight
with whatever incites us
to laughter
and wonder?
We have lost the way
to that world,
and do not even
allow ourselves
the freedom of our fantasies
about it.
Where does your imagination
roam free and unrestrained?
Campbell recommends that we
“Amplify your own fantasies!”
To allow ourselves to be
“Fascinated by your aspirations!”
And to integrate them into our life.
What are your fascinations?
Your aspirations?
Campbell would remind us,
“They both have to be a little bit insane!”
And, he would call us to
“Play with them!”
And tell us,
“That is the way to find the support for your life!”
How long has it been
since we dreamed ourselves to life? - 10/06/2019 — Happy Halloween 2019 01 — Indian Land, South Carolina, October 6, 2019
I can’t make sense of anything I do.
Truth be known,
no one can make sense of anything.
If you keep asking “Why”
of every “explanation,”
you will eventually get to the point
of “I don’t know.”
Or, “You have to take it on faith,”
which amounts to the same thing:
“I don’t know,
and I am not going to think about it anymore.”
I try to be as aware of my motives
as I can be,
but.
I have never had a motive
that I fully understood.
I can’t get to the bottom of any of it.
And, I think it gets in the way
of what I am going to do next
if I dwell too long
on what I just did,
or on what I did years ago.
Norms,
codes,
standards,
president,
protocol,
rules,
guidelines
and laws
help guide me along the way,
but.
All can be set aside
to take a photograph,
or to eat a piece of Lemon Ice Box Pie.
Leaving me wondering
what I will do next,
and hoping that I will
be better off for it
on every level.
Which would mean it won’t be pie. - 10/07/2019 — Steele Creek 2019/08/28 03 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 28, 2019
Awareness is the tool
for constructing our response
to each situation as it arises
in the time and place of our living.
Awareness is the primary tool,
the ultimate weapon,
and the time to act,
when it comes upon us,
is a matter of being attuned
to what arises within
as a compelling urgency,
a pronounced impetus,
to action–
and we find ourselves
doing what needs to be done
without knowing why here,
why now.
We do not think our way
to right action
so much as we listen/see
our way there.
When we know what’s what
on every level–
or on enough of them–
we know what to do about it,
and act like that,
as though we are dancing effortlessly
to music no one else can hear.
Sit in the presence of the facts,
the contradictions,
the conflicts,
the polarities,
the paradoxes,
and live within the tension,
open to all that is,
awaiting clarity,
realization,
and the inward push
to do what needs to be done,
perhaps against your will.
10/08/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 02 Panorama — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
We are on our own.
It is all up to us.
And we cannot do it alone.
You might think
we would be doing
everything possible
to establish the right kind of relationships
with ourselves
and with those who are at least as awake as we are
in order to have our best chance
of coming to terms
with the conditions and circumstances
of our life
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
situation-by-situation,
all our life long.
But no.
We follow the herd
from the barn
to the pasture
back to the barn,
waiting for someone to tell us
what to think,
what to believe,
what to do,
and cannot remember
the last original thought we had,
or the last chance we took,
or the last time
we trusted ourselves
to the guides who live within.
- 10/09/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 09 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
We have to have a life
that is bigger than we are–
a life that we serve
in a “Thy will, not mine, be done”
kind of way.
We belong to our life.
Our life does not belong to us.
Our destiny is in charge of us,
we are not in charge of our destiny.
Farmers belong to the seasons,
and to the weather.
Athletes belong to their sport,
and to their training regimen.
We all have our orders of the day.
We rise early
or sleep late
naturally–
and we set those tendencies aside
in service to the requirements
of our job,
or whatever is ours to do
(Taking the dog out,
driving the kids to school…).
Our life has its own shape and form.
We choose the life that owns us,
but we don’t get to live it any way we choose.
We are all ordered and disciplined
by the life we are living.
How right is the fit is the question.
How fully do we belong
to the life we are living?
To what extent is it “us”?
To what extent is it “not us”?
Are we owned by a life
we do not belong to–
that does not belong to us?
If so, how would our Real Life
be different?
What might we do
to incorporate some aspects
of our Real Life
into the life we are living?
How might we
walk two paths at the same time?
The better the fit
between us and our life,
the better we are,
the better our life is.
And it shows.
When things are not right,
we know it,
and our life exhibits it.
When we “live to get it right”–
to more accurately exhibit
the life we are built to live–
things shift into place,
take on a different light,
and we have an air
of belonging to the life we are living,
transforming everything
and making all things new - 10/09/2019 — Happy Halloween 2019/10 04 — Indian Land, South Carolina, October 9, 2019
The center fails to hold
when the government fails to govern,
and the law is flaunted
by the officials with the highest authority,
and the country is free-falling
as in the Great Depression
and in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
Where do we turn
when there is nowhere to turn?
What grounds us,
secures us,
when all the structures
and institutions
that have been so reassuring
in the past
no longer work their magic?
We are still breathing.
The silence is always with us.
The stillness is always the source
of comfort and direction
to those who know how
to wait and watch,
look and listen
for the two million year old voice
that has directed the people
who are our ancestors
through dark times
and difficult places,
to these times,
and this place.
We only have to remember our breathing,
and enter the silence,
and embrace the stillness,
to wait and watch,
look and listen,
and know that it is so. - 10/10/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 04 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
We have to suffer it through.
Or suffer through refusing
to suffer it through.
Suffering is the common ground
of every path.
How we understand that
and accept it,
embrace it,
acknowledge that suffering *is* the path
and take up what is ours to bear,
bearing it as it should be borne,
transports us to realization,
understanding,
enlightenment,
and the knowledge
that transforms our existence
and makes all the difference.
Suffering it through grows us up.
It is the only thing that does.
Growing up is the path
to wherever it is we think we are going.
The only path.
“If you are going to be my companions,
pick up your cross each day,
and come along with me”
(Jesus, or words to that effect).
We don’t have to go looking
for our cross.
It is everywhere we are asked
to suffer it through.
If we are married,
we have to suffer through being married.
If we are not married,
we have to suffer through being unmarried.
If we are employed,
we have to suffer through being employed.
If we are not employed,
we have to suffer through being unemployed.
And so on,
through all of the states of being
and all of the terms and conditions,
contexts and circumstances,
of our life.
Those who refuse to suffer
have to suffer through refusing to suffer.
The trick with suffering is to welcome it,
invite it into your life,
and dance with it daily–
consciously,
mindfully,
bearing the agone/agona
that comes with being alive.
All our life long.
Suffering is the door to life
and the path to life.
If you can understand that,
laughing,
you have it made–
and qualify for being
the current incarnation
of the Christ.
“Well done, good and faithful master!
Welcome to the joy of the master!” - 10/11/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 08 Panorama — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
The material world is not the real world.
The ancient ones of all races
in all parts of the world
knew that the visible world
is grounded in,
and founded upon,
the invisible world.
Today, science is the only discipline
that knows what we see,
weigh,
count,
measure
is upheld and made possible
by what we don’t see.
Gravity, for example.
Dark Matter, for another.
Where does direction come from?
Guidance?
What pilots our boat
on its path through the sea?
How did we get here, now?
Grace, luck, providence, Kairos, Tao, Dharma, synchronicity, chance, magic, flow, groove, charmed, cursed…
are all terms pointing
to more than can be known–
to more than our will at work in/upon our life.
And, we no sooner acknowledge that
than we begin to wonder
how we can exploit it,
take advantage of it,
work it to our own personal gain.
But.
Looking back over our life,
what was gain and what was loss?
We don’t know what is good for us,
or how good the good is that we call good.
We are better off in the hands of the invisible world
than in our own hands.
We only know what we want and don’t want.
We don’t know what *to* want.
We may know what we ought to want,
but we don’t know how to want it.
Or where we are well off.
Or what it takes to be there.
We all are Adam and Eve,
trading paradise for the pleasure of the moment.
Sure.
Put us in charge of our life.
We know what we are doing!
The alternative is to align ourselves
with the invisible world,
and to trust ourselves to it
through “the heaving waves
of the wine-dark sea.”
The path there starts
with sitting quietly,
being still
and noticing what occurs to us–
what arises in the silence–
attending our dreams,
listening to our body,
to our “gut feelings,”
to “what we know in our bones,”
to what our heart knows,
to what our feet know,
and allow those things
to lead us along the way,
not knowing what we are doing,
or where we are going.
Trusting ourselves to some spirit
that blows where it will.
You know the one.
It got us here, now. - 10/12/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 06 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
We need to be living like we are dying.
Like we are running out of time.
Like we have something to live for–
something to serve–
something to do.
What could that be?
We have no idea,
and conclude there is nothing to live for,
nothing to serve,
nothing to do–
and live as though that is the case.
Take money out of the picture
and there is no reason to live!
Give everybody all the money
they could ever spend
and what would they do
that would not fall
into one or more of the following categories:
Distraction,
Diversion,
Denial,
Addiction?
All we have are entertaining pastimes!
And death only relieves us of the pressure
of what’s for lunch,
and what to do with the rest of our life.
We have no compelling urgency,
no directing vision,
no guiding purpose.
And no idea of what to do about it.
Here’s one:
Empty yourself of all
that might pass for
a reason to live.
Get rid of the noise.
Sit still.
Be quiet.
For as long as it takes.
Wait for salvation.
Salvation is seeing what needs to be done
and doing it
in each situation as it arises
moment-by-moment-by-moment
in light of what is happening
and what needs to be done about it
your entire life long.
After a time,
you will develop
a rhythm,
a style,
take on a shape,
form yourself around
the skills and abilities,
interests and proclivities
that set you apart
and make you you.
You will have a way about you.
You will begin living
out of your own authority.
You will sharpen your own focus,
serve your own sense
of the good,
be responsible
for your own expression,
incarnation,
of your own gifts and genius
in service to the good of the whole.
And there won’t be enough time
to get it all done. - 10/13/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 03 Panorama — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
Exploitation.
That’s a bad thing.
It locks us into a perspective
that colors our perceptions
and cuts us off
from what needs to be done–
from what needs us to do it–
and focuses us on what’s in it for us,
what are wee getting out of it,
how we can maximize our opportunities
to our full advantage,
all other things notwithstanding.
Here’s one for you,
no, two, no three.
1) Our advantage isn’t what we think it is.
2) We are not here to serve our advantage.
at the expense of all other considerations.
3) We don’t know what is truly advantageous.
We need a certain about of working room.
We need enough resources
to not be consumed with survival.
We need to be secure and comfortable–
*in the service of*
what needs to be done/what needs us to do it
in the service of the good of the situation as a whole.
We are here,
not to serve ourselves,
but to serve the good of the whole,
the good of the other–
in a way that declares unequivocally
*there are no others*!
We have no idea what is to our fullest advantage.
We think in terms of wealth and power.
fame and fortune
(“Fortune and glory, Kid. Fortune and glory”).
That’s the best we can do.
So we try to exploit everything to that end.
And, here we are.
Looking for what, we do not know.
That’s where I come in
with: Sit down,
Shut up.
Be quiet
and still.
Listen.
Look.
Until you can see and hear
what’s what
and what needs to be done about it.
And do not shut things off–
do not shut yourself off from things–
thinking you know what’s what
and what needs to be done about it!
Have you watched all of the Jon Kabat-Zinn
YouTube videos?
One of the things you will learn there
is the importance of distancing yourself
from what you think
in order to see what you look at
and hear what is being said
(In any number of ways,
on any number of levels).
Awareness creates distance
when it sees without emotional
attachment/involvement/investment
in what is seen–
when it sees without opinion or judgment.
Just seeing,
just knowing,
just understanding,
in a “This, too, this, too” kind of way.
When it sees
without trying to possess/exploit
what it perceives to be its advantage
in any way.
Fostering and serving this attitude
is the first step
in becoming who we need to be
in order to live the rest of our life
the way it needs us to live it.
Why would we not want to do that? - 10/14/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 05 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 3029
We are looking for what fits,
for where we belong,
for what is right for us.
The only thing wrong with us
is that we are too often wrong
about what is important.
The only thing we need to do
about that
is change our mind
about what matters most
until we get it right.
We will know when that is
by the way things fall into place
around us.
Joseph Campbell said,
“We know when we are on the beam
and when we are off it.”
We simply need to know what we know
and act accordingly.
We know what fits,
where we belong,
what is right for us.
We know what is life for us
and what is not.
What’s the problem? - 10/14/2019 — Happy Halloween 2019 06 — Indian Land, South Carolina, October 14, 2019
We only have to live in each moment
in light of what matters most
in that moment.
It helps to have no ideology,
no theology,
no doctrine,
nothing to impose on the moment–
only an openness to the moment
in light of all things considered.
How do we know what is right?
What is good?
What is just?
Everybody knows these things
as they pertain to themselves.
We know when we are being treated poorly,
and when we are being treated well.
We know what is right for us,
what is good for us,
what is just for us.
Which is to say that
we know what is right,
what is good,
what is just.
We only need to get ourselves
out of the way
and apply what we know
about right, good, just
to the moment–
doing unto others
as we would have them
do unto us–
loving all others
as we love ourselves.
When we treat everyone lovingly
everything falls into place
around that.
We know what it means
to be treated lovingly.
Treat everyone like that.
In each moment.
Change the world. - 10/15/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 11 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
Communion is a lost art.
We talk of “communing with nature,”
and of “community,”
but.
The actual *practice* of communion,
anywhere,
on any level,
is largely,
if not completely,
neglected,
and the experience is accidental,
or “stumbled upon,”
if we ever encounter it.
Where are we “one” with anything,
even our life?
Regularly,
dependably,
predictability,
systemically?
A few friendships, perhaps,
but.
As the old biblical text declares,
“If we love only those who love us,
what have we done?”
Where do we go to commune
with those not like us?
Where does Right sit down with Left?
Used to be,
in the old days,
that both sides of the isle
would commune with each other
over dinner
after a brutal day at the office.
Where do opposites get together
to talk about the things that unite them
these days?
What’s it like in your house
over Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner?
How much communion is going on?
What can we do to revive the art?
To be sources of civility
and commonality
in our world? - 10/15/2019 — The Tree By The Side Of The Road — The Mandala Collection, 2019
What drives you,
propels you,
urges you on?
What do you serve with your life?
What do you seek
with all your heart,
and soul,
and mind,
and strength?
What serves you
as your ground,
your foundation,
your source,
your rhizome,
your bedrock?
Where do you go
when you have nowhere to turn?
What do you count on?
Rely on?
Depend on?
What is responsible
for you being where you are? - 10/15/2019 — Happy Halloween 2019 07 — Indian Land, South Carolina, October 15, 2019
We all have exactly the same problem.
Every one of us.
Around the world.
Through time.
It comes in two parts
but it is one problem.
We have to make sense of things.
We have to find a reason to go on with it.
How well we deal with the problem
tells the tale.
How well are you doing with it?
Everything we do is a reflection
of how well we are doing
with dealing with the problem.
My advice is to make it conscious.
The more conscious we are
of doing what we do–
the more conscious we are
of the problem
and how we are dealing with it–
the more likely we are
to actually deal with it.
And that will make all the difference. - 10/16/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 10 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
Let’s make a list
of things we can’t help:
We can’t help
how we feel
about making lists.
We can’t help
how we feel.
We can’t help
what we want–
and what we don’t want.
We can’t help
seeing the way we see.
We can’t help
what we are in the mood for–
and not in the mood for.
We can’t help
what we are afraid of.
We can’t help
what our choices are.
We can’t help
what we dream about when asleep.
We can’t help
what we dream about when awake.
We can’t help
where we have been,
and not been,
what we have done,
and not done,
what has been done to us,
and not done to us.
We can’t help
what we like
and what we don’t like.
We can’t help
what makes sense to us,
and what makes no sense at all.
We can’t help
the facts that impinge upon us–
like doing this
means not doing that,
having this
means not having that,
choosing this
means not choosing that,
or that, or that…
We can’t help
how one thing leads to another,
and how everything
has implications for other things,
and how we can’t do anything
without impacting something else.
We can’t help
having to come to terms
with what we can’t help.
Or how ridiculous it is
to talk about free will
when we are not at all free
to will what we will
or what we want–
and what we are going to do about it
is the question
that never goes away. - 10/16/2019 — Beidler 2019/06/23 35 — Banded Water Snake — Four Hole Swamp, Francis Beidler Forest Audubon Center & Sanctuary, Harleyville, South Carolina, June 23, 2019
We need help being who we are.
We can’t help being who we are,
and we need to understand that
in an atmosphere
which encourages
us to experiment,
explore,
examine,
define,
refine,
exhibit
and move through
all of the stages
of our development
in the times and places
of our living,
all our life long.
Who we are is not a steady state of being.
We are fluid,
evolving,
becoming,
growing,
enlarging,
expanding
in relationship with,
and in response to,
the context
and circumstances
of our life,
moment-by-moment-by-moment.
We are changing,
in flux,
flowing,
moving,
coming,
going,
losing,
gaining…
And need mentors,
sponsors,
stewards,
friends and supporters
in the work to be who we are
in the times and places
of our life.
Every living thing
needs a nourishing,
nurturing,
environment
to go about the business
of self-development
and self-determination
from birth to death.
And, as human beings,
we owe it to one another
to be what the other needs
to become who we are. - 10/17/2019 — Bass Lake 2019/10/07 01 Panorama — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, October 7, 2019
The Context,
conditions
and circumstances
of our living
serve as our own personal
labor/delivery room.
We are birthing ourselves
over the course of our life.
The umwelt that receives us each day
and tucks us in each night
forms the matrix
that is perfectly suited
to bring us forth
as the unique individual
we each are.
How well we cooperate
with the process,
align ourselves with it,
and make conscious the work
of becoming who we are
tells the tale.
We have to read the signs,
speak the language,
catch the drift,
and understand the nature
of what we are about
in order to be about it:
Birthing ourselves,
bringing ourselves forth,
growing ourselves up,
being who we have within us to be
in the time and place of our living
by meeting the day
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
and being there
who we are needed to be,
day-after-day-after-day.
It comes down to
what we say yes to
and what we say no to,
and how well we sync
who we are capable of being
with what is needed
in each situation
as it arises
all our life long.
It takes focus,
concentration,
intentional,
mindful,
compassionate,
non-judgmental,
awareness
to be who we are asked to be
and offer what is ours to give
in every here and now
that comes along.
If you think
you have
something better to do,
you are wrong.
You are living
at odds with your life,
and your life is evidence of that,
and will remind you of it,
until you wake up
and take up the process
of birthing yourself
into the face that was yours
before you were born. - 10/17/2019 — Lower Falls 09/07/2011 — Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, North Carolina, September 7, 2011
Our contradictions,
dichotomies,
polarities
are the crosses
upon which
we are crucified–
and offer us the possibility
of the right kind of dying,
which leads to resurrection
and new life.
And dying again,
and rising again,
again and again
throughout our physical existence.
Life is death,
death is life–
if it is the right kind of living
and the right kind of dying.
This is the process
by which
we come,
over time,
over the full course
of our life,
to exhibit
“the face that was ours
before we were born.”
This is the process
of individuation–
Carl Jung’s term
for the work
of becoming,
of aligning ourselves with,
who we are called to be,
who we are built to be,
who we are created to be,
who we are capable of being.
Which has practically nothing
in common
with who we want to be,
with who we wish we were.
And so the dying in order to live.
We die to the life
we have in mind for ourselves
in order to live the life
our life has in mind for us.
We know what is right for us
and what is wrong.
But, what is wrong
has a lot to offer.
This is the story
of the Garden of Eden,
and the story
of the Garden of Gethsemane.
If you can understand that,
you have a choice to make.
Again and again.
Over the course of your life. - 10/17/2019 — Memory of Notre Dame 08/30/2019 — The Mandala Collection, Indian Land, South Carolina, August 30, 2011
The artists of our times–
of all the times that ever have been,
or ever will be–
are the spokespersons of the times,
telling us,
showing us,
what we need to hear/see
in order to do what needs to be done
and become who we need to be
in the time and place of our living.
They, individually, are expressing
as only they can,
the truth of their experience
in the time and place of their living.
Some of them,
through their work,
resonate with us,
and some do not.
The ones who speak to us
have to be heard by us–
we have to allow them
to guide us into the questions
that we need to be asking,
to the reflections
we need to be considering,
to the realizations
we need to be having
in order to put things together
for ourselves,
align ourselves with ourselves
and be who only we can be
in response to the here and now
of our living.
Artists are the prophets of our times.
We must pay heed
to those who speak to us,
and open ourselves
to what they have to say. - 10/17/2019 — Redbud on the River 04/15/2008 — Oconaluftee River, Cherokee, NC, April 15, 2008
Jesus on the cross
is the metaphor for our time.
For every time.
For all of time.
The Buddha said,
“There is a way out of suffering!”
Jesus said,
“There is a way,
and it is through suffering!”
When John said Jesus said,
“I am the way, the truth and the life,
and no one comes to the Father but by me,”
John meant that Jesus meant
his way was/is the way of the cross.
Not the way it is generally understood–
with Jesus dying for everybody
so that nobody would have to die–
but the way Jesus meant when he said,
“If you want to be Christians,
you have to pick up your cross daily,
and do it like I did it.”
He meant, “Suffer it through!”
He meant, “Die, again and again,
figuratively,
metaphorically,
symbolically,
by dying to our idea of our life,
by dying to our idea of the way life ought to be
by dying to what we want
and wanting what we ought to want,
which is the good of the situation as a whole
in each situation as it arises,
all our life long,
until we die
really,
absolutely,
physically,
at the end of the line.”
On the cross,
Jesus was saying,
“Look! This is the way you do it!
This is the way it is done!
Everybody dies for the sake of the moment,
for the good of the situation,
for the good of one another,
for the good of all others.
By bearing the pain of their own life,
and doing what needs them to do it,
in spite of the cost to them personally,
no matter what,
in each situation as it arises,
all their life long.”
Parents sacrifice themselves for their children.
People sacrifice themselves for one another.
We sacrifice ourselves for the life
that needs us to live it.
Time after time.
That’s the way to do it.
We bear the pain.
We suffer it through.
Now, the church,
even back then,
knew this would not fly.
Who would think this is good news?
So they changed the narrative,
and gave us the church of our experience.
It’s time we call BS on that,
take up the way of the cross,
and step into the next situation
and see what needs to be done there,
and what we can do about it
with the gifts, genius, daemon, etc.
that are ours to share,
and do it–
and keep it up
for the rest of the time left for living. - 10/18/2019 — African House 04/29/2019 — Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 28, 2019
The worse thing we can do is dismiss,
discount,
discard,
disregard,
dishonor,
deny,
neglect,
ignore,
reject,
betray,
abandon,
nullify and void
the gift.
That leaves us to wander seeking
purpose,
direction,
wholeness,
completion,
fulfillment
and satisfaction
among entertaining diversions,
distractions,
and delights.
What are the chances?
The gift is the path
to all things worthwhile.
Serving it is our salvation.
Salvation is being right
about what is important,
and pledging ourselves to it
with liege loyalty and devotion
all our life long.
The gift awaits our allegiance,
even now.
Even still.
Even yet.
Finding and serving the gift
is as simple
as a shift in perspective.
Repentance is changing our mind
about what is important.
Stop thinking!
Stop evaluating!
Stop judging!
Stop having opinions!
Stop imposing your idea
of how things ought to be
on how things are!
Get out of your way!
Start noticing everything!
Notice your reaction to everything!
Notice what occurs to you!
Befriend your interests and inclinations!
Trust yourself to your leanings
and to the drift of your soul!
You have been ignoring directions
all your life.
Examine your discards.
Dig through your trash pile.
Follow hunches long buried.
And notions not acknowledged.
Wild hares have a lot in common
with white rabbits.
Look closer at the things
that catch your eye.
See how long it takes
to catch yourself smiling
for no reason,
and laughing aloud
at the wonder of it all. - 10/19/2019 — St. Augustine 2019/04/29 09 HDR — St. Augustine Catholic Church, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
What drives you,
feeds you,
nourishes you,
sustains you?
Where do you find
what it takes
to go on?
To do what needs to be done?
What is your core?
When did you first
begin thinking about
these questions?
Aniela Jaffe said,
“Those who do not
create meaning,
but wait for it,
end in never-ending
disappointment”
(Or words to that effect).
And those who live
based on someone else’s meaning–
on what someone else says is meaningful–
wind up in the same corner.
This is the difference
between serving
“The Supposed To Be”
and serving
“The IS.”
What is Heart for you?
Spend time with that.
Build your life around that.
Create/imagine ever-new ways
of working that into your life.
Of serving that. - 10/19/2019 — St. Augustine 04/29/2019 13 — St. Augustine Catholic Church, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
We save the world
one moment at a time.
A lost life is a string
of lost moments.
The most important time
is right here,
right now.
We have to live this moment well
to have a chance at the next one.
This moment lived poorly
carries over into the next moment,
increasing the chances
it will be lived poorly,
building momentum,
gaining speed
until our whole life is blown to hell.
We stop it by stopping it.
By stopping.
By siting quietly,
being still,
listening,
looking,
sensing,
feeling,
intuiting,
tuning in
turning onto
what is happening
and what needs to happen
in response…
Seeing,
hearing,
knowing,
doing
what needs to happen in response
to what is happening
in each moment,
moment-by-moment-by-moment
in each situation as it arises,
all our life long…
Being what the moment needs.
Offering the gift
that is ours to give.
Loving the moment,
gracing the moment,
cherishing the moment,
gifting the moment,
with our presence,
with our attention,
with our awareness…
Saving the world,
one moment at a time. - 10/20/2019 — St. Augustine 04/29/2091 11 — St. Augustine Catholic Church, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
What is to blame for the way things are
is our idea of the way things ought to be.
We want to live in the world we want to live in.
There you are.
Change that and everything changes.
But.
The world we want to live in
is always changing.
We can always imagine a better world
than the world we live in.
And, we can’t stand it.
We cannot bear the pain
of the dichotomy,
of the contradiction,
of the conflict.
We have to have what we want,
at any price.
Consider Adam and Eve.
Paradise wasn’t good enough.
Living in this world
in light of that world–
No! *That* world!
NO! THAT world!
Etc. Forever–
ends this world’s chances
of ever being fit to live in.
We hate this world.
And that is what’s to blame
for the way things are.
Change that and everything changes.
The operative modes of operating
in this world are:
Grace,
Compassion,
Kindness,
Gentleness,
Generosity,
Good Faith,
Good Will,
Benevolence,
Charity,
Devotion,
Transparency,
Integrity,
Forthrightness,
A genuine concern
for the well-being
of all people,
And An innate refusal
to exploit any situation
for our own good
at the expense of the good
of anyone else.
Give me those qualities in every one,
and I will give you a
Brave New World.
You’re laughing, aren’t you?
Well.
That’s what it will take.
Nothing less will do.
Each of us has to do our part
in serving the good of the whole.
It’s called being Christ-like.
And, having Buddha-mind.
All of the holy women and men
through the ages
have lived this way.
Now, it is our turn
to get with the program. - 10/21/2019 — St. Augustine 04/29/2019 14 HDR — St. Augustine Catholic Church Cemetery, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
Being aligned,
inner with outer,
in every moment
completely transforms
our approach
to living in the moment,
which is to serve what we want
to happen there
at the expense
of what needs to happen there.
Such alignment
depends upon–
and flows out of–
our awareness of the moment,
of the time and place of our living,
on every level.
Taking everything into account
brings complexity,
contradiction,
paradox,
polarity,
conflict,
contrary,
opposition
into the picture,
and requires us,
too often,
to make an unchooseable choice,
in light of all things considered–
a choice that is assisted by clarity
and confirmed by peace.
Think of Jesus in Gethsemane,
and Abraham with Issac.
That kind of clarity is found
more often by seeing,
feeling,
sensing,
intuiting,
knowing
than by reason and logic
or flipping a coin.
But, who has time for that?
Who has time
to slow things down
in order to look and listen,
see and hear?
Who has time to know what’s what,
and what’s happening,
and what needs to be done in response?
We are where we are
because we did not have the time–
or did not take it–
to be somewhere else.
Time to sit and listen,
see and hear,
feel and know,
what is being asked of us
and how best to respond.
Time that might be thought of
as prayer time–
time to commune with the moment
and see what is there,
and know what to do about it
with the gifts that are ours
in the time that is at hand. - 10/21/2019 — Bamboo 04/29/2019 01 — Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
Make a statement.
Any statement
about any subject
that you think is so.
What makes you think it is so?
Who says it is so?
What makes you think
they know what they are talking about?
Is it factual?
How would you verify it?
Establish its validity?
What witnesses would you call
who would declare it to be so?
On the basis of what?
Is the statement capable of verification?
How much do you think is so
that cannot be substantiated?
That remains your opinion?
Something you “take on faith”?
“Faith” is an opinion
we are convicted about.
Conviction carries a lot of weight.
But.
“It is a slippery slope,
a dangerous path.
Like a razor’s edge.”
Much of what we believe
lacks any foundation at all.
We cannot take it for granted
that we know what we are talking about
when we say something is so.
How do we know?
Self-awareness
means self-transparency.
It means questioning our
assumptions,
inferences,
premises
suppositions,
conjectures,
surmises
and hypotheses.
And knowing that we don’t know
as much as we think we know–
and don’t know a tenth
of what we do know.
If we know that much,
we will explore everything,
examine everything,
question everything.
And take absolutely nothing
for granted
ever. - 10/22/2019 — Bayou Teche 04/27/2019 01 — Bayou Teche, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, April 27, 2019 – Bayou Teche was, in its prime, the super highway of the swamp lands of Cajun Country in South Louisiana, transporting goods to market and merchandise from the markets to the people along the Bayou, making life better for some and possible for all.
The time within time—
the time within The Times—
is all we have to work with,
and determines the impact
the times upon us,
and the impact of us
upon the times.
Each of us is—
all of us are—
swept up in,
and swept away by,
the times which
receive us at birth,
and come upon us out of nowhere
throughout our life.
The quality of our life
within the times of our living
depends upon
the way we spend the time
that is ours within the times
that shape and form us.
It is like this:
Luck is entirely a matter of perspective.
The quality of our luck
hinges upon how we see
what we look at.
Good luck or bad luck
turns on our point of view—
on how we frame it,
on how we spin it,
on how we see it,
on what we say about it.
Want to change your luck?
Change the way you see it!
Change the way you think about it!
Change your mind about it!
We change our mind
by being aware of it.
Nothing changes the way we think
faster than thinking about it.
When we spend the time within the times
being aware of everything
we can be aware of,
we change how the times affect us.
When we change the affect,
we change the effect,
and live differently
though nothing has changed
about our life.
Change the way you think
about your life,
and about the times within which
you live—
by being aware of how you think
about your thinking—
and you transform everything
about your life,
and about the way you live
in relation to everything
and everybody.
And that changes everything.
The time within the times
is all we have to work with.
How well we work with it
influences everything that follows. - 10/22/2019 — Cypress Swamp 04/27/2019 12 — Lake Martin, St. Martin Parish, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, April 27, 2019
I am good for a way
that leads to
compassion,
grace
and maturity.
It is one of many ways–
as many ways as there are people.
The old saying goes,
“Many ways up the mountain,
but one mountain.”
My way is to modify this
and say,
Once at the top of the mountain,
other mountains appear,
and the way continues eternally.
I do not know if that is so,
of course,
but it satisfies my yen
to never cease the quest,
and honors Heraclitus who said,
“Traveling on every path,
you will not find the boundaries of soul by going;
so deep is its measure.”
There is no grace and maturity
without compassion,
No compassion without
grace and maturity,
No grace without maturity
and compassion.
No maturity without
grace and compassion.
What we are living toward
is compassion,
grace
and maturity.
All roads will take us there
if we keep walking.
As stewards and servants
of compassion,
grace
and maturity,
we will be able
to see things as they are,
and also are,
and see what’s what,
and what is happening,
and what needs to be done about it
in each situation as it arises,
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
and offer what we have to give
to do what needs to be done
using the gifts,
genius,
daemon,
qualities
and abilities
that we have from birth
and/or have developed
along the way.
That’s it.
Nothing here
about socking it away
and having it made.
Just getting up
and meeting the day,
one situation after another.
All along the way. - 10/23/2019 — General Store 04/28/2019 01 B&W — Oakland Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail/Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Natchitoches Parish, Natchitoches, Louisiana, April 28, 2019
Zen is what happened
when Taoism met Buddhism,
so the phrase should be,
“Zen-Taoism,” and not “Zen-Buddhism,”
but.
That is another fight
I will not win.
Anyway.
Two Zen-Taoist sayings are:
“When the flower opens,
the bees gather.”
“When the pupil is ready,
the teacher appears.”
The point of both
is that we cannot push/force/hurry
realization/enlightenment/waking up.
That happens in its own time,
at its own pace,
in its own way.
No striving allowed!
But.
Preparation is definitely permitted.
We can prepare the way,
and prepare ourselves for the way,
by understanding
we are both the Pupil and the Teacher.
“We are the sculptor
and we are the stone,”
(Alexis Carrel).
We know what catches our eye
and what does not.
No one can tell us that.
We know what resonates within
and what does not.
No one can tell us that.
Our place is to know what we know,
to sense what we sense,
to feel what we feel,
to ask/seek/knock
and to trust the questions
more than the answers,
so that we question the answers
until no more questions remain.
And.
Our place is to
notice when we are
dismissing,
discounting,
disregarding,
overlooking,
rejecting,
ignoring
the Teacher’s attempts
to get our attention.
We cannot push/force/hurry
realization/enlightenment/waking up.
But.
We can delay it,
squelch it,
prevent it
indefinitely
by refusing to be interested
in the things
that are calling our name. - 10/24/2019 — St. Augustine 04/29/2019 07 HDR — St. Augustine Catholic Church, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
I’m nearly one month into
the fourth quarter
of my 75th year.
It takes me longer
to get to where I’m going,
and my daily routine
means more to me
than it used to.
I think our Order of the Day
says more about us
toward the end of our days
than it does at the beginning.
We come to know what works
through the years,
and what is important to us,
and what isn’t.
And we spend time with what is.
What is important to me
amounts to very little
when I look at it,
but.
It is very important to me.
If you tried shadowing me
throughout my day,
you would be dead from boredom
by noon,
and I would be thinking
about a nap
to recover from all the activity.
The term “Dancing with the day”
takes on a different meaning
when you’re not striving
to align the day
with your wishes for it,
but are striving to align
yourself with what the day
is asking of you.
That kind of dancing is slow stuff,
built around the rhythm
of sizing things up
and letting go
what needs to go,
and letting come
what needs to come.
And being fine with what’s what.
The aggressive pursuit
of accomplishment,
achievement,
success
and glory
was never my bent,
so I’m markedly successful
in allowing the day the right
to its own course and gait,
and enjoying what that leads to,
and seeing where it goes–
and what I do with it,
and how I become better
at what I do
because of who the day
asks me to be.
It’s all in a day.
Who we are,
and who we need to be.
Day after day.
The practice is the same.
Getting better at who we are,
doing what is ours to do,
here and now.
For nothing more than being and doing.
For having been
and having done.
10/24/2019 — Creole Homeplace 04/29/2019 04 — Cane River National Heritage Trail, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
The Five Rules of Life,
which are all over the internet,
are:
Show Up;
Pay Attention;
Be True To Yourself;
Bear the Pain;
and Don’t Take It Personally.
These are fundamentally sound,
and I certainly agree with their importance,
but they are far from complete.
Johnny Carson might have added,
Brush Your Teeth,
Wear Clean Underwear,
and Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Street.
When they were driving back to college,
my wife and I would always go over
the Driving Rules with our daughters:
Buckle Up;
Lock Your Doors;
Don’t Pick Up Strangers;
and If You Have A Flat, Ride The Rim.
It was a Mantra For The Road,
and we couldn’t be comfortable
without reciting it,
though it certainly did not cover
all the contingencies.
No list does.
No matter how many we have,
there are always more rules to live by.
They are everywhere.
And they are all important.
And they soon begin to clash and collide.
Look Before You Leap
Runs into Those Who Hesitate Are Lost.
The Rules rule each other out,
clash,
contradict
and vie for supremacy.
we make ourselves crazy
trying to live by the rules.
At some point,
we have to suspend the rules
and wing it.
We have to “fly by the seat of our pants,”
and “feel our way along.”
We have to trust our own judgment,
and our power to live with–
and through–
whatever mess we might make
in stepping out “on our own,”
and attempting to find
our own way through our lives.
Which makes the Primary Rule
something along the lines of
Do What You Can Do With It Today,
And Do It Again Tomorrow.
- 10/25/2019 — Creole Homeplace 04/29/2019 04 — Cane River National Heritage Trail, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
The Five Rules of Life,
which are all over the internet,
are:
Show Up;
Pay Attention;
Be True To Yourself;
Bear the Pain;
and Don’t Take It Personally.
These are fundamentally sound,
and I certainly agree with their importance,
but they are far from complete.
Johnny Carson might have added,
Brush Your Teeth,
Wear Clean Underwear,
and Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Street.
When they were driving back to college,
my wife and I would always go over
the Driving Rules with our daughters:
Buckle Up;
Lock Your Doors;
Don’t Pick Up Strangers;
and If You Have A Flat, Ride The Rim.
It was a Mantra For The Road,
and we couldn’t be comfortable
without reciting it,
though it certainly did not cover
all the contingencies.
No list does.
No matter how many we have,
there are always more rules to live by.
They are everywhere.
And they are all important.
And they soon begin to clash and collide.
Look Before You Leap
Runs into Those Who Hesitate Are Lost.
The Rules rule each other out,
clash,
contradict
and vie for supremacy.
we make ourselves crazy
trying to live by the rules.
At some point,
we have to suspend the rules
and wing it.
We have to “fly by the seat of our pants,”
and “feel our way along.”
We have to trust our own judgment,
and our power to live with–
and through–
whatever mess we might make
in stepping out “on our own,”
and attempting to find
our own way through our lives.
Which makes the Primary Rule
something along the lines of
Do What You Can Do With It Today,
And Do It Again Tomorrow. - 10/25/2019 — St. Augustine 04/28/2019 01 — St. Augustine Catholic Church, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 28, 2019
In every situation,
there is what we need,
and there is what needs us.
There is what we want,
and there is what wants us.
And that’s it.
Keep your eye on those four things.
Work out who gets what
in light of all four,
and you will have it made–
as much as you can have it made,
given the nature,
context
and circumstances
of your life. - 10/26/2019 — St. Augustine 04/29/2019 08 — St. Augustine Catholic Church, Melrose Plantation, Cane River National Heritage Trail, Cane River National Creole Area, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, April 29, 2019
On the whole,
we don’t stand much of a chance.
Our life is going to be lived
as it has always been lived.
Our perspective and outlook
are going to be what they have been.
We aren’t going to do better
with our choices and decisions
than the people we hang out with
do with theirs.
(The Rule of Life that applies here is
“If you want to change your life,
you have to change the people
you run with.”)
What would it take to make
a real difference in the way
we think and live?
How different can we be?
For how long?
Stillness,
silence
and solitude
are all I can think of.
We live too loudly to listen.
And spend very little time
thinking about our thinking.
Reflection and self-reflection,
transparency and self-transparency,
realization and self-realization
aren’t high on our list
of things we do in a day.
When we talk,
it is typically in ways
that enhance and strengthen
our opinions and beliefs.
We rarely inquire about our
strongly held views,
“Is that so?
What makes me think it is so?
In what ways is it not so?
What do I have at stake
in thinking it is so?
How do I need to change my mind?”
Nothing is going to change
about our life
until we begin changing our mind. - 10/26/2019 — Goodale 10/25/2019 01 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
I have a golden rule of photography:
I will not put myself in harm’s way
to get a photograph.
I will not force access
where there is no access.
Yesterday, on a photo safari,
I drove past three outstanding photographs
because there was no parking available.
And I will regret through all eternity
having not stopped for any of the three.
But.
Had I stopped for any of them
and safely added them to my collection
of worthy photos,
I would not have taken any
of the photos I did take
because I would have interfered
with the time of my arrival
for each of them.
By the time I got to this particular amalgamation
of sky and reflections and lighting
it would have been an entirely different photograph,
and I may not have taken it at all.
Changing anything changes everything.
We think changing some things
would leave everything else exactly as it is.
If only we had had better parents
or a different point of origin
(In either time or place, or both)!
We think that would make everything better.
Maybe not.
Probably not.
Absolutely not.
“Everything else being equal,”
is a happy fantasy and a popular delusion.
Here we are!
Now what?
This is the moment everything before it
has produced.
What is the best we can do with it,
here and now?
Do it!
And get ready for the next moment!
Don’t waste time in remorse over
any past moment!
Attend *this* moment,
and what is being asked of you,
offered to you,
by it!
This is the only moment
we can make the most of.
To fail to do that
is to fail all of the moments
flowing from this one.
We cannot calculate our best move
or arrange a future entirely to our liking.
We can only do what needs to be done
in each moment
to the best of our ability,
and let that be that.
And, I am not going to force access
where there is no access! - 10/27/2019 — Swan Lake 10/25/2019 Panorama — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, October 25, 2019 (See the swan?)
Religion as it ought to be
is grounded upon the lived experience
of the people.
There is no room in religion as it ought to be
for Freedom Of The Will and Sin.
We are not free to do whatever we want.
We are *bound* to do whatever we want.
We cannot want what we want.
We cannot help what we want.
Paul said it himself,
“I want what I have no business wanting!”
No kidding.
We want what we want
and not what we want to want–
not what we ought to want.
That is not sin.
That is the truth.
We are up against ourselves
from the start.
It has nothing to do with being sinful
or evil.
It has strictly to do with who we are.
We are at odds with ourselves
at the core.
And.
We have the ability to recognize that,
accept it as an organizing principle
of our existence,
and work with it
in transcending it
and living in the service
of the best interest
of all concerned.
We can put ourselves aside
in serving a good beyond
our own personal good.
There is greed within,
and there is grace within,
and our ego-conscious self
can be aware of both
in light of the true good
of the whole.
We cannot rid ourselves
of our greedy side,
our lazy and lethargic side,
our love for smooth and easy side,
our disdain for whatever
is hard,
painful,
distasteful
and repugnant side,
but,
we can keep an eye on it.
And,
we can do what we do not want to do
out of liege loyalty
and filial devotion
to the best we can imagine.
We can sacrifice the world
to serve ourselves,
and we can sacrifice ourselves
to serve the world.
And we decide which it will be
here and now
in each situation as it arises.
Whose side are we on here, now?
The right kind of religion
assists us with knowing and doing
what is ours to do
in the moment-to-moment
choices of our life.
The right kind of religion
talks to us about
finding the way that is the right way
through the world
of daily decisions.
This is sometimes called
“The Straight And Narrow.”
It is also called
“A Slippery Slope,
A Dangerous Path,
Like The Razor’s Edge.”
The right kind of religion
talks to us
about the importance
of living aligned
with the way
of Grace,
of Tao,
of Dharma,
of Kairos
in the minute-by-minute
crush of circumstances
and options
in each day.
There is no theology
in the right kind of religion.
No doctrine.
No creed.
Only seeing/hearing,
knowing/doing
being/becoming.
This is who we are,
and this is who we also are,
and how are we going
to live this out
here and now?
We choose each day–
each moment
within each day–
whom we are going to serve,
here and now,
greed or grace.
And the cumulative total
of each day’s choices
tell the tale.
And mindful awareness
leads the way. - 10/27/2019 — Goodale 04/25/02 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
In each moment,
there is what we want
and what we do not want.
There is what is good for us
and what is bad for us.
There is what is good for others
and what is bad for others.
And we stand in the midst
of the swirling conflict of interests
at work in and through
the situations
and circumstances
of our life,
and make a choice
regarding what to do,
here and now,
moment-by-moment-by-moment.
How do we decide what to do?
What guides us through the times
of our living?
What leads us along the way?
What pilots our boat
on its path through the sea?
How aware are we of any of this? - 10/27/2019 — Swan Lake 10/25/2019 19 B&W — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
I am graced by 10,000 hands every day
helping me along the way.
How many people are responsible
for enabling me to enjoy my day–
from picking the coffee bean
and handling it all along its path
to the grounds I spoon into the filter
to become the cupa
that helps me welcome the day,
to all the people that take up from there
to dress me,
heat and cool me…
all the way to bedtime–
I am carried along by the grace of others.
So are you.
So are we all.
It is grace all the way down! - 10/28/2019 — Goodale 10/25/2019 03 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
What do you have at stake
in any situation?
What do you have to gain?
What do you have to lose?
Where are you most vulnerable?
Where are you most guarded,
defensive?
Where are you most willful,
defiant?
If my seminary had taught me
how to read myself
and the situation–
any situation,
every situation–
instead of how to read the Bible
in Greek and Hebrew,
and how to think like a
Reformed Theologian,
I wouldn’t have wasted
so much time
getting down to the heart of the matter.
If I had known how to see
what gives,
what goes,
what’s what,
what’s happening,
and what needs to happen
in response
in light of the true good
of the situation as a whole–
and how I can contribute to that
out of the gifts,
preferences,
proclivities,
perspective
I bring to the situation–
I would have had what I needed
to be who I am capable of being
in every situation
that comes along.
Jesus couldn’t do better than that.
And I didn’t have any more
than Jesus had.
None of us do.
We all are saddled with the task
of learning to be Pin-ball Wizards
without being able to see.
How do you think we do it?
We don’t know!
We just get in there with what we have
to work with
and see what we can do with it!
What works?
What doesn’t work?
In light of the true good
of the situation as a whole?
We are all forty years in the wilderness!
Learning to size things up
and recognize what’s what
and what to do about it
one situation at a time.
It helps to reflect on our life experience
to the point of forming new realizations.
That is the source of revelation,
enlightenment,
realization,
transformation–
experiencing our experience
and reflecting on it.
That is all anybody has ever had!
It is all Jesus had.
All the Buddha had.
All Lao Tzu had.
All there is to have.
Start with you,
here and now.
What’s what?
See where it goes! - 10/30/2019 — Parkway Overlooks 10/28/2019 01 Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway approaching Peaks of Otter, October 28, 2019
Jesus was the Christ
the way only Jesus could be the Christ.
The Buddha was the Christ
the way only the Buddha could be the Christ.
Helen Keller was the Christ
the way only Helen Keller could be the Christ.
Harriet Tubman was the Christ
as only Harriet Tubman could be the Christ.
Rosa Parks was the Christ
as only Rosa Parks could be the Christ.
You and I are to be the Christ
the way only you and I can be the Christ.
The Christ is the anointed one,
the coming one,
come to exhibit,
to incarnate,
the concrete,
living presence
of more than words can say
in the day-to-day experience
of all living things.
There is nothing to ask.
or want,
or imagine as being worthy and desirable
beyond being what the situation calls for
in every situation that arises
moment-by-moment-by-moment
all our life long.
To live to exploit the situation
to our advantage
is to live as Adam and Eve,
not the Christ!
To live to serve our personal good
and not the good of the situation,
is to live as countless thousands before us,
not as the Christ!
What is the time that is at hand
asking of us?
Bring that forth out of the gifts
that are ours to bestow upon the earth!
Or as Lao Tzu
(Who was the Christ
as only Lao Tzu could be the Christ)
would say,
“Do your work, and let that be that!”
Day after day,
for as long as there are days! - 10/31/2019 — Thunder Ridge 10/29/2019 01 Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway north of Peaks of Otter, VA, October 29, 2019
In any situation,
harmony is of higher value
than morality.
Discord.
Pandemonium.
Cacophony.
Disharmony.
Are greater evils
than anything prohibited
by the Ten Commandments
Harmony.
Congruity.
Integrity.
Concord.
Resonance.
Consonance.
In sync.
Aligned.
At-one.
Are evidence of atonement
and reconciliation,
and the very nature–
the essence–
of the path
that is simultaneously
the end of the path.
Everything seeks its own realization.
Its own completion.
Its own fulfillment.
We seek to be one
with who we are
and who we also are
and with all that is.
The old Taoist symbol
of Yin-Yang captures
the tension
of integrated wholeness
as the balance of opposites.
Both/And,
not
Either/Or.
The trick is to live our life
walking two paths at the same time.
The way to do that
is to walk this path
with that one clearly in mind,
holding both paths in our awareness
and carrying in our body
the cross of our contraries,
to the point of transcendence,
laughter,
play,
song
and dance. - 11/01/2019 — Sumac 10/28/2019 01 — Blue Ridge Parkway, near Roanoke, Virginia, October 28, 2019
You are taking things way too seriously!
Lighten up!
Stop trying to make sense of everything!
Of anything!
Give it a rest!
That is the message of Jesus
and the Buddha
and all the Dalai Lamas
and everybody who knows anything.
It don’t make sense!
It’s all useless,
pointless,
hopeless,
futile and absurd–
and it’s coming to a very bad end
(We’re all going to die!).
But, don’t let that stop you!
How we live in the meantime
makes all the difference!
Do not let the facts that it makes no sense
and we are dying
keep you from living
as fully as you can
for as long as you can!
Your problem is not that you are dying,
but that you don’t know what it means
to be fully alive!
The first thing it means is
STOP TAKING THINGS SO SERIOUSLY!
This is the lesson
of everyone of Jesus’ parables.
It is the core lesson
of the Buddhas
and the Dalai Lamas
and the Yodas
and the Obi wan Kenobis
through time.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE THINGS MAKE SENSE!
What is “sense” anyway?
What has making sense of things
ever done for you?
You are still here,
trying to make sense of things!
There is life to be lived!
Stop wasting your time
worrying with meaninglessness
and death!
What would it take for you to be
fully alive today?
In the next five minutes?
Right now?
Within the context
and circumstances of your life
just as it is?
What’s holding you back? - 11/01/2019 — Mabry Mill 10/30/2019 01 Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway, near Meadows of Dan, Virginia, October 30, 2019
Consciousness is consumed with thinking.
An alternative is awareness.
Things are occurring to us all the time
that we do not think up.
We can realize things
we do not think about.
We would be well-served
to honor, attend, nurture and nourish
our awareness of the threshold
between conscious
and unconscious.
The more conscious we become of,
and the more consciously we serve
the unconscious,
the more attuned we will be
to the time and place of our living,
and the more appropriately
and intuitively,
instinctively,
we will live in relation to our life,
and not to what we think about our life.
Thinking about our life creates
internal narratives
and scenarios,
and generates imaginary realities
that compete with the actual reality
of the here and now,
leading us to react to now
more out of our mind-world
than in response to the
this world right here.
We often live more in our mind-world
than in our here-and-now-world.
We are often more conscious
of our mind-world
that of our here-and-now-world.
Thinking of our mind-world
prevents us from being
in our here-and-now-world.
The trick is to become conscious
of thinking
and to intentionally shift our consciousness
to awareness–
to perceiving this moment right now,
and opening ourselves to the things
that are occurring to us
that do not have their origin
in the thinking process.
Sit quietly and see how long it takes
to be aware of something
you did not think up–
for something to occur to you
that does not originate in your thought process.
Awareness and thinking
are two aspects of consciousness.
Expanding our awareness
will deepen,
enlarge
and enrich our life–
and will provide us
with a wealth of experiences
that are worth thinking about. - 11/01/2019 — Goodale 10/25/2019 15 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
We need some Common Agreements
that we all can stand together and affirm.
Things that we all can count on
from one another.
Norms,
Codes,
Standards,
Principles,
Laws.
If we only had a Constitution!
If we only honored the Constitution we have!
What is so hard about honoring the Constitution we have?
Why has that fallen out of favor?
I trust that we are learning as a Nation
how important that is! - 11/02/2019 — James River 10/29/2019 02 Panorama — James River Visitor Center, Blue Ridge Parkway, Monroe, Virginia, October 29, 2019
What’s money for?
Did someone just ask,
“What’s money for?”?
That’s funny.
I was just thinking,
“What’s money for?”.
I came up with this:
Money is for buying
the tools and resources
(Like food, clothing, shelter, etc.)
required to do the work
that is ours to do.
If we have more money
than it takes to do that,
we have too much money,
and need to give some away
to those who don’t have enough.
In honor of the principle,
“Those who need help,
should be helped,
and those who can help
should be helpful.”
If we put money in its rightful place,
we would be putting ourselves
in our rightful place,
and we would be helping
everyone else find their rightful place,
and all would be right with the world.
Which is clearly something
we can do
and aren’t doing–
like a gazillion other problems
facing us in this time and place
(Littering, for one.
And global warming , for two). - 11/02/2019 — Peaks of Otter 10/28/2019 03 Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway, Peaks of Otter Lodge, Bedford, Virginia, October 28, 2019
Let things happen
in their own time.
Suffer it through.
Bear the pain.
This is the path of transformation.
We are here, now,
because people think
they can improve on it.
Because we think
we can improve on it. - 11/02/2019 — James River 10/29/2019 03 Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway, James River Visitor Center, Monroe, Virginia, October 29, 2019
Carl Jung said that the things that truly matter
are never products of “purpose or conscious willing,
but rather, seem to be borne on the stream of time.”
These things, he says, “presented by fate seldom,
or never, correspond to conscious expectation.”
We do not think our way to where we need to be.
Rather, he says that the way there
consists of doing “nothing (*wu wei*)
but let things happen.”
He continues,
“The art of letting things happen–
action through non-action–
(is the) key opening the door to the way.”
And adds, “For us, this actually is an art
of which few people know anything.
Consciousness is forever interfering,
helping, correcting, and negating…
It would be simple enough
if only simplicity were not
the most difficult of all things.”
Learning to accept what comes to us
is the art of letting come what is coming
and letting go what is going.
Upon that, everything depends.
Be like the river.
Letting come what’s coming,
and letting go what’s going.
And see where that takes you. - 11/02/2019 — Swan Lake 10/25/2019 15 Panorama — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
We are led by the things
that occur to us
out of the blue.
We do not plan our way
to where we are going.
Or, better,
the things we plan our way to
are more in the way
than they are on the way.
Chance occurrences are not so much chance.
They are turning points
occasioned by factors beyond imagining.
We look around and think,
“This is it and this is how it works.”
But we only see the surface,
with no inkling of all that is going on
beyond our conscious perceptions.
There is an invisible world
at the heart of life
about which we know
next to nothing.
We hear that
and immediately think
of conquest,
exploitation,
domination–
as though the invisible world
is ours to plunder
and use to our advantage.
Our place is to serve,
to cooperate,
to collaborate.
We are Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden,
thinking we can be Masters
of Paradise.
And we’ve heard of Jesus
who said,
“I came to serve,
not to be served,
and to give my life
to wake others up
to the role they are asked
to play.”
The future swings
on the quality of our relationship
with the invisible world.
The next move
is ours to make. - 11/02/2019 — Goodale 10/25/2019 04 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
Freedom is not license
to do whatever we want.
It is the opportunity
to know what to want.
From that point we are liege servants
in filial devotion
to the work
that is ours to do–
to the life
that is ours to live.
Our freedom
is the freedom
to know what to want.
Beyond that,
we are bound
to the legitimate
object/subject of our desire:
the work that is ours to do,
the life that is ours to live.
How do we know what to want?
Sit still.
Be quiet.
Open to the stillness.
See what occurs to us.
See what arises
from the silence.
If our body resonates
in recognition
of the urgency
of the vision,
we give ourselves
to its service
and the adventure begins. - 11/03/2019 — Peaks of Otter 10/29/2019 02 Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway, Peaks of Otter Lodge, Abbot Lake, near Bedford, Virginia, October 29, 2019
Ruthlessness and greed are the way of nature.
The biggest hummingbird
keeps the rest away from the feeder.
The big fish eat the little fish,
and the little fish hide.
Grace, compassion and kindness (etc.)
are what we bring to the table.
Ethics and morality
are the contribution of humanity
to the laws of nature.
We change the game
to the extent that we resist
ruthlessness and greed
and serve grace and compassion.
The vehicle by which we choose
how we express ourselves in our life
is mindful awareness.
The beast lives within.
We ride the dragon
when we get out of bed
and meet the day.
We could destroy them all
just like that
between breaths
for no reason
just because they are in our way.
But.
Civilization requires that we not do that.
So.
We mindfully mind our manners.
With enough practice,
and enough mindfulness,
it is almost as though
we actually are human beings.
But.
Mr. Hyde is always there,
looking for an opening,
ready to do his thing.
So.
We have to be alert to his antics,
and mindfully aware of our possibilities
at all times.
Or else.
We are that close
to letting the dragon
have the reins. - 11/04/2019 — Last Days of Fall 11/03/2019 07 — Linville River, Linville Falls Picnic Area, Blue Ridge Parkway, Linville Falls, North Carolina, November 3, 2019
Sometimes, I ask it like this:
“What would you go to hell for?”
And, sometimes I ask it like this:
“What would you do,
consistently, dependably, reliably,
for no reason other than you love to do it,
whether it makes any difference or not,
whether it matters or not.
whether it means anything or not,
because it makes a difference to you,
it matters to you,
it means the world to you?”
I hope your list is long.
Both lists.
The things you would go to hell for
and the things you would do
anyway, nevertheless, even so.
The lists are the same list.
Go to hell for the things you love
no matter what!
This gets us to the heart of the matter:
Living your own life
out of your own, personal, authority.
Living your own life
grounded in,
standing solidly upon
the things that mean the most to you,
so that nothing can happen
that will/can knock you off your foundation.
Loving what you love
and doing what you love to do
right up to the end!
If you knew you were going to have
a fatal heart attack tomorrow,
how would you live today
and tomorrow right up to your last moment,
so that the heart attack
catches you completely by surprise,
you are so engrossed in what you were doing?
Be that engrossed in doing what you love
every day!
Work what you love to do into every day!
Do not waste a day living it
without loving something about it!
When you get that down,
through practice, practice, practice,
you will be ready for anything.
And, you will be showing
everybody you know
how to live their life.
Get to work loving your life!
11/05/2019 — Last Days of Fall 11/03/2019 17 — Bass Lake, Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, November 3, 2019
Seeing is the ultimate weapon.
Seeing how things are
changes how things are.
Seeing is a superpower
possessed by all sentient beings.
It lives unacknowledged
and unaccessed in us all
because no one can
bear the pain
of knowing what’s what.
In order to see,
we have to have
no opinion
about what we look at.
The moment we have
something at stake
in the moment,
judgment and greed
come to life,
and grace and compassion
are relegated to the frigid hinderlands
of the Outer Darkness.
Then we care about
what we take to be
our best interests,
and see everything
in light of what it means
to us personally.
Seeing sees only when
we can let things happen
and do what needs to be done
without regard
for what we stand
to gain or lose
by the outcome.
The more the outcome means,
the less we are able to see.
But, what’s the point of seeing
if we can’t exploit it for our own advantage?
What good is a super weapon
if we can’t use it in the service
of our own good?
What does “Thy will,
not mine, be done,”
mean to you?
- 11/05/2019 — Last Days of Fall 11/03/2019 08 — Linville Falls Picnic Area, Blue Ridge Parkway, Linville Falls, North Carolina, November 3, 2019
I’m here by virtue of the books I’ve read
and the connections I made
between what I was reading
and the life I was living.
When I graduated from seminary,
after having received very little
or no help
from any source up to that point
that would position me
to deal with my life
and the lives of others,
I set out upon the quest
seeking what would be helpful.
The old Alchemical formula,
“One book opens another,”
worked well as a guide for living,
and the caveat I would add to the formula is
“for those who are seeking
with all their heart.”
If we are not looking,
nothing is going to show us the way.
After a while, the books begin to
reference each other,
and it seemed to me
that truth was a fairly well-defined circle
with silence and solitude
constituting the perimeter
and stillness at the center.
Zen, as the distilled essence
of Buddhism and Taoism,
remains the clearest,
most playful and nonsensical,
source of direction and encouragement
I know of,
with Jesus’ life and teaching forming
a wonderful koan/conundrum
in that tradition
for pondering to the point
of transcendence,
dancing and laughter.
The situation is hopeless!
So what?
Bear the pain!
Suffer it through!
Live on!
Live on!
In light of the best we can imagine
in each situation as it arises,
offering there what we have to give
out of the gifts and genus,
talents and abilities,
that came with us into the world–
anyway,
nevertheless,
even so,
just because! - 11/06/2019 — Last Days of Fall 11/03/2019 09 — Linville Falls Picnic Area, Blue Ridge Parkway, Linville Falls, North Carolina, November 3, 2019
The secret to having it made
and having it all together
is to be just fine
with not having it made
and not having it all together.
What’s to have that we don’t have
except the perspective
that is just fine
with this right here right now?
People are desperately seeking
something that is not this,
not here,
not now.
But, that is all they know
about what they want,
about what it will take
to make them happy
with this right here right now.
Happy is a frame of mind.
A perspective.
A way of seeing
this right here right now.
What needs to be changed
about your life
that seeing it differently
wouldn’t help?
What can you do to change it?
In the meantime, what?
In the meantime,
change the way you think about it!
Change your mind about it
until the time comes
when a shift is possible,
then make the shift!
When the door opens,
walk through!
In the meantime,
bear the pain,
suffer it through,
wait it out,
with a different perspective.
The perspective shift
is the shift
that enables
the shift we are waiting for.
It allows us to see things differently.
And that changes everything. - 11/06/2019 — Peaks of Otter 10/28/2019 02 Panorama — Peaks of Otter Lodge, Blue Ridge Parkway, Bedford, Virginia, October 28, 2019
There is nothing to see but this moment
and what is going on in it–
what *all* is going on in it.
That kind of seeing
also sees
what needs to be done in response–
and does it.
Seeing is doing
in this sense.
Seeing is knowing and doing.
Practice cultivating a quiet
seeing space
for each moment,
which is, of course,
also a quiet listening space.
Seeing and hearing
are knowing and doing.
When our action flows spontaneously
from our seeing and hearing,
we are one with the Tao,
with Dharma,
with Kairos,
with Grace,
and that is to be
at one with the heart of things.
If you are going to be at one with something,
be at one with that.
It gets crazy
and goes all to hell,
if we begin to think about
what is good for us–
what is advantageous to us,
what is beneficial to us,
what we stand to gain,
and lose.
That disrupts the flow,
and we are no longer
one with the moment.
That is Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden.
Strive to be Jesus
in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Live for the moment,
each moment.
Live to be one with the moment.
In service to the moment.
Trust everything to fall into place
around that.
11/07/2019 — Thunder Ridge 10/29/2019 02 — Parkway Overlooks, Blue Ridge Parkway, Milepost 74.7, Virginia, October 29, 2019
People with cameras
treat one day like any other.
People who like to think
of themselves as photographers
take weather systems into account,
and go with a camera
into days when the time is right.
The photos on the trip
to the northern Blue Ridge
were taken on 10/28-29.
The Halloween Bluster
blew through on 10/31,
effectively taking fall with it.
I’ve been calling the people
at Francis Beidler Forest
for three weeks,
asking “Is it right, yet?”
I think it may be “right”
on November 16.
Knowing when the time is right
is crucial knowing.
Letting things happen is one thing.
Letting happen what needs to happen,
when it needs to happen,
is quite another.
The Bible takes Kairos into account.
Jesus came,
as we all do,
“in the fullness of time,”
“at the right time,”
“when the time was at hand.”
No one is born out of time,
though many of us are “behind the times,”
and some of us are “ahead of our time.”
But.
It is all at exactly the right time.
For us,
and the times that need
what we have to offer,
what we bring forth.
And.
We meet the times at the right time best
by developing our sense
of what time it is,
and what time it is for,
and what time it is not for.
The Preacher, Ecclesiastes,
is famous for saying,
“There is a time for everything
under heaven.
A time to be born,
and a time to die…”
Leaving us to ponder,
“What time is it for here and now?”
Jesus’ best saying didn’t make it
into the Bible–
because the people
putting the Bible together
did not think the time was right for it.
They had their agenda,
which got in the way,
as agendas are prone to do,
and they blew their opportunity,
which is the very thing Jesus
was warning against
in the passage they left out
of the scriptures.
Jesus is talking to man
he found working on the Sabbath,
and said,
“Man, if you know what you are doing
(what time it is),
you are blessed,
but if you don’t know,
you are accursed,
and a transgressor of the law!”
The trick with knowing what time it is,
and is not,
is having to be right about it.
You can see why the Formers of the Scriptures
wouldn’t want to confuse things
by leaving this text in,
when they, themselves,
had no idea of how to know what time it is.
It is crucial knowing.
Everything hangs on it.
Kairos is a harsh taskmaster,
reaping where he does now sew,
planting where he does not cultivate,
and leaving us in the lurch.
We are to let things happen.
But.
Do we let having an affair happen?
Or do we let not-having an affair happen?
King David let having an affair happen.
And, several generations later,
Jesus happened.
Did David know what he was doing?
Was he blessed?
Was he accursed?
How do we know what to do?
What it is time for?
I check the weather
before I go out with my camera.
My affairs are another story.
- 11/07/2019 — Goodale 10/25/2019 05 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, October 25, 2019, an iPhone photo
Take things as they come,
and do with them
what needs to be done.
That can be done
only from the perspective
of mindful awareness
that takes everything
into account
and has nothing at stake
in the outcome.
The catch is
that no living thing
can have nothing at stake
in every outcome.
All living things have preferences
and disinclinations.
That’s having a stake in the outcome.
So.
We work to perfect the art
of walking two paths at the same time,
by always keeping the other path in mind
while walking the one we are on–
and know at all times
that thinking we know what we are doing
is the “slippery slope,”
the “dangerous path,”
“like a razor’s edge.”
And proceed very carefully
along the way.
With mindful,
compassionate,
non-judgmental,
awareness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn’s YouTube videos
are a help here. - 11/07/2019 — Swan Lake 10/25/2019 02 Panorama — Swan Lake Iris Gardens, Sumter, South Carolina, October 25, 2019
You know where your enthusiasm lies.
Only you know where your enthusiasm lies.
Why aren’t you trusting yourself
to know where your enthusiasm
is asking you to go,
and asking you to stop going?
Why aren’t you trusting yourself
to your enthusiasm?
It is a better guide than Yoda,
Jesus,
Obi-wan Kenobi,
Gandalf,
and Albus Dumbledore. - 11/07/2019 — Road Through Fall 10/28/2019 01 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Orchard Gap, Virginia, October 28, 2019
Live like it matters!
Live like you mean it!
Live with your heart in what you are doing!
What would you have to be doing
for your heart to be in what you are doing?
What could you do with all your heart?
Why aren’t you doing it?
Why waste your time doing things
you have no heart for?
What does your heart want to do?
Whose side are you on? - 11/08/2019 — Last Days of Fall 11/03/2019 01 Panorama — The Bridge on Boone Fork Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway, near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, November 3, 2019
Everyone is seeking something.
What is missing from your life?
What is the nature
of the emptiness
you carry within?
What is the source
of your dismay?
I’m seeking to square myself
with the disharmony
without and within.
I’m seeking ways
of making peace
with how things are,
and letting be what is.
Squaring up is my daily practice.
Finding peace is my daily work.
I’m able to be a source of peace
to the extent that I have found it
and am in touch with,
if not quite yet in tune with,
the harmonies within and without.
It is all so fleeting.
I am the only constant in my life,
as you are in yours,
and we are all coming and going
like flotsam and jetsam
on a storm-tossed sea.
We need more consistency and stability,
reliability and dependability and sustainability
than we get.
We are seeking the bedrock.
the foundation stone,
the rhizome.
The unmoving center
in a kaleidoscopic world.
Where are the harmonies in your life?
The sources of peace and security?
What restores your soul,
and your sense of groundedness
and constancy?
What can you count on?
When you are out of tune
with your life,
or your life is out of tune with you,
what serves as your tuning fork?
What brings you back into focus,
at one with the flow–
the ebb and flow?
The rhythm of life and nature?
The music of the spheres?
How do you get yourself aligned
with yourself
and the life that needs you to live it?
Wendell Berry speaks of
“The Peace of Wild Things.”
I recommend that you googleit
and sit with his poem,
and perhaps make an excursion
to “where the wild things are.”
Regularly.
xxx
09/10/2019. — My view is that the mental and physical health of women
give them priority over any fetus they may be carrying.
I will support the rights of women to their own body,
and will assist their cause verbally and financially
for as long as I am able.
Surgical abortion and chemical abortion should
always be available to women who have need of them,
and no one has any right to interfere with that
or to condemn women for doing what they must do.
This is where I stand and I’m not moving.
I understand that I will never change any minds with this,
and I don’t intend for this to do that.
I am simply stating what is true for me
and will be true for me forever.
09/17/2019 — What do you know about God
that you haven’t been told about God?
That you haven’t read about God?
What do you know about God
out of your own experience of God?
Where do you go to experience God
as God is–not as God is said to be?
09/17/2019 — If all you know about pizza
is what somebody told you about pizza,
you don’t know pizza.
If you worship pizza,
and sing hymns to pizza,
and pray to pizza,
and listen to sermons about pizza,
and attend study groups on pizza,
and talk about pizza all the time,
but never eat pizza,
you don’t know pizza.
09/18/2019 — All lines are straight
if they are short enough.
All lines are curved
if they are long enough.
That’s how things are.
They don’t need a reason
for being that way.
It is the nature of lines.
You and I have natures
just like lines do.
It’s the way we are.
09/19/2019 — Pay attention to what occurs to you,
“out of the blue,”
“for no reason.”
Do not dismiss it.
Do not discount it.
Act on it.
Expeditiously.
09/20/2019 — If we find and mind our business
and find and do our work,
while helping other people
find and mind their business
and find and do their work–
without confusing ours with theirs–
the world will shift overnight.
09/20/2019 — The people who have no chance
are the people who have none
to help them with their life.
They are like babies
left to die in the desert.
If the Pro Life people were Pro Life,
they would be helping people
with their lives
throughout their life.
Housing,
Clothing,
Food,
Health Care,
Education,
Nutrition,
Jobs that pay a living wage,
Opportunities to discover and be who they are…
People who have the resources
to find and be who they are
have a chance to excel.
People who don’t, don’t.
It is incumbent upon
those of us who have a chance
to help those who do not
throughout their life,
throughout the world.
09/20/2019 — The people who need help
with their life
have to help us help them.
They have to bring with them
the will to do what they can do
to do what can be done
about their life
and their circumstances.
Incentive;
Determination;
Dedication;
The practice of mindful,
compassionate,
non-judgmental,
awareness;
Self-transparency;
Self-direction;
Self-reliance;
Good faith…
The list is long of things
no one can give someone else.
The people who don’t have a chance
have to give themselves a chance
*and* have help
with the work
of finding their life
and living it.
The inner,
innate,
qualities
have to meet the outer
opportunities
in order to come forth
and bloom into the fullness
of life and being.
We all have a part to play
in the making of a life.
No one does it on their own.
No one can make anyone else do it.
This applies all our life long.
Jesus raised the dead,
and left the dead to bury the dead.
09/20/2019 — Success is living a life
aligned with itself–
so that the life we live
is the life that is ours to live,
and reflects/exhibits/expresses
who we are/the face that was ours before we were born.
Jesus was successful.
The Buddha was successful.
Gandhi was successful.
The Dalai Lama is successful.
The list is long.
And.
Everyone on the list
lives to serve an agenda
not their own.
Their agenda
is to live aligned
with the agenda
that is handed to them
moment-by-moment-by-moment
in each situation as it arises
all their life long.
Ah, but!
Who could possibly live in such
a here-and-now way?
Only those who know
the essential nature of,
and practice the art of,
walking on two paths
at the same time!
Successful people walk
on two (or more) paths
at the same time.
There is what we do to pay the bills.
And there is what we pay the bills to do.
And, if what we to pay the bills
is too much at odds
with who we are/the face that was ours before we were born,
we will need to find something else
to do to pay the bills.
Our integrity is the sine qua non
of success.
The more we live with integrity,
the more successful we are,
the less we live with integrity,
the less successful we are.
In order to be successful,
we have to know who we are
and what is ours to do–
and live in ways which reflect,
exhibit,
express,
that in each situation as it arises
for the good of the situation as a whole.
09/20/2019 — I was talking with a deep south farmer in the 80’s
in his cotton field
about racism.
At a point in the conversation,
he said,
“Hell, Jim, this ain’t the way
I *see* things!
This is the way things *are*!”
The moon is 238,900 miles from earth.
That is how things *are*!
Whether or not
“The moon is a white marble
floating on a black velvet sea,”
is how we see things.
We often confuse how we see things
with how things are.
It is one of the things we do best
(Along with kidding ourselves,
shooting ourselves in the foot,
telling ourselves what we want to hear,
and taking ourselves way too seriously).
How we see things
is one of the things about us
that we can do very little about
(Along with our fingerprints
and iris patterns).
We are not in command of the way we see.
Change the way you see sugar,
alcohol,
exercise
and tobacco!
Now!
Change the way you see anything!
The way we see things has us
more than we have it.
The way we see changes
over the course of our life
by the way we are impacted
by our experience.
We come to see things differently,
but.
Not by effort of the will.
We cannot help how we see.
But.
We can begin seeing how we see.
And wondering how we came to see as we do.
And playing around with how many alternative ways
we can imagine seeing things.
And exploring why we prefer one way
over other ways.
What makes it easy for us to see the way we do?
Why do we think our way of seeing is right
and other ways of seeing are wrong?
What do we have at stake
in seeing the way we see?
What do we stand to gain by seeing how we see?
What do we stand to lose by seeing differently?
The stake determines everything.
But that’s another day’s work.
09/21/2019 — Sometimes, all we can do
is wait for the times to change.
In the meantime,
we busy ourselves doing what we do best,
which is usually also
what we enjoy doing most.
And trust one thing to lead to another
the way “One book opens another.”
Then, when the times change,
we will be ready.
If the times don’t change fast enough,
we will have spent our life
in the service of what we do well
and what we love to do.
Either way,
times changing,
or times not changing,
we will be just fine.
“Get in there and do your thing,
and don’t worry about where it takes you
or what is going to come of it!”
(Joseph Campbell talking about the moral
of the Bhagavad Gita, or words to that effect)
09/21/2019 — We self-medicate
with booze and pot.
Eases our way.
Smooths out the rough places.
Lessens our pain.
No physician or therapist
would say,
“You need to smoke pot
(or “more pot,”).
You need to drink alcohol
(or, “more alcohol”).
You need to spend more time
being high.”
But, we prescribe those things
for ourselves.
And, we will not hear
that we are kidding ourselves,
deceiving ourselves,
lying to ourselves,
killing ourselves.
But.
We are.
And we are the only one
who can do something
about it.
“We are the sculptor,
and we are the stone”
(Alexis Carrel).
Our life is up to us.
What we make of it
is ours to do.
We begin by squaring up to the task,
and to our circumstances,
and to the gifts,
genius,
daemon,
spirit,
abilities,
aptitudes,
talents,
interests,
proclivities,
that came with us from the womb–
and the skills
we have developed since then–
and getting to work.
09/21/2019 — 2 billion birds have died
bees and other insects are going extinct
mosquito-borne diseases are increasing
brain-eating amoeba
and flesh-eating bacteria
and toxic algae
and antibiotic resistant viruses
and rising water levels
and dead zones in the ocean
and you know the litany to Global Warming
are all a part of the snowball
that is gaining momentum by the day
and we live at the bottom of the hill.
It’s nature’s way of slapping us back in place,
or at least out of the way,
and starting over.
How many times does this make, I wonder.
Nature starting over.
I think by now it must be what Nature does best.
09/22/2019 — We spend too much of our time
trying to make things be
what we want them to be.
Exploitation,
Manipulation,
Control,
are the words
that define our existence.
There isn’t a situation
we can’t work
to our advantage.
Like we know what that is.
How do we define our “advantage”?
We define it in terms
of whatever we want at the moment–
or whatever we want beyond the moment.
Who would ever do
what they don’t want?
Consistently?
Routinely?
Deliberately?
How do we know what to want?
What is good on one level
is bad on another.
What we want on one level
is not at all what we want on another.
What, then, guides our deciding
and our choosing?
How do we know where,
and when,
we are better off?
When does better
go over into
being worse?
How much of a good thing
is a bad thing?
How good is the good
we call good?
In light of what shall we live?
In light of what shall we live
in each situation as it arises?
What is at stake in each moment?
What hangs in the balance?
To be determined by the choices we make,
and the decisions we decide,
and the actions we take
moment-by-moment-by-moment?
Where do we turn
for guidance in the matter
of how to live our life?
What drives us?
Leads us?
Directs us?
In the service of what
do we live?
If not to our advantage,
to whose advantage–
to what’s advantage?
If not to our pleasure,
to whose pleasure–
to what’s pleasure?
What governs the thoughts we think?
The moods we have?
The things we do?
What are we seeking?
What is optimal?
Where do we belong?
As an alternative to the Three Big Motives above,
exploitation,
manipulation,
control,
I suggest these three conditions of life
as the motivating principles of existence:
balance,
harmony,
homeostasis.
Find the center.
Flow with it as it moves
from moment to moment.
Be one with the moment
in every moment
for the good of the moment.
And trust that to be enough.
09/23/2019 — A lot of us could stand
with Terry Malloy and say,
“I coulda had class.
I coulda been a contender.
I coulda been somebody,
instead of a bum,
which is what I am.”
(Terry Malloy/Marlon Brando,
*On The Waterfront*)
Our circumstances
offer us all the excuses
we need.
Its the decisions
and choices
we make within our circumstances
that tell the tale.
The time and place of birth,
our family of origin,
and our parents’
family of origin
set the stage.
Here we are.
Now what?
How we answer that question
in each situation as it arises
all our life long
is our contribution
to the stew.
No one can answer it but us.
09/28/2019 — “Let’s go bowling, Dude.”
What is the equivalent
of bowling in your life
and mine?
Whatever it is,
it is taking our mind off
living our life.
What do you do to
turn off,
look away,
drop out?
Identify it
and stop doing it.
Instead,
sit down,
be quiet,
look,
listen,
wait
to see what occurs,
arises,
emerges.
Open yourself
to the pain
that waits
in the silence,
and bear it consciously,
holding it in your awareness,
and waiting
to see what else,
what all,
occurs,
arises,
emerges.
It may be hell, but.
It is a hell of a lot better
than bowling.
09/28/2019 — Everyone has access to the same information.
What we do about it tells the tale.
How open we are to it,
how aware we are of it,
what we dismiss,
disregard,
discount,
ignore
has us where we are
in each moment.
Always.
09/29/2019 — Our life calls us forth.
We show ourselves to be who we are
in response
to the terms and conditions,
situations and circumstances,
limits and requirements
of our life
moment-by-moment-by-moment.
The constant through all
of the upheaval and turmoil
of each day’s deliveries
is the unique blend
of character and disposition,
priorities and preferences,
perspective and perceptions,
proclivities and inclinations,
genius and gifts,
traits and tendencies
that set us apart from one another
and reveal who we are
for all to see.
Who we are
is who we can be trusted to be
in the give-and-take,
through the gains and losses,
of each day.
There is a remarkable consistency
about the way we go about our life.
We can be depended upon
to do this if that happens–
to be this way in those circumstances.
We develop a particular gait,
a certain style,
a manner of being,
over time.
Those who know us
know when we are being
“just like ourselves,”
and when we are not.
The “idea” of “us”
goes before us
and trails along after us.
How accurate that “idea” is
depends upon how well we are aligned with
the nature that came with us from the womb.
We live best
when we live to exhibit
“the face that was ours
before we were born.”
The word for that kind of life
is “integrity.”
“Know thyself,”
and,
“To thine own self be true,”
and,
“Love your neighbor as you love yourself,”
are all the instruction we need
to live well upon the earth.
The catch is
we have to heed it.
09/29/2019 — Discipline holds things together.
Discipline is how we do things.
Discipline is doing things that exhibit who we are
in ways that reflect who we are.
When we live undisciplined lives
it all goes to hell like that.
Football teams are built around
a core identity
instilled by the coach:
“This is who we are.”
“This is how we play the game.”
“This is what we do
and how we do it.”
That works fine
as long as the football team
is winning.
When they begin to lose,
badly and frequently,
they tend to forget
who they are,
and begin to play recklessly,
carelessly,
mindlessly.
Then, it is up to the coach
and to the leaders on the team
to call them back to
who they are,
and demand that they
live in ways which serve/display
their identity–
intentionally,
carefully,
mindfully.
It is the discipline
to be who we are
even when we are losing
that keeps a bad situation
from going over into a complete disaster.
We have to play/live aligned
with the vision of who we are
and how we do things.
And when we drift away from that,
we have to find our way back to it,
and play/live grounded in who we are.
Without a coach
and team leaders in our life,
it’s all up to us.
And without self-discipline,
where will we be?
09/29/2019 —a I can’t stack eggs very well.
And you wouldn’t want me
to sing at your wedding.
This list is long.
The things I do well
rank high with me,
but not so much with anybody else.
Naps, for instance,
are among the things I do best.
My grandchildren are not impressed.
I don’t know anybody who is.
Doesn’t stop me,
or even slow me down.
Find what you do well,
and enjoy doing,
and do it.
Why would you not?
09/30/2019 — After we have moaned and hollered,
stewed and cussed,
we still have to get up
and do what needs to be done.
That’s the truth
as clearly
as the truth has ever been told.
Are we going to sit there,
or what?
09/30/2019 — If we live long enough,
we all come around
to the realizations
we don’t want anything
to do with.
Some of us had rather
be dead.
The rest of us
pick up our cross
and stumble toward Golgotha.
And resurrection.
09/30/2019 — A lot of people
want to be president
who don’t have what it takes
to be president.
A lot of voters
want a president
who has no business
being president.
And here we are.
09/30/2019 — Jon Kabat-Zinn has a wonderful approach to vitalizing the connection with our life. Vitality is the other side of transparency. Once we become self-transparent, everything falls into place around that. He has YouTube videos by the dozens. Watch the shortest ones first.
10/01/2019 — We know when we are hungry,
when we are sleepy,
when we have had enough
and need to leave.
No one can knock us off these things.
No one can tell us,
“Don’t tell me when you are hungry!
I’ll tell you when you are hungry!”
That would be ridiculous.
We know what fits us,
and where we fit,
where we belong,
and where we have
no business being.
We know when things are flowing smoothly,
and when the going gets tough.
When things stop going,
and when there is no reason to keep going.
We can trust ourselves to know these things
and others like them.
We don’t have to wait for anyone
to tell us.
We can be secure
in our knowledge
of the basic guiding principles
of our life.
So, what’s the problem?
Not enough cooperation is a problem.
Not enough of the right kind of help is a problem.
Not enough resources
to do what needs to be done
is a problem.
Not knowing where to start is a problem…
And all of these things
are problems
we need to “sound out”–
problems we need to talk out–
in order to hear ourselves saying
what we need to hear.
But.
Once we hear what we need to hear,
we know it.
We have what we need
to find what we need
to do what needs to be done.
Start talking/writing
saying all you can think to say
about what needs to be said,
and then think about what you said,
and what needs to be said
in response to what you said.
Let that work in that part
of your mind
we call “the unconscious”
(Because we are unconscious
of what goes on there).
And see what occurs to you
“out of the blue,”
over time.
10/02/2019 — We are not responsible for how we see things.
We cannot help how we see things.
We cannot force ourselves to see things any other way.
But.
The way we see things has changed
over the course of our life.
What is going on?
It is called growing up.
Maturation.
Maturity.
And we all grow up against our will.
We have no choice but to suffer it through.
All the way.
What needs to change about the way you see things?
Watch what happens there over time.
10/14/2019–The creed at the heart of fascism is
“It’s THEIR fault!”
The belief around which fascists rally is
“Get rid of THEM and all will be fine!”
Both are lies.
Fascism is based on the fallacy of Themism,
which surmises
“If everyone were like US we all would be happy at last!”
And,
“It’s people like THEM
who make people like US
hate people like THEM!”
Which lock fascists into a self-validating conviction
that cannot be refuted
because there will always be
those fascists hate–
those who are not like them.
They cannot change their mind
without growing up
and accepting responsibility
for having created a life
that is incapable of sustaining life
and requires somebody to blame.
The way out of fascism
is the realization
“I and I alone am the one to blame
for my life being as it is!
And I and I alone am responsible
for becoming who I need to be
to make things better than they are!”
“It is all on ME!”
is something a fascist cannot see.
“I would be great if it weren’t for THEM!”
is all a fascist can do.
A Pickle is a place
where nothing can change
until something else does.
Where fascism is concerned,
we are all in a Pickle.
10/17/2019 — It’s so hard!
It’s Too Hard!
We want smooth and easy!
The whole problem in eleven words.
Bear the pain!
Do what’s hard!
Suffer it through!
The solution in nine words.
10/18/2019 — Grace is the foundation of the civilized world.
No one earns their way.
Our way is made possible by the grace of others.
We exist because of the grace of others.
Grace is kindness.
Kindness is grace.
Nothing good happens
apart from grace and kindness.
Grace is unilateral.
It is our gift to the world.
Become a servant of grace.
Lighten burdens.
Spread good will.
For no reason.
That’s grace for you.
10/18/2019 — Carl Jung said, “When one does the next and most necessary thing without fuss and with conviction, one is always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.”
It has an ought-to-be-ness about it that cannot be denied.
If you are seeking a meaningful life, simply do the next necessary thing with all your heart, the way it needs to be done, the way it is supposed to be done. And then, the one after that.
10/19/2019 — The Photographer’s Lament:
“I only wanted to be
in all of the right places
at all the right times.
10/19/2019 — Can we allow our life–
can we allow life–
to be what it is?
Can we allow ourselves
to be who we are?
Can we allow other people–
all other people–
to be who they are?
Can we allow the present moment
to be what it is?
Can we work within the givens
with the gifts we have been given
in the service of the good of the situation
in each situation as it arises
all our life long?
10/19/2019 — What is the motivation
to be who you are?
What’s in it for you?
What do you stand to gain?
How can you parlay that
into something better than that?
What could be better than that?
10/19/2019 — There are a lot of places
I do not belong,
places I have no business being.
It is part of my work
to stay out of those places–
and to be where I do belong,
doing what is my business
to be doing.
We can solve a lot of problems
just by not creating any.
10/19/2019 — There is no time to waste!
If you don’t feel it,
don’t do it!
Wait for the shift to happen.
Wait for the door to open–
then walk through.
Time spent waiting
with your eyes open
is not wasted.
When waiting, wait!
10/20/2019 — When we screw up,
we make amends–
to the extent that is possible–
and bear the pain
of realization
and contrition,
and change what needs to be changed
about our way with life
in order to do better.
If anybody thinks
they don’t need to do better,
they are failing
to see themselves as they are.
If anybody thinks they are
beyond forgiveness,
they need to reckon with
their own refusal
to forgive themselves.
And bear the pain of their guilt
and of their requisite transformation,
and change what needs to be changed
about their way with life
in order to do better.
The work of repentance,
penitence,
atonement
and recompense
is the work of doing better
moment-by-moment-by-moment.
We live this moment better
than the last one
all the way
to the end of the line.
And, if anyone thinks
they don’t need to do that work,
they are failing
to see themselves as they are.
10/28/2019 — Tuned into the time and place of our living, awake, alert, aware—that’s the sure recipe for depression. Or, for enlightenment, realization, revelation. Depending on how we see what we look at. We are the door to our own future. It all depends on us.
11/05/2019 — If you want to know the truth, you have to live in truthful ways. Truth is known through acts of integrity and grace, kindness and compassion, generosity and peace. It doesn’t come by reading it, or being told it. You have to live it, or live a lie.
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