One Minute Monologues 031

January 28, 2016 – March 25, 2016

  1. 01/28/2016 — How bored can you be?
    The Boredom Test is the tipping point
    of the spiritual journey
    Boredom is another manifestation
    of the Cyclops standing in the path.
    If we run at the first sight of boredom,
    We don’t have a prayer. A high boredom threshold
    is a prerequisite for the journey.
    Boredom is an opportunity
    for reflection, rumination, walk-a-bouts,
    A chance to examine our assumptions,
    Explore our inferences,
    Contemplate our experience,
    Rethink our thinking.
    We cannot rush through boredom
    In the panic-driven obsession with
    Taking our mind off our life.
    Whatever we don’t want to face and consider
    Is where we have to go:
    “The treasure you seek lies in the depths
    Of the cave you most don’t want to enter.” We call it boredom,
    But it is fear.
  2. 01/29/2016
    Living with conscious,
    mindful,
    compassionate awareness
    Is all that is required for living well. We will live toward the good
    when we live transparent to ourselves,
    Within circumstances that are transparent to us. To see things as they are on all levels
    Is to know what needs to be done about them—
    And to know is to do. Who among us knowingly would withhold the good?
    Who among us would
    associate with anyone
    who would knowingly withhold the good?
    How could any of us face ourselves
    (Transparent to ourselves, remember)
    Knowingly withholding the good?
    How could we bear the truth of the sham of our lives,
    Talking righteousness and goodness
    And knowingly withholding the good? The fabric of society is based
    on “liberty and justice for all.”
    Are we who we say we are, or not?
    If not, why lie about it?
    Why not say, “We don’t give a wet damn about _____!”
    And fill in the blank
    with all types of people
    we don’t give a wet damn about?
    What’s with posturing,
    posing,
    pretending,
    shamming?
    Why live a sham life?
    If we aren’t going to be who we say we are,
    We are left with a world of masks,
    facades,
    veneers
    Held together with empty promises
    and hollow alibis. Who, knowingly, can live like that?
  3. 01/30/2016
    We live in the field of incongruity,
    incompatibility,
    impossibility, In order for things to be
    what they need to be,
    Something cannot be what it is. Things have to be what they are not
    in order for things to work.
    The Tea Party cannot accept gay people
    and black people
    and women
    and immigrants…
    The list is long. And say,
    “People can’t be gay,
    and black,
    and women,
    and immigrants…” Something has to give.
    Something has to go so that something else—
    Say peace and justice
    and compassion
    and good faith relationships among all people everywhere—
    Might come. The chances of that happening
    are about the same
    As those of the sun rising
    and setting at the same time.
    And, here we are.
    Something has to go
    So that something else might come. And, in the meantime,
    we are stuck with having to make things work
    As well as they can work,
    Here and now, just as it is. Here’s how we do it:
    No illusions.
    Awareness, awareness, awareness.
    Laughing and playing at/with
    the very idea that anything can happen,
    Here and now, with things as they are. It’s impossible, of course,
    But so was everything else f
    rom the viewpoint of the cave dwellers.
    And now we have grand pianos and jumbo jets. Live with peace,
    justice,
    compassion
    and good faith relationships,
    And see where it goes.
    Laughing and playing
    with the incongruities,
    impossibilities
    and absurdities.
    I especially like the absurdities.
    If life weren’t absurd,
    it would be no fun at all!
  4. 01/31/2016
    Recipes are guidelines.
    Human beings love a Rule.
    Love to be Ruled.
    Love to Live By The Rules.
    Because, I think, it gets us off the hook.
    If we Live By The Rules,
    No one can find fault with us,
    And we don’t have to go
    to the trouble of being responsible
    for our own life.
    We just do what we are told
    without having to think for ourselves—
    With all the risks that entails.
    Recipes are guidelines
    offering suggestions regarding what works.
    Recipes are handy that way.
    They shorten the time
    between feeling like a pancake
    and eating a pancake.
    Rules keep us from
    having to figure out from the start
    what’s best in certain situations.
    We remember what worked last time
    and apply it this time.
    Rules and recipes outlive their usefulness
    when they stop working
    To make things work
    and start working to get in the way.
    We have to have the freedom
    of our own authority
    To decide whether a rule or a recipe
    is working or not working
    In a particular situation,
    And do what needs to be done
    to make things work.
    We set rules aside in order for things to work.
    Jesus was out of accord
    with every book of order of his day.
    He healed on the Sabbath.
    What’s the modern equivalent
    of healing on the Sabbath in your case?
    Swing for the fences.
  5. 02/01/2016
    Think of your most important relationships,
    and add your soul to the list.
    Your relationship with your soul
    is on a par with your relationships
    with all the people who are most important to you.
    You are the guardian of all of these relationships,
    And your place is to see to it
    that all of them get equal attention
    and equal place in your life.
    You cannot take your soul for granted.
    Your role for what remains of your life
    is to learn to tend the needs
    and interests of your soul
    As though it were one of your
    most important relationships.
    Where will you start?
    When will you begin?
  6. 02/01/2016
    Theology is mythology
    that has been baptized
    and declared to be literal,
    actual,
    absolute
    and unchangeable
    by those who said the earth was flat,
    the center of the universe
    and created at 6 PM on Saturday, October 23, 4004 BC. It’s past time we put all of that to rest,
    and give ourselves to the task of finding,
    and living in alignment with,
    the Numen at the center of ourselves. Anticipating this turn, G.K. Chesterton said,
    “When Jones follows his Inner Light, Jones follows Jones.”
    Yet, when Jones follows
    those who say they have the light,
    Jones follows those who say they have the light.
    What’s Jones to do?
    Trust his own sense of what is right for Jones,
    or do as he is told?
    Jones has to decide
    if he is going to live out of his own personal authority
    and let the outcome be the outcome,
    or let someone else tell him how to live.
    Either way, it is all up to Jones.
    What Jones says goes.
  7. 02/02/2016
    Any excuse will do,
    And excuses abound,
    For not doing the things that need to be done,
    For not living the life that needs us to live it,
    For not finding the Numen at the center of ourselves,
    For not living out of a conscious,
    living,
    relationship with it,
    all our life long. “The Tao that can be said
    Is not the Eternal Tao,”
    But that doesn’t mean anything we say
    Is the Eternal Tao.
    We have to know what we are talking about.
    We have to have an actual relationship
    With the Numen within.
    Substitutes abound.
    Any excuse will do.
  8. 02/02/2016
    Individuation, in the Jungian sense of the word,
    means Becoming who you are built to be—
    who only you can be—
    growing up into who you are,”
    And implies eccentricity
    Cutting your own path,”
    Being your own authority,
    Finding your own way,
    Marching to your own drummer,
    Singing your own song,
    Dancing your own dance,
    And allowing your life to unfold,
    To take shape,
    Around you,
    As it will. We do not will our life into a particular shape.
    We sense how it needs to be lived,
    And allow it to find its own form.
    This is the purest magic there is,
    Our life falling into place
    As we live it.
  9. 02/02/2016
    In any situation, “reasonable minds” can examine all the facts,
    And interpret them differently,
    Draw different conclusions,
    Pursue different courses of action,
    Based on the same facts.
    The way we interpret what happens
    Makes all the difference.
    The way we see
    Is not the only way to see.
    Whether it is the best way to see
    Depends on our interpretation of what “best” means.
    “Best” in terms of what?
    Everything about us is based on
    our interpretation/evaluation/exegesis of everything about us.
    We may live in a world of concrete facts,
    But, how we live there is based
    on the abstract and the ephemeral.
    Our life is dependent upon the way our imagination
    Interacts with our experience.
    The facts are the playthings of ideas,
    Which generate ideas,
    Which transform the facts,
    So that no fact exists in a vacuum,
    Separate from some way of seeing,
    perspective, understanding.
    A meaningless fact means that it has no meaning.
    A truly meaningless fact is inconceivable,
    invisible, non-existent.
    Our life is a disparate collection of interpretations.
    And we take it seriously.
    What are we thinking?
  10. 02/02/2016 — Bryce Canyon 2006—Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, September 2006Your life is a horse you are riding home, but.
    You don’t know where home is,
    but the horse does.
    Your job is to keep the horse
    from stopping to eat grass,
    And the horse will take you home. “Stopping to eat grass” is
    losing your focus amid the 10,000 things.
    We are not here to lose our focus.
    We are here to pass through
    space and time on our way home.
    When we are focused,
    We still have experiences that are a part of the journey.
    Even stopping to eat grass is part of the journey,
    But we cannot forget the journey.
    We cannot lose sight of the journey in great fields of grass. Everything is a part of the journey
    When we live with the journey in mind.
    When we forget the journey,
    Nothing is part of the journey. Our life will take us home
    If we live with the journey in mind.
    We are passing through this place on our way home,
    Picking up experiences that will be a part
    Of the stories we will tell
    when we arrive back where we belong.
  11. 02/03/2016 — Mesquite Dunes 2006 03 — Death Valley National Park, California, April 2006It’s important what’s important—
    What we recognize as important,
    What we treat as important,
    What is important. Nothing is more important
    than knowing what is important,
    And living as though it is.
    How we treat one another is important.
    More important than any ideology,
    Or set of beliefs,
    Or collection of customs and social codes. It is important that we treat one another lovingly
    No matter how we feel.
    “We don’t hate gay people,
    or black people,
    or immigrants,
    or women,
    or refugees!” say those who do.
    Well, treat them lovingly, then. As it is, they can’t tell your not hating them
    from your hating them
    By the way you treat them.
    So treat them lovingly.
    If you don’t hate them,
    Treat them so they will have
    no reason to think that you may hate them. And, so it goes for all people,
    Around the world,
    Across the seas,
    On the other side of town,
    And just down the street.
  12. 02/03/2016 — Reelfoot Lake 31 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015What is the nature of your productivity?
    What do you produce that you are most pleased with?
    That you most enjoy producing?
    I produce ideas, thoughts, realizations, connections.
    These generally take the form of
    Poems, paragraphs, photographs or recipes.
    In order to clear a space for this kind of production,
    I also produce naps.
    These are the things I most enjoy producing.
    I also produce lists for errands and groceries,
    Which I then tend to and procure.
    I am convinced that productivity that pleases us
    Is an essential component of a life well-lived,
    a central aspect of health and wholeness.
    And I wholeheartedly recommend
    that you become aware of
    The things you enjoy producing,
    And produce them consciously and often,
    Enjoying yourself immensely
    In the work of your body, mind and soul.
  13. 02/04/2016 — Goodale 2015 37 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015Ulysses could have shortened his
    Hero’s Journey considerably
    By being mindfully,
    compassionately,
    aware of his circumstances. Ulysses was stupid every time
    he had the opportunity to be stupid.
    The Journey is about overcoming our stupidity. Put Lao Tzu, Jesus, or the Buddha in Ulysses’ place,
    And you have a different Journey.
    You have a Journey no one would care to read about,
    Or go watch at the movies. We like to read about and watch
    people being stupider than we would be.
    It gives us that superior feeling that we crave.
    All of our cultures have been based on superiority.
    We love a Lord, and would love to be one,
    And in striving to be one, at least on some level,
    We throw in with Ulysses on a Journey we despise. Lao Tzu, Jesus and the Buddha
    Were superior to being superior.
    And were content to be themselves.
    Mindfully, compassionately, aware of their circumstances.
    Offering what was needed to the moment of their living. And, then, there is Ulysses.
    What kind of hero would you like to be?
  14. 02/04/2016 — Cadillac Mountain 2009 — Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine, October 2009Experience is the catalyst
    uniting our conscious ego
    with our unconscious self,
    Enabling the transformation
    by which unconscious becomes conscious,
    Incarnation is realized,
    And the virgin birth,
    Or the coniunctio,
    Is made real in our own life, In order for the miracle to happen,
    We have to experience our experience,
    Be present with it
    And receive it with right interpretation.
    If you think that’s easy,
    Hop in the saddle
    And tell them to open the chute.
  15. 02/04/2016 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 09 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015We are afraid there is nothing to us.
    We are afraid we are nothing.
    We are afraid of being nothing, of nothingness.
    We have looked and can’t find anything there.
    We have thought about it, and cannot think of anything
    That we are, or might be, or could be
    If we put our mind to it.
    We have tried putting our mind to it,
    And nothing happens.
    Just as we thought. So, we live to take our mind off of it,
    Off of who we are and what is to become of us.
    We live too fast to think,
    Too distracted to think,
    Too drunk or stoned to think.
    We buy into the action.
    We don’t care what kind of action.
    Diversion. Anything.
    To escape nothing. Nothing is the Cyclops we dread the most.
    We have nightmares of the Void.
    Utter emptiness.
    Falling, falling…
    Flailing about forever.
    We have to do the terrible thing:
    Face it.
    Our fear.
    Nothing.
    And step into it.
    And see if we fly. On the other side of nothing is the self at the center
    With a life waiting for us to live.
    Faith is trusting this to be so,
    All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
    We owe it to ourselves to find out
    If we are as hopeless as we believe we are.
  16. 02/04/2016 — Scott Creek Sunset 04 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, South Carolina, January 29, 2015We have to believe in our destiny
    In the life that is ours yet to live,
    That only we can live. We have to believe that there is more to us than meets the eye
    Any eye, even our own. Because what is left to us if we do not?
    If we do not believe in ourselves,
    And what we are capable of,
    And what we might do with the gifts that are ours,
    The gifts we don’t even know we have,
    Because we have not dared to hope we might have a gift,
    And have not have had the courage to trust that we do
    Beyond all reason and doubt,
    What is left of us? Believe that there is you
    The you you know yourself to be
    With your history, your past, your prospects and resources.
    And believe that there is Also You
    The you you have it in you to be,
    Even now, even so. Give you to Also You,
    And say, “I have nothing to lose so,
    I am handing myself over to you,
    In complete faith that you can do more with me than I can,
    And I will trust that to be so, no matter what happens,
    From this day forward.
    Beginning now it is this way between us:
    Thy will, not mine, be done.
    This is my liege oath to you!” Mean it.
    Do it.
    It has always come down to this through the ages.
  17. 02/05/2016 — Kings Mountain Farm 21 B&W — Sorghum Press, Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015Our experience with our life has to impact our life,
    Or it is wasted.
    Experience is for reflection,
    For realization,
    For making connections,
    For seeing what fits and what does not fit,
    For evaluating what we have been told,
    And determining what can be used,
    And what is to be thrown away. Yet, we too often gauge our experience
    In light of what we are told it is supposed to be.
    If something is “not the way we experience it,”
    Our experience is discounted
    And we are encouraged to toe the “company line”
    To see things like they are supposed to be seen. We are disconnected from
    the validity of our experience early on,
    And the light goes out of our eyes
    Long before we are laid to rest.
  18. 02/05/2016 — Spring Willow 2004 — Country Park, Greensboro, NC, April 2004Magic happens when we wake up
    and begin to see things as they are.
    Connections are everywhere.
    Signs and wonders whirl around us.
    Meaningful coincidences are common occurrences.
    Doors open,
    Paths appear,
    Benevolent guides point the way,
    And we are at peace with the universe,
    And at home in the world. You would think we would be more interested in
    Waking up and seeing things as they are.
  19. 02/06/2016 — Walnut Tree 2002 — Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Townsend, Tennessee, September 2002Johnny Manziel cannot cooperate
    with his own best interest.
    This is the essence of mental illness:
    Being unable to live with your own best interest at heart.
    Being incapable of living in good faith with yourself.
    Being compelled to shoot yourself in the foot
    again and again until you bleed to death.
    Or shooting yourself in the head to speed up the process. Addicted to self-destruction.
    Johnny Manziel is every addict we know,
    or read about in the papers.
    Drugs and alcohol get all the press,
    But food addiction in all its forms is right in there with them,
    And sex addiction,
    And physical/verbal/emotional abuse addiction… I once thought I wanted to be a psychotherapist,
    But I realized early on in my apprenticeship
    That the people who needed the most help
    Were unable to help themselves.
    They willed to not help themselves.
    Try to fix that without their cooperation! And they cannot cooperate in their own recovery, reclamation.
    They cannot.
    That’s mental illness for you.
    And don’t hold those with that condition at fault.
    You can’t wake yourself up any more than
    they can wake themselves up.
    And all any of us ever need is waking up.
    And some of us do wake up. It is the hope for us all.
    That one day, we will wake up.
    So we buy the mentally ill as much time as we can
    Against their will
    Hoping they will wake up.
    Some do.
  20. 02/07/2016 — Wild Goose Island B&W — Saint Mary Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, September 2004Allow me to whine and complain. The ground rule of photography is this:
    “You Pays Your Money, And You Takes Your Chances.” You invest in the equipment and in the travel expenses,
    And spend the time it takes getting there,
    And maybe the photo is there, and maybe it isn’t. Five things are required for a worthy photograph:
    Subject,
    Lighting,
    Focus,
    Exposure,
    and Composition.
    A landscape photographer is in control of three of them. If the subject is a mountain or a waterfall,
    Conditions determine its availability.
    If it is a moose or a grizzly bear,
    You may have to wait past your departing flight time.
    The moon rise or set, like the sun rise or set,
    May be clouded in for a week,
    Or two.
    The light can be terrible forever.
    So you go, knowing that you may have to go back,
    With no guarantees even then. Speaking of “then,”
    Then you grow old,
    And with the advent of your 72nd year,
    You notice the presence of what I like to call “creeping disinclination,”
    And you sense “rampant disinclination” gathering itself
    Just around the bend.
    What are you going to do with another moon rise at the beach,
    Anyway? How long will you be interested in continuing to
    Pay Your Money And Take Your Chances?
    What with arthritic knees
    And the comfort of coffee when you like it,
    The way you like it?
  21. 02/07/2016 — Reelfoot Lake 32 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015All healing is miraculous. We create conditions favorable to the healing process,
    And turn things over to the body’s innate healing capacities
    Which includes the body’s environment,
    Both physical, emotional and spiritual
    (And by “spiritual” I mean “unconscious,”
    That is, “All of that which we are not conscious of.”
    I do not mean any
    of the supposed religious hierarchies of the “other world”). The body’s environments
    Inner and outer
    Are either healing environments,
    Or they are toxic environments.
    Or some combination of both.
    Needless to say, we fare better in healing environments,
    And owe it to ourselves and all sentient beings
    To create, and live in, environments
    That are conducive to our health on all levels. That we do not do that is curious,
    And exemplifies the fact that we do not much care about
    Living in ways that serve our best interest.
    We will not devote ourselves to the care of body and soul.
    We prefer to live “any old way at all,”
    And take our chances.
    To “follow the course of least resistance,”
    And hope for the best. We could do better and don’t.
    We prefer to take pills
    And have surgeries,
    Rather than change our diet
    And our life style.
    We blame the cruel fates,
    Instead of assisting the benevolent powers,
    And never ask ourselves whose side we are on.
  22. 02/08/2016 — Hatteras Sunset — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina, October 2004We are at war with life,
    And can’t make up out minds
    Whether we want to live it
    as it could be lived or not.
    We settle too easily for less than life could be,
    Which is just above death,
    Just enough alive to not be declared dead,
    And buried,
    But fighting life—the life that could be lived—all the way. We don’t exercise,
    We don’t follow a healthy diet,
    We smoke,
    Drink too much alcohol,
    Do drugs—
    prescription, over the counter, illegal.
    And we fall into some easy enough routine
    That allows us to pay the bills and get by.
    What? We don’t pursue the gift.
    Why not?
    Why do we not live in the service of the gift?
    Dead things float with the current,
    Go with the flow.
    It doesn’t matter to them where they end up.
    Why do we forsake the gift?
    We are burning daylight.
    There is less time each day.
    Why renounce and abandon the gift?
  23. 02/08/2016 — Bass Harbor Lighthouse — Bass Harbor, Maine, September 2004My wife and I live “cornered into” a small section of woods,
    16 to 20 acres perhaps
    With a strip to the north and a larger portion to the west.
    It is a short time until the rampant development
    That is sweeping all the woods away
    Devours “ours” as well. Until then, I relish the sound of the wind through the trees,
    Which are pines and a good selection of hardwoods,
    And am “at one” with my—all of our—ancestors
    Who lived with the sound of the wind through the trees,
    And did what was theirs to do. And, when it is no more,
    I will adjust,
    and remember.
  24. 02/08/2016 — Camden Harbor — Camden, Maine, September 2004We have to have the freedom of our own mind,
    And have to be free to change our mind
    As the result of our on-going reflection on our experience. Changing our mind is an inside job,
    And cannot be forced upon us from without.
    We have to know when we are being “talked into” something,
    And stop it “in its tracks.” “I appreciate your viewpoint, and will take your suggestion
    under advisement,” is all we need say
    In defining our boundaries and drawing our own line. We are perfectly capable of experiencing our experience,
    And deciding for ourselves what is valid and what is not,
    What is working and what is not, but.
    We have to experience all of our experience,
    And catch ourselves in the act of being selective
    In favor of old conclusions and tacit assumptions. We must live transparent to ourselves,
    Open to the full range of our experience,
    If we hope to be able to change our mind
    In light of evidence to the contrary
    Of our preconceived notions
    and comfortable prejudices.
  25. 02/09/2016 — Scott Creek Sunset 06 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, South Carolina, January 29, 2015We have to be our own heroes.
    We are the only ones who can save us.
    We do it by waking up,
    Coming to our senses,
    Seeing, hearing and understanding,
    And changing our mind about what is important. We don’t do it to avoid hell and get to heaven.
    We do it to be who we are,
    Fully alive in the time and place of our living,
    Doing the work that makes our heart sing. The monsters that have to be bested,
    Again and again are
    Fear and Lethargy,
    Which is the idea that it is too late,
    That it won’t do any good,
    That it is no use
    And too much trouble,
    And maybe we will start tomorrow. No one can talk us into doing what must be done.
    We have to stand ourselves up,
    And walk into our life,
    Living it to the hilt in the time left for living,
    No matter what.
  26. 02/10/2016 — Black Bayou 15 HDR — Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Management Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 2015Consciousness carries with it
    the possibility of reflection and examination,
    Of imagining potential scenarios
    and considering different responses,
    rehearsing an event before it happens
    in order to guide it toward an outcome
    that we rank as being better than others we foresee. With consciousness comes
    the designations good, better, best,
    And bad, worse, worst. Which opens the door to ethics and morality,
    culture,
    norms,
    codes,
    standards,
    laws
    and civilization. With the arrival of consciousness,
    We break with the natural world,
    And begin to walk two paths at the same time. There is the path of nature,
    Where might makes right
    and the law of the jungle prevails,
    And the path of civilized humanity,
    Where the end does not justify the means,
    And justice and kindness
    call us beyond brutality and ruthlessness. The way of nature still courses through our veins,
    But, knowing, we know the call
    of a different way, and guilt is born.
    And forgiveness, and accountability,
    and the necessity of putting things right. We live bearing the cross of two competing natures,
    And must bear it consciously,
    with mindful compassionate awareness,
    If the weight of our distant past
    Is not to destroy the hope of our future,
    And that of the world.
  27. 02/10/2016 — Cane River Pier at Sunset — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, July 2004The more we can be mindfully,
    compassionately,
    non-judgmentally
    aware of,
    and present with,
    a moment,
    a situation,
    the more we can hold the moment
    in our awareness,
    without judging
    or willing
    or resisting
    or influencing
    or directing
    or compelling,
    but just being with the moment,
    aware of all that is there with us—
    the colors,
    the lighting,
    the objects,
    the people,
    the emotional tone,
    the atmosphere,
    the “feel” —
    what is foreground
    and what is background,
    and how, with a shift of focus,
    background becomes foreground,
    and foreground background,
    and how our observing the moment
    takes us out of the moment,
    yet influences the moment
    by removing ourselves from it,
    so that the moment
    gets its direction from sources
    other than ourselves
    and the impact we might otherwise have. The more we so this,
    the more we are open to,
    and aware of,
    the presence of “More Than Meets The Eye”
    in each moment,
    and can see,
    and feel,
    how this moment,
    is an extension of the last moment,
    and a precursor of the next one,
    and how all of life is in movement,
    flowing from one moment to the next,
    like a symphony on a cosmic scale,
    being played by an orchestra
    we cannot hear.
  28. 02/11/2016 — Goodale 2015 38 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015Our imagination is a powerful tool
    in the service of good or evil,
    life or death.
    Everything of human origin
    is the creation of someone’s imagination.
    Arrowheads,
    pottery shards,
    grand pianos,
    atomic bombs…
    It all came from “nothing but” our imagination.
    We can imagine ourselves sick,
    and well.
    Imagine ourselves bound and free.
    Imagine ourselves dead and alive.
    Imagination used mindfully
    is a boon to existence.
    Used mindlessly,
    it is the end of all things.
    Observe how you use your imagination
    and how it arranges your outcomes,
    and impacts your life.
    Observe how your awareness of things,
    changes things.
  29. 02/12/2016 — Kings Mountain Farm 13 HDR Panorama — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015Self-discipline does it.
    It is key ingredient to the Hero’s Journey,
    We can’t take the first step without it. Fear and Lethargy
    (Sometimes experienced as Disinclination
    maybe tomorrow,
    maybe later,
    maybe one day,
    maybe soon)
    are the dragons,
    the monsters,
    the manifestations of the Cyclops
    standing in our way
    (James Hollis).
    Mindful,
    compassionate,
    non-judgmental awareness
    can point the way, but
    after we know clearly what needs to be done,
    we still have to do it.
    And stay with it.
    Over time.
    For the long haul. Ben Howland says,
    “Winning or losing, it’s still a grind.”
    Nothing makes it easy,
    doing what is to be done.
    We stand ourselves up and step into it each day
    throughout the day,
    everyday,
    swimming up stream against
    our natural tendency
    to go with the flow
    and let nature take its course. We are working against nature,
    against our own nature!
    It is not the natural thing
    being a True Human Being,
    being the Hero on her, on his, own journey!
    We have to overcome all obstacles to do it,
    especially the self-imposed ones.
    Always the question:
    “Whose side are we on?”
  30. 02/12/2016 — Mountain Fall 2004 — Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina, October 2004Jesus said on two different occasions:
    “If you aren’t with me, you are against me!”
    And,
    “If you aren’t against me, you are with me!” Apparently, there is no possibility of neutrality in the matter.
    My take on everything Jesus is said to have said
    is that he is the mouthpiece of the Numen—the Self—the Truth
    at the center of us all. When Jesus speaks, WE are talking
    to ourselves,
    about ourselves,
    calling ourselves to come
    to our senses
    and join together with ourselves. It is the same with everyone of us
    who has approached True Human Being-hood:
    The Buddha,
    Lao Tzu,
    Tevya,
    Yogi Berra,
    Hester Prynne,
    Betty White… The call is clear:
    “Off the fence with you!
    Out of the recliner!
    Into the fray!
    Into the action!
    Make a choice!
    Move it NOW!” No hiding our talent,
    our gift,
    our Self in a sealed Mason Jar,
    buried in a deep hole,
    under a large rock,
    taking no chances
    on getting something wrong!
    Every day we live
    on our side,
    or against ourselves.
    Every day.
  31. 02/12/2016 — Pines 2004 — Down East North Carolina, March 2004Jesus was fond of saying, “Those with ears, let them hear!”
    It’s the same as saying, “You have to know what I mean
    before you can understand what I’m saying.”
    Or, “You have to have thought about this,
    wrestled with it,
    before you can grasp what I have to say about it.”
    Or, “You can only hear
    what I am articulating
    if you have cultivated
    and nurtured
    and watered it to the point
    of bursting into bloom
    when the light strikes it.
    Otherwise, all will be dark,
    no matter how brightly the sun shines.” In every generation there are those
    who say what needs to be said,
    and those who can hear what is being said.
    And there are those who say
    only what has been said,
    And those who can hear
    only what has been said.
    And there we are.
  32. 02/13/2016 — Price Lake Blues — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, April 2004Jesus came healing on the Sabbath,
    keeping company with the “unclean”
    (People with leprosy
    or some chronic illness
    or injury,
    or those simply too poor
    to pay the Temple tax,
    and obviously afflicted by God
    for some unpardonable sin,
    hence not to be acknowledged
    for fear of becoming guilty by association),
    with women and tax-collectors. Jesus was out of accord with every book of order of his day,
    yet, in the Sermon on the Mount, said,
    “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law.
    I have come to fulfill it.”
    And then, he proceeds through the rest of the Sermon
    to lay aside the Law with things like:
    “You have heard it said…
    But I say unto you…” Jesus very deliberately lived
    so as to abolish the letter of the Law,
    the written Law,
    so as to fulfill the spirit of the Law,
    doing what needed to be done in each situation as it arose,
    without regard to what was supposed to be done
    according to Jewish Law or social code. But that didn’t mean people were free to do
    whatever they felt like doing.
    “If you know what you are doing,” he said
    to a man he found working on the Sabbath,
    “You are blessed.
    But if you don’t know what you are doing,
    you are accursed and a transgressor of the Law.” And he prayed for the people at his crucifixion saying,
    “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”
    Everything revolves around knowing what we are doing—
    around living a considered life—
    around living consciously,
    mindfully,
    compassionately,
    non-judgmentally,
    aware of the time
    and place of our living,
    and what is being called for there,
    what is being asked of us there,
    and complying in the moment
    out of a heart that
    sees,
    hears
    and understands what is being asked of it. As Jesus might have said,
    “You all have a heart!
    Go live in its service!”
    It is never more difficult than that.
  33. 02/13/2016 — Reelfoot Lake 33 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015There are two of us living one life.
    The one we are conscious of,
    And the one we are not conscious of.
    The conscious one is here to become conscious
    Of the one we are unconscious of—
    to bring to life in the life we are living
    the life we are capable of living
    in collaboration with the one we are
    to become conscious of. The question, then, is always pertinent,
    and difficult to answer with clarity and certainty:
    Whose side are we on?
    How do we know?
    How can we be sure?
    Who is piloting our boat on its path through the sea? We have to read the signs,
    interpret our dreams
    and our wanderings of mind and body,
    consult the Inner Other,
    practice mindful,
    compassionate,
    non-judgmental
    awareness
    of our interior and external worlds,
    and work to put ourselves in accord
    with that which is seeking to be in accord with us. All that should keep us occupied
    for the rest of time.
  34. 02/13/2016 — Price Lake Blues Two — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, April 2004The work of finding our life and living it
    is carried out on two different fronts at the same time. There is the matter of establishing connection,
    and putting ourselves in accord,
    with the Invisible Other at the core,
    heart,
    ground,
    foundation
    of our life and being. Robert A. Johnson’s book “Inner Work”
    will be a helpful guide
    for this part of what is ours to do. The other matter is that
    of developing
    and deepening our ability
    to be mindfully,
    compassionately,
    non-judgmentally
    aware
    of the time and place
    of our living,
    both internally and externally. The work of Jon Kabat-Zinn
    with Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR,
    will be a very helpful resource here.
    You Tube videos are readily available,
    and Jon has several books out on the subject. Our life has a depth and breadth
    that we cannot imagine,
    which it waits for us to experience and explore.
  35. 02/14/2016 — Lake Crawford 11 HDR — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015Self-reflection leads to self-exploration,
    And self-examination,
    And self-realization,
    And self-discovery,
    And self-correction,
    And self-development,
    And personal growth.
    Seeing things as they are
    Non-judgmentally and compassionately
    Transforms things.
    If you want to change the world,
    See everything there exactly as it is,
    With eyes of compassion
    and without judgment,
    Starting with yourself.
  36. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 02/14/2016 — Smoky Moon — Clingman’s Dome Parking Lot, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, October 2004Several things rank as essential life tasks: Mindfulness, which implies compassion
    and detachment to the degree that is non-judgmental.
    Self-transparency and keeping good faith with oneself.
    Integrity in the sense of living in ways
    that are aligned with,
    and integral to,
    what is deepest, truest and best about us.
    The self-discipline necessary
    to do what is ours to do in each situation as it arises.
    Making the trade-offs
    that are required of us throughout our life,
    which implies saying no to ourselves
    and no to others when that is appropriate
    and called for by our circumstances.
    Living toward the center and away from the extremes—
    balancing,
    reconciling,
    integrating, the opposites,
    contradictions
    and polarities
    of our life,
    and bearing consciously the pain
    of maintaining the tension
    between/among dichotomies
    that can only be recognized, not reconciled.
    Making our peace with the way things are,
    which includes making our peace
    with the lack of peace in important areas of our life. I’m sure I’ll think of something more to add to the list,
    but if we cover these items,
    we’ll be just fine.
  37. 02/15/2016 — Black Bayou 16 HDR — Black Bayou National Lake Wildlife Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 2015President Obama lives in the service
    of what he considers to be the right thing to do.
    The Affordable Health Care Act,
    providing health care to millions of people is one example.
    His support of Gay Marriage is another.
    Republican members of Congress
    have attempted to repeal the Health Care Act over 50 times,
    and attempted to defund it many times as well. Republicans in congress,
    Republican governors,
    at least one Republican Chief Justice,
    and other Republican elected officials
    have opposed,
    and attempted to undermine
    and prevent gay marriages on a number of occasions. What is clearly the right thing to do on one level
    is clearly the wrong thing to do on another level.
    A photographic rule applies:
    The brighter the light,
    the darker the shadows.
    Bright sunshine casts deep shadows. Reasonable minds can look at any fact
    and interpret it in radically different ways.
    Is it the right thing to do,
    or the wrong thing to do?
    Who is to say?
    Whatever you think is right,
    someone is going to think is wrong.
    Who decides what is right, what is wrong? Jesus broke the Law
    and justified it on the grounds
    of knowing what he was doing.
    That meant at least two things: A) He felt that the human need and right
    to be helped superseded any law
    that might interfere with,
    or prevent, that help from being offered, and
    B) He was quite ready to pay the price
    of his civil,
    non-violent, Jesus was a conscientious objector
    willing to serve his conscience
    to death on the cross.
    Was he right, or was he wrong? There is never going to be 100%
    world-wide agreement
    on questions of right and wrong.
    Hitler thought he was right,
    and had followers who agreed with him,
    to the death.
    What does conscience know?
    Where does conscience come from?
    What is the origin of scruples,
    qualms,
    values,
    compunction
    and the moral sense?
    What is right?
    What is wrong?
    How do we know?
    Who is to say? Mindfulness leads the way.
    We have to be transparent to ourselves
    and aware of the origin
    and ground of our values.
    Who says that what we say is so?
    Where do we get our ideas of right and wrong?
    What makes us think we are right?
    That we know what we are doing?
    That we are being like Jesus,
    and not like Hitler?
  38. 02/16/2016 — Goodale 2015 39 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015Knowing what we are doing
    Means knowing when we are kidding ourselves
    About knowing what we are doing. It means knowing that we don’t know what we are doing
    A good portion of the time. It means knowing what we don’t want to know,
    Facing what we don’t want to face:
    The truth about the aloneness and vulnerability
    Of ourselves before the responsibility of our life. We need help with what is to be done.
    Two things make this a problem.
    We aren’t taught how
    to access the help that is “right there”
    “A very present help in time of trouble.”
    2. It isn’t the kind of help we want.
    We want what we have no business having.
    And want to know how to have it.
    We want help in having what we want. The joke is on us.
    Help with knowing what to do
    Is not the same help
    as help with having what we want.
    We can have the first, not the second.
    The question we have to answer is this:
    Do we have what it takes to know what to do
    When it means doing what we don’t want?
    How far do we live from
    “Thy will, not mine, be done”?
  39. 02/17/2016 — April Cascade — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, April 2004Your life has meaning
    When you do the things that make your heart sing. How long has it been?
    Has it been so long that you laugh at the idea of a singing heart? Start with what once made your heart sing.
    How far back do you have to go to find yourself lost
    In what you were doing?
    Begin there.
    Do what once was filled with meaning and see where it leads. The old Alchemical formula was
    “One book opens another.”
    Just so, one engaging activity
    leads to another.
    Your heart is dying to sing.
    Take it to the music.
  40. 02/17/2016 — Boulder Beach — Otter Point, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine, September 2004We have to dig our own gold.
    Or pan for it.
    It is our place to search out
    The treasure hard to find.
    No one can hand it to us,
    Much less tell us about it,
    Explaining it to us,
    Even in great detail,
    Outlining it for us,
    Defining it,
    Describing it,
    Quoting the saints,
    And the sacred texts,
    And the wise, old, masters
    Telling us to take their word for it,
    Perhaps threatening us with the Everlasting Fires of Hell
    If we don’t. No one knows the nature
    of the treasure
    we alone seek,
    and will know it
    when we find it. There are no shortcuts,
    Or easy routes,
    Or fast tracks to glory land.
    Joseph Campbell said it:
    “The treasure you seek
    Is in the depths of the cave you most don’t want to enter.”
    And we have to go there,
    against our will.
    Enter,
    and descend into the depths.
  41. 02/19/2016 — Sunset Reflection — Price Lake and Grandfather Mountain, Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, June 2006The Christian Church calls it “salvation.”
    But it is coercion. Always has been. The threat of hell and eternal agony.
    The promise of heaven and infinite glory.
    Taxing the flock
    With “free will offerings”
    And talk of “merit.”
    Making disciples of all nations.
    Dragging people where they are not ready to go.
    The end justifying the means.
    Concealing in the name of revealing.
    No questions allowed.
    Take it all on faith.
    Believe what you’re told.
    Do what they say.
    Betray your own soul
    by betting everything on it,
    And trust yourself to it,
    To show you the way.
  42. 02/20/2016 — Reelfoot Lake 34 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015Our life is our responsibility.
    We keep looking for divine intervention to make it easy,
    Or even possible,
    But we have the tools and have to learn to use them.
    The primary tool is mindfulness.
    Mindfulness initiates, implements, utilizes, the other tools:
    Awareness,
    intuition,
    instinct,
    compassion,
    understanding,
    imagination,
    creativity,
    resiliency,
    courage,
    self-discipline,
    ..
    All of the traits,
    characteristics,
    temperaments
    and values
    That make us human
    And make life livable. We come packed with all we need.
    We are a Swiss Army Knife of responses.
    And it is up to us to square up to the fact
    That it is up to us,
    And find the response
    appropriate to the occasion,
    On every occasion.
  43. Kings Mountain Farm 16 HDR Panorama — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss
    and don’t be afraid,
    and doors will open
    where you didn’t know
    there would be doors.” We hear that and think
    there is some kind of magic
    at work in the universe
    to assist us in the work
    to get what we want.
    We even say
    “The Universe will help you,”
    like the settlers who moved into the Dakotas
    were told by the church of their day,
    and told themselves,
    “Rain will follow the plow.”
    It didn’t.
    The Universe is completely uninvested in us. We hear “Follow your bliss,”
    and think that means, “Do what you want.” Campbell also said, talking about Abraham Maslow,
    “Maslow says that people live for five things:
    Survival,
    Security,
    Personal Relationships,
    Prestige,
    and Self Development.
    Yet, these are precisely not the values
    that a mythically inspired person lives for. A person who is really gripped by a dedication,
    by a zeal,
    will sacrifice all these things
    for the sake of his or her own passion.
    These five values are the values
    people live for who have nothing to live for.
    Nothing has seized,
    caught,
    or driven these people ‘spiritually mad.’
    These people aren’t worth talking to.
    These people are bores.” Your “bliss” will break your heart
    and eat your life alive.
    We “die to ourselves”
    and live in the service of our heart’s true passion,
    of our bliss,
    in a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way. That’s when the magic happens
    but, it is not that our way is served
    and we get what we want.
    The magic happens when we surrender
    our way and serve our heart’s true purpose.
    Then, we put ourselves in accord with our life,
    and we see things that were meaningless to us before. Then, there are doors where before there were no doors,
    and people to help us who were nowhere around
    because we could not see them,
    focused as we were on our wants,
    our fear,
    our lethargy. In the service of our own goals and dreams,
    desire, fear and lethargy
    jam the signals coming to us
    from all around us,
    and we cannot see
    or hear
    or understand
    what is available to us
    in all times and places. Once we step away
    from our idea for our life,
    die to ourselves,
    and live aligned with our heart’s true purpose,
    there it all is,
    open doors
    and helping hands.
    But,
    it comes with a price. Golgotha and the empty tomb
    are metaphors that are realities
    in the lives of all of those
    who know what I’m talking about.
    We all die to what we thought was life
    in order to live the life
    at the center of our heart.
    Death and resurrection,
    does not mean everyone
    at the end of time,
    but one person at a time.
  44. 02/21/2016 — Lake Katherine Panorama — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, December 12, 2015We aren’t here to “make something happen,”
    So much as to “do what needs us to do it.”
    To bring ourselves forth to meet the situation as it arises. We have to pay the bills, of course,
    But our place here is to meet the moment
    As it needs to be met
    As only we can meet it. This means we have to get to know ourselves. Compassionately.
    Non-judgmentally. This is who we are,
    and who we also are.
    These are our interests and our gifts.
    These are not.
    This is what is happening.
    This is what needs to happen.
    This is what needs to be done about it.
    This is where we fit in. How would we do it?
    We are to live in ways
    Appropriate to the occasion
    As only we can.
  45. 02/21/2016 — Green River Horseshoe 2007— Dead Horse Point State Park, Moab, Utah, September 2007The Bible is a treasure trove of myth and metaphor,
    Speaking from,
    and to,
    the heart of “the human condition.” If it could be understood and received as such,
    The world would be enriched overnight.
    The Servant Songs collected in the book bearing the name of Isaiah,
    Speak to us, of ourselves:
    “He was despised and rejected by others,
    A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief…
    Surely, he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows,
    Upon him was the chastisement we all deserved…
    By his wounds we are healed.” We know him, her, well.
    He, she, lives within us all,
    And enables us to put on our public face
    And stride into each day.
    But he, she, knows what we dare not remember,
    And carries in our behalf the woundedness
    Of the blows we have had to put behind. Our Suffering Servant serves us well,
    And by his, by her, leave,
    We live. Perhaps, if you give yourself time alone, and reflect,
    You will know of whom I speak,
    And show him, show her,
    the kindness of your gratitude
    And devotion.
  46. 02/22/2016 — Mirror Mirror 04 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 11, 2015Our life has been compared to a slippery slope and a razor’s edge.
    We are always one wrong move away from catastrophe,

And one right move away from having it made for now.
What’s it going to be?

There is a basketball adage, “One bad shot leads to more bad shots.”
And another, “Take care of the ball!”
And one more, “Let the game come to you,”
Which means “Wait for the door to open and walk through.”
Or, “Look for the opening and take the good shot.”

We try to create something that isn’t there,
Try to make something happen out of season,
Try to force our way into being,
Will our way along.
And all the while,
We are always one slight shift of attitude or perspective
From the best life has to offer,
in the time and place of our living.

  1. 02/23/2016 — Lake Crawford 12 HDR Panorama — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 13, 2015The hardest thing is settling
    for the life that is our life to live—
    The one with our name on it,
    The one that only we can live—
    And living it the way it needs to be lived.
    The hardest thing is settling ourselves into it,
    And doing right by it.
    We have other bigger,
    better,
    finer,
    faster
    lives in mind.
    This is the struggle that tells the tale.
  2. 02/23/2016 — Yosemite Falls 01 2006 — Yosemite National Park, California, April 2006We can always imagine a better place to be,
    than this place,
    A better life to live
    than this life. Thoreau said, “Shall we always study
    to obtain more,
    and not sometimes be content with less?”
    What is the nature of our discontent? I submit for your consideration
    That it may be rooted in the absence of roots.
    We belong to nothing,
    Are owned by nothing,
    Nothing serves as the overriding
    claim upon our service. We are adrift upon an empty sea
    And wander aimlessly about.
    One port is as good as another,
    And a better one is only an island or two away. We live endlessly looking for somewhere to be,
    Hoping to be claimed by some reckless passion
    Before we die.
    Yet, we withhold ourselves from would-be passions,
    Wanting to be certain that this is the One,
    And that there isn’t a better one waiting at the next port-of-call
    As though we won’t always imagine a better place to be,
    A better life to live.
  3. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 02/24/2016 — December Orchard 06 — Springs Farms, Lake Haigler Access, Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina, December 12, 2015There were two living generations before me,
    My grandparents’ generation and my parents’ generation,
    And their best advice to me was along the lines of,
    “Keep your nose clean and to the grindstone.
    Believe what you are told and do what we say.
    Don’t ask any questions we can’t answer,
    And for God’s sake, Jimmy, stop looking out the window!” Nothing from any of them
    About the importance of mindfulness.
    They never said
    “Be aware of everything.
    Your awareness will teach you all you need to know.
    Always ask the questions that beg to be asked,
    And say the things that cry out to be said.
    Develop a love for contradictions,
    And struggle to reconcile what can be reconciled,
    And to bear consciously and graciously the pain
    Of opposites that must remain poles apart.
    Be open to your experience
    And let it lead you to the things you love,
    And away from the things you do not love.
    Trust your judgment in all cases great and small,
    And when it becomes apparent that you made a bad call,
    Let that judgment lead you to make amends
    And to do better next time.
    Don’t look for answers,
    But for experiences that force reflection,
    And lead to new realizations.
    You are on your own with your life,
    But you have all you need
    To find your way into the company of those
    Who are also figuring out who they are and what to do,
    And can help by sharing with you what they know.
    A large number of that company will be dead,
    But their books will illumine their path,
    And encourage you in your own path.
    When your courage falters,
    And your hope fades,
    Be still and listen to your heart and your stomach.
    They will always lead the way.” It would have helped if they had been a little bit awake.
    They didn’t know what to do with me,
    But that is ridiculous!
    I came from them!
    They couldn’t help me
    Because they had turned their backs on themselves.
  4. 02/24/2016 — Reelfoot Lake 35 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015Be mindful of your inner dialogues.
    Everything good is already stirring around in there.
    You don’t have to think anything up.
    Where do you think ideas come from?
    We don’t think them up.
    They seize us!
    Grab us by the neck!
    Toss us into the air!
    Hurl us into action!
    We have to put ourselves in the place of being seized more often.
    By paying attention to what is stirring within. Our inner dialogues are the source of creativity and life.
    Vitality, meaning, purpose, hope, guidance, direction…
    It’s all there
    Whispers and inklings of wonder
    Welling up from our soul.
    Our place is to wait, and watch,
    And notice when a word, a phrase, a train of thought,
    Catches our eye in a special kind of way
    Sparks a little energy in us
    Flips our “Yes!” switch—
    And look closer,
    Seeing where it leads.
    Pay attention to your internal dialogue,
    Listening for something that says, “Follow me!”
    And tag along.
  5. 02/25/2016 — Dry Falls — Nantahala National Forest, Highlands, North Carolina, April 2005The “Archetypal Intention” (Stevens) is for the future to be the past
    For how it has been done to be how it is to be done.
    What worked in the past
    (The way to be a man or a woman, for instance,
    Or a father or a mother, etc.)
    Has been stored in our genes
    Via natural selection,
    In that those who did it “right”
    Were more likely to pass along their characteristics,
    Their way of doing “it,”
    Than those who did it wrong,
    So that, by now, “the way to be human beings”
    Is as much apart of us
    As the way to be a Robin or a Lion or a Humpback Whale
    Is a part of those particular manifestations of life. Except, but, only.
    We have reached a point in our evolutionary development
    Where the future must be like no past ever lived.
    “Fight Or Flight” has to give way to negotiated,
    And mutually agreeable,
    Peaceful solutions to armed conflict and refugee resettlement.
    ad infinitum. We don’t have an archetype for that.
    WE are the archetype for that.
    We have to find our way into a future that is a break from the past,
    Using our inherited capacity
    For imagination, creativity, transcendence and transformation.
    Call it the Archetype for A Brave New World.
  6. 02/25/2016 — Kings Mountain Farm 18 B&W — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015The Law of Compensation is realized in each generation
    We live to be who our parents were not.
    Whatever the excesses and deficiencies were in the parents,
    They are likely to be the opposite in their children.
    This doesn’t mean Sally cannot be an introvert like her mother was.
    It means Sally will not be her mother in other ways. The ways in which we are not our parents’ children
    Are the ways in which our parents most needed to be themselves,
    And weren’t,
    Because the way wasn’t clear for some reason,
    Perhaps because they wouldn’t allow themselves the privilege
    And they resented it (or applauded) when it bubbled up in their offspring. At any rate, it is an interesting reflection
    Of unconscious processes at work
    In the development of family systems,
    And one of the things revealing
    That there is more to all of us than meets the eye.
  7. 02/26/2016 — Glade Creek Mill — Babcock State Park, Clifftop, West Virginia, October 2007Consciousness is the most unnatural thing nature ever has done.
    Consciousness can imagine a world of justice and peace—
    Unlike anything the natural world is capable of producing.
    Yet, consciousness’ shortcoming
    Is that it cannot be conscious of what it is not conscious of—
    And there is more of everything than meets the eye. The Unconscious and the genome, and their relationship—
    Mind and consciousness, and their relationship—
    The numen, instinct and intuition, and their relationship… All beyond the purview of thinking, reasoning, beings.
    What we can’t make out, we make up. May we, at least, be mindful of that,
    And hold it in our awareness,
    And have the courage to know that we don’t know,
    And cannot know what we don’t know,
    And make our peace with that,
    Enjoying what is to be enjoyed,
    Grieving what is to be grieved,
    And seeking out good company as we are able,
    With whom to share the wonder of being human.
  8. 02/27/2016 — Mirror Mirror 03 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015One idea leads to another.
    If you are never curious,
    Never playful,
    Never imaginative,
    Never wondering,
    Never inquisitive,
    Never adventurous,
    Never exploring,
    Never inventive,
    Never looking,
    Never examining,
    Never reflecting,
    Always afraid to question anything,
    Guess how many ideas you will have.
  9. 02/28/2016 — Lake Crawford 13 HDR — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 13, 2015Fascism,
    Racism,
    Anti-Semitism,
    Islamophobia,
    Sexism,
    Homophobia,
    Bigotry,
    ..
    The list is long
    Lay inert in German hearts waiting to be ignited
    By the rhetoric of Hitler and the ruthlessness,
    Willful, prideful, ignorance of the Nazis
    Waiting to be encouraged, permitted, given excuse and reason to be. And Lie even yet in the hearts of good people everywhere,
    Waiting to be inflamed by the inciting oratory of those
    Living in the far extreme of hatred and fear. In every age comes the question to be answered by the age:
    Will you live mindfully or mindlessly?
    Each age answers by what it condones and what it condemns.
  10. 02/29/2016 — Beaver Pond — Bass Lake, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, NC, June 2009There is our life and what to do with it,
    In all of the times and places of our living,
    Through all of the stages of our development.
    I recommend listening to
    what it has to say
    In order to determine how it needs to be lived,
    And aligning ourselves with it. Our life is alive in its own right,
    With a life of its own.
    We are here to assist it
    In its own becoming
    As chance and circumstance allow. What is our life asking of us?
    How might we go about
    Placing ourselves in accord
    with what it has in mind
    for us today?
    Given the givens that are ours to work with?
    Here we are.
    Now what?
  11. 02/29/2016 — Bethany Church 02 Panorama — Bethany ARPC, Clover, South Carolina, December 13, 2015Our work is to live truthfully.
    This doesn’t mean “telling the truth.”
    It means living in ways that incarnate the truth of who we are.
    It means living in ways that are aligned with the central drift of heart and soul.
    It means living in ways that express, exhibit, reveal and make plain
    The gifts, character, values at the core of the center of ourselves.
    It means doing things that are “in character,”
    And not doing things that are “out of character.”
    It means living in accord with the life that is our life to live
    The life that only we can live
    The life that needs us to live it. We were born to be who we are.
    That is our purpose and our ultimate good.
    And it doesn’t matter if it does no good.
    Our Good Work is to be who we are.
    It doesn’t have to do big things,
    Achieve great ends,
    Save the world,
    Transform the cosmos. The privilege of being who we are
    Is the highest good.
    If we live our whole life long being who we are,
    And nobody notices or cares,
    Nothing changes,
    And we make no difference at all in the way life is lived about us,
    We still got to be who we are!
    We still got to live our life!
    We did not let anything stop us from completing the Good Work!
    May that be said of us all!
  12. 03/01/2016 — Reelfoot Lake 36 HDR— Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015Heavy smokers dying of emphysema are shocked
    At the unfairness of being unable to smoke with impunity,
    “Why can’t we be flip and casual with life,
    And do with it as we please,
    Without implication, consequence or outcome?” Society mavens know the rules of the game they have mastered,
    And spend their lives looking for a party to bless
    Or a festive occasion in which to shine with resplendent glory,
    And collect clippings to remind them of that time
    When everyone knew their name.
    Power brokers ride high on the backs of their workers
    And the money of their investors,
    Enjoy the gratification of owning people
    And being somebody. The unwashed masses and huddled poor
    Trudge through their days
    Looking for crumbs and coins and other lucky breaks,
    Without prospects or hope
    Beyond another day without prospects or hope. They all stand at the end of their days
    Undone by the quickness of its arrival
    Shocked that it has come down to this,
    Thinking there would be more to it.
    How did they miss the joyful wisdom of knowing
    “It’s a good day to die”?
  13. 03/01/2016 — Lenten Rose 2016 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, February 28, 2016What is your present source of deepest joy?
    How much time, in a week, say,
    do you spend present with the source of your deepest joy?
    If you do not currently have a source of deep joy in your life,
    It is a concern, but not a problem.
    What as been a source of deep joy in your life?
    How much time did you spend with it? What is your present source of greatest conflict?
    What are the different sides pulling against each other and against you?
    Where do you find relief from the conflict? What is your present source of peace, comfort and consolation? Where in your life do you find meaning, purpose, hope and satisfaction? Reflect on these things. Then, reflect on your reflections.
  14. 03/02/2016 — Kings Mountain Farm 23 HDR B&W — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015The search for the life that is our life to live
    The life that needs us to live it
    The life that no one but us can live
    Is the search for what we love about our life. Too many of us love the wrong things too much
    To be able to love anything about our life.
    Our life isn’t about any of those things.
    Wealth, fame, attention, glory…
    We want a life we can show off,
    Not a life we can love. With no one to see us,
    Admire us,
    Applaud us,
    Adore us,
    Worship us,
    Envy us,
    We would have no reason to live.
    We live looking for a life someone else can love. We’ll never find our life
    Until we look for one we can love,
    Even if no one else ever does.
    How would you live your life
    If there were no one else
    To see, or know, or care?
  15. 03/02/2016 — Green River Canyon 2007 01 — Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah, September 2007We have to make room for one another.
    It is easy enough to find something
    we don’t like about every one of us.
    Probably, most of us can find as much
    about ourselves that we don’t like.
    Who are we to be excluding anybody?
    Telling anyone they aren’t welcome?
    Demanding that anyone
    “go back where they came from”? It isn’t like we have been here forever.
    Every one of us came from somewhere else.
    How is it that we get to tell someone else to leave
    When someone else could be asking us to leave?
    What’s with this, “I don’t like you,
    so you’ll have to leave” business?
    Particularly when there is as much
    about us and our kind that we don’t like
    As there is about you and your kind.
    We have to commit ourselves to the work
    of making room for one another,
    And give ourselves to it every day for the rest of our life.
    Negotiation and compromise, Kid.
    Negotiation and compromise.
    The future of civilization depends on it.
  16. 03/03/2016 — Peto Lake Rainbow — Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies, Alberta, September 2005Your future is more important than your past.
    Your capacity for good is more important
    than your propensity for stupid.
    You are either on your side,
    Or you are not.
    Whose side are you on?
    That’s the question we have to get right. We have to believe in ourselves
    In spite of the lack of corroborating evidence
    And regardless of the abundance
    of grounds to condemn
    and abandon. All of the hero’s journeys
    Are about the long quest
    past good reasons to quit
    To the gold at the heart of the hero. Jesus believed in Jesus when no one else did.
    That’s what set Jesus apart.
    The alchemists believed they could make gold
    Out of base metal.
    That’s the work we are all engaged in.
    The gold is there,
    Waiting for those who believe it is so,
    And take up the work of proving themselves right.
  17. 03/04/2016 — Campbell’s Nursery 03 — Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, Charlotte, NC, March 3, 2016If you are going to be in love
    with anything,
    be in love with your life.
    Too many of us are walking around
    in lives we do not love.
    If our life were a person,
    It would have divorced us years ago.
    It’s an escort accompanying us through our days
    To give us the appearance of being alive,
    But we both know it’s a sham,
    And are waiting out the end
    For the lack of anything better to do. It never occurs to us to find a life we love,
    Or, if it does, we dismiss the idea as wild and radical,
    And too much trouble at this point in the process.
    But the truth is everything depends on our finding a life we love
    And living it. Yet, we are afraid there is no life for us,
    That we missed our chance way back when,
    Or never had one,
    And we have given up all hope in the matter,
    Resigning ourselves to a regimen that feeds our bodies
    But not our souls
    All the way to the end of the line. While our life lives out its days locked away
    Behind a door we refuse to open
    For fear there won’t be anything there.
  18. 03/04/2016 — Pike’s Nursery 01 — The Koi Pond, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016We are united across ages and cultures
    By the experience of being alive.
    The experience of war creates a family with members in all centuries.
    As does the experience of child birth,
    Of parenthood,
    Of old age, decrepitude and death.
    Of grief, loss, sadness and sorrow,
    Of joy, celebration, awe and wonder. At the level of life experience we are one with all humanity.
    Division enters the picture with ideology.
    With the quest for power and domination.
    Ideology fosters military conquest
    Which expands the reach of ideology,
    And the two form a partnership of division and destruction.
    We need to stop talking about what we believe,
    And start talking about what we know
    Because we have experienced its truth in our life.
    Stop killing people because they are evil and wrong,
    And start honoring people because they are as we are
    At the level of life experience.
  19. 03/05/2016 — Pike’s Nursery 02— Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016Stop being locked in place by fear and desire.
    You are your most reliable resource
    For getting you out of situations you get yourself into. Mindfulness leads the way.
    Stop insisting on certain futures,
    And open yourself to the full reality of what is happening
    And what needs to happen in response. Be mindfully, compassionately, non-judgmentally aware
    Of your internal response to the full reality of your situation.
    Hold yourself gently, tenderly, kindly, in your awareness.
    Be fully aware of you.
    What are you refusing to take into account?
    Failing to consider?
    Be fully aware of you
    Being fully aware of the reality of your situation. Practice holding yourself in your awareness.
    Allow mindful, compassionate, non-judgmental awareness
    To bring you to the point of on-going self-transparency
    (Self-consciousness without the judgmental component).
    You will be ready for anything.
  20. 03/06/2016 — Campbell’s Nursery 01— Charlotte, NC, March 3, 2016You can’t fake spontaneity.
    Spontaneity is completely truthful.
    A hiccup is an act whose time has come.
    So is a sneeze.
    The trick is to be spontaneously appropriate to the occasion.
    A bit of Mary Poppins wisdom applies here:
    “Anything can happen if you let it.” We are to live so as to be
    Spontaneously appropriate to every occasion
    To each situation
    As it arises.
    This means being so mindfully
    (compassionately, non-judgmentally)
    attuned to each occasion/situation
    So completely aware of what is happening
    And what needs to happen
    That we see what needs to be done and do it
    Without thinking about it. No planning,
    plotting,
    scheming,
    conniving,
    calculating,
    manipulating,
    designing,
    crafting,
    exploiting,
    capitalizing
    or cashing in. Only living in the moment
    by being true to ourselves and the moment.
    Being who we are
    and what the moment needs of us
    in every moment.
    We cannot fake spontaneity, We can practice it.
    Until it becomes spontaneous. We are to live to be spontaneously and appropriately
    Responsive to each occasion/situation as it arises.
    Just like Mary Poppins.
    And Jesus of Nazareth.
  21. 03/07/2016 — Through the Trees 02 — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 3, 2015We are responsible for finding our own life and living it
    And we cannot do it alone.
    It takes a good enough environment all the way along the way.
    Everything depends upon the context and circumstances of our life.
    The world has to receive us well.
    Or, well enough.
    For us to have a chance.
    Too many of us plop out of the womb
    With no loving arms to welcome us
    And no one to nurture and nourish us,
    Soften the impact of the transition,
    And help us find what we need to do what is ours to do.
    We are on our own from the start,
    Too concerned with surviving
    To have a chance at thriving. Those who can, must.
    Jesus did,
    And the Buddha.
    The list is long of those who took what they had
    And made it work.
    Who found their life and lived it,
    With what help there was at hand.
    We all have the opportunity
    To do what can be done
    With the resources available to us.
    Life reaching for life.
  22. 03/07/2016 — Indian Land Sunrise 01— Indian Land, South Carolina, March 7, 2016You can set the time for going to bed,
    But not for going to sleep.
    You can decide what you will do to pay the bills,
    But not what it will take to feed your soul. The important things are out of our hands.
    In whose hands are WE is the question?
    Whom do we trust with the deep matters of life and being?
    There is much that we are unconscious of
    And must rely on
    To find our way to meaning, purpose and value. The Inner World is the source of vitality and direction.
    Why we dismiss it and grant it no place in our life
    Can only be explained in terms of abject,
    prideful,
    arrogant,
    willful,
  23. 03/08/2016 — Pike Nursery 07 — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016The way to make really good soup
    Is to make a lot of bad soup mindfully.
    Mistakes are the price of competence.
    No one ever gained competence by watching the master do it.
    Competence comes from doing it
    Mindfully aware of what we are doing,
    And unafraid of making mistakes.
    The way the master does it is just the way the master does it,
    And to do it exactly that way
    Is to lose the grace, beauty and wonder
    Of all the ways innovation,
    creativity,
    imagination,
    invention
    and playfulness
    could open before us. The disciples must be like the master
    In following no master,
    And laughing their way to enlightenment.
    Living to do everything by the book
    And precisely right
    All the way
    Takes the life out of living
    And the joy out of being alive.
  24. 03/08/2016 — Goodale 2015 40 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015″One thing I can tell you is you got to be free!”
    John Lennon was right about a lot of things.
    This is at the top of that list. But freedom is betrayed and wasted
    If it is not spent entirely in the service of self-determination.
    We are free to be who we are. If we aren’t interested in pursuing the life that is ours to live
    And living it,
    We may as well be enslaved to some ruler’s dictates,
    Or shackled in some dark dungeon
    For all the good our “freedom” is doing us. The freedom to do as we please
    Is just another form of bondage
    To our own fears and desires
    And offers no hope or meaning
    In our frenzied quest for entertaining pleasures.
  25. 03/09/2016 — Campbell’s Nursery 07 — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016We are responsible for separating ourselves
    enough from the noise of life
    To engage the silence necessary
    for awareness and reflection to occur
    In order to find the center—
    Eliot’s “still point of the turning world”—
    And live out of that foundation,
    Letting our life fall into place around it. Knowing what is central to us, for us,
    Is the knowing that only we can know.
    No one can tell us what that is.
    We find it, know it, for ourselves.
    We keep waiting for someone to tell us
    What is ours to do.
  26. 03/09/2016 — Campbell’s Nursery 05 — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016The Christian church talks about worship
    as though worship can be scripted, planned.
    Nothing could be further from the truth. Worship is the spontaneous response of the worshiper
    To an encounter with the Numen within or without.
    You can have prayers of intercession,
    confession,
    praise,
    thanksgiving
    and petition,
    three hymns,
    a sermon,
    an anthem
    children’s handbells,
    and an offering but.
    All of it together doesn’t
    equal the impact of a lone goose
    or a flock,
    winging their way through a cold morning fog
    to an undisclosed destination,
    as they have done for ages past counting,
    and we stand bowed by tears of wonder
    for no apparent reason.
    You can’t package that,
    or design it,
    or turn it over to some team to produce,
    once on Wednesday and three times on Sunday,
    every week of the year.
  27. 03/10/2016 — Pike’s Nursery 05 — The Koi Pond, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016Everything goes on the table.
    All of the facts that make up our life
    And how we feel about them—which is another set of facts.
    Then we consider the table. This is the way things are
    and this is the way we feel about it.
    Now, what needs to be done about it?
    What needs to happen in light of every other thing? It may take a while, but.
    There is no more important task on the entire list of tasks
    (Which is, by the way, also on the table).
    In light of everything, what needs to happen? What we want to happen is just another fact on the table,
    And, “Just ’cause we want it doesn’t mean it (needs to be) so.” Start looking at your life as a collection of facts
    That needs to be prioritized
    From the standpoint of a perspective
    That takes all the facts into account,
    Even itself.
  28. And get to work.
  29. Used in Short Talks on Contradiction, etc., 03/11/2016 — Trout Lily 2016 01— Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 10, 2016Before consciousness, there were no dichotomies.
    No contradictions.
    No polarities.
    No opposites.
    There was only the way things were. Planets crashed into planets.
    Volcanoes erupted,
    Mountain ranges appeared and disappeared,
    Species’ appeared and disappeared…
    No one cried, rejoiced, lamented, celebrated.
    There was neither bad nor good,
    Right nor wrong.
    Then consciousness appeared
    With its obvious evolutionary advantages,
    And categories were created,
    Changing everything. But they weren’t there before we were.
    We made it all up,
    Distinctions,
    Preferences,
    Ideals,
    Ideologies,
    And said God did it. The arbitrary became absolute just like that.
  30. 03/11/2016 — Indian Land Sunrise 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, March 7, 2016Mindfulness is a full-time practice. Paying attention to the moment,
    Compassionately and non-judgmentally,
    Means being aware of what is happening within
    And how we are reacting to it,
    While being aware of what is happening
    in our external environment
    And how we are reacting to that.
    While being aware of what needs to happen,
    And what gifts we have that may be able to meet that need. This is far removed from having an agenda
    That we are seeking to impose upon our world.
    Or from seeing situations as things to exploit to our advantage.
    Or from being afraid of everything
    and how it might work to our disadvantage. Mindfulness engaged in with
    non-judgmental compassion
    Is far removed from how we live our life,
    And from how life is lived around us.
    Take up the practice and transform your world.
  31. 03/12/2016 — Crocus 2016 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, March 11, 2016Think of Karma as momentum. We live a certain way over a period of time,
    And build up momentum,
    Creating an environment that supports that momentum,
    That way of living,
    And producing a complex of interrelated
    Props, presumptions and expectations
    Which fuels the process that sustains our way with life,
    And keeps alternative possibilities from being entertained or explored. Momentum is the tendency of a body in motion to remain in motion,
    And of a body at rest to remain at rest.
    That’s karma for you.
    Think of the Tea Party and Donald Trump.
    Bad Karma.
    Think of the Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu.
    Good Karma.
    Think of you.
    While I think of me.
  32. 03/13/2016 — Pike Nursery 04 — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016When something comes, something has to go.
    When something goes, something has to come.
    This is the Law of Compensation at work in our life. The challenge for us is to be conscious of the coming and going,
    And to accommodate ourselves to the rearrangement of our life
    To let come what’s coming
    And to let go what’s going.
    This is called putting ourselves in accord with our life. This is the Task of Life
    Through all of the stages of life.
    Other people will tell you it is something else,
    But, it is this.
    Adjustment and accommodation, Kid.
    Adjustment and accommodation.
  33. 03/14/2016 — Trout Lily 2016 05 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 12, 2016We have to call time out from time to time
    To reflect, recollect, regroup, recover and reorient ourselves. Too many people crashing my life with their agendas
    And timetables does me in.
    I have to escape, breathe, and remember who I am, what I’m about,
    And find my way back to the path with my name on it. We ebb and flow on the path like the tides on the sea.
    It is not one constant “Hallelujah, Now We Have It!” victory march.
    There is a lot of breathing, remembering and finding the thread
    (That would be Ariadne’s Thread)
    Again, along the way.
  34. 03/14/2016 — Practice 01 — Playing with Crocuses Using layer masking in Photoshop to create a montage of crocuses, Indian Land, SC, March 14, 2016Our life is our responsibility.
    No one can live it for us,
    Or tell us how to live it.
    And we pay a price to live it as it needs to be lived. Fathers and mothers pay a price to be the right kind of father and mother.
    The same thing holds true for all the roles we play.
    It isn’t easy often,
    Or fun often,
    But it is always necessary that we live it the way it needs to be lived
    That we do it (our life) the way it needs to be done. We have to monitor our frustration level,
    And our dejection level,
    And our fatigue level,
    And all the other levels,
    And keep an eye on our fluctuating state of being
    To avoid “flying off the handle,”
    And knee-jerk-reacting our way through whatever
    Has pushed our buttons one time too many. There is a life that needs us to live it
    Past all that would keep us from living it.
    Our commitment to the life that is ours to live
    Brings us back to the center of what is important,
    And grounds us in the work that is ours to do,
    Again and again.
  35. 03/15/2016 — Goodale 2015 41 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015We each have to live our own life,
    Work our side of the street,
    Do it the way we determine it needs to be done.
    And the rest of us have to grant each of us
    The freedom to find our life and live it.
    We have to be accountable to the rest of us,
    And to ourselves
    We have to live in good faith with one another,
    And with ourselves.
    We have to be responsible for doing the work that needs us to do it. And if we are not?
    Everyone suffers.
    Our obligation to each other is to find our life and live it
    And to assist each other in that endeavor.
    To refuse to do it is anathema, an obscenity, a disgrace
    Beyond measure.
    When we abandon our destiny,
    We give up all hope,
    And drift alone through a Void of our own making So.
    When we feel like our life isn’t worth it,
    That our work isn’t working,
    That it is too hard,
    Or too unimportant,
    Or too useless to continue,
    We have to see that as another manifestation of the Cyclops
    Standing in our path,
    And get up and do the thing that needs us to do it.
    This is the heroic part of the Hero’s Journey,
    And is a recurring experience along the way.
  36. 03/15/2016 — Campbell’s Nursery 04 — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016We are the Cyclops standing in our path
    Whom we have to slay,
    Again and again,
    On our way to the treasure. And, we are the Phoenix,
    Rising from our own ashes,
    Again and again,
    On the journey to the treasure. And, we are the treasure
    Hidden among a myriad
    Of dreams,
    agendas,
    goals,
    hopes,
    plans,
    aspirations,
    ambitions,
    desires,
    fears,
    fantasies,
    opportunities,
    possibilities,
    ideas,
    objectives,
    aims,
    intentions,
    purposes,
    .. We are,
    At once,
    Our best hope,
    And our worst enemy.
    How we work things out
    Tells the tale.
  37. 03/16/2016 — Woodlands Spring Panorama 01 — Indian Land, South Carolina, March 15, 2016We are, at once, the Sovereign Lord of our life
    And its Liege Servant,
    Sworn to loyalty and devotion everlasting. We say what our life is and what it is not.
    And we are not free to say just anything
    To be flip and casual,
    Irreverent or unfaithful. Our relationship with our life
    Is to be the Holiest of Holies,
    Unrivaled and without parallel
    In the sphere of human experience.
    It is up to us
    To see that it is so.
  38. 03/17/2016 — Trout Lily 2016 06 C — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC, March 12, 2016Perspective shifts are the way to the truth and the life.
    We see things one way
    And then, something happens,
    And we see things another way.
    “I once was lost/But now am Found/Was blind/But now I see.” Nothing changes but the way we see things,
    And that changes everything. If you want to do something about the way things are,
    See your seeing. Nothing has the raw power of a perspective
    That takes itself into account.
  39. 03/17/2016 — Gethsemane Gardens & Nursery Poster — Greensboro, NC, March 17, 2016We have to mine our experience
    For the gold
    For the “treasure hard to find”
    Aware of the ease with which we
    Discount, discard, dismiss
    Our experiences, our gifts, our life
    Thinking nothing good can come of any of it. That’s what they said of Nazareth,
    And what the Nazarene warned against
    With his words about the stone the builders reject,
    And the pearl of great price. Our experiences, our gifts, and our life
    Are where the treasure is to be found.
    Joseph Campbell said
    It is our reflection on our experience
    That leads to new realizations.
    We find the gold by sifting through our experience,
    By experiencing our experience in light of ALL of our experience. We have to do the work of looking
    If we hope to be able to see.
  40. 03/18/2016 — Carolina Jasmine 03 — Indian Land, South Carolina, March 17, 2016Really good advice abounds,
    But,
    The value of any advice lies in the meaning
    It’s hearers ascribe to it. Interpretation and application are everything.
    The current best advice I have ever heard
    Comes from the Old Testament prophet Micah:
    “Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God.” I think we all have different Gods
    That our highest value
    and the way in which we devote ourselves to it
    Are different for each of us.
    The idea that God could be
    homogenized,
    pasteurized,
    distilled,
    and refined
    into some Book of Doctrine’s definition
    is the height of blasphemy and sacrilege. “The Spirit is like the wind that blows where it will.”
    “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” We are all responsible for walking humbly with our God
    and being eternally faithful to the God that is God
    by doing justice and loving kindness.
    because that is as close to God
    as even God can be.
  41. 03/19/2016 — Lake Crawford 13 HDR — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 13, 2015The cumulative weight of the life we have lived
    Is readily apparent in the life we are living. Ben Howland, men’s basketball head coach at Mississippi State, said,
    “One bad shot leads to more bad shots.”
    That’s karma for you.
    Our karma is good or bad,
    with us or against us,
    to the exact degree
    that we are on the side of our destiny,
    or working the other side of the street. Our karma shifts from bad to good
    as we take up the practice
    of aligning ourselves with our destiny
    by putting ourselves
    in accord with the life that is our life to live. We do that by applying ourselves to the process of:
    Introspection
    Reflection
    Connection
    Realization
    Implementation
    Repeated ad infinitum throughout the time left for living. The alternative is to keep taking bad shots.
  42. 03/19/2016 — Robert Frost’s line
    “Good fences make good neighbors,”
    Is an appropriation of the Old Testament commandment
    (One that didn’t make the Top Ten,
    But should have been Number One):
    “Thou Shalt Not Remove Thy Neighbor’s Landmark!”
    Which applies to all varieties of boundaries
    And to all varieties of people. It is another of the ideas that we have discarded,
    dismissed, The concept of a “good fence” is wasted on us.
    We don’t have any fences,
    and don’t know how to begin constructing them. We don’t know where we stop and our neighbor starts,
    and allow everyone to know our business,
    or let them tell us what our business should and shouldn’t be.
    It’s easier to go with the flow,
    Never mind that dead fish float with the current,
    and live fish swim against it. We have to find our boundaries,
    recover our landmarks,
    erect our fences,
    and build them solid and strong.
    We have to know what is good for us and what is not,
    what is right for us and what is not,
    what our work is and what it is not,
    what our side of the street is and what it is not,
    what our business is and what it is not,
    where we belong and where we do not,
    who we are and who we are not,
    and honor our boundaries
    and demand that they be honored
    by those who call themselves our neighbors,
    or friends and family.
  43. 03/19/2016 — Rural Route — York County, South Carolina, March 7, 2016Mine is the Hermeneutic Task,
    Seeing and saying and being Truth.
    The word comes from Hermes (Mercury),
    The Messenger of the Gods,
    the God of Interpretation,
    Meaning,
    Understanding,
    Right Seeing,
    Right Saying,
    Right Being. It all begins with,
    And hinges upon,
    Being transparent to oneself.
    It is not easy.
    I’ve never had a motive I fully understood,
    and the more you know about anything,
    the more you realize you don’t begin to know
    all there is to know about it. So knowing means that you know you don’t know,
    and will never get to the bottom of any of it,
    but must press on
    to discover what can be discovered
    in the time left for living. Now, that’s a job worth having!
    Knowing that you will never run out of work to do!
    I’m set for life!
    Beyond life!
    Forever!
    And there is not a moment to be wasted
    in the work to see, say and be Truth,
    the Whole Truth,
    and Nothing But The Truth—
    the work of being consciously human.
  44. Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion 03/20/2016 — Goodale 2016 42 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2016Tell me now—
    Is the moon a white marble floating
    On a black velvet sea,
    Or not?
    What is the truth, here?
    Is it or isn’t it?
    Yes or no?
    Right or wrong? A culture that values
    “The facts, just the facts, ma’am,”
    Is hard pressed to find a place
    For feelings and metaphors. If it isn’t factual,
    It can’t be true.
    Even where religion reigns,
    Everything is “taken on faith”
    To be factual no matter how far removed
    From the laws of physics, logic and reason. To suggest that the ground of religion
    is metaphor and imagination
    is to commit the heresy of heresies,
    and to keep company with Satan himself,
    who is, of course, quite factual,
    actual,
    tangible and, hence, Well.
    Is the moon a white marble
    Floating on a black velvet sea,
    Or not?
  45. 03/21/2016 — Campbell’s Nursery 06 — Charlotte, North Carolina, March 3, 2016What would you suffer any hardship to do? That.
  46. 03/18/2016 — Peach Orchard Spring 02 — Panorama Springs Farms Orchards, Fort Mill, South Carolina, March 21, 2016We have to come to terms again and again
    with what we have done
    and what has been done to us. It has to be done again and again
    because it keeps coming around.
    Something reminds us and we remember
    because “the past is never past,”
    nor ever completely forgotten. Corporate prayers of confession
    and declarations of pardon do not suffice,
    for the ritual is the one we must carry out on our own
    each time the time comes around,
    saying to ourselves,
    “This is what I have done,
    and what has been done to me.
    I forgive us all!” The last line is the clincher. All the talk about God forgiving
    and Christ forgiving,
    misses the mark.
    I cannot be forgiven until I forgive me.
    And I cannot live with what has been done to me
    until I forgive those who did it. I cannot begin to come to terms with any of it
    until I carry out the requisite action from the heart—
    And I have to do it again and again,
    Because its time comes around again and again. The anguish,
    the agony,
    require repeated recognition,
    acknowledgement,
    and the words of forgiveness and grace.
    For as many times as there are times. And there are many.
  47. 03/22/2016 — Carolina Jasmine 08 — Indian Land, South Carolina, March 17, 2016We can do what is hard,
    Or we can do it the hard way.
    We seek smooth and easy,
    Soft and easy,
    Quick and easy. All leading to the hard way. The important things are all difficult.
    It is the difficulty that brings us forth. Joseph Campbell reminds us:
    “It took the Cyclops to bring out the hero in Ulysses.”
    Trials and ordeals, Kid. Trials and ordeals. The path to the Land of Promise,
    and the Treasure Hard to Find,
    winds through the heart of Gethsemane
    and across the face of Golgotha. “What a slippery slope this is!”
    “Like the Razor’s Edge!”
    Yet, opt for smooth and easy
    At your peril.
  48. 03/22/2016 — Lagoon’s End B&W — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, South Carolina, December 6, 2014
    Basketball players have to know
    the spot on the floor that is their spot—
    the place where they have
    the most confidence in putting up their shot. The entire court belongs to Steph Curry.
    He got range!
    Some people are that way.
    The rest of us have to be mindful
    of where our place on the floor is—
    of where we belong,
    And where we have no business being
    anywhere else. We have to know what is ours to do,
    And what is ours to leave for someone else.
    When and where would we say “Gimme the BALL!”
    And be right about it?
    What is our spot, our shot? Mexican cornbread is my spot.
    My shot.
    And pimento cheese.
    Steph Curry has nothing on me there.
    Where do you shine?
  49. 03/23/2016 — Indian Land Sunrise 03 Panorama Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 7, 2016Our life is a dialogue,
    a collaboration,
    between our brain’s left and right hemispheres.
    Right is feeling.
    Left is thinking.
    It takes the unique partnership of both
    to make it through the maze
    Of choices,
    possibilities,
    opportunities,
    responsibilities,
    values,
    limitations,
    aspirations, etc.
    that make up our life each day. We have to call meetings of the minds throughout the day.
    Our feeling mind must commune with our thinking mind,
    And vice versa.
    Look at the world.
    It’s a mess because our minds aren’t talking.
    They are at war. The Middle East and Africa feel it and do it.
    The US, Russia and parts of Europe think it and make it happen.
    It’s a crazy way to run a world.
    Or a life. Get your thinking and your feeling talking to each other.
    Throughout each day.
    Form the partnership.
    Change the game.
  50. 03/23/2016 — Pike’s Nursery 10 — The Koi Pond, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 4, 2016Do not measure yourself by your outcomes.
    Let your standard of success be
    the degree to which you incarnate
    your inner self
    your inner woman, or man
    in your life. Live to be who you are, and also are.
    To do what you love.
    To exhibit what you value.
    To bring forth your heart and soul
    and make them plain in what you do. To live like this
    requires the spiritual practices of
    mindfulness,
    silence,
    reflection,
    realization,
    self-transparency
    and good faith with ourselves and others—
    and asks us to be who all of the old masters were,
    in living at one with the core of our being.
  51. 03/23/2016 — Pine Cones — Indian Land, South Carolina, March 13, 2016Everything comes up from the core,
    from the bottomless well of life
    at the center of ourselves
    from what we refer to,
    dismissively and disparagingly,
    as our imagination. WE are the origin of all that is
    of all that is meaningful,
    at any rate.
    We credit God with all the good ideas,
    and ourselves with the bad ones,
    because it seems as though we are asking for it
    to say that we are the source of all that has meaning. We are the source of all that has meaning.
    We ascribe meaning, find order, make sense, declare value.
    And, if you say something is meaningful
    that doesn’t resonate with me,
    I’m likely to ignore it.
    And if it doesn’t resonate with any of us,
    we are likely to call you crazy,
    and give you a wide berth. Meaning isn’t private, though it is highly personal,
    and value is recognized across a broad bandwidth.
    We get it,
    because we are connected at the core.
    There are common bonds among us.
    We belong to one another,
    and find meaning in the communities we create. We are a wonder to behold.
    You would think we would
    spend more time being spellbound.
  52. 03/24/2016 — Blurred Barred Owl — McDowell Nature Center and Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 24, 2016We think with a magic stick
    and a crystal ball
    we could create a very good life.
    You could look it up.
    All of the fairy tales
    and folks tales
    and myths of lore
    have people tromping around
    in search of magic wands and spells,
    wizards and witches,
    genies and leprechauns
    to give them a magical boost
    into “the land of gentle breezes
    where the peaceful waters flow.” Anything to take our minds off
    the dreadful reality of life as it is! All of the old masters,
    male and female,
    knew that we change our circumstances
    by changing our perspective,
    and aligning ourselves
    with the Self at the center of ourselves.
    The Buddha did that,
    the Christ did that,
    Joan of Arc did that… “We are all we have.
    We are all we need.”
    The football rallying chant
    needs to be interpreted on a personal level.
    The “We” is the individual and his/her Deep Self.
    When we establish the connection
    with our Deep Self,
    and live out of it,
    magic happens.
    That’s the only way it does.
  53. 03/25/2016 — McDowell Barred Owl 01 — McDowell Nature Center and Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 24, 2016When you get the What in place,
    the Why
    and the How
    will take care of themselves
    (Along with the When and Where).
    We think we have to get the Why
    and the How (When and Where) in place first.
    We want to know
    Why we would do
    everything before we do it.
    And How
    (When and Where).
    Once we know Why and How (When and Where),
    then we will consider What.
    So we cast about,
    lost and depressed,
    miserable and forlorn,
    because we are looking
    ceaselessly for Why and How
    (When and Where) —
    and constantly tossing What aside.
    Always asking What to prove itself.
    Demanding that What justify its existence,
    Demonstrate its worth and value. “Why should I do THAT?”
    “How am I supposed to do THAT?”
    (“When do I have time in my life for THAT?”)
    (Where am I going to do THAT?”)
    Are the wrong questions. We are looking for What you need to do
    That is so compelling
    You will ignore every Why and How
    (When and Where)
    In order to do it. It doesn’t matter Why.
    However it takes
    (Whenever you can)
    (Wherever you are).
  54. 03/25/2016 — McDowell Barred Owl 01 Detail — McDowell Nature Center & Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, March 24, 2016Know what your work is and do it.
    Your work is ongoing, unending.
    You don’t get it done,
    and you don’t retire.
    Your work is your life.
    Your life is your work.
    As you live your life,
    you do your work.
    Your work is who you are,
    what you are about.
    It expresses you
    And pulls you forth.
    Your work
    Is to find your work
    and do it.
  55. 03/25/2016 — Bloodroot 2016 01 — McDowell Nature Center & Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, March 24, 2016The way you approach the natural world
    determines whether it will reveal itself
    or conceal itself. When I’m taking wildflower photos,
    I have to point them out to many of the people
    who walk the trails
    and ask me what I’m doing “down on the ground.” “Being in nature”
    is not “being with nature”
    And not seeing a thing. Mindfulness leads the way
    Everywhere we go.
    The work is always to see what we look at,
    And to look at every single thing. Not that I’m Mr. Never Miss Anything Ever.
    A group of bird watchers
    showed me the first Barred Owl I’d ever seen,
    perched on a branch at eye level
    15 feet off the path I walked. It was an epiphany,
    and stays with me as a reminder
    to see what I am seeing
    and what I am not seeing.
    We all need to be reminded.
    And we all need to do it.
    Every day.

One Minute Monologues 029

10/27/2015 — 12/16/2015

  1. 10/27/2015 — Receive it all with compassionate awareness—
    including our automatic reaction to it all
    (We hate it, we are terrified by it, we are panic stricken,
    we are overjoyed, enraptured, etc.).

    Receive our reaction to it along with it.
    Receive IT ALL
    With compassionate awareness:
    ”This too, this too…”

    That’s it.

    Just hold it all in compassionate awareness,
    And wait for the shift to happen.
    The shift will always happen.

    That’s the way compassionate awareness works.
    We hold it all in compassionate awareness,
    and a shift will happen.
    A perspective shift.

    We will feel it in our body.

    That’s the feeling of being put in accord with reality.
    The only healthy way to be in relation to reality
    is to be in accord with it.

    Our body knows when you are in accord with reality,
    and when we are out of accord with it.

    Our body keeps score.
    And will thank us
    when we take up the practice
    of receiving it all with compassionate awareness.

    And we will feel it.
    Every time.
  2. 10/28/2015

    It’s amazing
    the way being aware of one’s thinking/feeling
    shifts, deepens, expands, enlarges, transforms
    one’s thinking/feeling,
    and alters one’s reality—
    providing options and choices,
    and creating futures,
    that did not exist prior
    to the advent
    of compassionate awareness.

    How it works
    is beyond understanding
    or explanation,
    making it magical,
    or, if you prefer, miraculous,
    and an ever-present example
    of Sheldon Kopp’s observation:
    ”Some things can be experienced, but not understood,
    and some things can be understood, but not explained.”
  3. 10/26/2015

    Sit with yourself.
    Listen to yourself.

    Not to the narratives that you spin without pause—
    the ones about being not good enough,
    not going fast enough,
    not getting enough done,
    not being happy enough,
    or wealthy enough.

    Listen past all of that
    to what your Self is saying to you.

    Sit with your Self
    until you can separate your Self
    from the things you always hear when you are quiet.

    Listen past what you normally hear
    until you can hear your Self who has never been heard.

    Know you can be with your Self anywhere, any time.

    That is a radical realization,
    with radical implications for the rest of your life.

    Live to see what you and your Self can create together
    in the time left for living.
  4. 10/28/2015

    It has taken everywhere we have been
    to get us where we are.
    So, stop your moaning and complaining and regretting
    this place or that one.

    They were all exactly what you needed
    to be here, now.

    It would be wrong to waste all that has gone into
    getting you where you are
    by not being here, now,
    choosing instead to ruminate
    and rummage around in your griefs and sorrows,
    in your could-have-been’s
    and your except-but-only’s.

    If your could-have-been’s had been,
    if your except-but-only’s had not been,
    you still have the exact same problem you have right now:
    Being. Here. Now.

    So. Be. Here. Now.
    Listen. Look. Attend. Hear. See. Be. Here. Now.

    Receive well the moment
    And all that is in the moment with you.
    Bless the moment with your kind attention,
    with your compassion
    and your grace.

    Befriend the moment.
    It has been waiting all your life for you.
    Celebrate with joy and wonder,
    the time and place of your being,
    of your life.

    Of your being alive,
    here and now.
  5. 10/29/2015 — Lake Chicot HDR 06 — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 27, 2015

    Carl Jung was of the opinion that it is all about “individuation”—
    his term for becoming who we are,
    for being “one with our Self.”

    The Old Testament said it is about “becoming who God is,”
    or words to that effect.

    It’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, “The Father and I are one.”
    And, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”

    It’s what Paul had in mind when he said,
    “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

    Individuation is growing up into the Self we are.
    It is becoming full partners with the Self within,
    and living in ways that express, exhibit, make manifest—
    the Biblical term is “incarnate”—
    the Self within in all that we do in, and with, our life.

    It is about getting out of the way—
    with our will, our desires, our idea of what we want our life to do for us—
    and allowing our Self to live through us,
    no matter what that might mean for us
    and our idea of success,
    or our idea of “what life is all about.”

    Life is all about becoming who we are—
    living aligned, at-one, with the Self within.

    Integrity means oneness with our Self within.
    We are here to live with integrity of being with our Self,
    so that “The Father, The Self within, and I are one.”

    It is time we started figuring out how to do that,
    don’t you think?
  6. 10/29/2015 — Lake Chicot HDR 01 Panorama—Canoe Launch, East Trailhead, Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 27, 2015

    There’s nothing to it.
    Really.
    Nothing. To. It.

    We do nothing.
    Okay, we sit.

    That’s doing something.
    Quietly.
    That’s doing something else.
    Enfolding all the thoughts and moods
    that come with compassionate awareness.
    When will it end!

    Here. Now.

    We sit quietly
    and meet everything that comes
    with compassionate awareness.

    Work up to twice a day for twenty minutes each time.
    You can do it walking.
    Walk quietly
    and meet everything that comes
    with compassionate awareness.

    Or, you can do it running.
    Swimming.
    Bicycle riding.
    Horseback riding.
    Eating.
    Taking a shower.

    You have no excuse for not doing nothing.
    You can do it anywhere, any time.

    There’s nothing to it.
  7. 10/30/15 —  Lake Chicot HDR 11 — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 27, 2015

    Nothing is too big to be contained in our compassionate awareness.
    Not our depression.
    Not our fear and anxiety.
    Not our anger.
    Not our hatred, jealously, envy, inferiority, insecurity…

    Not our greed, dissatisfaction,
    hunger and thirst for more of everything—
    for something, we don’t know what—
    anything to take our mind off of our reality.
    Not our reality.

    All of it fits nicely within our compassionate awareness,
    and we don’t have to do anything
    about any of it
    beyond welcoming it into our attentive presence,
    assuring it that it has a home with us,
    and is safe with us,
    and asking it to tell us all that it has to say.
    xxx
  8. 10/30/15 —  Cajun Cadillac Panorama B&W—Bayou des Glaises, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, October 29, 2015

    Seeing things as they are

    Means seeing that our interpretation of things is what we are seeing

    The things we see reflect the seer seeing

    Inviting us to see ourselves,

    And wonder why we see the way we see

    And not some other way instead.

    The way things are appears to be different

    To all those who view them—

    They appear differently to us in different moods,

    And at different times of the day.

    The way things ARE is contingent upon the 10,000 things!

    And, we see THAT when we see them as they “are.”

    And, seeing THAT enables us to make inquiries

    Regarding the why and wherefore of our seeing.

    Why see it the way we see it now?

    What is impacting our seeing?

    Where did we learn to see as we do?

    What does seeing things the way we see them

    Enable us to get by with?

    Prevent us from doing?

    How are we inhibited, limited, stuck in place

    By the way we see things?

    How else might we see things?

    How might our life work better if we saw things differently?

    We cannot hope to see anything “as it is”

    Until we can see our seeing,

    And see what holds our seeing in place,

    Keeping us from seeing anything other than the way we see things

    All our life long.
  9. 10/30/15 —  St. Augustine Catholic Church Panorama—Isle Brevelle, Louisiana, October 30, 2015

    Nobody has any business pursuing a spiritual practice until after retirement.

    We should look forward to retirement as the time for being spiritual,

    And I don’t mean as in doctrine, dogma, ideology and theology.

    I mean as in direct experience with That Which Can Be Known But Not Told or Said.

    Before retirement the stress of life—

    Job, house and car payments, bills, spouse/partner, kids, education (yours and your children’s), etc—

    Bears too heavily upon us,

    Creates too much distraction for us.

    It will be hard enough for us to walk two paths at the same time in retirement,

    Juggling those responsibilities and duties which, like goodness and mercy, shall follow us all the days of our life—

    AND maintaining and deepening our practice.

    It’s ridiculous to think that we could do a creditable job doing the Two Paths thing in our working life.

    Look at all the gurus you know.

    Do they have a full time job in addition to being a full time guru?

    The Dalai Lama takes care of his own business,

    And his people manage his affairs.

    That’s the way to do it.

    Anybody could be the Dalai Lama with someone to manage her, or his, affairs!

    So don’t be hard on yourself for not being “more spiritual.”

    Tune in as you are able,

    And look forward to retirement as the time for awakening to the Holy AAAUUUUMMMMMmmmmmm……

  10. Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion — 10/31/15 —  Lake Chicot HDR 08 — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 27, 2015

    Physical reality puts us in touch with spiritual reality.

    The threshold to awareness, realization, enlightenment and perception

    Is our encounter with the limitations and restrictions of life as we live it.

    Each moment in this world is a doorway, a portal, into the other world.

    Religion doesn’t always see it that way.

    Religion as we know it spends too much time denouncing,

    Dismissing, discounting and denying the world of physical reality.

    This world, according to that religion,

    Is a “vale of tears,”

    Filled with “pain and suffering,”

    And is only something to be made up to us

    In the world to come after we die.

    That religion misses all this world has to offer

    By focusing on the glories of the other world.

    This world is all we need to clue into the other world

    And open ourselves to it,

    Bringing it into this world here and now.

    We live here, now, as extensions of that world into this world.

    We make the connection between worlds real,

    And transform this reality with infusions of that reality,

    By living here and now as though that reality is the Real Reality,

    With grace, mercy, compassion and peace

    Where greed, anger, hatred, fear, envy, revenge and vindictiveness would normally be.

    We get to the other world through this one

    By allowing physical limitations and restrictions

    Show us everything we need to know about spiritual reality

    And it’s experience and expression in the world of here and now.

    Simply sit with this world as it is,

    Receiving it with compassionate awareness,

    And that world will open itself to you.
  11. Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion — 11/01/15 —  Lake Chicot HDR 12 — Cabins—Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 12, 2015

    There are three statements that form the ground of all good religion world-wide across time:

    1) The Bread of Affliction is the Bread of Life.

    2) The Cup of Suffering is the Cup of Salvation.

    3) The full scope of the Spiritual Journey is the distance from The Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane.

    When we understand how these statements apply to us and our life,

    And accommodate ourselves to their truth,

    We will be the Buddha and the Christ, Abraham, Mohamed. Lao Tzu, Black Elk and all others of their ilk.
  12. 11/02/15 —  Lake Chicot HDR 10 — Cabins—Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 27, 2015

    We know when we are in the flow, and when we are out of it—

    When we are in harmony with the Way of Things, and when we are out of harmony.

    Nothing gets us out of the flow, out of the Way, faster than:

    A) Trying to use it for our personal benefit, gain, advantage, profit, or,

    B) Trying to willfully, force it into being and into compliance with our desires.

    Waking up is like going to sleep.

    We cannot make it happen.

    We cannot control it, will it, force it, direct it, manage it, own it, possess it.

    It posses us.

    The way of alliance with the Way, the Flow, is

    ”Thy will, not mine, be done.”

    This is anathema to the culture of the world,

    Where winning, forcing, commanding, commandeering, triumphing, owning, possessing, controlling

    Are the only point and purpose of life.

    Football, baseball, basketball, soccer, chess, and NASCAR,

    And everything else

    Is grounded on willing our way to victory, wealth, and glory everlasting.

    And then comes along the Flow and the Way with their

    ”Not YOUR will, but MINE, be done,”

    And we are left in the pitch darkness of the deepest night,

    Trying to force ourselves to go to sleep.

    The Way is not the way for this time and place.

    And it is the only hope for this time and place.

    There you are.
  13. 11/02/15 —  Lake Chicot HDR 07 — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, October 27, 2015 — The yellow flowers along the shoreline are Nodding Beggartick.

    Jon Kabat-Zinn is fond of saying, “In all of the languages of the East, the word for ‘mind’ and the work for ‘heart’ is the same word.”

    Sometimes, he puts it this way, “All of the religions of the East have one word for ‘mind’ and ‘heart.’”

    It point is that mindfulness is not possible without compassion.

    We cannot ‘know’ without knowing with compassion—

    Without lovingly knowing.

    Seeing, hearing and understanding is possible only

    By seeing, hearing, and understanding with compassion.

    The quality of the What (we do)

    Is contingent upon the quality of the

    How (we do it)

    And the

    Why (we do it).

    Compassion shapes, forms, limits and determines

    The What, the How and the Why.

    Those who live well

    Live compassionately.

    Those who live without compassion

    Live poorly.

    If you are going to be anything,

    Be compassionate

    Without being a patsy,

    And your life will be a beautiful work of art.
  14. 11/03/15 —  Black Bayou 05 — Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 02, 2015

    Let your “Yes” be yes,

    And let your “No” be know.

    Mean what you say,

    Do what you say you will do.

    Live in good faith with yourself,

    And with all others.

    No duplicity.

    No hidden agendas.

    No posturing.

    No pretending.

    Being at one with yourself,

    And transparent to yourself,

    So that you are who you are

    In each situation as it arises,

    And “what they see is what they get.”

    It doesn’t get more basic than that.

  15. 11/03/15 —  Cotton in the Field 01 Panorama—Hwy 61 through the Mississippi Delta, November 3, 2015

    Heaven is a perspective,

    Not a place.

    A point of view,

    A way of seeing—

    With grace and compassion,

    Kindness and peace,

    Generosity and good will.

    No one can expect to “get to heaven,”

    Without bringing heaven forth

    In their relationships

    With all people

    Every day.

    We create heaven

    By the way we see those

    Who share the moment with us.

    We may not be God, but.

    We are as close to God

    As some have ever been
  16. 11/04/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake HDR 01 — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeak, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    Driving 10.5 hours from South Carolina to Tennessee-almost-Kentucky to photograph Cypress Trees sounds crazy.

    It is actually therapy.

    A lot of things that are therapeutic are crazy.

    What is really crazy is trying to be totally sane,

    And never doing anything that sounds the least bit crazy.

    Find the things that are therapeutic for you,

    That help you “recover from the past and store up for the future.”

    That serve you as an oasis in the desert,

    And reconnect you with your heart and soul.

    And, do them often,

    No matter how crazy it might sound.
  17. 11/05/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 07 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    Honor the natural rhythms!

    That’s the First Law of Harmony and Accord.

    The tide comes in and the tide goes out.

    Don’t mess with the tide.

    Global warming is the result of profit making having a higher priority than the First Law of Harmony and Accord.

    When “Profit At Any Price” becomes the operating principle governing existence,

    Existence will hang by a thread.

    Our place is to recognize the rhythms at work in our life,

    And let our life fall into place around our rhythms.

    If you are a morning person,

    Don’t work the midnight to eight a.m. shift.

    If you like rocking chairs,

    Sit in rocking chairs.

    Honor the rhythms!

    Respect the consequences—

    The consequences of honoring,

    And of dishonoring,

    The rhythms.

    Paying the price of honoring the rhythms,

    Results in a greater profit

    Than paying the price of dishonoring them,

    Though it won’t likely be a monetary gain.
  18. 11/05/2015 —  Morton’s Overlook 01 HDR—Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, November 5, 2015

    What’s in there?

    All the old stories about seeking hidden treasure

    Are about discovering what’s in there.

    YOU are the treasure hidden in the field!

    The pearl of great price gathering dust in some pawn shop’s

    Display case of costume jewelry.

    YOU are the Philosopher’s Stone,

    Capable of turning “nothing” into “finest gold,”

    By discovering what’s in there

    And allowing it to come to life

    In you,

    And through you into the world!

    What’s in there?
  19. 11/06/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 04 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We care about what we care about,

    Whether we ought to care about it or not.

    If we could just care about what we ought to care about,

    And not care about what we have no business caring about,

    The world would be a different world.

    Racism and white supremacy have no place in any world.

    The Confederate flag still flies in the State of Mississippi,

    Tucked safely away in the corner of the “state flag.”

    But, for too many Mississippians,

    The state flag wouldn’t be worth flying without that symbol

    Of racism and white supremacy—

    Leaving the rest of us at a loss

    About what to do when evil is seen as good,

    And good as evil.

    How do you wake people up to the discretancy

    Between what they care about

    And what they ought to care about?

    How do you wake people up to the importance

    Of caring about what they ought to care about,

    And ought not care about what they ought not care about?

    It keeps me awake,

    Pondering it.
  20. Used in Short Talks On Contradictions, etc., 11/07/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 05 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    Living at one with ourselves—

    Transparent to ourselves

    And aware of our ambivalence and contradictions—

    Is the single most important way

    Of having an impact for the good

    On the conditions and circumstances of our life.

    Changing the world—

    To the extent that it can be changed—

    Is as simple as being who we are

    In each situation as it arises,

    And letting the outcome be the outcome.
  21. 11/07/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 06 — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015 (The white dots are White Pelicans)

    We have to live firmly grounded in a defining ethic,

    With clear boundaries,

    And an unflinching, unshakable grasp

    Of what is right and what is wrong.

    We have to KNOW what is good and what is not good,

    And live in ways that serve the good and oppose the not-good.

    We have to KNOW what the rules are,

    And abide by them.

    The trick is that we impose them on ourselves.

    Second-hand rules—

    Those handed to us by external authorities—

    Are worthless when it comes to providing

    Eternal stability and foundation

    Amid the heaving waves of the wine-dark sea.

    We have to be grounded in our own sense of value,

    And live out of it—be guided by it—in all that we do.

    We are who we are

    Because we say so,

    Because WE KNOW who we are

    And who we are not.

    And you can see it in our life.
  22. 11/08/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 03 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    Joseph Campbell said “We know when we are on the beam, and when we are off it.”

    We resonate with what is right for us, and are repelled by what is wrong.

    How often do we override our sense of what is right, and ignore our sense of what is wrong!

    Adam and Eve before the Forbidden Fruit, Jesus searching for his best future in the wilderness and in Gethsemane faced the choice of what to override and what to ignore.

    So do we all, more often that we care to know.

    At the core of each of us is the rock solid truth of who we are, and who we are not—of who we are to be, and of who we are to be not.

    The foundation stone is a guide stone, a polestar, directing us to the life we are built to live, and away from the lives that drain us of life, and lead to the wasteland and the void.

    We are born with an internal guidance system that knows with firm conviction when we are on the beam and when we are off it.

    Why the lack of attention? Of consultation? Of awareness and alignment?

    Why do we not spend time throughout the day, every day, in meditative openness to what we know?

    Seeking to place ourselves in harmony with our Inner Guide?

    Listening, searching, sensing what here, what now?

    Why live not knowing? Not caring? Out of sync with the direction of our life’s true flow?
  23. 11/08/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 02 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We have to know when to rein in our impulses and enthusiasms

    And when to give them a hearty endorsement.

    We have to know when to say Yes! and when to say No!

    There are legitimate limits that must be recognized, respected, honored and observed.

    We are not free to live any way we choose,

    Any time we like.

    We serve values and ends that are not ours to establish and remove,

    But to acknowledge and serve.

    There is a Good greater than our good—

    Greater than our idea of good—

    A Justice greater than our sense of justice

    And our quick tendency to feel betrayed, neglected and denied.

    We are part of a cause greater than we are.

    Our life is to be an experience and an expression of more than words can say—

    Of more than can be told, or said, or explained, or understood.

    At the heart of each of us

    Is the knowledge of a truth that is greater than we are.

    As Captain Jack Sparrow would say,

    “I have no say in the matter, Gibbs—It’s the pirate’s life for me. Savvy?”
  24. 11/09/2015 —  Black Bayou 01 — Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 2015

    We have to work to be who we are,

    Living our life the way our life needs us to live it.

    We swim against the strong currents

    Of home, church, society and culture to do that.

    Everything about our life is arrainged

    To make us be who we are not,

    And to keep us from being who we are.

    ”You do what I tell you to do—

    When I tell you to do it—

    The way I tell you to do it!”

    We hear it from the beginning,

    And it replays throughout our life

    To the very end.

    It takes conscious, mindful, awareness,

    Determination, and courage,

    To step beyond the ways we are told to do it,

    And do it the way we would do it—

    The way we say it needs to be done—

    In each situation as it arises,

    All our life long.

    Who do YOU say you are?

    How do YOU say you are to go about being you?

    Get behind the wheel of that baby,

    Take it for a spin.

    See who is the first to ask you

    Who you think you are,

    And to tell you to get back in line.
  25. 11/09/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 08 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We look for it out there…

    The land of promise,

    The treasure hard to find,

    Meaning, purpose, value,

    Success, fortune and glory,

    The Fountain of Youth,

    The City of Gold,

    The Northwest Passage,

    The Holy Grail…

    We carry with us what we seek,

    Searching for what we have never lost but cannot find.

    ”The Tao is like a man riding his ox,

    Looking for his ox.”

    We seek “the face that was ours before we were born.”

    The Inner Other who is our Invisible Twin.

    The Self we are but a shadow of,

    And once knew, but have forgotten.

    We seek ourselves—our Self—

    Who seeks us.

    This story should have a happy ending.

    Why won’t we allow that to happen?

    What do we fear

    That keeps us from opening ourselves

    To what resides within?
  26. 11/10/2015 —  Black Bayou 02 HDR—Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 2015

    There is the life we dream of living,

    The life we settle for,

    And the life that is our life to live.

    We get all dour and depressed,

    Mopey and moaning,

    Because the life we settle for

    Is a far cry from the life we dream of living,

    In a “Poor me, poor me!” kind of way,

    While the life that is our life to live—

    The life that can be lived in any situation,

    In every context and circumstance,

    From penthouses to prisoner of war camps,

    Stands waiting at the gate

    For us to climb in the saddle

    And do what can yet be done with it,

    While the light still lasts,

    In a “Let’s see what we can do with this day,” kind of way.
  27. 11/10/2015 —  Bud Ogle Cabin 03 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, TN, November 5, 2015

    In a perfect world, we each would have exactly what we need from our environment to grow into who we are best equipped and suited to be.

    We would have everything we need to be who we are.

    We come into the world expecting certain things to be in place:

    Parents, extended family, a social structure that is secure and dependable, with trustworthy and just rules to live by, nurturing, nourishing, relationships, resources and experiences for honing our skills and developing our ability to find our way in the world.

    The less of this we find when we get here, the harder time we will have in putting together a life for ourselves, and helping others put one together for themselves.

    Most of us need more help than we get.

    We accommodate ourselves to the world we live in by taking stock, compensating for what is lacking in our life where that is possible, recognizing our handicaps and limitations, and doing what can be done with what we have to work with.

    Seeing clearly how things are and accepting the fact they are how they are, and the implications that has for us and our life, squares us up with our circumstances, and gives us the best chance of finding the openings and making the most of our opportunities for growth and development.

    In every life, there is a sense in which liabilities can have advantages and advantages can have liabilities. So, are we better off to have won at birth, or to have lost? Only time will tell, but having the heart for the task at hand will make all the difference.
  28. 11/11/2015 —  Goodale 2015 01 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 11, 2015

    We give up too easily, we quit too soon.

    Instead of giving up and quitting,

    We need to simply hand it over,

    And let our heart take the lead.

    If we gave our heart the controls to our life,

    And willingly, in good faith, aligned ourselves

    With our heart’s drift and direction,

    No matter what that might mean

    For our wishes, wants, desires, aims and ideas,

    Resurrection would be instantaneous and everlasting,

    As long as we didn’t say,

    ”Oh wow! I feel better now,” and take our life back.

    Our role is to collaborate with our heart,

    And make no unilateral decisions

    About any matter, great or small.

    Take a Heart Reading several times a day!

    Checking-in with the Inner Consultant

    Keeps things in harmony and balanced,

    All along The Way.
  29. 11/12/2015 —  Goodale 2015 07 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    We have to live with our feet under us,

    Grounded on the Foundation Stone,

    Which is, of course, our “Heart of hearts.”

    I use the term, “Heart,”

    As a metaphor for that which is central to us,

    Deepest, best and truest about us,

    As in “The heart of the matter,”

    Or “Getting to the heart of things.”

    Our Heart is who we are,

    Which includes who we also are.

    Our Heart is ALL that we are,

    Where we are One and at-one with ourselves.

    When we live and act out of our Heart,

    We are “Grounded on the Foundation Stone,”

    And nothing can move us,

    Because “We know whereof we speak.”

    Finding our way to the Ground and Foundation of Our Life

    Is the essential task—

    The one to which we owe our full allegiance

    and complete devotion.

    If you think you have something more important to do,

    You are wrong.
  30. 11/12/2015 —  Chimney Tops—Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, November 5, 2015

    The trip to the Holy Grail, the Holy Land, the Land of Promise, Nirvana, Enlightenment, the Peace of God, Paradise, or wherever it is we think we are going works like this:

    See, Hear, Do!

    We put all the emphasis on seeing and hearing, on understanding, on getting it all figured out, on knowing what the answers are.

    We memorize the Bible, and the Book of Confessions, and the Book of Doctrine, and the Catechisms Large and Small, and constantly talk about what we know,

    Conveniently ignoring forever what we also know.

    It is what we also know that matters.

    What we also know is what we know unconsciously, just beyond the boundaries of our conscious awareness.

    That is the real Holy Land.

    If you want to live in the lap of God, open yourself to what you know but don’t know that you know.

    We have to DO what we KNOW needs doing, but we are so busy talking, talking, talking about what we do know—all the doctrines and ideology positions that we are sure are the Gospel Truth—that we ignore, discount, dismiss, deny what we also know.

    For instance, if, while reading this, you get a sense that you need to call your mother, or apologize to your child, stop reading this and call your mother, or apologize to your child.

    Forget what you are doing and DO what you KNOW needs to be done!

    This is the Law and the Gospel, and it is the only thing keeping you from the Elysian Fields and the Lap of God.
  31. 11/12/2015 —  Oconoluftee 2015 02 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee, NC, November 5, 2015

    Don’t take my injunction to “DO!” as an invitation to live impulsively.

    You are your own guide here.

    You have to sense the source of your directions.

    You have to trust your own judgment.

    ”Does this need to be done?”

    ”Who am I trying to please with this action?”

    ”Who would be most pleased with me for doing this?”

    ”Who is guiding my boat on its path through the sea?

    ”Who is calling the shots?”

    ”Does this come from my deep sense of what needs doing—

    Or from some external source that I have internalized?”

    We have to live out of our own judgment.

    We have to be our own authority for what we do and leave undone.

    We have to live our own life.

    We have to take care of our own business.

    Impulsive, unreflective, living

    Is dancing to someone else’s tune.

    We have to sing our own song—

    The song of our own heart.

    Knowing where the line between Them and Us lies

    Is essential knowing.
  32. 11/13/2015 —  Goodale 2015 10 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    What is important?

    Your answer to that question,

    Through each stage of life,

    Is the Teller that tells the tale.

    We are who we are

    Because of what is important to us.

    How important is what we declare to be important

    Is the question.

    Our life is a quest for true value—

    For ideas, people, symbols, and things ert and inert

    That are truly valuable.

    We are looking for the treasure

    Worthy of our allegiance and loyalty over time,

    And settle, too often, for glass beads and silver mirrors.

    Thus, the importance of knowing what is important.

    How can we tell?

    How do we know?

    There is no substitute tool in the whole bag of tools

    For attentive, compassionate, mindfulness—

    For seeing what we look at,

    For knowing what we know.

    Eyes to see,

    Ears to hear,

    And hearts to understand,

    See, hear and understand beneath the surface

    And beyond the visible

    Into the depths

    And into the invisible.

    Make sure your Seer, Hearer, Understander

    Is operating on all levels

    By becoming mindful of what you take to be

    The whole thing.

    Mistaking the sheen for the gold

    Is a rookie mistake.

    Our life needs more from us than that.
  33. 11/13/2015 —  Black Bayou 06 — Black Bayou Lake Wildlife Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 2015

    Just as “one book opens another,”

    So one moment lived well opens into the next moment,

    Carrying us, moment-to-moment, into all of our life.

    We don’t have to think our life out,

    We only have to open ourselves to what our life is asking of us,

    And wait for the door to open in “this” moment,

    With the Way leading to all moments flowing from this one.

    It’s all very magical,

    Leading us to think in terms of synchronicity,

    Or the Grace of God.

    All three terms—magic, synchronicity, and God’s Grace—

    Mean the same thing: Unexpected gifts and direction.

    We do not think our way into these gifts and directions.

    They visit themselves upon us,

    Unfold before us,

    And bless us with wonder at the mystery of life—

    An experience common to those

    Who step into each moment

    Looking for what needs what they have to offer,

    And allow one moment to open to the next.
  34. 11/14/2015 —  Goodale 2015 20 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    Our life—both of them—

    The one we are living,

    And the one that is ours to live within the one we are living—

    Demands a response from us.

    We respond best to each life

    From a perspective of quiet, mindful, compassion.

    Ariadne’s Thread winds through both lives,

    And we follow it—

    Not by thinking our way forward

    With reason and logic,

    Plans, schemes, strategies and tactics,

    And not by being cagey and clever—

    By being present with what is happening

    With compassion and awareness,

    And waiting for the shift to happen,

    The door to open,

    The path to appear—

    And acting when the time is right

    To claim the prize,

    Which is doing the right thing,

    In the right way,

    At the right time.

    In each situation as it arises.

    To live this way

    Is to be one with the Tao,

    And live the life that is ours to live

    Within the life we are living.

    May it be said so of us all!
  35. 11/14/2015 —  Goodale 2015 06 Panorama—Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    We are divided within.

    It’s a left bran/right brain split,

    With the left brain being the seat of conscious, willful, logic and reason—

    Ego driven and goal oriented,

    And the right brain being the home of all that is unconscious,

    Including, heart, soul, and Self.

    Ego and Self.

    Two minds, one body, one life.

    The way of the culture of the East

    Has been to disappear the Ego.

    Starve it out.

    Ignore it.

    Denounce it.

    Renounce it.

    Send it packing.

    Chase it away with the sound of AAAAAUUUUUMMMMMM…

    The culture of the West has taken a different tack:

    Repress,

    Or suppress,

    All that is unconscious—

    Give it no place to call home.

    The result with both East and West

    Has been war within throughout the eons.

    How different would things be

    If Ego and Self had been working together

    All this time

    To heal the breach,

    Honor each others strengths

    Strengthen each others weaknesses,

    And live in the wonder of each others company

    As one?

    We should live to find out,

    Starting now.
  36. 11/15/2015 —  Goodale 2015 16 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    The Quest is for wholeness,

    And for meaning.

    We cannot live on entertaining apps and gadgets.

    There has to be an underlying ground and purpose to our life,

    And sex isn’t it.

    How many times can we fall in love

    Before we wake up to the realization

    That falling in love has nothing to do with the other person,

    But everything to do with us?

    It is ourselves we are seeking in the other!

    Ourselves we see in the other!

    Our Self seeking us in the other!

    Those love letters you pen?

    Those poems you write?

    Notes from you to YOU!

    YOU are there,

    In the other!

    All those qualities that attract you to the other?

    Even the eyes—

    What is it about those eyes?

    Get to the bottom of it!

    What the eyes represent to you

    Are what you seek in YOU!

    What the other person represents to you

    Is what you seek in YOU!

    Is what YOU seek to BE in your life.

    If the other person can be of help to you in living your life,

    And if you can be of help to the other person,

    The two of you may want to enter a partnership

    For LIFE—

    For the LIFE that is trying to come forth in each one of YOU.

    That way, you both could intentionally make the other conscious

    Of the YOU trying to come forth in each of you

    Throughout your life together.

    That would be what marriage is all about.
  37. 11/16/2015 —  Goodale 2015 20 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    There are right ways to be a Mom or a Dad,

    And wrong ways to be either.

    Right ways to be their child,

    And wrong ways.

    All of the roles of our life have a right and wrong side to them.

    The idea is to stay on the right side of all of them.

    There is a problem with that, of course,

    Being right all the time.

    If you think that’s easy,

    Or could be if you just tried hard enough,

    I say, “Go ahead! Climb onto the back of that beast,

    And tell them to open the chute!”

    My bet is you won’t last the eight required seconds

    Of Rodeo Time.

    And that isn’t even the hardest part.

    The hardest part is when the Right Side

    Of one role,

    Clashes head-on with the Right Side

    Of another.

    Once you are older, with children,

    You have the role of the Right Mom, Right Dad,

    With your children,

    And the role of the Right Child

    With your Mom and/or Dad.

    All of our roles have the tendency to clash like that.

    Makes it impossible to be on the right side of all of them.

    The nature of the game forces us

    To play some of our positions wrong.

    Something else to be aware of,

    And square up to,

    And bear the pain of,

    Consciously.

    Living mindfully,

    With compassion,

    Trumps everything else,

    When it comes to doing it right.

    Getting that down

    Will help you through a lot of tight spots.
  38. 11/16/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 10 HDR—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    It’s a mess, and I don’t have the solution.

    My best advice is,

    ”Don’t let the fact that it is a mess stop you,

    Or even slow you down.

    Get in there and do your thing—

    Live your own life,

    Aligned—to the best of your ability to intuit and implement—

    With your life’s idea for itself.

    Your role is to be YOU—

    To be true to your Self

    (The Self at the heart and center of who YOU are)—

    In every context, situation and circumstance.

    Zone into YOU

    And bring YOU forth to meet the day

    Everyday.

    Don’t worry about fixing the world.

    Bring YOU forth to meet the world.

    That’s the blessing the world needs most.”

    If you can find better advice,

    Take it.
  39. 11/17/2015 —  Goodale 2015 03 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    There is nothing to be

    Beyond being who we are.

    There is nothing to do

    Beyond doing what we are uniquely suited to do.

    All the planning, plotting, scheming, organizing, arranging, designing…

    Could be replaced with seeing, hearing, and understanding.

    But, we don’t trust the Inner Guides,

    Or even know of their existence,

    And think we are all alone with what to do about us.

    So, we devise a life for ourselves

    That doesn’t fit,

    And wonder what is wrong

    Without a clue.
  40. 11/17/2015 —  Bud Ogle Cabin 05 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, November 5, 2015

    Loneliness is knowing there is no one but you.

    If you get the flu, you make your own chicken soup.

    If you throw up, you clean it up.

    No one has your back.

    Everything is up to you,

    Depends on you,

    Weighs heavily upon you.

    Loneliness is the bane of the old and the young alike.

    There is no agony or anguish like loneliness borne alone.

    Alcohol and drugs numb the pain

    But do nothing to relieve the reality,

    Or change the fact

    Of aloneness.

    Yet, there is consolation.

    Our Psyche does not leave us bereft.

    There is a Gang of Invisible Friends in there—

    A two-million-year-old-Self with a stake in our life;

    Ancestors, who themselves faced loneliness, from ancient times;

    The Wise Old Man or Woman;

    The Hero, the Artist, the Creator, the Wild One, the Guide…

    Walk among them, invite them along,

    Take advantage of all they have to offer.

    Relieve The Mood the next time it strikes

    With an inner communion of those

    Who are with you always

    To comfort and to bless.
  41. 11/18/2015 —  Goodale 2015 08 Panorama—Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    When we bring ourselves forth

    To meet the moment

    The way the moment needs to be met,

    We transform the moment,

    And influence the way life is lived

    Around us

    Far more than we ever know,

    Or can imagine,

    Or believe.
  42. 11/19/2015 —  Goodale 2015 05 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    Whenever I get out of the way,

    The Voice is there, waiting to talk.

    The Voice knows exactly what I need to hear.

    I gather, that is also exactly what The Voice needs to say.

    I can only assume that something similar goes on with everyone.

    I would like to work the experiment with each of you,

    Getting you out of the way,

    And seeing what happens then.

    I’m going to have to trust you to conduct it on your own.

    Get out of the way.

    See what happens.

    How would you go about doing that?

    Getting out of the way, I mean.
  43. 11/19/2015 —  Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon River 06 — Chimney’s Picnic Area, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, TN, November 5, 2015

    I’m here to help you with your life,

    But, there’s a catch.

    You actually have to HAVE a life.

    You can’t just be wishing you had a life,

    Or dreaming of having a life,

    Or trying to think up a life.

    You can’t make up just any life,

    Or pick one off the rack, and say, “This’ll do.”

    You have to have a life that has you back—

    That grabs you by the neck,

    And throws you against the way,

    And says, “I’m yours and you are mine!

    And there is no getting away from me,

    Or trying to hide!”

    Of course, that doesn’t stop us from getting away,

    And trying to hide.

    But THAT’S the life I’m talking about.

    The one that wants you but you don’t want—

    For 10,000 reasons.

    So, lets start with your discard pile.

    What lives have you thrown away?

    Dismissed, discounted, denied?

    Which one, or ones, keep coming back,

    Wondering if it’s time yet,

    If it’s finally their turn now?

    If I am going to be able to help you with your life,

    You have to believe you have a life,

    And if you aren’t gripped by one,

    You have to believe that you could be gripped by one.

    You have to be willing to give your life at least that much of a chance.

    You have to be willing to bet the rest of your life

    On a life you are not even sure you believe in.

    That’s where it starts—

    With you being willing to bet your life

    On actually having a life,

    And letting it have a chance at you.
  44. 11/19/2015 —  Ginkgos 02 Panorama—Charlotte, NC, November 18, 2015

    One of the spiritual laws discovered by Alchemy is

    ”The heart and the mind must be in harmony with the work.”

    This applies across time and space as a bedrock requirement

    For spiritual realization.

    We must be one with what we do.

    It isn’t our work if we are not one with it.

    Heart and mind have to be in harmony with each other,

    And with The Work,

    Or there is no spiritual development.

    We cannot become spiritual by talking and thinking and believing.

    Our heart has to be in what we say, think and believe,

    And it must take shape, be given form, in our work.

    Heart and mind come to life in our work.

    Who we are and what we do have to be in harmony.

    One.

    If our heart isn’t in it,

    And our mind doesn’t buy it,

    It isn’t our work,

    And we are wasting our time—kidding ourselves—doing it.
  45. 11/20/2015 —  Goodale 2015 12 Panorama—Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2025

    I’m here to help you with your life, but.

    You have to help me help you.

    You do that by being open

    To the possibilities of life

    In every situation of life,

    In every context and circumstance of life,

    And receiving everything

    With mindful, compassionate awareness

    (Without judgment, will, or opinion),

    Seeing what needs to happen there,

    And what you can do to assist its happening,

    With the gifts that are yours to give.

    That’s your role.

    My role is to remind you of your role.

    If you refuse to have anything to do with it,

    That’s your business,

    And I have no business

    Meddling in your business.
  46. 11/20/2015 —  Oktibbeha County 02 HDR Panorama—Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, November 20, 2015

    Here is a book recommendation:

    ”Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” by Greg McKeown.

    You’ve heard me say,

    ”You have to know what is important,

    And live as though it is.”

    McKeown helps us determine what is important.

    Living as though it is is still up to us.

    Our life isn’t ours

    As long as someone else is telling us what is important—

    Which, of course, would be pleasing them.

    McKeown’s book is about reclaiming our life,

    And living it.

    Which makes his book important

    In my book.

    And so, the recommendation.
  47. 11/2012015 —  Reelfoot Lake 11 HDR Panorama—Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We are the final authority over our own life.

    What WE say goes with us.

    What’s with this looking around to see if we are approved?

    Acceptable?

    Young children—before kindergarten—are completely free to be who they are.

    Jesus said, “Unless you turn and become like children,

    You will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

    He knew what he was talking about.

    Living out of our own heart and soul,

    Grounded in our own center,

    Our own core of being,

    On our own authority,

    Is the foundational requirement

    For life that is spilling over, pouring out.

    Do it the way YOU would do it,

    All your life long!
  48. 11/21/2015 —  Goodale 2015 17 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    It isn’t so difficult, finding our life and living it.

    1) Understand that to be the most important thing.

    2) Step away from the noise in your life and be quiet enough to listen to yourself think and feel yourself feel.

    3) Reflect on: What is the one thing you wish you were doing that you are not doing?

    4) Reflect on: Where do you find your deepest joy in your life?

    5) Reflect on: What skills, gifts and abilities do you enjoy using the most?

    6) What are your dreams, waking and sleeping, saying about your life as you are currently living it?

    7) What choices do you need to make that you are putting off making?

    8) What choices are you allowing someone else to make for you?

    9) In light of the above, what do you need to do?

    10) Do it!
  49. 11/23/2015 —  Cypress Trees 01 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    Anthony Stevens said, “In counting our blessings, we invariably overlook the shadow that they cast.”

    Every asset is a liability, and every liability is an asset.

    We think of blessings as nullifying negative aspects of our life.

    Blessings trump, x-out, negate, disappear, etc. all things unwanted.

    Grief, loss, sorrow, tragedy, heartbreak, devastation, agony, despair, and all things similar

    Are dismissed and erased by “counting our blessings.”

    “When I think of my son’s death, I look around and see all those people who have it so much worse than I do, and remember how blessed I truly am.”

    The blessings do not cancel out the ache of the absence of those who were life itself for us.

    Life is ONE:

    Grief AND Delight.

    Joy AND Sorrow.

    Blessings AND Afflictions.

    In living well, we have to take EVERYTHING into account,

    And live in light of conflicting, oppositional, mutually exclusive and excluding realities.

    The fact that “this” is true,

    Does not discount or deny the fact that “that” is also true.

    We live in the tension of the polarity between “this” and “that.”

    We allow all of it to be so, because it is so.

    And we live with one in light of the other,

    Allowing “the other side” to deepen, enlarge, expand and mature us,

    And enable us to live out of the wisdom created

    Through the consideration of counter-balancing realities.

    Life is the art of managing the tension between opposing poles,

    And bearing consciously the pain of their contradictory nature.

    Every time we say “Yes” to something,

    We say “No” to something else.

    And vice-versa.

    We have to see what ALL we are doing,

    And not-doing.

    And then decide what to do.
  50. 11/23/2015 —  Leaves of Fall 05 — Indian Land, South Carolina, November 18, 2015

    Carl Jung felt that we must each, in our own way, learn the art of letting things happen, in their own way.

    This is the Taoist principle of Wu-Wei, doing what needs to be done by doing nothing at all in an intentional, willful, forceful way, or “doing by not-doing.”

    Letting things happen.

    Seeing what path opens before us, and walking it to wherever it may lead.

    Jung said, “Letting go of oneself becomes the key to opening the door to the way.”

    We have to turn ourselves over to the psyche.

    The left hemisphere has to recognize the central place of the right hemisphere, and place itself in accord with it.

    The left hemisphere honors the right,

    And collaborates with it—listens to it—aligns itself with it—

    In the joint creation of a life worthy of us, a life worth living.

    Jung said, “Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, negating, and never leaving the simple growth of the psychic process in peace.”

    The left hemisphere no sooner says, “Okay. I’ll listen to my counterpart on the right side of our brain,” than it begins to edit, amend and put right, or dismiss, what comes forth.

    The left hemisphere is the consummate One Who Knows Best And Must Be Pleased.

    The right hemisphere is never more than the ragamuffin child who must always be overseen and put straight.

    We have long since identified with the left hemisphere, so that as conscious egos, the way of the left hemisphere is the way of the culture, and the way of each of us.

    It is asking a lot of us to “learn the art of letting things happen,”

    To “Step back, stand aside, and see what opens before us,”

    And, “Follow it out, wherever it leads.”

    Perhaps, it is asking too much.

    But, nothing less will do.

    Our work is cut out for us, waiting on us to take it up.

    We demur, and wait, ourselves, for something more like what we have in mind.
  51. 11/24/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 12 HDR – Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We are responsible for our own happiness, mood, state of mind and being.

    We have to make our own peace with the way things are.

    We don’t have to like any of it to live in accord with it.

    From 1942 to 1944 Victor Frankl accommodated himself to Nazi Concentration Camps–one of which was Auschwitz.

    He said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

    And, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

    Our “why” is “what we are here for,” “what is ours to do,” “what we do that centers us, focuses us, grounds us, and makes our heart sing–even though it be breaking.”

    I’ve recommended Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk before. Here’s the link again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioZd3AxmnE

    Find your why! It will connect you immediately with your what!

    With your why and your what in hand, you can handle any how and where!

    If we spend all our time and energy trying to arrange our where and how to our liking,

    We will be awash in despondency and lost in remorse and sorrow.

    Do not allow your where and how to disconnect you from your why and what!

    We have to find our life and live it, regardless of the context and circumstances of our life!
  52. 11/24/2015 —  Goodale 2015 09 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    Libido is only marginally concerned with sex.

    Beyond sex, there is life.

    Libido is Life Energy—the Fuel of Life.

    Our level of libido is a measure of our interest and investment in our life.

    It is an indicator of the degree to which we love the life we are living.

    If sex is the only thing about our life that turns us on—

    If sex is all we live for—

    We have no life.

    We don’t know why we are here,

    Or what do do with the time that is our on the earth.

    We are lost, aimless, without direction, meaning or purpose.

    Here we are. Now what?

    First, there must be hunger and thirst.

    Libido has to come to our rescue—

    And will, once we wake up enough to know

    We have to seek the life that is ours to live,

    With heart for the journey,

    And an unshakable resolve

    To serve the life that calls us,

    With loyalty and allegiance forever.

    This is the Knight’s quest for his adventure,

    The Lady’s quest for her heart’s true desire.

    It is our quest for our life.

    It is the Hero’s Journey.

    Libido’s true reason for being.

    The Fuel for Life.
  53. 11/25/2015 —  Black Bayou 11 HDR —  Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 2015

    Knowing what’s what is all we need to know.

    Knowing what’s what knows what’s what on every level at once.

    When we know what’s what, we remember to breathe.

    We remember to breathe consciously,

    Slowly,

    Deeply.

    That changes everything.

    It gives us time, clears space, provides perspective,

    Enables us to know what we know,

    Like how much of what we know is being filtered

    Through our left hemisphere,

    And how little is coming to us through our right hemisphere.

    That, alone, transforms our response to the here and now

    Of our living.

    More Right!

    Less Left!

    Applying that mantra physiologically and not politically

    Would put us in the middle of where we need to be.

    Which is in the middle of all polarities and extremes.

    The fulcrum.

    The balance point.

    The place of greatest influence.

    “The still point of the turning world.”

    Living there changes the world.

    All worlds.
  54. 11/25/2015 —  Through the Trees 01 — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 01, 2015

    Our biggest problem is knowing who we are—

    Knowing what is important to us on a level

    Beyond what we think is important.

    We think what we think is all there is to us.

    We are, we think, who we say we are.

    We have no idea who we also are.

    This is our problem.

    Knowing who we think we are is shallow water.

    We contain unfathomable depths,

    Of which we know nothing.

    We are a mystery unto ourselves,

    An adventure story waiting to be lived.

    We look forward to Star Wars,

    And ignore the world within waiting to be explored.

    Our task is to open ourselves to the inner world,

    And experience the truth of who we also are,

    Of the unlived life waiting to be lived.

    Starting is as easy as remembering tonight’s dreams,

    And understanding what they have to say.
  55. 11/25/2015 —  Goodale 2015 11 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 11, 2015

    Listen to your life!

    Your life will tell you all you need to know about living.

    Living is the lesson.

    Life is the teacher.

    The key is interpretation.

    We have to “get it.”

    Observation is not the problem.

    We can see what is happening with the best of them.

    Understanding what is happening is the problem.

    Perceiving what is happening is the problem.

    Comprehending what is happening is the problem.

    Our life swings from bad to good

    On the pivot point of Right Interpretation.

    Things are going poorly,

    And we push, push, push to make them better.

    Things are going well,

    And we push, push, push to make them better.

    Adam and Eve walked through Paradise

    And had an idea for making it better.

    Our life isn’t what we want it to be

    And we focus on rearranging our life.

    How about rearranging ourselves?

    Why do we never think of that?

    Sitting down with our idea of how our life should be,

    And changing the way we think.

    Why is it always bending our life to serve our will,

    And never bending our will to serve our life?

    What is our life asking of us?

    What does our life want from us? With us?

    We have to listen to our life to know,

    With a heart devoted to understanding what we hear.
  56. 11/27/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 08 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, November 26, 2015

    If we don’t grow up with the confidence

    That we are grounded in loving presence,

    Knowing that we are secure, valued and wanted,

    We have to establish that for ourselves—

    Consciously, deliberately, intentionally—

    In order to provide ourselves with the foundation

    Our parents failed to furnish.

    This is not easy,

    But.

    It is essential.

    We have to know what we hunger for—

    We are driven to fit-in, belong, be loved, have a place

    That is secure, certain and guaranteed—

    And bear consciously the pain of its absence,

    While we seek it’s confirmation.

    Here’s the secret:

    We will find what we seek

    By knowing that we seek it,

    And willing ourselves to live as though we have it

    Before its reality is conferred upon us

    By those who matter most to us.

    We have to fake it ’till we make it.

    We have to act the part.

    We have to courageously pretend to be more whole than we are.

    We have to dance with our fear.

    We have to do it the way we would do it

    If we knew we were secure, valued and wanted.

    We have to become what we need.

    We have to be what we seek.

    Living transparent to ourselves,

    And bearing consciously, compassionately, the pain of our parents’ negligence (or abuse).
  57. 11/27/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 13 B&W — Charlotte, NC, November 26, 2015

    We have to step into our fear

    And dance with our insecurity.

    Joseph Campbell said, “The treasure we seek,

    Lies in the cave we are most afraid to enter.”

    The Land of Promise

    Lies on the other side of our fear.

    We can easily talk ourselves out of doing what needs us to do it.

    We can come up with 10,000 excuses “like that,”

    For not doing the thing that waits for us.

    We do what is ours to do

    By doing it.

    It takes living with heart to find our heart.

    Courage comes,

    As the Lion in the Wizard of Oz discovered,

    From acting courageously.

    We don’t have to be courageous

    To act courageously.

    We only have to act courageously,

    As though we are in a movie about our life,

    And have to play the part that calls for courage.

    Play the part the situation calls us to play,

    As though we are in a movie

    And it’s our role.

    We act our way all the way to the Land of Promise,

    To the Journey’s End.
  58. 11/28/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 14 B&W Panorama — Charlotte, NC, November 26, 2015

    To be loved

    Means to be listened to with understanding.

    Anything else is posturing.
  59. 11/28/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 04 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    If you are going to aim for anything,

    Aim to be a

    Loving presence in the lives of others—

    Dependably, reliably, consistently conveying

    A constant source

    Of stability, safety and security—

    So as to reassure, console, comfort and encourage

    All who come your way,

    Amid the heaving waves

    Of the wine-dark sea.
  60. 11/29/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 13 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 04, 2015

    It takes time to square ourselves up with how things are

    When the discrepancy is great between how they are

    And how we wish they were.

    Coming to terms with that discrepancy

    Is life’s hardest task.

    We don’t hurry through it,

    Or breeze right past it

    On our way to happier times.

    We have to bear our own grief,

    Carry our own sorrow,

    And live with the weight of our own agony and anguish,

    Through long days and nights

    Of letting go what’s going,

    And letting come what’s coming,

    And allowing things to be as they are.

    Denial is the only shortcut,

    And saves us nothing in the long run,

    Postponing the inevitable,

    And preventing the accommodation

    That puts us in right relationship with our life,

    And allows us to reconcile ourselves to the disparity

    Of contrary truths—

    The truth of how things are and of how we want things to be—

    And do what needs us to do it

    Even yet, even now, even so.
  61. 11/29/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic Panorama 01 — Charlotte, North Carolina, November 28, 2015

    What would you be willing to go to hell for?

    Knowing what you would go to hell for

    Is the best way I know of assessing what is important.

    If it is important enough to you to go to hell for it,

    It’s important.

    If you wouldn’t go to hell for anything

    Because avoiding hell is the most important thing,

    You have no foundation,

    No ground,

    No integrity.

    You have sold out.

    You have sold your soul for the price of getting to heaven

    No. Matter. What.

    You are only doing what someone else tells you to do,

    And, you have missed the point.

    The point is to live your life at one with your Self and your Life.

    You, your Self and your Life have to be One.

    Making for: Wholeness. Completion. Integrity.

    That’s the point.

    Where this kind of oneness of being exists,

    THERE is heaven!

    And only there.

    Thus, the question:

    What would be willing to go to hell for?

    We have to be willing to go to hell

    In order to get to heaven.
  62. 11/30/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 11 Panorama B — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    You cannot do what needs to be done,

    And do what is supposed to be done,

    In any situation that arises.

    Who determines what needs to be done?

    You do,

    Out of your own personal authority,

    In response to your read of the situation.

    Who determines what is supposed to be done?

    Those Who Know Best And Must Be Pleased

    Out of their knowledge of policies and procedures

    And the way it has always been done

    In similar situations,

    From the beginning of time.

    Jesus said, “Why don’t you decide for yourselves what is right?”

    But we don’t have the personal authority to determine what is right

    In each situation as it arises,

    So, we fall back on Ecclesiastical Authority,

    And do it the way it is supposed to be done.

    If Jesus had done it that way,

    He would have never been crucified,

    And we would have never heard of him.

    To do it Jesus’ way

    Is to do it OUR way.

    If we dare.
  63. 11/30/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 06 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    We work it out with our innate capacities and interests,

    Our enthusiasms and desires,

    Our possibilities and our limitations

    (You wouldn’t want me playing the piano at your wedding,

    And that’s just one item on a very long list).

    We take what comes with us into the world in one hand,

    And we take what we find waiting on us—

    The context and circumstances,

    Terms and conditions,

    Of life in the world—in the other hand,

    And work to get the two hands together

    Over the course of our life,

    Seeing what we can do with all of it,

    What we can make of it,

    What it can make of us.

    Our life is our art.

    We are its gift to us.

    We bring each other forth,

    Delighting in the wonder of our creation.

    May it be so said of us all!
  64. 11/30/2015 —  OktibbIteha County 02 HDR Panorama — Starkville, Mississippi, November 20, 2015

    Our role is to put ourselves in accord

    With the context and circumstances of our life,

    And align ourselves with the life

    That is trying to come to life within us,

    And through us—

    Even now, even yet—

    In a “Thy will, not mine be done,” kind of way.

    It takes the right sort of listening

    In the right sort of silence

    To know what I’m talking about,

    But, any sort of listening

    In any sort of silence,

    Is enough to know

    This isn’t it.

    The way to it

    Is through the knowing

    That comes from listening intently, intensely,

    In the silence

    For that which is on the other side of our awareness

    Intently, and intensely hoping to commune with us

    Along the pathway of instinct and intuition,

    Dreams and fantasy,

    And guide us to the life

    That waits for us to live it,

    Even now, even yet.

    Make dates with the silence,

    And listen as though your life depends on it.
  65. 12/01/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 14 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    I would like to do it all over again,

    And do it like it ought to be done.

    I got way too much in my way the first time.

    I was all about what I liked and didn’t like,

    What I wanted and didn’t want.

    As if I knew what to like and not like,

    Want and not want.

    What did I know?

    I only had the mood of the moment to guide me.

    I have better guides at this point in my life.

    I wish I had had them from the first.

    It takes a lot of living

    To know when you are getting in your own way,

    And step aside,

    Listening for the guidance of the Guides,

    Taking everything into account,

    And allowing All Things Considered

    To wake us up

    As to what needs to be said and done,

    And what needs to be left unsaid, undone.

    I would like to do it all over again,

    Taking everything into account.

    I hope I can do a better job

    With that from this point forward.

    May it be certainly so!
  66. 12/01/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 24 — Charlotte, NC, December 1, 2015

    The life that waits for us to live it

    Is a gentler, kinder life than the one

    We are living and seek to live.

    The life we need to seek to live

    Needs far less than the life we live to live.

    The life that needs us to live it

    Seeks to bring us forth and make us known—

    To ourselves and the world.

    The life we seek to live is concerned only

    With buying, spending, amassing and consuming—

    And cares nothing

    For self-reflection, examination and expression.

    We live to not-know ourselves,

    But to hide from ourselves in the 10,000 things and ways.

    The difference between the two lives

    Is considerable,

    And worth considering.

    Even if we choose not to live it,

    At least, we would know what we were rejecting,

    And be responsible for saying, “No!”
  67. 12/01/2015  —  Leaves of Fall 08  —  Andrew Jackson State Park, November 9, 2015

    Carl Jung, from an early age,
    was aware of having
    an outer and inner personality
    which he dubbed, #1 and #2.

    #1 took care of managing the details of the day—
    his conscious ego, rational, logical, reasonable, consistent, dependable—
    choosing what clothes to wear and what to have for lunch, etc.

    #2 was the two million year old man within,
    the Deeper Self of his unconscious,
    who oversaw,
    and weaved together,
    the threads of Jung’s larger life,
    directing him toward nature,
    philosophy,
    reflection
    and inquiry.

    Jung realized that #1
    had to put himself in accord
    with #2, so that,
    rather than “kick against the goads,”
     #1 would consult #2 regarding
    the general direction
    and drift of the times,
    and find ways of organizing
    the details of life as it was being lived
    to reflect and express the larger
    meaning and purpose
    that #2 would have Jung serve.

    There may be a gift here
    for each of us to decide
    if it is something
    we would do well
    to open and explore.
  68. 12/02/2015  —  Goodale 2015 15  —  Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 11, 2015

    We live in the most neurotic (i.e., crazy, mixed-up, spinning its wheels going nowhere, but not irrational) culture in the entire history of cultures, like a dog chasing its tail, getting more neurotic with each generation, and each year of each present generation

    Because we will not stop, see what we are doing, bear consciously the pain of that realization, and do the work of waking up, coming to our senses, making our peace with how things are and how things also are, and doing what needs to be done—doing what is being asked of us—in each situation as it arises, with the gifts, interests, values and enthusiasms that lie latent and unacknowledged, unexpressed, within us,

    Listening to, and serving, our instinct and intuition, in conjunction with our reason and logic—trusting ourselves to that marriage of opposites as we step into and engage all the other opposites at play in our lives, to reconcile, integrate, harmonize and make whole—

    Trusting ourselves to, and allowing, this wonderful old process to bring us home to ourselves, each other and all others, in peace that passes all understanding, restores us to our soul, and all of us to our collective soul, and makes all things good.

    We make life hell for ourselves and others, while being one slight perspective shift away from the glories of heaven and life everlasting, because we won’t do the work of waking up, growing up, and living as though we are—but keep waiting for someone else to go first, to create a mass movement that goes viral and makes it easy because everyone is doing it, and it is so much fun that we would be crazy not to.

    Here’s a news flash for you: We would be crazy not to now.
  69. 12/02/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 02 — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    There is nothing to equal

    Establishing a relationship

    With a Jungian analyst

    And getting to work.

    You can delay it,

    Deny it,

    Spend time with substitutes

    Facsimiles,

    Replacements,

    And stand-ins,

    But.

    There is nothing to equal

    Establishing a relationship

    With a Jungian analyst

    And getting to work
  70. 12/02/2015 —  Bud Ogle Cabin 04 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, November 5, 2015

    There is a level to our lives that is beyond the apparent, routine and ordinary—

    A level waiting to be discovered, explored, experienced, lived.

    There is a side to us—a deeper “I”—waiting to come to life in our life,

    Transforming our life—the one we are living—

    And infusing us with life, libido, vitality, amazement and wonder,

    That This could have been hiding in us all the while,

    Waiting for us to discover “the treasure hard to find,”

    And become who we have always been.

    We make the discovery by becoming conscious—

    Mindfully, compassionately, aware—

    Of all that we know of us,

    But don’t know that we know

    Until we pay attention,

    And understand that everything

    Is just what it is,

    And more than it is.

    More than we could ever imagine.

    And, it has been so all along.
  71. 12/03/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 15 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We are at once bound and free,

    And live out our lives within that tension,

    Doing what we can to move from bondage to freedom,

    Without allowing the insurmountably of our task

    To dissuade us from its completion.

    This is “the human predicament” in short form.

    We cannot do what must be done,

    And we can’t let that stop us.

    No quitting! No giving up! No surrender! No lagging behind!

    We live to alter our genetic makeup for the better

    By being conscious of what we are up against

    And of what is ours to do, nevertheless, even so,

    And living to see what mindfulness can do

    With where we have come from

    And where we—as individuals and as a species—need to be going.

    This is our work,

    And the work needs workers.

    Are you in or not?
  72. 12/03/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 03 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    It is the place of consciousness

    To harmonize

    The thinking brain and the feeling brain:

    No dominance!

    Collaboration!

    We have to consciously think about what we are feeling,

    And notice how it feels to think what we are thinking.

    If we spend most of our time thinking,

    We have to consciously ask ourselves,

    Throughout the day,

    “How do you feel about this?”

    If we spend most of our time feeling,

    We have to consciously ask ourselves,

    “What do you think about this?”

    Our dominant function

    Has to consciously give way to our subordinate function,

    Inviting input, guidance and direction

    From “the other side,”

    In order to approach our life choices and decisions

    As One.
  73. 12/04/2015 —  Goodale 2015 18 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    There is one practice,

    Which applied worldwide

    Would produce immediate transformation,

    Bring on Nirvana, peace, and goodness everlasting:

    Knowing when to step back and stand aside,

    And doing it.

    When the situation calls for us

    To step back and stand aside

    We have to know it and do it.

    Too many of us are Caspar Milquetoast—

    Never knowing when to but always doing it.

    And too many of us are Bluto the Terrible,

    Never knowing when not to and never doing it.

    And that’s why we have the world we have today.
  74. 12/04/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 05 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    The emotional value we ascribe to the facts that shape our life

    Has everything to do with the meaning the fact has for us,

    And nothing to do with the fact.

    Some of us are stymied by facts

    That others of us brush off in our pursuit of other facts

    That others of us view with disdain.

    The same fact creates different responses across a broad sampling of us.

    We blame facts, hate facts, love facts, worship facts,

    But the facts, themselves, depend on something

    Beyond themselves to create their value in the lives of the people

    Who blame them, hate them, love them, worship them.

    Meaning is not lodged in any fact.

    Freedom is a shift in perspective.
  75. 12/05/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 16 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    We are here for the blessing.

    We are here to be blessed,

    And to be a blessing.

    The blessing is the encounter with grace—

    With the grace of mercy

    And the mercy of grace—

    Experienced as “unmerited benevolence,”

    As kindness, unexpected and undeserved.

    Lagniappe, generosity.

    The gift of time and caring presence.

    With nature,

    A sunrise counts,

    Or an hour of stillness among the cypress trees.

    It’s amazing what a calm presence

    Can do for a troubled soul.

    It is a blessing to be given,

    And received.

    Welcomed, relished, appreciated.

    Look for the blessings

    To give and receive.

    We are here for the blessing.

    Don’t leave a day unblessed.
  76. 12/05/2015 —  Oktibbeha County 03 — Starkville, Mississippi, November 20, 2015

    We are here to live our life—

    The life we are capable of living,

    The life that is ours to live,

    The life that only we can live—

    Amid the facts that define our living.

    We live in the midst of things as they are

    As those who know that things are more than they appear to be.

    We live in the midst of things as they are

    As those who know how things also are.

    This is called walking two paths at the same time.

    We can never take this world

    Of ordinary, apparent, reality,

    For the only world.

    The other world exists just beyond

    The visible facts of space and time,

    Straining to break forth into this world

    Through the lives of those

    Who are open to more than words can say—

    To more than logic and reason

    Are capable of imagining and intuiting—

    Who are “transparent to transcendence”

    (To borrow a phrase from Karlfried Durckheim)

    Incarnating the world beyond time

    Into this here and this now

    Simply by being who they are,

    And also are.

12/06/2015 —  Goodale 2015 19 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 11, 2015

The right mix of vulnerability and courage

Sends us on our way,

Aware of our possibilities and chances

Enough to neither be foolhardy nor cowardly

And able to do what needs to be done

In each situation as it arises

All along the way.

The right mix of all of our opposites and contraries

Is crucial for the journey.

Live from the center,

Visit the extremes only to offset the extremes,

And come back to the center:

“The still point of the turning world,”

And the fulcrum of the universe,

Levering all things into their proper relationship with each other

In the dynamic flow of time and place,

The dance of life.

  • 12/06/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 07 — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    The world can be too much for us to manage

    From time to time.

    The Holidays are anything but happy for a lot of us.

    All the old griefs and sorrows come calling,

    Sadness wells up, spills over, pours out.

    We lose our way

    And wander through the days in a daze,

    At the mercy of forces quite beyond us.

    Whenever, however, the world is too much for us to manage,

    We have to find the center, the ground of our being,

    And remind ourselves of who we are,

    Where we live,

    When we were born,

    What year it is,

    What odors are on the air we are breathing,

    And what sounds surround us,

    Connecting us to this here, this now.

    Past all the sadness of the past,

    We are here, now, breathing, hearing.

    The center has need of us,

    The ground of our being is calling our name.

    There is a life beyond the life we have lived,

    And are living—

    A life that would make its home with us,

    And call forth the gifts that are still ours to give.

    We are being called through the sadness

    To life beyond sadness

    In this here, this now.

    Why would I lie?
  • 12/07/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 20 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    There is that which struggles for expression,

    Strives to be known,

    Endeavors to be incarnated

    In the physical world

    Of normal, apparent, reality.

    Human beings stand on the threshold

    Between worlds,

    Alive to both worlds,

    Citizens of each

    Capable of communing with visible and invisible alike,

    It is our unique and irreplaceable place

    To bridge the worlds,

    Bringing that world forth in this world

    To the everlasting benefit of both.

    We begin by recognizing the truth of our position,

    And listening for what is trying to get our attention,

    And enter this world through us

    To make this world more like that one

    By serving the old values like

    Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness,

    Generosity, beauty, mercy…

    And tending whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,

    Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable,

    Whatever is excellent, whatever is worthy of praise…

    And bringing these things forth

    In the life that is ours to live

    Within the life we are living,

    Using the gifts that are ours to give

    For the true good of all.

    This is not too difficult for any of us,

    And it is essential for all of us,

    To wake up and be who we are.
  • 12/07/2015 —  Leaves of Fall 10 — Indian Land, South Carolina, December 4, 2015

    It starts with our family

    (Because we know where we stand with them,

    And we have to know where we stand

    With those we would help,

    I mean really help,

    And not just offer a hand-out,

    Or a bowl of soup in some soup kitchen)

    When it comes to helping someone avoid desperation.

    Desperation is the worst thing.

    When you’re desperate,

    You have lost all options,

    Your back is to the wall,

    Or the brink,

    And you will do anything—

    ANYTHING—

    For something to eat,

    Or a place to spend the night,

    This night—

    You’ll worry about tomorrow night tomorrow.

    So, we help our family first,

    If they can be helped.

    That’s the thing.

    People have to help us help them.

    They have to be able,

    And willing,

    To help themselves.

    They can’t just “really mean it this time”

    When they say they will.

    If your brother

    Is an indolent drunk,

    Or terminally into crack,

    You have to be steadfast with the triage,

    And look for someone else to help,

    Someone who can help you help them.
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 12/08/2015 —  Goodale 2015 05 Panorama 02 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    The longer our list

    Of deal-breakers and non-negotiables—

    The things we must have or won’t do—

    The more our life has to go Our Way—

    The less able we will be

    To reconcile opposites,

    Make peace with contradictions,

    Integrate polarities,

    Live in harmony with dichotomy and discord,

    Stay married with kids,

    And go home for the holidays.

    And the more miserable will be our life,

    And the lives of those who have to deal with us.

    The shorter our list,

    The more centered and grounded

    Will be our life,

    And the better it will be for everyone,

    Worldwide.
  • 12/08/2015 —  Ginkgo Magic 01 Panorama Detail — Charlotte, NC, November 28, 2015

    In order to live out of our own authority

    We have to be grounded in what is central to us.

    When we are centered in what is important to us,

    We live out of the center of what is central to us—

    Of central importance to us.

    No one can give us that,

    Or tell us what that is to be.

    Only we know what is of central importance to us.

    That is the foundation stone,

    “The still point of the turning world,”

    The point around which our life revolves,

    The source of our life and being,

    And no one can take that from us.

    Centered on what is of central importance to us,

    We are stable, secure, and immovable.

    We are at one with who we are,

    And live our life as one who is in charge of what we are doing,

    Tending our business as one who knows what our business is,

    Living out of our own authority.

    Integrity is living in ways that are integral

    With the center and ground of our being.
  • 12/09/2015 —  Reelfoot 17 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    Mindfulness leads the way

    To the center of ourselves,

    To what is of central importance to us,

    Through all of the conflicts and contradictions,

    Opposition, polarities and incompatibilities

    That create the raging storms

    Within and without,

    Producing the heaving waves

    Of the wine dark sea

    We must traverse

    On our way to “the still point of the turning world,”

    Find “the face that was ours before we were born,”

    Know the full truth of who we are and also are

    (Which is who we ARE)

    And become who we have always been.

    Mindfulness leads the way

    To recognizing and harmonizing

    The strengths and influences

    Of the two hemispheres of our brain

    And becoming whole at last.
  • 12/09/2015 —  Bud Ogle Cabin 01 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, November 5, 2015

    Our life is the art of “letting it happen.”

    To do that, we have to be mindful—

    That word again—

    Of what is happening,

    Of what is working,

    Of what is vibrant and vital

    About us and what we are doing,

    And consciously cultivate it,

    Nurture it,

    Nourish it,

    Believe in it,

    Trust it,

    Follow where it leads,

    And see where it goes.

    We must (MUST) notice

    When we are posed to dismiss something

    That has life about it,

    Something we are doing,

    Because it doesn’t measure up to external standards

    Of good and worthy.

    It has life about it!

    That is all it needs to infuse us with life,

    Purpose, direction, meaning, wonder, spirit, zeal

    And all of the rest of the spiritual pantheon

    Of qualities, characteristics, gifts and experiences

    That constitute the full scope of the spiritual journey.

    To dismiss it would be like rejecting the services of our guide.

    You wouldn’t want to do that,

    Would you?
  • 12/09/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 11 — Charlotte, NC, November 24, 2015

    The spiritual journey is an inner path

    To the Self at the center of us all.

    We progress through interior encounters

    With opposites, contradictions, incompatible differences,

    Conflicts of interest and of values, polarities,

    And mutually exclusive beliefs, viewpoints, positions, perspectives and outlooks.

    We are what we hate.

    The spiritual journey requires us

    To come to terms with all this,

    Make our peace with it,

    And work it out—

    Reconciling, integrating, honoring, recognizing, listening, seeing, understanding, accepting, forgiving, cooperating, collaborating, welcoming, befriending,

    And growing up.

    Mindfulness (that term again) leads the way.

    Compassionate, non-judgmental awareness

    Of all that is going on within us

    Transforms how we respond

    To all that is going on in the world external to us

    And we live there as agents of

    Grace, compassion and peace,

    Exhibiting outwardly what is true inwardly,

    And blessing all who come our way

    With a sense of divine presence

    As the Self in them recognizes the Self in us,

    And all is well.
  • 12/10/2015 —  Goodale 2015 32 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 4, 2015

    Carl Jung formulated his Shadow hypothesis as a way of interpreting his observation of a “counter,” or “contrary,” unconscious personality at work within each of us.

    Our Shadow is the polar opposite of our Persona, or our “public face”—who we think we are and show ourselves to be, the “ideal” us.

    My Ideal Me is Lao Tzu—Mr. Laid Back, let things take their course, let things happen according to their own rhythm and timing, no pushing, no forcing, live from the center, mind your own business, and all will be well.

    That makes my Shadow any member of the Tea Party, particularly Donald Trump and the Republican candidates running for President, trashing boundaries, sending anyone who is not like they are to internment camps or deserted islands so that they won’t have to deal with them. The consummate hustlers, con-artists, evangelical-convert-the-world-to-their-ideology-NOW-disciples-of-their-ideal-of-Christ…

    And the meaning for me is that I have to become my Shadow in dealing with my Shadow. I have to be rude, nasty, ugly and mean—drawing hard lines and saying “NO! ISAIDNO!” I cannot allow my Shadow to “take its course”! I have to block its path!

    And, therein, lies the goodness and the power of our Shadow.

    It brings forth the Also-I, rounds out our personality, and makes us whole.

    There are times and places where drawing hard lines and shouting “NO!” are quite appropriate and called for—times when Mr. Laid Back Lao Tzu has to stand aside in favor of telling the Tea Party, and Donald Trump, Et al., where to stop, turn around, and hie out to their deserted island of choice for as long as time shall last starting NOW!
  • 12/10/2015 —  Hay in the Field 01 Panorama— Rapides Parish, Louisiana, October 29, 2010

    We find our life and live it

    By living consciously—

    By being mindfully (that word again) aware

    Of what is happening on all levels of our experience,

    To the full extent that we can be aware of what is happening.

    That’s it.

    The more aware we are,

    The more we know of what we know,

    Of what can be known.

    The more we know,

    The better we can evaluate our options, choices and decisions,

    And the more likely our choices and decisions

    Will direct us toward ends that are legitimately ours to serve,

    And less toward ends that are none of our business.

    Living well is a matter of knowing what’s what,

    And doing what needs to be done about it.

    If we aren’t living mindfully,

    We aren’t living as well as we could be living,

    And may be just going through the motions of life,

    Pretending to be alive.
  • 12/11/2015 —  Goodale 2015 30 Panorama B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    Sit with your life spread out before you, around you.

    Where lie your inhibitions?

    Your compulsions?

    Your obsessions?

    Your Dark Matter—

    Things that would be obvious to others,

    But are invisible to you?

    How would you know a Dark Matter

    When you see one?

    By the effects it generates,

    The strange disturbances it creates.

    Where do things become strange in your life?

    Where do you spend your time and energy (and money)?

    What do you think about most often?

    What do you do most frequently?

    What does thinking about the things you think about

    Keep you from thinking about?

    What does doing the things you do

    Keep you from doing?

    What are the social things—and the job related things—

    That other people do with ease,

    That you cannot do at all?

    What is being asked of you

    That you cannot do?

    What excuses do you make for not doing

    The things you cannot do?

    How do you dismiss, discount, deny, ignore

    The things you need to do

    That you cannot do?

    Sit with those things.

    Become curious about them.

    Explore them.

    Get to the bottom of them.

    Notice when, were, resistance becomes overwhelming.

    What are you resisting?

    What is the source of the resistance,

    The reluctance,

    To see what is there?

    In what ways do you hide

    From what is to overpowering to consider?

    Our life is the source of Life

    To those with eyes to see,

    And the courage and the will to keep looking,

    And of Death,

    To those who do not.
  • 12/11/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 17 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, December 1, 2015

    It comes down to, depends upon, revolves around, flows from,

    Six things:

    1) Seeing

    2) Seeing things as they are AND as they also are, which is how they ARE

    3) Seeing what things mean

    4) Seeing the implications that has for us

    5) Seeing what needs to be done about it in light of all things considered

    6) Doing it

    Get those six things down, and you have it made.

    As much as you can have it made.

    I’m still working on the first one.
  • 12/12/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 18 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    Our capabilities far exceed our expressions.

    And, therein, lies the problem.

    Our potential is always frustrated

    By our degree of satisfaction

    With our actualization.

    We think we are grown up enough

    When we can drive

    And buy beer.
  • 12/12/2015 —  Hay Under Cover 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, SC, December 11, 2015

    It can seem too hard.

    “You mean I have to show up for work on time every day?”

    It’s too much for some of us.

    Being responsible for ourselves, for our life, for our care and feeding,

    Is too much.

    We pass.

    Being conscious—mindfully aware (that term again)—

    Of what we are doing

    Is often too much for those of us

    Who are making a game effort

    At the showing up for work and being responsible part.

    We pass.

    On our life.

    And settle for going through the motions.

    Aimlessly, listlessly, meaninglessly.

    What’s it going to take?

    We have to throw ourselves into it wholeheartedly.

    We have to give our entire being to the work of living our life—

    Of being responsible and mindfully aware,

    And making the adjustments necessary

    To put ourselves in accord with our life,

    With the life that needs us to live it,

    Responsibly and consciously,

    Every day for the rest of the time left for living.

    Everything depends on it.

    Everything.

    If you are going to believe anything,

    Believe that,

    And act as though you do.
  • 12/13/2015 —  Goodale 2015 20 — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    The key to letting things happen

    Is being cool with paradox and contradiction.

    Is being cool.

    Rigidity and inflexibility are antithetical to life.

    Suppleness and resiliency are essential to life.

    There will be a time when suppleness

    Has to give way to rigidity,

    And resiliency must become inflexible.

    We dance with our life

    As the music changes

    And the beat goes on.
  • 12/13/2015 —  December Orchard 03 Panorama — Springs Farms Peach Orchard, Fort Mill, SC, December 11, 2013

    Nothing can matter more than

    Being who we are at the center,

    At the vital core,

    Of our Self—

    The Tao,

    The Christ,

    The Buddha,

    The God,

    Within.

    The Heart of Value,

    Meaning,

    and Life

    Is ours to realize,

    Serve,

    And bring forth

    In our life—

    In the life we live

    In the time left for living.

    We cannot think it is about making money,

    And living out our time

    Enjoying the splendors of wealth and privilege.
  • 12/13/2015 —  Country Sunrise 01 — Indian Land, South Carolina, December 13, 2015

    Greg McKeown, in his book, “Essentialsm: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” uses the acronym WIN as the short form of “What’s Important Now?”

    Shortstops can be so consumed with their error on the last play that they continue the trend on the coming play.

    What’s Important Now focuses us on the only time we have to work with: N.O.W.

    Now is the focal point.

    The fulcrum.

    The pivot point.

    Levering ourselves into position

    To live our life as only we can—

    By deciding What’s Important NOW?

    And giving it our full, here comes that word again,

    Mindful, compassionate, attention.

    No matter what has gone on before,

    Or what we are afraid will happen in the future,

    HERE we are NOW!

    NOW what?

    What’s important NOW?

    Answering the question

    The way it begs to be answered

    Is the key to all that follows.
  • 12/14/2015 —  Reelfoot Lake 19 HDR — Reelfoot Lake State Park, Hornbeck, Tennessee, November 4, 2015

    The bedrock rule governing all knowledge is:

    You Have To Know What I Mean

    Before You Can Understand What I’m Saying.

    It’s corollary is:

    Truth Has To Be Experienced—

    It Cannot Be Explained.

    All knowledge hinges

    On our willingness,

    And our ability,

    To reflect on our experience

    In order to form new realizations.

    A five-year-old child

    Is only capable of knowing so much—

    No matter how much we explain things.

    When they are inhibited

    From reflecting on their experience,

    They never know more than what they are told.

    They grow up to be members of the Tea Party,

    And fundamentalist religion.

    The more powerful they become,

    The more their numbers grow

    Through the simple practice

    Of banning reflection on experience.
  • 12/14/2015 —  Bethany Church Cemetery 07 B&W — Bethany ARPC, Clover, South Carolina, December 13, 2015

    When our life stops working

    (And we know when it is working

    And when it is not working.
    .
    Putting your jeans on before your shoes works.

    Putting your shoes on before your jeans does not work)

    The solution is not to try harder,

    Forcing, pushing, shoving, kicking, screaming, yelling…

    The solution is to listen deeply,

    Look closely at what we are doing that isn’t working.

    The problem will suggest its own remedy.

    We have to step back

    And reflect on what is happening

    To see what needs to happen.

    Then, it’s a matter

    Of having the courage to do it.

    And, courage comes

    From acting courageously—

    Whether you feel courageous or not.

    The AA slogan applies:

    “Fake it until you make it.”

    That’s something that works every time.
  • 12/15/2015 —  Goodale 2015 23 Panorama — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina, November 11, 2015

    We all have a story to tell with the way we live our life.

    Tevya had his story to tell,

    Hester Prynne had her story to tell,

    Zorba the Greek had has story…

    You have yours, I have mine.

    The worst thing is to die with our story untold.

    We live to tell our story.

    We live in the service of our story.

    Or we live in the service of someone’s idea of our story,

    Maybe our own.

    Maybe we have our own idea for our story,

    Which we like better than the story that is ours to tell.

    Maybe we live to tell OUR story the way WE think it ought to go.

    All of the tragedies, fictional and real, are about co-opting our story,

    And forcing it down paths that are not our path to walk.

    Thinking that we know what we are doing,

    Or thinking it doesn’t matter what we do,

    Sidetracks us into some story other than the one that is ours to tell.

    Staying on track—

    Staying on the beam—

    Is staying true to our story—

    True to ourselves,

    Authentically aligned with the truth of our own being,

    Grounded in the center of what is central to us,

    Being who we are

    Regardless of the nature and circumstances of our life.

    And letting our story be told the way it needs to be told

    By living our life the way it needs us to live it,

    No matter what.
  • 12/15/2015 —  Ginkgos 2015 20 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, December 1, 2015

    We have to come to terms with our life

    Over the full course of our life.

    We don’t ever get it down.

    The work is on-going, unending.

    We get the first grade down

    And think we’re something.

    It’s like that the entire way.

    When we wake up to the eternal nature of The Deal.

    We’re bummed out for decades.

    “Why try, if we are never going to get it figured out?”

    “What’s the point if it keeps getting harder?”

    It isn’t that we have to come to terms with our life,

    But that we have to come to terms with the process

    Of coming to terms with our life again and again forever.

    The idea saps us.

    It wears us down.

    The perennial dripping of one more damn thing.

    We have to keep growing up

    Whether we like it or not.

    This is really what we need religion

    And something like the church

    (But completely unlike the church of our experience!)

    For:

    Growing up.

    We need the right kind of help with that

    All our life long.
  • 12/16/2015 —  Silhouettes 01 Panorama — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015

    I know a woman who cannot say “No.”

    That isn’t quite right.

    She says “No” twice a month

    To prove she isn’t addicted to “Yes.”

    You can imagine what a mess her life is in.

    Actually, it isn’t.

    She gets up early and works hard all day,

    And takes little pink pills to keep going,

    To keep it all going,

    To keep it from becoming a mess.

    The strain is undeniable.

    How many holes can you plug in the dike

    Before the flood comes?

    The pre-flood strain

    Is her life’s way of begging her

    To say “No” in all of the important places,

    So that she might say “Yes” to her Soul/Self

    And nurture her relationship with the core of life and being,

    And nourish her life in the source of life—

    The ground of silence and solitude—

    Relax, and breathe again,

    In the presence of what is essential,

    And too easily lost

    Amid the clamor of all that claims to matter.
  • 12/16/2015 —  Lake Crawford 01 HDR — Kings Mountain State Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina, December 14, 2015

    It takes an inordinate amount of courage

    To say “No,” initially.

    It becomes easier with practice and time,

    And, it helps to remember how many times

    We say “No,” in a day.

    It also helps to rehearse different ways to say “No.”

    “If I had more time and fewer children,

    I would be happy to help you, but I’ll have to decline your offer.”

    “If I were more like I ought to be than I am…”

    “If I were a better person…”

    “If I were more like the person my mother wants (wanted)

    Me to be…”

    “If it weren’t Monday (Or whatever day it is)…”

    (And when the other person says, “What does it being Monday

    Have to do with it?

    Say, “Nothing. The important thing

    Is that I can’t help you with that, but I wish you well.”)

    In time, you will look forward to opportunities

    To try out new ways of saying “No.”
  • 12/16/2015 —  Bethany Church Cemetery 01 B&W — Bethany ARPC, Clover, South Carolina, December 13, 2015

    You have to believe in Grace

    As the foundational operating principle in your life,

    And in the universe.

    Nothing has to be the way it is.

    Everything is here by Grace.

    This photograph is evidence of Grace at work in my life.

    I’m there with a camera with the light and gravestones.

    No way I could have planned that.

    No way we can think up a life worth living.

    Yet, one remains a possibility for us—

    If we open ourselves to it

    And wait, watching, for it to open itself to us.

    There is a catch, of course.

    We have to bear consciously the pain of our life as we live it.

    The pain of our life not being what we need it to be.

    The pain of being unable to arrange what we need our life to be

    Because the way it is won’t allow us to do what we need to do

    To have what we need our life to be.

    We have to bear consciously, with compassion,

    The pain of the way our life is—

    Bearing in our body the cross

    Of not having what we need,

    With compassion for it all.

    And wait for something to stir to life,

    For Grace to appear

    In some form, from some place, we can’t begin to imagine.

    Bear the pain consciously

    With compassion,

    And wait for Grace to come bearing possibilities

    You never could have thought up or created on your own.

    Bear the pain consciously,

    With compassion,

    And believe in Grace

    To grace you in ways you won’t believe.

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One Minute Monologues 028

08/20/2015 — 10/26/2015

  1. 08/20/2015 — Tidal Pool 01 — Sunrise, Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 20, 2015

    Can you be mindfully aware of each situation as it arises,

    Without judgment, will or opinion–

    Seeing what is happening,

    And what needs to be done in response,

    And offering what you have to give

    For the good of the situation,

    And doing it again in the next one that arises?

    See the good,

    Do it.

    In order to see the good,

    We have to look with open eyes–

    That is with eyes not clouded

    By judgment, will or opinion.

    If you are going to practice something,

    Practice seeing with open eyes.
  2. 08/21/2015 —Sunrise 03 — Tidal pool runoff, Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina, August 21, 2015

    There are places that prevent you from being anywhere else.

    Algebra was not one of those places for me.

    School was not one of those places.

    I cannot remember being engaged at school

    The way I was engaged by the woods I walked through

    On my way home from school.

    The natural world nourishes my soul

    In a way that formal education

    (And formal religion, for that matter)

    Could not—and cannot—do.

    We take our peace where we find it.

    No one can hand it to us,

    Or tell us where it is to be found.

    Our heart/soul knows what it is, where it is.

    We only have to walk around

    With our eyes open

    Waiting for our heart to light up

    When we wander into the presence

    Of our soul’s true joy.

    It is our place to find all the places,

    And to return to them often.

    This is the way of life, and being alive.

    Some people light up with the slightest whiff

    Of algebra.

    There are many ways to life and peace.

    Find yours.

    Walk them
  3. 08/22/2015 — Sunrise 02 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 21, 2015

    We find our life and live it.

    Every day.

    Our life changes with the tides,

    Is different with the circumstances.

    We do not wake up in exactly the same world

    We went to sleep in.

    Sometimes, our world is radically, unrecognizably, transformed.

    We have to find our life, there, and live it.

    Our life is a reflection, and extension, of our circumstances.

    Our circumstances give us our life.

    Life without circumstances, would be exactly what?

    Our circumstances give our life shape and form and character.

    Step into your circumstances!

    Find your life again!

    Live it!

    How do we fit what we know of our life

    Into THESE DAMN CIRCUMSTANCES???

    That’s the test.

    It’s called The Cyclops Exam.

    It calls forth imagination, courage and creativity.

    And, shapes and forms our life,

    And produces character

    Like you would never believe.

    But.

    We have to participate willingly–

    We have to engage our circumstances

    With the right spirit–

    For the magic to happen,

    And we birth ourselves

    Again,

    And again,

    Forever.

    Endlessly becoming who we are

    Always.
  4. 08/23/2015 —Sunrise 04 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 21, 2015

    The enemies are:

    Laziness and Lethargy,

    Arrogance and Greed,

    Inflation and Deflation.

    The allies are:

    Imagination, Inventiveness and Creativity,

    Reflection, Realization and Insight,

    Patience, Resiliency and Courage.

    Seeing how things are

    Is knowing what needs to be done.

    Then, there is only waiting for the time to be right

    To act.

    Nature spends very little time acting,

    And a lot of time resting, playing, waiting, watching,

    And is always doing what needs to be done.
  5. 08/23/2015 —Tidal Pool 02 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 20, 2015

    There are people who are constitutionally prohibited from squaring up to the way things are,

    And constitutionally compelled to live in a fantasy world where things are what they are supposed to be, to their way of thinking.

    ”Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? And did I hear you say, he was meeting you today, to take you to his mansion in the sky?”

    Mark Twain observed that “people seldom fight a winning fight against themselves.”

    But.

    It helps to know what we are up against.

    The First Spiritual Law states: We have to live transparent to ourselves.

    Everything flows from there that can flow from there.

    The Second Spiritual Law states: In order to live transparent to ourselves, we have to perceive and receive ourselves without judgment, will, or opinion, and allow compassionate, mindful, awareness to work its slow magic over the full course of our life.

    The people who want to know what the rest of the spiritual laws are don’t fully appreciate what is required by the first two.
  6. 08/24/2015 — Sheldon Church Ruins, HDR 05 Panorama – Yemassee, SC, August 24, 2015

    James Hollis said, “Divorce doesn’t end a marriage, and death doesn’t end a relationship.”

    My father is as alive and influential in my life as he ever was.

    So is yours.

    The story of this old church “ended” years ago, but the beat goes on.

    Nothing ends.

    Books and movies run on and on–not just in terms of their impact on us,

    But also, in terms of what remains to be said of their characters

    And what they did with their lives–

    Or what influence they continued to wield

    In the lives of those who knew them–

    After the author quit writing, or the credits rolled.

    We speak of endings, happy or sad,

    And of moving on,

    Thinking we can leave home without carrying it with us.

    Part of me will be eight years old forever,

    And the other parts of me have to realize that

    And make allowances,

    Giving the eternally-eight-year-old room to work out his stuff

    In the safe company of the rest of us,

    Who think he is just great,

    And know we couldn’t have done our part without him.

    The past plays out in the present and future.

    We have to make it conscious,

    And play along like a good jazz ensemble

    Picking up on what the sax man is doing,

    Making him sound so sweet.
  7. 08/25/2015 — Harbor River Mooring HDR—St. Helena Island, SC, August 24, 2015

    All it takes is growing up.

    You can’t have a problem that growing up can’t handle.

    Refusing to grow up is the problem.

    THE problem.

    And YOU are the solution,

    Thinking, as you do, that you are grown up enough,

    And you don’t deserve any more problems,

    Trying to make whiskey your Mamma,

    Taking care of you one more day,

    Because those mean old problems won’t go away.

    Or, is it ice cream?

    Whatever it is that you are pretending is Mamma,

    Isn’t your Mamma,

    And you have to grow up.

    Again.

    The good news is that’s all there is to it.

    Get that down and you have it made.
  8. 08/25/2015 —Land’s End HDR 01 Panorama—St. Helena Island, SC, August 24, 2015

    I make my best decisions when I’m not trying to make a good decision,

    When I’m not even thinking that a decision needs to be made,

    Or, that I am making one.

    It’s like I walk into a good choice without choosing.

    All I’m conscious of is not choosing, not trying,

    Just seeing what I do, as an interested observer of my own life.

    It’s a strategy as old as Taoism,

    Which merged with Buddhism,

    To form Zen.

    Wu-wei,

    Doing by not-doing.

    It has been a life-long strategy
  9. That I didn’t contrive, but “fell into”

    By virtue of being unable to come up with anything better.

    I often say of my 40 years in the ministry

    That I don’t know any one who accomplished as much

    By doing as little.

    I get out of bed and see what happens,

    And spend much of my time

    Being dumbfounded and amazed by it all.
  10. 08/26/2015 — Garden City Beach 05 — Garden City, SC, August 21, 2015

    When we put ourselves in the service of our life,

    As a vassal in homage to a king,

    With an oath of fealty and liege,

    Things change.

    You are no longer in charge.

    You are responsible for listening,

    For sensing direction,

    But not for directing.

    Your life unfolds through you

    Within the circumstances that limit and define you.

    It is your place to align yourself with the life

    That is trying to live itself through you.

    It is a collaboration, a composition, a work of art–

    As much as a painting, or a symphony, or a ballet

    Is a work of art.

    Your life produces you,

    As much as you produce your life.

    You are the poem

    And the poet.

    The dancer

    And the dance.

    Stop working to make something happen,

    And start listening to what is trying to happen.

    Allow yourself to be led.

    Let yourself learn how to follow

    The guidance of an invisible guide.
  11. 08/27/2015 — In the Marsh 02 — Beaufort, SC, August 26, 2015

    If you have symptoms, you’re not listening.

    If you don’t have symptoms,

    Those around you are covered up in them,

    Because you are not listening,

    And they are not listening.

    If neither you nor those around you have symptoms,

    You and they are the next incarnation of the Buddha,

    Of the Christ,

    And live among us as Bodhisattvas,

    And are the hope of humankind.

    The symbol of the age

    Is the three not-so-wise monkeys,

    See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil,

    With “evil” understood as

    ”That which I do not want to acknowledge, much less confront!”

    We don’t want to see what we don’t want to see.

    We don’t what to hear what we don’t want to hear.

    We don’t want to say what we don’t want to see or hear.

    And, we have symptoms that know no end,

    And cannot be fixed.

    It comes back to the refusal to grow up.

    Growing up is seeing what needs to be seen,

    Hearing what needs to be heard,

    Saying what needs to be said,

    And doing what needs to be done about it.

    That is all that is standing between you

    And Bodhisattvahood.
  12. 08/28/2015 — The Ole Swimming Hole Panorama—Edisto River, Colleton State Park, Walterboro, SC, August 26, 2015

    When someone asks you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    Tell them you want to be awake,

    Because being awake is the whole point of growing up

    And everything falls into place around that.

    And if they say, “I mean, what do you want to DO?”

    Tell them you want to see how things are,

    Which is Yin,

    And how things also are,

    Which is Yang,

    And both together is how things REALLY are,

    Which is Tao,

    And at-one with Tao,

    We DO, naturally, easily and spontaneously,

    What needs to be done

    About how things are

    In each situation as it arises,

    And no one can DO more than that.
  13. 08/28/2015 — Jenny Adams HDR Panorama—Harbor River, St. Helena Island, SC, August 25, 2015

    Living in the service of a heart

    That yearns to sing and dance

    Is the point and purpose of being alive.

    But.

    We have to pay the bills it takes to live.

    And, therein lies the problem.

    How much for singing and dancing,

    And how much for eating and sleeping?

    Negotiation and Compromise, Kid!

    Negotiation and Compromise!

    It helps if we incur the right bills.

    How do we know which are the right bills?

    I was hoping someone would ask that question!

    Observation and Reflection, Kid!

    Observation and Reflection!
  14. 08/29/2015 — Storm Clouds at Sunrise 06 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 20, 2015

    We live to make our little heart sing.

    That is our primary loyalty,
    ,
    Our chief concern,

    Our overriding allegiance,

    After survival.

    We live to make our heart sing, but.

    We have to be living for the singing to happen.

    We have to eat and drink.

    You know the routine:

    Food, clothing, shelter, education, health insurance,

    Dental care, tri-focals, and a retirement plan.

    We have to take care of business.

    Taking care of business,

    On one hand,

    Can mean neglecting what we take care of business to do,

    On the other.

    We are here to be sure it doesn’t.

    To balance things out.

    To remember why we are here.

    And do the things that make our little heart sing.

    How long has it been, by the way?
  15. 08/30/2015 — Hunting Island Panorama HDR 09 — Beach Erosion, Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, August 25, 2015

    On my best days,

    I’m the Buddha,

    And the Christ.

    So are you.

    We all are the Buddha, and the Christ, and Lao Tzu, and all the rest of the Holy Ones,

    On our best day.

    The Zen masters could say,

    ”If you meet the Buddha on the road,

    Kill him!”

    As a way of reminding their disciples

    That THEY are the Buddha,

    And THEY aren’t being the Buddha

    If they concede that honor to someone else.

    The key to being the Buddha, the Christ, etc.,

    Is having a singing heart.

    On our best days,

    We are doing what makes our heart sing,

    And bringing life to life all around us.

    Joseph Campbell said,

    ”The influence of a vital person is vitalizing.”

    The Buddha brings out the Buddha in everyone.

    The Christ brings out the Christ.

    They couldn’t keep it to themselves,

    Even if they tried.

    Especially, if they tried!
  16. 08/31/2015 — Sunrise 01 — Harbor River, Port Royal, SC, August 25, 2015

    It is enough to see ourselves as we are,

    And, as we also are–

    Without judgment, will or opinion–

    But with preference and direction,

    Imagination, creativity, patience, resiliency, perseverance and courage.

    It’s more than enough,

    And all we will ever need.
  17. 08/31/2015 — Live Oak Lane—St. Helena Island, SC, August 25, 2015

    We have to do our own work.

    We are on our own when it comes to listening, seeing, understanding, waking up.

    We are on our own when it comes to knowing what is important,

    And giving ourselves to its service.

    When I was in theological school,

    They told me that Greek and Hebrew were important.

    I knew Greek and Hebrew were not important,

    But had to bow to Those Who Knew Best And Had To Be Pleased.

    Jungian psychology was—and is—important,

    And would have been a great help to me in the ministry,

    But I had to get it on my own

    Because Those Who Knew Best

    Didn’t know what they were talking about.

    We cannot trust others to know what is important.

    We have to know what is important for ourselves

    And live in its service.

    And, if it turns out that we don’t know what we are talking about,

    We have to change our mind about what is important,

    And live in the service of what is important then.

    No one can do the important things for us.

    We have to do that work ourselves.

    And we are fearful,

    And somewhat lazy.

    We have to do the work of working through that as well.
  18. 09/01/2015 — “Growing up will break your heart.

    And there is no rational immunity against the experience–

    No intellectual shortcuts through the agony.

    Insight is no help.

    We can’t realize our way through it.

    The realizations come after we’ve popped out on the other side.

    But, on this side of that realization, it’s hell–

    Which we repeat throughout the lifelong process

    Of growing up.”

    I don’t remember who said that,

    But she knew what she was talking about.

    If it wasn’t MC Richards,

    It could have been.
  19. 09/01/2015 — Tropical Forest—Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, August 24, 2015

    Our symptoms,

    Our dreams,

    Our problems and our response to them,

    Other people and our response to them,

    And their response to us,

    Our job,

    What we do in our spare time,

    Our spouse or partner,

    Our children,

    Our pets…

    All of our life

    Is a mirror,

    A message to us,

    About us

    And the distance between how we are living

    And how we need to be living

    To exhibit and express who we are,

    And the gifts that are ours to share,

    And the life that is ours to live.

    The life we are living

    Is indicative of the distance between it

    And the life that is ours to live.

    May those with eyes to see, see!

    May those with ears to hear, hear!

    That’s all there is to it.
  20. 09/02/2015 — Johnson Creek Mooring 02 Panorama HDR—St. Helena Island, SC, August 24, 2013

    It will help if you take up the practice of having purpose, preference and direction

    Without judgment, willfulness, or opinion.

    Live your life like you are a kayaker in whitewater.

    Kayakers don’t have time to form an opinion

    About what the stream presents to them

    In each Now of their journey.

    They respond without willful insistence

    To whatever the moment requires of them,

    And then forget that moment

    In order to deal with the next one that is already

    Requiring their full attention.

    People who live poorly

    Have an opinion about every little thing.

    Generally, a negative opinion,

    Elaborately formed and loudly proclaimed.

    ”You won’t BELIEVE what just happened!”

    They have no life,

    They only have opinions,

    And “feelings” that are always being “hurt.”

    You don’t find them in kayaks on whitewater.

    But they are in kayaks on whitewater,

    And don’t know it.
  21. 09/02/2015 — Hunting Island Panorama 02 — Beach Erosion, Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, August 24, 2015

    Here’s what I like about the Buddha:

    It is said that he died from eating bad pork.

    How enlightened is that?

    If you can’t tell bad pork when you see it, smell it, taste it,

    How can you claim to be “the awakened one”?

    Not even the Buddha is the Buddha.

    And the Christ is not the Christ.

    The Messiah is not the Messiah.

    And, they all ARE who they are precisely because they are not!

    It’s wonderful,

    Because I’m not enlightened either.

    I fit right in.

    So do you.

    We don’t have to be who we are not.

    We only have to relax, and be who we are.
  22. 09/03/2015 — Bitter Weeds HDR—Fairfield County, SC, September 3, 2015

    We live between our potential

    And the possibilities for its realization.

    We can too easily concede to impossibility,

    And despair of ever finding a way

    Of being who we have it within us to be.

    We can push too hard,

    In the service of grandiosity and inflation,

    Where possibility does not exist.

    We have to find the Middle Way,

    Serving our Gift

    Within the limits governing its expression.

    We live to see what we can get by with,

    Without taking it personally,

    If it is less than we hoped for.
  23. 09/04/2015 — St. Simon’s Church—Peak, SC, September 3, 2015

    We have to work it out.

    We have to make it work.

    We stand between our gifts—our potential–

    And the context and circumstances of our life,

    And have to get the two together.

    We have to bring our gifts forth within our circumstances.

    We have to realize our potential within our possibilities.

    It is easier to go through the motions of living–

    To follow the cow in front of us

    From the barn to the pasture,

    And back to the barn.

    All our life long.

    We have to do what is hard.

    Every day for as long as we are alive.

    Whether we want to or not.

    Are in the mood for it or not.

    Feel like it or not.

    If we don’t do it, it won’t get done.

    We are here to serve our gifts

    And bring ourselves forth,

    Birthing ourselves.

    We are the Virgin and the Christ.

    Bethlehem is everyday.

    Golgotha is everyday.

    And there is no one to do our work but us.
  24. 09/05/2015 — The Old Brick Church Cemetery 07 B&W—Fairfield County, SC

    You have to marry your LIFE,

    The LIFE which calls forth your GIFTS,

    Makes your HEART sing,

    Makes YOU whole,

    And is THE WAY for you

    Among the 10,000 ways.

    The first task of life

    Is to find your LIFE,

    Fall in love with it,

    And marry it,

    Plighting your troth to it,

    Pledging your allegiance,

    Loyalty and fidelity to it,

    And promising to do right by it

    Through all the situations and circumstances of living

    ’Til death do you part.

    Amen.

    Get that down,

    And you have it made.

    Miss that step when it would have been “easy,”

    And you will have to go back for it,

    Encumbered by duties and responsibilities

    That will have to be taken into account

    Worked through,

    And lived around.

    But, that’s just how it is.

    It will give you purpose, focus and direction,

    And bring joy to your heart,

    Which finally gets to sing.

    It is never too late

    To marry your LIFE.

    Just a little awkward in places.
  25. 09/06/2015 — The Old Brick Church HDR Panorama 06 — Fairfield County, SC, September 4, 2015

    We cannot buy vitality,

    But we think money is more important,

    And sell ourselves in the service

    Of That Which Is Not Life

    In the name of Really Living,

    But the last time we lived

    Was in the sixth grade

    Playing hide-and-seek

    With our brother.
  26. 09/07/2015 — Cypress Knees 02 — Cypress Swamp, Colleton State Park, Walterboro, SC, August 26, 2015

    Carl Jung said he lived to ask, and answer to the extent that was possible, the “unasked questions of my ancestors.”

    That is the case with each of us.

    We are handed, at our birth, the unasked questions of our ancestors–

    The experiences unreflected,

    The assumptions unexamined,

    The facts grossly misinterpreted and arrogantly, ignorantly, declared to be explained,

    The lives unlived–

    And the ghosts of all who have passed before us

    Gather in the deliver room

    Hoping that we will be the one

    To deliver them

    From the burden of having failed themselves

    To summon the courage

    To see things as they are.

    May we live to relieve them of their shame

    By looking until we see,

    Listening until we hear,

    Inquiring until we understand,

    Taking nothing at face value,

    But examining everything

    And reflecting on every experience,

    Until we have mined the gold

    And become the Philosopher’s Stone.

    Shining the light of consciousness

    Into the deep darkness of being!
  27. 09/07/2015 — Hunting Island HDR 03 Panorama—Beach Erosion, Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, August 24, 2015

    Start with what you don’t want to hear.

    Or, with what you don’t want to see.

    Start with what you don’t what to know.

    With what you don’t want to be the way it is.

    When the way things are

    Are not the way we want things to be,

    We will find a million ways

    To discount, dismiss, deny and ignore

    The way things are

    In favor of the way we want things to be.

    When we look at our life,

    We have to understand

    That we have done it,

    And are doing it,

    To ourselves,

    With what we allow,

    And don’t allow,

    Ourselves to know.
  28. 09/08/2015 — St. Simon’s Church 01– Peak, SC, September 3, 2015

    Too often, we don’t know what to do

    Because we don’t want to do what we know to do.

    We are afraid.

    We are comfortable amid a myriad of discomforts.

    When the door opens, we demur, delay, abstain.

    When the way appears before us,

    We turn aside, make excuse,

    Busy ourselves with what is not the way.

    We don’t want what we pretend to want,

    What we wish we wanted.

    We lack the courage of our convictions,

    And talk about “spiritual growth,”

    But read another book

    By our favorite guru, or the latest one,

    Instead of doing what needs us to do it.

    Maybe tomorrow.

    Maybe later.

    Or never.

    But definitely not now.
  29. 09/08/2015 — Harbor River Mooring 04 HDR Panorama—Port Royal, SC, August 24, 2015

    We can have purpose, preference and direction,

    But we cannot have power and control.

    Wherever, whenever, power and control are wielded,

    Problems arise.

    Try forcing your spouse, child, parent, etc.

    To exercise, lose weight, read books or play the piano.

    Tell me how well it works.

    Forcing anything leads to resistance and resentment,

    And sometimes, war.

    The more controlling, the less everything vital and valuable.

    Control your day, force your agenda, command your life

    And pay the price.

    Or, live with purpose, preference and direction,

    And allow the day to follow its own course,

    Negotiating, compromising, and taking no for an answer

    As the situation requires.

    Live in the service of what needs to happen

    When everything is taken into account,

    And with no kidding yourself about what needs to happen.

    Kidding ourselves leads to all manner of complication

    And grave difficulty.
  30. 09/09/2015 — Garden City Beach Panorama 01 — Garden City, SC, August 21, 2015

    Carl Jung said, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents.”

    And, “The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”

    I would add, the second strongest influence and second greatest tragedy on family and children is the lived lives of the parents.

    Children live as compensation for the lived and unlived lives of their parents,

    And/or as the continuation of the lived lives.

    We live to be who our parents were not, and/or to be who they were.

    There is not a child in the world, past, present, or future, who escapes that burden.

    None of us are free to live “our own life.”

    We have the lives of our parents to shadow, haunt, direct and guide the life that we like to think “is our own.”

    My mother’s recent death has put me to probing all the ways I live to compensate for, and continue, her life.

    The ways, they are legion.

    And when we pull my father into the picture,

    There is hardly room enough for me anywhere.

    I am my parents’ child

    No matter how I might object and deny.

    So, I bring them to life with me in my life,

    Live consciously—so far as that is possible–

    Of their on-going influence on me and my choices,

    Values, purpose and direction.

    And let it be with compassion and good humor,

    Because it is so,

    And I am living proof that it is.

    So see me is to see my reaction to my experience

    Of James and Katheryne,

    Even now, after all these years.

    We walk arm-in-arm into each day,

    And make of it what we can.

    Peace be with you, James,

    And with you, Katheryne.

    It is good to be with you both,

    And to make of you what I can!
  31. 09/09/2015 — Huntington Beach Sunrise 10 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 21, 2015

    The day has its own rhythm, its own flow.

    It has its own agenda,

    Its own terms of service.

    The day will let us know what it has in mind for us,

    What its need of us is.

    In its own time.

    In its own way.

    We can make our plans,

    Draw up our schedules of events,

    Sharpen our focus,

    Decide what is going to happen.

    But.

    The day has the last word.

    It is enough that we come to the day

    With purpose, preference and direction–

    And allow the day to amend,

    Or transform,

    Those as the day deems necessary.

    We live in service to the day.

    The day the day does not live in service to us.

    We don’t make the terms.

    We abide by them.

    Or not.

    There is no peace for those

    Who cannot make their peace

    With the day.
  32. 09/10/2015 — Lake Shamokin 02 — Camden, SC, August 19, 2015

    When we work out the right ratios

    Among Reason and Logic,

    Instinct and Intuition

    In each situation as it arises,

    And mix in the courage

    To do what we know needs to be done,

    And do it,

    We have it made.

    As much as you can have it made.
  33. 09/11/2015 — Past Prime 02 — Rountree Plantation Nursery, August 15, 2015

    The Buddha was not a Buddhist,

    The Christ was not a Christian,

    The Prophet was not a Muslim.

    Our work is to BE the Buddha, not a Buddhist,

    To BE the Christ, not a Christian,

    To BE the Prophet, not a Muslim.

    The work is simple:

    Grow up,

    Live transparent to yourself,

    See what you look at,

    Do what needs to be done

    In each situation as it arises

    With the gifts that are yours to give.

    Throw out Doctrine,

    Theology,

    Ideology—

    Live in ways that are true to your Deep Self

    And aligned with the life that only you can live,

    With nothing to gain

    And nothing to lose,

    Completely free to do what needs to be done

    In each situation as it arises,

    As you determine that to be

    After taking everything into account

    That can be taken into account.

    This is the work of a True Human Being—

    Which we are all called to be.

    Spitting image

    Of the Buddha, the Christ, the Prophet.
  34. 09/10/2015 — Past Prime 03 — Rountree Plantation Nursery, Charlotte, NC, August 15, 2015

    Each of us comes packed with gifts

    To bring forth in their time

    And meet the challenges,

    The trials and ordeals,

    Of our life,

    In each moment of our living.

    We are equipped to deal with

    Whatever comes our way,

    In becoming who we are called to be

    All along the way.

    The stories of the species

    Are about finding the very gift

    That is needed in all of the tight places

    To slay the giant,

    Or the dragon,

    Answer the riddle,

    Find the treasure,

    Win the day.

    The stories remind us

    Of what is so:

    We have the gifts needed for the journey,

    So, start walking!
  35. 09/10/2015 — Cypress Knees 01 — Cypress Swamp Trail, Colleton State Park, Walterboro, SC, August 26, 2015

    When NASA sends satellites beyond the solar system, it plots their course near planets and moons with enough gravitational pull to draw them close, and boost their forward momentum to propel them on their journey into the great beyond.

    Our life uses the right kind of people, places and experiences to do the same with us.

    We, like the disciples with Jesus, are always ready to move in, set up house, and stay for the remainder of our days in the company of those who are such good places to be.

    Our life needs us to move on, farther, deeper, into our own life and its journey into the great beyond.

    The right kind of people draw us close, so that we gain momentum, find what we need, and speed off on our way.

    There is no settling down on the spiritual journey.

    We are all satellites with our own, personal, individual mission,

    Helping one another gain momentum, find direction, and live their life.

    Marriage is like the merger of solar systems.

    If you have watched Cosmos, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson (And why would you not, if you haven’t???),

    You know that in just a few more cosmic calendar years the Milky Way is going to merge with Andromeda for one fine dance in the heavens, and a light show that will last earth years beyond counting—boosting each other’s momentum, stirring things up, and sending one another on our way.

    A marriage truly made in the heavens.

    And, how marriage out to play out on earth,

    With each partner helping the other with her, with his, own personal life throughout the time they are together in their joint life.

    How many marriages do you know of where that is happening?

    Where the partners even have an idea of their own personal life,

    Much less, are actively involved in living their life?

    You know how Paul the Apostle looked around and said,

    ”None are righteous, no, not one!”?

    We can look around and say, “None are living their life! No! Not one!”

    We begin to turn things around,

    And build momentum toward the good,

    By living our life, and helping others live theirs.

    Just like the planets, the satellites, and the solar systems.
  36. 09/13/2015 — Light Show—Sunrise at Sand Beach, Port Royal, SC, August 25, 2015

    It’s hard.

    It’s hard in every developmental stage of life.

    Leaning to talk, to walk, to pee and poop in the right place…

    All the way to walkers, wheelchairs and feeding tubes.

    It is all hard.

    Life is hard.

    Start there.

    Don’t expect easy anywhere.

    Look for what helps

    To deal with the facts of each stage,

    Without denying, escaping, or hiding

    From any of it, ever.

    We have what it takes

    To meet life straight on.

    We are uniquely equipped to come to terms with it all.

    We only have to lay aside

    Our wants, wishes, and desires

    And see what is being asked of us,

    And how creative we can be in adjusting ourselves

    To new realities

    All along the way.

    Our inner resources are incredible.

    Nothing can happen to us

    That we haven’t met as a species

    10,000 times before.

    Relax into the archives

    Of the cumulative experience of the species!

    For everything that comes up in our life,

    There is a gene for that!

    We only have to trust ourselves

    To life’s experience of life

    To find what we need to deal with life.

    Open yourself to ALL the possibilities!

    See what comes to you

    As an aid in handling what’s hard.
  37. Used in Short Talks on Contradiction, etc., 09/14/2015 — Schweinitz’s Sunflower 01 — Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation, Huntersville, NC, September 13, 2015

    Your demons are your contradictions.

    You want everything to be smooth and easy,

    And nothing is smooth and easy.

    In order to make everything smooth and easy,

    You have to deny that nothing is,

    And live in a world of make believe

    Where you can have what you want

    Even if you have no business having it.

    You spend your life wrestling to get things in place,

    When it is not the nature of things to be in place.

    You are swimming upstream or crosscurrent,

    Against your very own self

    And your very own life,

    Willing everything into being,

    Or caving in and capitulating

    In depression and despair

    To your demons

    That you refuse to recognize

    As the contradictory nature of things as they are,

    And do the work of recognition and reconciliation,

    Integrating your opposites

    And squaring yourself with the oppositional nature of reality,

    In becoming one with all things,

    Laughing at the very idea of smooth and easy.
  38. 09/15/2015 — The Watchman and the Virgin—Zion National Park, Springdale, Utah, May 2010, near Zion Pizza and Noodle Co.

    Any activity that absorbs you, centers and grounds you, focuses you and brings you back to the path, to the work that is yours to do.

    Practitioners of Zen sit zazen, in meditation, rake sand, paint with sand, conduct tea ceremonies.

    Children have coloring books, adults have Sudoku, cross word puzzles and pianos.

    If you haven’t done a coloring book in a while, a mandala coloring book can be engrossing.

    You are looking for a focal point of extreme concentration.

    Something to pull you in and absorb you fully.

    It’s a meditative practice.

    And will shut out the world of mindless activity and anxiety,

    Bring peace,

    And restore the connection with your soul.

    Once a day is not too often.

    Intentional focus on one thing over time cures many ills.
  39. 09/16/2015 — Schweinitz’s Sunflower 03 — Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation, Huntersville, NC, September 13, 2015

    Safety is the first thing.

    We can’t be anything until we can be safe.

    We have to trust ourselves to our environment,

    To our life,

    And to ourselves,

    In order to risk ourselves in the service of our life.

    We have to trust ourselves to risk ourselves.

    Trust comes from knowing

    We are safe with ourselves.

    How safe are we with ourselves?

    How kind are we to ourselves?

    How nurturing and nourishing?

    How gentle and tender?

    If we don’t get that from within,

    Where do we go to find it?

    If it does not reside within,

    How can we ever trust ourselves to it from external sources?

    Who can make us safe

    If we are not safe with ourselves?

    What is a conscious ego good for

    If not creating consciously a safe place

    For a developing psyche to be?

    Yet, we come down hard on ourselves

    For having an ego at all!

    To much so-called “spiritual literature”

    Calls for the eradication of the ego,

    As though without an ego, all our troubles disappear.

    Who is it that eradicates the ego?

    When we set ourselves against ego,

    We set ourselves against us!

    Safety is the goal,

    Not internal witch hunts and juntas!

    Befriend yourself.

    Make Rumi’s “The Guest House”

    Your foundational orientation.

    Live to be safe with yourself on every level.

    Safety first, you know.
  40. 09/16/2015 — National Cemetery Panorama—Beaufort, SC, August 27, 2015

    Forgiveness is the only thing that can restore relationships that have been decimated unintentionally, accidentally, or with reasoned deliberation.

    Those that have been destroyed with malicious intent are beyond the pale of forgiveness, because restoration of relationship is likely to be of no concern to the perpetrator of its demise.

    At stake in the experience of forgiveness are the matters of guilt, accountability, repentance, penitence, and dedication to the care of relationship throughout the future.

    Forgiveness does not occur in a vacuum, but within the bounds of a relationship that matters to those involved in its rupture and demise.

    To speak of “forgiving Hitler,” for example, does nothing to restore relationship with Hitler, because Hitler is dead, and because he would care nothing for relationship with those who are doing the “forgiving” if he were alive.

    We can talk of “consciously bearing the pain of Hitler’s guilt, and refusing to allow his guilt to consume us with hatred and desire for his eternal damnation,” as a way of freeing us from bondage to his “abomination of desolation,” but “forgiving Hitler” cannot be done apart from Hitler’s participation in the “sacramental restoration of relationship.”

    ”The sacramental restoration of relationship” honors the elements of guilt, repentance, penitence, forgiveness and dedication to the care of relationship throughout the future, and is grounded on all parties involved in the relationship consciously bearing the pain of guilt’s burden, and declaring their intent and determination to refuse to let that burden interfere with their relationship from this point on.

    Just as marriage consecrates two people and sets them on a path sacred to each other, forgiveness consecrates all those involved in the rupture of relationship, and sets them on a path sacred to each other.

    And, if someone doesn’t care enough about the relationship to forgive, or to be forgiven, forgiveness can’t do a thing to heal it, and it remains to those wounded to resolve to bear the burden of the pain of guilt alone for the sake of their future free from the grief of betrayal and treachery.
  41. 09/17/2015 — Hunting Island Beach Panorama 10 — Beach Erosion, Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC

    The pilgrimage to Mecca is a sacrament to Muslim’s worldwide.

    Those who are able, make their way annually to “the holiest of holy places,” year after year.

    Muslim’s have no corner on holy places.

    Make your list.

    Make your pilgrimages.

    Take up the practice of living sacramentally,

    That is, living consciously in touch with the holiness

    Of the places that are holy unto you–

    Living consciously in touch with the holiness of life.

    Life is sacramental–

    ”An outward, visible, sign of an inward, spiritual grace.”

    We are graced by unspeakable holiness

    In the births of our children,

    In the new birth of spring,

    In the colors of fall,

    Mountain vistas,

    Ocean rhythms

    The wonder of love,

    The wonder of life…

    When we wake up,

    We wake up to the wonder of life, living, being alive,

    And live sacramentally–

    Consciously aware of the holiness of life

    Through our communion with holy places

    All our life long.
  42. 09/18/2015 — Johnson Creek Mooring 02 — St. Helena Island, SC, August 24, 2015

    We carry the emotional luggage of our ancestors.

    It is difficult for us to be more awake, aware, alive and grown up

    Than they were.

    And I’m talking about ALL of our ancestors here,

    All the way back to the paramecium.

    It takes a long time for consciousness to develop,

    And then it takes a long time for consciousness to mature.

    Take Donald Trump and put him beside the Dalai Lama

    For an example of the disparity of the maturity level

    Of modern adults,

    Then put the entire human population of the world on the scales

    And they tip radically toward Donald Trump,

    Which explains his following.

    Maturity is sadly lacking in the species.

    And we each suffer the immaturity of our ancestors,

    Struggling to move beyond the legacy we have inherited in our genes

    To respond appropriately to our environment

    As emotionally mature human beings.

    It is a struggle worthy of the best we can bring forth.

    Make it a goal

    To be more conscious—more transparent to yourself–

    Than your parents were,

    And more emotionally mature in dealing with what comes your way–

    As a gift to generations yet unborn.
  43. 09/19/2015 — St. Simon’s Church HDR Panorama 04 — Peak, SC, September 3, 2015

    Life as we live it is an endless series of diversions and distractions.

    We live to be entertained.

    The way we live keeps us from thinking about our life.

    Thinking about our life depresses us

    Because we don’t know what to do with ourselves,

    So we lose ourselves in diversions

    To make life bearable.

    All this changes with courage and trust.

    We have to trust that we actually have a life,

    And have the courage to risk ourselves to it

    In stepping out in complete darkness

    As a way of seeing what is there.

    Our life is an adventure waiting to be lived.

    Waiting for us to make ourselves available to it–

    To swear our allegiance and loyalty to it–

    ”Forsaking all others,

    And being faithful to it,”

    For as long as we shall live.

    We have to live as though it is so

    To know that it is.

    Start with that commitment,

    And wait,

    Watching,

    Listening,

    Sensing,

    Feeling.

    Pay particular attention

    To your dreams and symptoms,

    And to the things that catch your eye,

    That resonate with you,

    That call your name.

    Live to find your life,

    And live it.

    Make the search for your life

    The center, ground and focus of your life,

    And the entertaining pastimes

    Will become a waste of time.
  44. 09/20/2015 — Harbor River Mooring 05 — Port Royal, SC, August 24, 2015

    Bear consciously

    The pain

    Of the discrepancy

    Between how things are

    And how you want them to be.

    It will make all the difference.
  45. 09/21/2015 — Watkins Glen 2015 01 — Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, September 20, 2015

    When our focus is on finding our life and living it,

    All other considerations fall into place around that–

    And some fall out of consideration altogether.

    When our focus is on finding our life and living it,

    Our values are reshuffled,

    What is important is made apparent,

    And what is not important

    Is shown to be the empty pretender to High Value it is.

    We cannot live the life worthy of us

    And waste our time on trivial pursuits,

    No matter how acclaimed and flashy.

    Whether she loves me,

    Or loves me not,

    Will become clear in time.

    What my life is asking of me here and now

    Is my ultimate concern in each moment of my living.
  46. 09/22/2015 — Watkins Glen 02 Panorama—Rainbow Falls, Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, September 20, 2015

    We turn it around by giving it a different meaning,

    By seeing it with a different perspective.

    Abandonment can be understood

    As an invitation to rely on our inner resources,

    Develop self-reliance,

    Independence,

    Confidence,

    And learn to trust the guides within–

    Resonance, Intuition, Instinct and Wisdom.

    Ascribing meaning is our superpower.

    The way we see things is our magic wand.

    We are never as lost and alone

    As we are afraid we are,

    Or will be.

    The power of perspective

    Is the gift of the gods.

    Failing to use it is stupid.
  47. 09/23/2015 — Watkins Glen 2015 04 Panorama—Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, September 20, 2015

    Too often, all of us are subservient to compulsion, obsession and inhibition.

    Too rarely, any of us are free to see what needs to be done

    In the situation as it arises,

    And do it.

    The path to enlightenment

    Is the path of reflection and realization–

    The path from bondage

    To freedom:

    The freedom to see and to do.
  48. 09/23/2015 — Tupper Lake 2015 Sunset 01 Panorama—Tupper Lake, NY, September 22, 2015

    We are on our own,

    And we cannot do it alone.

    We need each other

    To be who we need each other to be,

    In each stage of our development,

    Throughout our life.

    We need each other to be the right kind of company,

    Offering the right kind of help,

    In the right kind of way.

    There are no rules to keep

    In becoming and being the right kind of company,

    Only general principals to observe and apply.

    Offer what you need!

    Become what you love!

    See what you look at–

    Without judgment, willfulness, or opinion.

    We all need encouragement.

    Learn how to be encouraging.

    We all need to be balanced, grounded, centered, honored, respected, accepted, treated lovingly

    (This is the important thing:

    You don’t have to love me to treat me lovingly.

    Treat me so lovingly that I can’t tell the difference

    Between being loved and being treated lovingly).

    We all need a quiet, safe, place

    That helps us reflect on our experience

    And form new realizations.

    We can create a therapeutic space

    Without being therapists or “doing therapy.”

    Live therapeutically!

    Should be a bumper sticker.

    Inspire it!
  49. 09/25/2015 — Eagle Cliff Falls Panorama 02 — See the eagle in the cliff? Havana Glen, Montour Falls, NY, September 20, 2015

    We have to seek out the counter-balancing perspectives and listen to them.

    This is tricky because counter-balancing perspectives

    Are much more than just opposing positions.

    The Tea Party has an opposite position to practically all of mine,

    But.

    They are not counter-balancing.

    And they are not true perspectives.

    They are contrary and oppositional positions.

    They espouse an ideological position,

    Not a clear and well-considered perspective.

    The Tea Party is against abortion,

    It is not for children.

    It is not for feeding children, sheltering children, educating children, keeping children healthy, and providing children with jobs and careers as they age.

    The Tea Party has no ideas about those things.

    It doesn’t care about them, or about children.

    It has a position on abortion,

    Not a perspective that takes the welfare of children into account.

    Counter-balancing perspectives are wonderfully refreshing

    When they come along,

    Because they air-out issues,

    And are not afraid to look at all sides,

    Or, hesitant to admit they don’t know when they don’t know.

    They are quick to ask questions they cannot answer,

    And can tell you what they think,

    Without trying to convince you they are right.

    And they are good for enabling you to fill out your own perspective,

    By listening to you without trying to prove that you are wrong.

    What a world it would be,

    If we could expand each other’s point of view,

    Without championing one at the expense and exclusion of all others.

    May we live so long as to see the day!
  50. 09/20/2015 — Bog River Falls 2015 05 Panorama—Tupper Lake, NY, September 24, 2015

    Love Unreturned is our Body’s, our Life’s, way of getting our attention,

    And showing us what it is like

    To be spurned, ignored, rejected

    By the one who holds the key

    To your life everlasting.

    We think it is the end of the world

    For our love to be unreturned,

    And contemplate suicide,

    Because who could live out a miserable existence,

    Cutoff for one’s True Love?

    That’s what our Body/Life feels like

    When we go off with eyes for something

    Other than the Destiny/Life that is ours to live.

    We are our Life’s Great Hope,

    And we squander our chance at being alive,

    Chasing after mirages and

    Building castles in the air.

    We do to ourselves

    What our Unreturned Loves do to us.

    If we were living our life,

    We would be looking for someone

    To partner with

    In bringing forth the Life in each of us,

    Instead of looking for Gods and Goddesses

    To sweep us away.
  51. 09/20/2015 — Moss Glen Falls 02 — Stowe, VT, September 25, 2015

    Our life is constantly speaking to us,

    Trying to get our attention,

    Hoping we will listen

    And align ourselves with its need of us

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done,” kind of way.

    Everything is a message to us

    About the life we are living,

    And the one we need to live.

    Our body is our life’s trusted messenger,

    Sensing, intuiting, instinctively knowing,

    What needs to be done.

    Our symptoms and our dreams

    Declare without end

    How things are in our life

    And how they need to be.

    White rabbits wink at us

    In the events and circumstances of our life,

    Whisk away,

    But pause, looking back, to see if we are following.

    Each day is a letter to us from our life,

    Written again in hopes that we will read it

    And begin living the life that is ours to live

    In the time left for living.
  52. 09/20/2015 — Tupper Lake Sunset 04 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 22, 2015

    Everything falls into place

    Around finding our life and living it.

    The quest for our life

    Is the spiritual journey.

    It is the distance from our head

    To our heart.

    We do not find our life by thinking about it.

    We feel our way there.

    We dance our way there.

    When our heart begins to sing,

    And our feet begin to dance,

    We’ve found it.

    Keep the rhythm going

    And we have it made:

    Enlightenment, Nirvana, Heaven, the Elysian Fields, the Promised Land, and Glory Land.

    All for the low, low price of doing what we are here for

    In the time left for living.
  53. 09/28/2015 — Eclipse Sequence—This is a series of photos I took of the full Luna eclipse in 2008, or was it 2006? But. I cannot imagine how one full Luna eclipse could be distinguished from another. Throw pictures of them all in a pile, and ask me to sort them out, and I wouldn’t know where to begin.

    If our heart isn’t singing,

    It is breaking.

    We break our heart

    When we refuse to do what it loves to do,

    When we ignore it,

    When we take it for granted,

    When we treat it as though it is only a pump,

    And fail to understand that our hear is the source of life,

    And not just what sustains life.

    Our heart sings when we find our work and do it.

    Our heart leads the way to our work,

    Waiting on us to follow it.

    But, we have other ideas,

    And put heart off

    Until we have sown wild oats,

    And chased wild geese,

    And lived in pursuit of illusions of grandeur,

    And fantasies of happy ever after.

    And our heart is breaking,

    Dying to sing.

    Dying for us to wake up,

    Turn our life over to our heart,

    Find the life, the destiny, that is ours to live,

    And live it.

    With all our heart.
  54. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 09/28/2015 — Blackeyed Susans—New Hampshire roadside, September 27, 2015

    Our work is to dance to the song our heart is singing,

    AND pay the bills!

    We walk two paths at the same time.

    This is the nature of the spiritual journey.

    We do what it takes to support ourselves and our family

    While we are doing what it takes to serve our heart’s true joy.

    This is heroic stuff.

    The stuff of legend and fable.

    Ulysses and the Cyclops.

    David and Goliath.

    Doing what cannot be done,

    By reconciling contradictions,

    Integrating polarities,

    Making peace,

    Creating wholeness,

    Amazing ourselves.

    If you are bored with your life,

    Depressed and hopeless

    Because of the lack of resources,

    And the absence of meaning, purpose and direction,

    Hand yourself over to your life.

    Let it direct your living.

    On two paths at the same time.

    And be amazed.
  55. 09/29/2015 — Bartlett Falls Panorama 01 — Bristol, VT, September 27, 2015

    What would be most helpful to you?

    What kind of help do you need?

    Being clear about what would be helpful

    Enables us to be clear about what we are seeking,

    And puts us on track to find what we need

    To do what needs to be done.

    We are responsible for seeking what we need,

    And for finding what we seek.

    We cannot sit back, prop up our feet,

    And wait to be rescued.

    We go in search for what would be helpful to us.

    If we don’t ask for the Tabasco Sauce,

    We can’t complain about the bland nature of the shrimp cocktail.
  56. 09/29/2015 — Watkins Glen 2015 09 Panorama—Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, September 20, 2015

    We can start anywhere.

    We can start with:

    ”What needs to be done?”

    ”What needs us to do it?”

    ”What do I need to do?”

    The questions are not to be answered,

    But to be wondered about.

    We are really asking:

    ”What ALL needs to be done?”

    ”What ALL needs me to do it?”

    ”What ALL do I need to do?”

    We have to put it ALL on the table,

    And walk around the table,

    Considering the table.

    Of all that is on the table:

    ”What all needs to be done NOW?”

    ”What all needs me to do it NOW?”

    ”What all do I need to do NOW?”

    ”NOW is the time to do what?”

    Sit with the questions,

    With what needs to be done,

    And see what you rise up to do–

    Spontaneously, effortlessly, without willing yourself to do it.

    Simply watch and see what you do.
  57. 09/30/2015 — Chemung County Barn HDR 01 — Watkins Glen, NY, September 23, 2015

    We can’t hear anything we aren’t ready to listen to.

    We have to live our way

    To the life that is waiting for us to live it.

    No one can hand it to us before its time.

    All those mistakes, bad choices and wrong turns

    Are preparation.

    We find what is right for us

    By winding our way through a lot that is not right.

    Reflection and Realization, Kid.

    Reflection and Realization.

    Death and Resurrection, Kid.

    Death and Resurrection.

    We pay a hefty price for eyes that see,

    Ears that hear,

    And a heart that understands.

    But.

    Once we begin to see,

    Sign posts pointing the way are everywhere.

    There is hope in all the emptiness, anguish and angst.

    It’s grist for the mill, Kid.

    Grist for the mill.

    We are milling maturity and wisdom,

    Compassion and grace.

    We live our way to those things.

    There are no shortcuts on the road to life.
  58. 10/01/2015 — Jenne Farm HDR 01 — Reading, VT, September 28, 2015

    There is what we want to happen.

    There is what we don’t want to happen.

    There is what needs to happen.

    And, there is what can happen.

    The spiritual journey is learning to work out the ratios.

    We spend too much time and energy

    Wanting what we have no business having,

    Willing what cannot be willed,

    Forcing what cannot be forced,

    Refusing to make our peace with the way things are,

    Failing to put ourselves in accord with our life,

    Rejecting obvious paths because they are contrary

    To our desires,

    Oblivious to what is being asked of us,

    Living in denial,

    Wondering what is wrong.
  59. 10/01/2015 — Iconic New England 01

    Our work is a Good Work,

    And we have to embrace it as such–

    Marrying our work and plighting it our troth,

    In sickness and in health,

    As long as we shall life.

    This is the missing element in all of human life.

    We have no sense of Our Work.

    We think we are here to enjoy ourselves

    With entertaining pastimes,

    And take the smooth and easy path through life.

    We have no sense of belonging

    To something greater than we are–

    That needs us and our gifts

    In its service for the true good of all.

    We all are Adam and Eve,

    Trading Paradise for a passing pleasure,

    Or Esau,

    Trading his birthright for a bowl of oatmeal.

    We sell ourselves out for a brightly wrapped box of smoke,

    And never understand that it is about Our Work.

    Not what we do to pay the bills,

    But what we pay the bills to do.

    What are you doing with your life?

    We have to be able to answer the question.

    We have to spend our life

    Finding the work that is ours to do with our life.

    All the attractive options

    Are manifestations of the Forbidden Fruit

    Inviting us to leave the path,

    Turn aside from the search,

    Forget Our Work

    And enjoy their ephemeral delights.

    Their promise of splendor beyond compare

    Conceals the one-eyed reality of the Cyclops

    Luring another victim from life to empty wandering

    In the wasteland of our discontent.

    Only Our Work can save us.

    Our life consists of finding Our Work and doing it.

    Find it.

    Do it.

    With all your heart,

    And complete devotion.

    Your life depends on it.
  60. 10/02/2015 — Watkins Glen 2015 07 – Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, September 20, 2015

    We have to complete the developmental tasks of each stage of life.

    We cannot move to the next stage until we have completed the developmental tasks of the present age.

    Want to guess how many of us are still hung up in jr. high? High school?

    Pay attention to your conversations through a day.

    Somebody did somebody wrong.

    Somebody is going to win another world series or super bowl.

    Somebody is being politically stupid.

    News. Weather. Sports. And woe is me, poor, poor me.

    Look around you at all the things we have devised to keep us where we are, unthinking, unreflective, unaware:

    Schedules, appointment calendars, computer games, TV shows…

    No quiet times for listening, looking, seeing, hearing, wondering, imagining…

    It is as though the culture—the world culture—has declared,

    ”To hell with developmental tasks!

    They are too hard!

    They hurt too much!

    I’m not moving past where I am!”

    Facing up to how things are and what needs to be done about them

    Is too much for us.

    Escape! Denial! Diversion! Distraction!

    Dismiss, disregard, ignore everything that makes you uncomfortable.

    God forbid that we should be uncomfortable.

    Understand this:

    The path to enlightenment, realization, awareness, maturity, wisdom, grace, compassion, peace and life pouring over, spilling out, blessing everyone

    Winds through the heart of Gethsemane

    And across the face of Golgotha.

    Let me translate that for you:

    We have to complete the developmental tasks of each stage of life.
  61. 10/02/2015 — Chemung County Barn HDR Panorama 01 B&W—Elmira, NY, September 23, 2015

    No one can give us our work,

    Any more than someone else can tell us what will make our heart sing.

    We find our own way to the heart that sings,

    And to the work that is ours to do.

    The two are one.

    Find one, and you find the other.

    But do not think your work has to stay the same, unaltered, forever.

    Just as “one book opens another,”

    So what makes your heart sing

    Will lead to what else makes your heart sing,

    And your work expands, enlarges, deepens

    Beyond anything you might imagine.

    And, do not think your work is your ticket to fame and fortune,

    Or even to a living wage.

    You are not here to profit from your work

    Beyond singing along with your heart.

    Pay the bills with a good day job–

    One that compliments your work, perhaps,

    But certainly does not contradict, or deny, it.

    Your gifts are uniquely suited to your work,

    And are not to be exploited for your own pleasure.

    You belong to your work.

    It is enough that you believe in it,

    And do it with all your heart,

    The way it needs you to do it.

    Let doing your work be your reward,

    And be glad to be able to do it–

    That is the key to fulfillment,

    And life everlasting.
  62. 10/02/2015 — Fall Fern 01 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 22, 2015

    An old truism asserts “Truth is reality.”

    And, because reality is subject to perception and interpretation,

    Truth is multifaceted, contradictory and ever changing.

    The fluid nature of truth

    Is reflected in several of the sayings of Jesus.

    ”I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me”

    Is the one we always hear quoted.

    He also said, a few verses earlier, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him (sic).”

    Jesus also said, “If you are not with me, you are against me,”

    And, “If you are not against me, you are with me.”

    Which way is it?

    Both ways.

    All ways.

    At the same time.

    Our rational, logical, brain flips out over this,

    But our intuitive, instinctive, creative, imaginative brain

    Says, “Of course,” or, better, “Duh!”

    The point here is that when we are confronted by

    ”The truth of reality,”

    We have to step back and remember the power of

    Perception and interpretation,

    And see what else we can see about what stands before us

    By walking around it,

    Making inquiries,

    Looking from all sides and angles.

    Asking, “What ELSE is true about reality?”

    Gives us a bit of leverage,

    And shifts things into a more manageable position,

    Opening doors, and providing options and choices

    We didn’t notice on first glance.

    Taking all things into consideration

    Enables us to work with reality,

    And transform the facts–

    To the astonishment of those

    Who only think they see “what’s there.”
  63. 10/03/2015 — Moss Glen Falls 03 — Stowe, VT, September 25, 2015

    The concept that “Your religious liberty ends where my constitutional rights begin” is foundational for life together.

    ”Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

    ”Liberty and justice for all.”

    ”All men (people) are created equal.”

    The constitution is a compilation of common agreements which bind us together in a republic governed (after Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address) “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

    We are free to live our life in any way that does not restrict the freedom of others to live their life.

    I work my side of the street, and you work yours.

    I stay out of your business, and you stay out of mine.

    We cooperate with each other in ways that honor our common interest—that serve the common good—and help each other define, and live, our own life.

    I live my life, and help you live your life—to the extent you are interested in being helped, and find what I offer to be helpful.

    And, the same goes for you, with me.

    All of this is grounded upon the necessity of a good faith commitment on the part of each of us to find our life and live it, to find our work and do it.

    Where that is lacking, nothing can be done for any of us.
  64. 10/03/2015 — Tupper Lake Sunset 03 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 22, 2015

    We have to live with intensity,

    With devotion, dedication, and determination.

    We have to live with our heart in what we do.

    We have to care about what we are doing with our life.

    We have to live like we mean it.

    What would it take for you to live like you mean it?

    Instead of just getting by?

    Just meeting the minimum daily requirements of being alive?

    Just being upright, intact, 98.6 and breathing?

    Just going though the motions?

    What would it take for you to live believing in what you are doing?

    For you to be owned by your life?

    To belong to your life?

    To love your life?

    With all your heart, and soul, and mind, and body?

    What would it take?
  65. 10/03/2015 — Iconic New England 03 — United Presbyterian Church, South Ryegate, VT, September 27, 2015

    Start with what you love.

    You don’t have to think about what you love,

    And you will never find your way to your ground,

    Your center,

    Your foundation,

    Your work,

    Your LIFE,

    By thinking about it.

    Start with what you love.

    With what engages you,

    Enthralls you,

    Captivates you,

    Moves you,

    Makes your heart sing,

    And takes you out of time.

    Work what you love into your life

    On a regular basis.

    Treat what you love as your best friend–

    As your secret lover.

    Make dates with it.

    A rendezvous.

    Bring it flowers and chocolates.

    Let it fill your heart with joy and anticipation.

    Follow it–

    As your love for things expands–

    With devoted allegiance–

    Into all of life,

    Transformed,

    And transforming all the world.
  66. 10/04/2015 — NO—Swiftwater, NH, September 25, 2015

    Things have a certain order about them.

    We put on our socks and pants before we put on our shoes.

    We hate the restraints order places on us.

    We take shortcuts.

    We run stop signs and lights.

    We have it OUR way.

    ”Damn the shoreline! Full speed ahead!”

    One of the developmental tasks in the early stages of life

    Is understanding the fundamental importance of the order of things,

    And submitting to the necessity of aligning ourselves

    With the proper sequence required by the situation as it arises.

    More often than not, where there are problems,

    Someone is not happy with the queue,

    Or the procedure,

    And is looking for a quick trip to happy and content.

    When we skip the developmental tasks

    It’s hard on everyone.

    Each of us has to bear the pain of the inconvenience

    And agony of existence.

    When personal pain is not properly borne,

    Corporate pain is increased across the board, around the table.

    The source of anguish, chaos, disruption and dismay

    Is generally someone who is not grown up enough to honor

    The necessary order of things and acquiesce to life as it is.

    Pain unborne spills over onto others every time.
  67. 10/04/2015 — Tupper Lake Sunset 2015 01, Day 3 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 24, 2015

    I’m amazed at how quiet I have to be to hear anything worth saying.

    The connection is fragile and easily lost amid the noise of life.

    Those who know, know the importance of maintaining the connection.

    What is the quietest place in your life?

    How often do you go there?

    How long do you remain?

    People want to know the answers to their questions,

    But they are the answer to questions being asked of them,

    Yet, they live too loudly to listen.

    What can you say to those who cannot hear?

    Who cannot turn off the noise in their life

    To tune into their soul?

    Some things we have to do for ourselves.
  68. 10/05/2015 — Iconic New England Collage—September 2015

    Looking for our life is like looking for our shadow.

    All we need is a little light of consciousness, shining on ourselves,

    And there it is.

    Notice the things that stir your soul,

    That move your heart,

    That catch your eye.

    You have been living your life, off and on, all this time—

    Or, almost living it.

    It has always been “right there,”

    Trying to get your attention.

    But you’ve had your eye on other things

    And didn’t see the things you weren’t seeing.

    Now, it’s a matter of seeing what you are not seeing.

    Once you develop that knack,

    ”Boom!” — as John Madden would say—

    There you are!
  69. 10/05/2015 — Woodlawn Cemetery Panorama 08 — Elmira, NY, September 21, 2015 — Woodlawn Cemetery is the burial site of Mark Twain and his family (not pictured here), and is an amazing place from an aesthetic and historical standpoint. The stories that lie buried here…

    If you aren’t having fun with your life,

    At least some of the time,

    In some of the scenes and situations you are in,

    Your heart isn’t singing nearly enough.

    If your heart isn’t singing,

    It isn’t YOUR life that you are living.

    Only YOU can do something about that!

    Beginning right now, determine to find ways to have fun with your life,

    Determine right now to find ways to let your heart sing.

    This is the crucial, critical, determining factor

    Regarding the quality and liveability

    Of your life from this time forth.

    Your have to reintroduce play into your life.

    You have to play with your life.

    Laugh, sing, and dance.

    Your life isn’t going to change until you do.

    It’s waiting on you to give it the go ahead.

    You can’t be waiting on it to turn some corner and become fun.

    Look. It’s like this.

    You can look for what there is to not like about anything.

    And you can look for what there is to like,

    You have the power of perspective and interpretation going for you.

    Swing for the fences!

    Laugh all the way around the bases!

    Then run them backwards, backwards!

    And do a couple of somersaults between first base and home.
  70. 10/06/2015 — Bog River Falls 2015 Panorama 01 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 24, 2015

    It’s such a strange, and undeniable, thing

    That living our life–

    The life that makes our heart sing–

    Requires such courage.

    Perhaps it is because no one else is doing it,

    And the rest of them don’t understand its importance,

    And think we are being uppity,

    Thinking of ourselves like that,

    When, of course, we should be thinking exclusively of them.

    Whenever anyone accuses us of being selfish,

    It is because we are doing something we want to do,

    And not something they want us to do.

    But we are being selfish.

    Weird, but real.

    Anyway, it takes courage to be who we are,

    Doing what brings us to life

    On one level,

    While doing what it takes to pay the bills

    One another.

    It doesn’t leave much time for those

    Who want us to do what they want us to do.
  71. 10/06/2015 — Covered Bridge Collage—Vermont and New Hampshire, September, 2015

    ”Invoked, or not invoked,

    The God will be present.”

    The Delphic Oracle spells it out for us.

    We will confront the truth of our life,

    Align ourselves with it,

    And live in its service to the end

    Or not.

    Either way, the God will be present.

    Will we be present with the God,

    Who is present with us,

    Is the question.
  72. 10/06/2015 — A Man and His Dog—Fish Creek Pond, Lake Clear, NY, September 24, 2015

    Our work engages us in the recovery of the sacred.

    What is sacred for you?

    What is holy?

    Sacrosanct?

    To be revered, honored, cherished and held in high esteem?

    My bet is that we have a very short list,

    If we have one at all.

    The culture is without a sense of the sacred.

    It’s all fair game for the one-liners of SNL and late night comedy routines.

    What will we not laugh at?

    Not deride?

    Ridicule?

    Defame?

    Denounce?

    Where does that leave us?

    When there is no holy ground to stand on,

    We are in freefall,

    Where even the laughter is empty.

    Only our work can save us–

    But.

    Our work must become holy unto us

    In order to connect us with all that is holy.

    In seeking our work,

    We are searching for a portal

    To sacred ground of existence,

    And must approach our task

    As pilgrims—disciples—on the path

    To a holy land of the heart,

    Uniting all of us in the realization of the sacred incarnate in each one.
  73. 10/07/2015 — Chemung County Barn HDR 04 — Elmira, NY, September 23, 2015

    We can’t agree about what is important.

    That’s because what is important is different for each of us.

    We perceive things differently,

    Give weight to things differently.

    We are different.

    At the core.

    Yet, we throw ourselves together in groups

    And clusters,

    And population centers

    And act as though we are one.

    And hate, expel, ostracize, castigate, despise and kill

    Those who are not like we are.

    Not even we are like we are.

    To deny that and pretend we are one

    Is to deny ourselves.

    We are one in the sense that we are many.

    We are one in that we are all different from the others.

    We have differentness in common.

    It goes down from there.

    We have to stop pretending,

    And start granting latitude.

    Making allowances.

    Blurring the lines,

    Or erasing them.

    You are not like they are.

    Stop acting like it.

    They are not like you are.

    Stop thinking they should be.

    Let differences stand,

    Without standing in the way.

    Understand “community”

    And “like-minded-ness”

    As being grounded upon the agreement

    Of mutual respect for each other,

    And a common commitment

    To help the other find, and be, who they are,

    In a “What is good for one is good for all” kind of way.
  74. 10/08/2015 — Falls Park Falls HDR 02 — Reedy River, Falls Park, Greenville, SC, October 8, 2015

    The three traditional contact points

    with the holy, sacred, numinous reality

    that is often called “god” are

    art (fine and practical), music and nature.

    To these three, I would add good conversation.

    Good conversation is hard to come by these days

    because we don’t go in much for reflection.

    All we have are opinions.

    No reflection.

    No examination.

    No inquiry.

    No thinking.

    Certainly no creative, imaginative, thinking.

    Only reactivity.

    We know what we like,

    and what we don’t like,

    and that’s as far as it goes with us.

    What more do you need?

    That’s opinion for you.

    Open and shut case for no thinking required.

    The way of the world in the 21st century.

    We all have opinions.

    And zero insight.

    And some are of the opinion

    that everyone should have guns.

    That’s a recipe for shootouts on every corner.

    That’s what not thinking will do for you.

    We have to start thinking,

    reflecting,

    creatively,

    imaginatively,

    seeking new realizations,

    cultivating insight,

    courting enlightenment,

    waking up.
  75. 10/09/2015 — Old Stone Bridge HDR 02 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, October 8, 2015

    Our life is there before us,

    waiting for us to realize

    what has always been so,

    and become who we already are,

    making that evident–

    real-izing the inherent makeup of our being–

    by the way we live.

    We grow into ourselves,

    and exhibit the wonder we are

    by doing the things that are ours to do

    the way only we can do them,

    all our life long.

    If you missed out on this basic structure

    due to poor mentoring

    and bad preaching,

    you have a lot of living left to do,

    getting you together with your life!

    That’s the Hero’s Journey, you know.

    Our life always needs us

    to be its hero!
  76. 10/09/2015 — Early Morning Mist B&W—Tupper Lake, NY, September 23, 2015

    We can look at anything

    and see what to not like about it.

    We can look at anything

    and see what to like about it.

    The difference between these ways of looking

    is the difference that makes the difference.
  77. 10/10/2015 — Falls Park Spillway 01 — A retaining dam on the Reedy River running through downtown Greenville, SC, October 8, 2015

    I posted this a year ago, and thanks to Annie Oakley for reminding me, here it comes again:

    This is a paraphrase (because I don’t have permission to quote directly) of Carl Jung in a 1931 interview with Whit Burnett in the New York Sun, and found in “The Earth Has A Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology and Modern Life,” edited by Meredith Sabini and published by North Atlantic Books:

    The people of the United States must find the wherewith all to say NO! to the abounding temptations of the culture: The quest for things, for uniformity, for multitasking, for being like everyone in the neighborhood, etc., and to sit still in quiet contemplation until the realization dawns that contentment, peace, satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness are not to be found in the things the culture would have them pursue, and that trying to be like everyone else in the service of success and an increasingly higher standard of living is to be out of accord with the deeper dictates of heart and soul, and to be increasingly far removed from the personality and type of life that the individual possesses but ignores in seeking what she, what he, thoughtlessly buys into as being the solid ground and goal of their lives. The conflict between how they are living and how they need to live to satisfy their inner self will, sooner or later, result in some form of emotional disturbance, if not physical sickness and death.
    He goes on to say, again paraphrased:

    No matter how we deny it and pretend it is not so, we all, at different times and places in our life, have a sense of things being not right somehow. We yearn to be rid of the hustle, noise, conflict and confusion of our life, and to simply live. This realization is expressed in countless ways in our dreams, which warn of the outcome of living out of synch with ourselves. Our dreams are our body’s way of revealing to us what is going on in our psyche/soul/mind—the body’s best effort in saying in symbolic ways that something is wrong, or more to the point, what specifically is wrong in the life of each individual person. The dream is our body’s way of calling our attention to its instinctive awareness of what is out of accord and what must be integrated, reconciled and realigned. If we do not heed these warnings, we pay the price in one way or another.
  78. 10/10/2015 — Spider Web 01 B&W—Tupper Lake, NY, September 22, 2015

    Think of the number of stories

    across all ages, nations and religions

    about our getting in our way,

    and then think about the number of stories

    about our cooperating–

    our living in accord–

    with our way.

    Which list is longer?

    What is your story?

    How will you write what remains to be written?
  79. 10/11/2015 — Price Lake 2015 01 — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, near Blowing Rock, NC, October 11, 2015

    We can make any situation better, or worse,

    by the quality of our perception of it,

    the quality of our participation in it,

    and the quality of our response to it.

    When we take everything into account,

    the path opens before us,

    and it only requires a willing (not willful) heart

    to do what needs us to do it

    in each situation as it arises.

    Seeing, hearing, understanding

    is knowing, doing, being.
  80. 10/10/2015 — Upper Falls Panorama 03 — Linville Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC

    Listening is the work of the conscious mind/Ego,

    reflecting on its experience

    and forming new realizations,

    which deepen its connection,

    its alignment,

    with the soul’s drift and joy.

    The work of the conscious mind/Ego

    is to place itself in accord

    with the soul’s song

    and to live in ways

    that bring the song to life in our life,

    so that we move to the rhythms of soul,

    and exhibit the values of soul

    and are the incarnation of soul

    in each situation as it arises,

    our whole life long.

    We dance to the music of soul,

    And our heart sings soul’s song.
  81. 10/11/2015 — Mallards Landing—Reedy River, Falls Park, Greenville, SC, October 8, 2015

    “What are you doing that you believe in?”

    “Why are you doing anything you don’t believe in?”

    The two best questions!

    # 3 is “What do you believe in?”

    Ask someone what they believe in,

    And they will get theological on you.

    They don’t know what they believe in.

    They know what they have been told to believe.

    If you don’t believe in your work,

    You have a job.

    If your work doesn’t inspire you, consume you,

    You have a job.

    If you don’t live into each day

    To better contribute to your body of work,

    You don’t have a body of work.

    You may as well be shopping each day,

    Or lolling on the beach.

    What are you doing that you believe in?

    Why are you doing anything you don’t believe in?

    Because it pays well?

    If you are not using your paycheck

    At least in part,

    In the service of what you believe in,

    You have sold out.

    Money cannot buy you anything to substitute for

    What you believe in.

    And you can have that for nothing.

    If you will wake up to what it is

    And serve it with all your heart.

    That’s your mission,

    If you choose to accept it,

    And, why would you not?
  82. 10/13/2015 — Still Green in the Foothills HDR Panorama—Blue Ridge Parkway near Grandfather Mountain, NC, October 11, 2015

    It’s all about the work.

    The key to life spilling over,

    Pouring out,

    Everlasting

    Is finding our work and doing it–

    Finding the things that make our heart sing and doing them.

    Living in ways that call forth and make manifest

    Who we are and what we are about.

    Doing what we believe in,

    What we know to be worth our time.

    Doing what we are here to do, what is ours to do,

    In the time left for living.

    Everything hinges on finding our work and doing it.

    So, why aren’t we looking?

    What’s with killing another day

    Doing things that are Not Us?

    Spend the day in search of the things that are Indubitably You!
  83. 10/14/2015 — Blue Ridge 2015 HDR 02 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Grandfather Mountain, NC, October 11, 2015

    We are what we need,

    We need only to be who we are.

    But. We can do that best

    In a community of those

    Who are being who they are.

    Nothing is more important

    Than keeping the right company.

    There is a direct relationship

    Between the people we run with

    And the quality of our life.

    How different can we be

    From those who form our In Group?

    We need a group/community

    That encourages individuality,

    Not one that inhibits and restricts it.

    If you have to be like WE are,

    WE aren’t a good place for you to be!
  84. 10/15/2015 — Middle Saluda River 01 — Jones Gap State Park, Cleveland, SC, October 15, 2015

    What do you know of God that you didn’t get from someone else–

    Including the Bible?

    The Bible gets all the credit

    For delivering God-As-God-Is

    Straight from God to us.

    That’s only what someone made up and spread around.

    Where did the people who wrote the Bible come up with what they came up with?

    Divine Revelation, right?

    Which ceased to exist 2,000 years ago,

    Conveniently timed to coincide with the rise of Ecclesiastical Authority.

    God doesn’t have to go to the trouble of talking directly to us any more.

    We have the Priests and Preachers to tell us what’s what.

    And where do they get it?

    The Bible, of course.

    And why can’t we all get it there?

    We might get it wrong and go to hell.

    THEY know how to read Greek and Hebrew.

    I’m here to tell you that everyone has equal access

    To what has always been called God.

    Intermediaries are not required.

    The Reformed version of Christianity

    Even had a doctrine called “The Priesthood of All Believers”

    Until the implications dawned upon the Authorities

    Who swept it into the dim regions,

    And never spoke of it again.

    Which leaves the question remaining to be answered–

    By you:

    What do you know of God that you didn’t get from some source other than yourself?
  85. 10/16/2015 — Footbridge Panorama—Jones Gap State Park, Cleveland, SC, October 15, 2015

    When it comes to what you know about what has always been called God,

    Don’t give me your opinions.

    Opinion is always being displayed as knowledge.

    Opinion is a cheap, cowardly, lazy surrogate for knowledge.

    Opinion is easy, loud, and theatrical.

    Opinion is ignorant, unthinking and incapable of reflection–

    Particularly self-reflection.

    Knowledge is lived experience.

    People who know crab cakes

    Grow up on the coast of Maryland.

    If someone starts talking about “good crab cakes,”

    Ask them where they grew up.

    If someone starts talking about God,

    Ask them what they lived through

    That revealed that to them.

    If they can only talk to you about “the Bible,”

    It’s like the crab cake person talking to you about a recipe book.

    We don’t know God by what we read or hear,

    Only by what we live through,

    By what we experience.

    Anything else is opinion.

    Or, worse, propaganda.

    Evangelism is the propagandalism of the world.
  86. 10/16/2015 — Bog River Falls Abstract 01 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 2015

    Make a pact with yourself to care more about the things you care about.

    Spend more time doing the things you care about,

    And less time doing the things you don’t care about.

    Care about the things you care about

    Consciously,

    Deliberately,

    Conscientiously.

    Live with—and toward—the things you care about

    In ways that everyone knows you care about them.

    Let the things you care about

    Become as important to you as they deserve to be.

    Nothing will reshape your life for the good

    Like caring about the things you care about.

    And not caring about the things you don’t care about.

    Square yourself up with the things you care about,

    And don’t care about.

    Your life will fall nicely into place around the things you care about.

    Which is how it should be.
  87. 10/17/2015 — Middle Saluda River Cascade 02 — Jones Gap State Park, Cleveland, SC, October 15, 2015

    We give our time and attention to our outer reality,

    Our appearance,

    Our pose,

    Our image,

    Our sex appeal,

    Our popularity,

    Our place in the lives of others,

    Especially in His Life,

    Or Her Life

    (You know who I mean).

    We’re all Out There,

    Trying to fit in,

    To belong.

    If we tend to our inner reality,

    Our outer reality will fall into place

    Around our center, core, ground, and foundation

    And all will be right with the world.

    Our inner reality is the key:

    Who we are,

    What we are about,

    What matters most,

    What is of highest value,

    What is ours to do in the time left for living

    Our talisman, guide, North Star, and friend.

    Our Self.

    Where we belong.

    What we belong to.

    The governing source and goal of our life.

    Why would we ignore that world

    In favor of mirages and happy fantasies?
  88. 10/18/2015 — Middle Saluda River 02 — Jones Gap State Park, Cleveland, SC, October 15, 2015

    Your life is your responsibility.

    Which means you decide how well it’s going,

    And whether you are “on the beam,” or off of it.

    And, if you are off of it, you decide what to do to get back on it,

    And stay there–

    Which includes who to listen to

    And when to stop listening to them.

    You know that by listening to you.

    If you were to listen to me,

    The first thing I would tell you is:

    Learn to listen to YOU.

    Learn to distinguish among the you’s vying for your attention

    And compliance.

    We all have a lot of voices within.

    Impulsive, compulsive, lazy, fearful, arrogant, prideful, willful, etc. voices.

    We have to listen past all the voices claiming to know what they are doing,

    To The Voice That Knows,

    And listen to it.

    All the others are pretenders to the title.

    The first step is to listen past all of them

    To The One Who Knows.

    Nothing happens for the good

    Until you can recognize the voice within of The One Who Knows

    And listen to it.
  89. Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion — 10/18/2015 — Old Stone Bridge HDR 01 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, October 8, 2015

    We don’t need theology or doctrine,

    Or some second-hand religion

    Passed along to us by Those Who Know Best And Must Be Pleased.

    We need only the truth of our own experience

    To validate for us

    The importance of compassion and kindness

    In a “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,

    Whether or not they return the favor and do unto you

    As you have done unto them” kind of way.

    The truth of our own experience,

    Reflected upon,

    And interpreted in light of the experience of the species,

    And the values at the heart of being human,

    Is all we need to square us up

    To how things are and what needs to be done about it

    In each situation as it arises.

    No religion that has ever been could do more for us,

    Or as much.

    Theology and doctrine are divisive.

    Good religion is unifying

    Like the encounter with awe, wonder, grace and beauty

    In art, music and nature–

    Like a cup of cold water on a hot day.

    Who could argue about any of those things?
  90. Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion –10/19/2015 — Early Morning Mist 02 B&W—Tupper Lake, NY, September 22, 2015

    No one needs to be told what to believe

    In terms of doctrine and theology.

    Everyone needs to be told what needs to be done

    And given the freedom to figure out what works for themselves.

    All approaches to the experience with spiritual reality

    Are composed of the same elements.

    The basics are:

    Seeing (What you look at),

    Hearing (What you listen to),

    Understanding (How things are and how things also are),

    Knowing (What is happening in each situation as it arises),

    Doing (What needs to be done about it),

    Being (In accord with your life and with the way of life–

    Which includes bearing the pain of your experience).

    The tools are:

    Mindfulness Meditation (Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work is a great source for training),

    Silence,

    Living as an outlet of compassion and grace,

    Reflection and Realization,

    Practice (Discipline, Rituals, Routines),

    Participation in the right kind of company (Communities of Innocence, I call them),

    Diet and exercise.

    We cannot read a book,

    Attend a lecture,

    Go on a retreat

    And “be spiritual.”

    “Being spiritual” is a practice, a regimen, a way of life.

    Not a vocabulary or a set of beliefs.
  91. 10/20/2015 — Bog River Falls 2015 Panorama 02 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 23, 2015

    You have to find your voice

    And listen to it.

    You have to find your heart’s song

    And sing it.

    You have to find your life

    And live it.

    The disciple has to become like the Master

    In following no Master.

    Only you know what is yours to do.

    Only you know what catches your eye.

    Only you know what does it for you.

    The only guru worth following

    Is the one who won’t have you

    Chasing after her, or him–

    Who tells you:

    ”Listen to me when I tell you:

    ’DON’T LISTEN TO ME!

    LISTEN TO YOU!’”

    Listen to you.

    And, if it leads to a dead end,

    Keep listening to you

    To get you out of there

    Having gotten what you need from there,

    Which is learning that you have to listen to you,

    No matter what.
  92. 10/20/2015 — Fish Creek Pond HDR—Near Clear Lake, NY, September 25, 2015

    My mother died early in September, and her memorial service is slated to be held in a week. I am appropriately sad these days, as much over the life that was not as over the life that was.

    I would love to know how her life would have been if my mother had had what she needed.

    Of course, we can say that about ourselves, Terry Malloy, and everyone we know, but. This is my mother who has died, and I can excuse myself for deeply regretting what she missed because of all those in her life who, themselves, were operating with only deficits and deficiencies to work with.

    We come into the world set and primed for certain environmental conditions, much like an acorn drops from the oak expecting sunlight, soil and water. The world that greets us is not always what we need. And, we walk with a limp, or worse, because of it.

    Many, if not most, of us spend our life compensating for what did not meet us when we slipped from the womb. It helps if we know, consciously, that is what we are doing, and consciously search ways to work around what is missing in our life.

    Lacking that much awareness, we live, like my mother, against the odds, and do what chance and timing provide us in creating the life we live.

    I celebrate Katheryne’s resolve, courage, creativity and her heard-headed refusal to quit—and her life, which gave me and my siblings more of a life than we would have had if she had folded early-on, and left us as much to chance and timing as she was handed.

    Here, then, is to Nancy Katheryne Hamilton Dollar—for all she did with what she had to work with, and who she became in spite of finding little more than deficit and deficiency in the environment that received her slip-sliding from the womb into its welcoming arms.
  93. 10/21/2015 — Gaffney Icon—Gaffney, SC, October 8, 2015

    We can let our thoughts run away with us.

    That isn’t the thing to do with thoughts.

    We have them.

    They can’t have us.

    Hold us hostage,

    R-u-n-n-o-f-t with us,

    Over some cliff

    Into some abyss

    To torture us forever.

    We can create entire scenarios of despair

    All coming to the hopeless conclusion

    That we will never have a chance

    And it is pointless and futile to go on.

    This is where compassionate awareness

    Comes to our rescue.

    Compassionate awareness receives what we are doing to ourselves

    Without going along with us to the brink and over it.

    As we become aware of what we are doing

    We can wake up

    And say, “Wait a minute.

    ”I’ve been here before.

    ”I know where this is going.

    ”And I’m not going along again.”

    We stop our thoughts from running away with us

    By being compassionately aware of them:

    ”I’m scaring myself again.

    ”It’s what I do best.

    ”I’m going to stop now, and count my breaths.”

    Then we take a deep breath,

    And count the next 20

    Counting to five between one exhale and the next inhale.

    That will put our thoughts in their place as fast as anything will.
  94. 10/22/2015 — Spanning the River—Middle Saluda River, Jones Gap State Park, Cleveland, SC, October 15, 2015

    We are always having to pause and take stock

    to see where our enthusiasm lies.

    Enthusiasm for the task drifts away, over time,

    to some other task.

    We have to notice when it leaves,

    and pick up the trail before it grows cold,

    and we are left with a life

    we have to pretend to be living,

    but no longer have the heart for.

    Where do your enthusiasms lie these days?

    What are you doing to deepen their attachments,

    and follow their lead?

    Enthusiasm for life IS life!

    When it goes,

    we have to allow it to take us with it,

    or wander the back roads forever wondering

    whatever became of passion and bliss

    after the fire burned out.
  95. 10/22/2015 — Linville Cove Viaduct Panorama 01 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Grandfather Mountain, NC, October 12, 2015

    The optimal distance between people in relationship with each other is the point at which the “I’s” are supporting each other with their life and work, and no one has gone over into a “We,” where the boundaries separating individuals have dissolved and everyone is intent on being like everyone else—or, like they are “supposed to be” for the sake of the relationship.

    This is true for couples, congregations and political parties.

    ”We” exist for the good of the “I’s” composing the “we.”

    When the “I’s” exist for the good of the “We,” the optimum distance for relationship has been transgressed, and individuals are disappearing into the myth of the “We.”

    The myth of the “We,” in its most outlandish and ridiculous form is in the idea that corporations are individuals.

    Corporations are where individuals go to disappear.

    Where individuals are eaten alive.

    Where no one is responsible for anything because everything is done by the nebulous, and ostensibly non-existent, “We.”

    Two or more healthy, well-defined, consciously, compassionately aware “I’s” are essential for every “We.”

    No “We” can be healthier than the health of the least healthy “I” composing it.

    A healthy “We” is an intentional collection of healthy “I’s” who come together for the mutual support of each others life and work, and for the good of the larger community beyond the “We” so established.

    Healthy “I’s” are essential for the development of healthy “I’s.”

    Whatever contributes to the health of an “I,” contributes to the health of more than one “I.”

    The right kind of “We’s” produce the right kind of “I’s,” and vice versa.

    And that’s how we “I’s” save the world.
  96. 10/23/2015 — Freedom Bridge at Falls Park Falls—Greenville, SC, October 8, 2015

    We all are stupid in our own way.

    It helps the whole when we are the only one impacted by our stupidity.

    Some of us—too many of us—are stupid in ways that keep the world flame burning much lower than is good for any of us.

    We each do our part in serving the good of ourselves and the whole

    By taking up the practice of mindfulness meditation,

    And practicing daily.

    Simply being compassionately aware of everything happening and not happening

    In the present moment

    Without judgment, willfulness or opinion

    Shifts the moment toward the good of all.

    Compassionately seeing, hearing, knowing

    What is happening and not happening

    In each situation as it arises

    Without judgment, willfulness or opinion

    Changes everything.

    But.

    It takes doing it religiously over time

    To know

    That I know what I’m talking about.

    It would be stupid

    To be handed the solution to the mess we all are in

    And not practice it.

    Particularly when it asked no more of us

    Than sitting with the moment

    Once a day

    And being fully, compassionately, aware

    Of what is happening and not happening there

    Without judgment, willfulness or opinion.

    Wouldn’t it?
  97. 10/24/2015 — Fall Woods Road 01 — Indian Land, SC, October 23, 2015

    We cannot wake up before the time for awakening is upon us.

    Seeds sprout at sprouting time.

    The grain is harvested at harvesting time.

    It is the way of things.

    ”For everything there is a season,

    And a time for every unfolding and coming forth under heaven.”

    Nothing can be made to happen before its time.

    But.

    It’s time can be missed.

    The opportune time can come by,

    Looking for us,

    And we can be busy tending other matters.

    ”I cannot come to the banquet,

    Don’t trouble me now,

    I have married a wife,

    I have bought me a cow.

    I have fields and commitments,

    That cost a pretty sum,

    Pray hold me excused.

    I cannot come.” (Lyrics by the Medical Mission Sisters, “I Cannot Come To The Banquet”)

    We can be so preoccupied with having Our Way

    That we are never available to The Way,

    No matter how many times it returns,

    Calling our name.

    Our Yossarian is never available

    To the invitation of our life’s Orr.

    And the dead are left to bury the dead,

    While Life goes on without them.

    And so, the need to take up the practice

    Of looking and listening–

    Of being mindfully attentive to the moment of our living–

    So that we might see and hear

    When the time for seeing and hearing comes upon us.
  98. 10/25/2015 — Fall Woods Panorama 01 — Indian Land, SC, October 23, 2015

    The situation as it unfolds before us

    Will bring us forth to meet it,

    And if we refuse to come forth,

    Our situations will increase in intensity and insistence,

    Until we finally have no recourse but to come forth and meet them,

    Or fold up and “die” in one of the 10,000 ways to “die”

    Without officially, and finally, being dead.

    Our life is the place of our coming forth,

    And we WILL come forth,

    Or not.

    That being the case,

    Why not learn all we can about coming forth,

    About meeting our life,

    About assisting what is bringing us forth,

    And discovering how to be our life’s able assistant,

    Its ready partner in collaboration with it

    In the development and presentation of who we are

    In all of our glory,

    For our good,

    And the good of the whole?

    Why do it the hard way,

    Or worse, fail to do it at all?
  99. 10/25/2015 — Leaves of Fall 01 — Indian Land, SC, October 22, 2015

    Where do we go to find our peace,

    Restore our balance,

    Regain our equilibrium,

    Recover our sense of direction,

    Reconnect with heart and soul,

    Remember our center,

    Reestablish our foundation,

    Revive our connection with the source and ground

    Of life and being?

    You might try sitting still,

    And breathing,

    Intentionally attending the moment

    Of sitting and breathing,

    With compassion for all that is there with you,

    And without judgment, willfulness or opinion

    For any of it.

    Just sitting,

    Just breathing,

    With compassionate awareness

    Of and for the moment.

    What do you have to lose?
  100. 10/26/2015 — Price Lake 2015 02 — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, near Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2015

    What is your relationship with reality?

    Contentious?

    Oppositional?

    Compassionate?

    Are you integrated with reality?

    At one with reality?

    At peace with reality?

    At odds with reality?

    In denial about reality?

    How harmonious is your relationship with reality?

    Upon what does your harmony with reality depend?

    Things going your way, perhaps?

    To what extent is reality an extension of you?

    To what extent are you an extension of reality?

    Where do you stop and reality start?

    Upon what does the quality of your relationship with reality depend?

    What can you do to improve the quality of your relationship with reality?

    What keeps you from doing that?

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One Minute Monologues 027

06/10/2015 — 08/19/2015

  1. 06/10/2015 —  Lake Chicot Panorama 03 — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, March 22, 2015

    Each stage of life comes replete with responses

    To the situations that arise during that stage,

    That are appropriate to the situation,

    And appropriate to our stage in life.

    It is our place to play the part we are asked to play,

    In ways appropriate to the situation,

    And appropriate to our stage in life.

    It takes observation and reflection

    To know what is being asked of us,

    And how we need to respond.

    No matter how long we live,

    We never out-live the importance

    Of working introspection, silence, solitude and reflection

    into our life–

    And living out the revelation/realization revealed to us

    In the time and place of our living.
  2. 06/11/2015 — Water Lily Panorama 01 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    There is no hurry.

    It isn’t like we are going somewhere.

    When we fully arrive,

    And have complete understanding,

    The only thing that can give us

    Is the gift of being completely present in the present moment.

    All there is to get, to have, to achieve, to acquire

    Is here, now.

    When you wake up, you wake up to where you are,

    When you are,

    How you are,

    What is happening,

    And what needs to be done about it.

    You see what you look at.

    You hear what you listen to.

    You know what you know

    On all levels of knowing,

    That no one can tell you,

    Because it is the full awareness

    Of your own direct, personal, experience

    That is the foundation of the kind of knowing

    That transforms your life,

    And turns you into a true human being.
  3. 06/11/2015 —  Duck Pond Panorama 01 — Freedom Park, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, June 11, 2015

    We can make things better than they would be without us.

    And, we can make things worse than they would be without us.

    Why don’t we go for the first option,

    In each situation as it arises–

    As a unilateral commitment to the good of the world?
  4. 06/12/2015 —  Damselfly 01 – Indian Land, South Carolina, June 10, 2015

    Immaturity is the refusal to adapt, adjust.

    Maturity is the art of adaptation, adjustment.

    There is always something else to place ourselves in accord with.

    The Cyclops stands in our path

    In myriad manifestations–

    Each one asking us to grow up.

    The spiritual journey is never any more difficult

    Than doing what is hard,

    Here and now.
  5. 06/13/2015 —  Schwabacher Landing 2004 B&W—Grand Teton National Park, WY, September 2004

    Solitude is not isolation.

    Solitude is being where you are,

    When you are,

    How you are,

    Who you are.

    Solitude is oneness with the time and place of our living.

    Solitude is our origin,

    And our goal.

    Seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing, doing, being

    Are functions of solitude.

    Experiencing our experience,

    Reflecting on our experience,

    Receiving new realizations, revelations,

    Are possible only in solitude.

    Silence is required to hear what is happening,

    To see what you are looking at,

    To know what you know.

    For long eons of evolution,

    There was nothing but silence and solitude.

    Now, we can’t get away from the noise of life.

    There is no sanctuary from the amplified disruptions,

    Intrusions, violations of the boundaries setting us apart.

    It’s madness everywhere we turn.

    We take medication to sleep.

    We live too loudly to listen

    Even to our bodies.

    What are you going to do?
  6. 06/14/2015 —  Old Stone Cemetery 04 — Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    Do your thing with mindful awareness,

    Seeing what you look at,

    Hearing what you are saying,

    And what is being said to you,

    Knowing what you know.

    That’s all there is to it.
  7. 06/10/2015 —  Mountain Laurel 01 — Indian Land, South Carolina, May 17, 2015

    We have to be able to separate ourselves from our life.

    We cannot take any of it personally,

    So that we are unable to differentiate between

    Something happening,

    And something happening to us,

    And us.

    Something happens that has implications for us–

    It’s raining, say, and we wanted to work in the yard–

    And you would think it is the worst thing that ever happened to us.

    Our entire day is ruined.

    This is not a mature reaction.

    Maturity understands that

    Distance is leverage,

    And perspective is the lever.

    If we can stand back from our life and what is happening there,

    Observe it from a place of detached interest,

    And see what is called for, what needs to happen in response,

    And do it–

    Without drama or emotional upheaval–

    We will transform the world.

    Our world, anyway.
  8. 06/16/2015 —  Queen Anne’s Lace 02 Blended—Indian Land, South Carolina, June 14, 2015

    What would it take for things to be “well with your soul”?

    I would need a salt water marsh where I could take photographs of waterbirds, wading, swimming, flying,

    And a way to share the photos and my reflections and realizations.

    I’m close to being there, and actually am there several times a year.

    What is your soul asking of you?

    Where does it need for you to be?

    What does it need for you to be doing?

    When have you been most clearly aware of the connection

    With your soul?

    Where have things been well with it?

    Your place is to carry your soul where it needs to go,

    And do what it needs to do.

    You are just along for the ride.

    Once you understand your role,

    And live to fulfill it,

    Things will be well with both you and your soul.
  9. 06/18/2015 —  Summer Flowers 01 — Tickseed Sunflowers, Indian Land, South Carolina, June 15, 2015

    Look in all of your mirrors,

    See who looks back at you from each one.

    Start with the bed you wake up in.

    What does the bed, and the bedroom, and the bathroom, and the house,

    Say about you? What do they reveal of you?

    Proceed from there throughout your day.

    What do you wear?

    How do you greet the first person you meet? The fifth?

    Who do you show yourself to be in each scene of your day?

    Who is the YOU that shines through in each of the roles you play?

    Are there some YOU’s you don’t allow to shine through in some roles?

    How many YOU’s do you keep in seclusion, unavailable to public viewing?

    It is crucial that YOU are aware of all the you’s there are,

    And that YOU work with them all,

    Consciously, mindfully, compassionately, over time,

    To integrate, reconcile, harmonize, choreograph into a whole

    That is completely transparent to you,

    So that all of you knows, and is comfortable with, all of you.

    Don’t hide anything about yourself from yourself.

    And no pretending to be not pretending!

    Nothing happens for the good in your life

    Until you integrate the whole,

    And step as one into your day.

    Each day.
  10. 06/18/2015 —  Queen Anne’s Lace 03 Blended—Indian Land, South Carolina, June 14, 2015

    I am appalled and aghast at the murder of nine good people in Charleston, SC, last night, and at the rampant, escalating hatred of black people by white people in this country.

    White supremacy is an evil beyond evil. Apartheid is a sickness of the soul unto death. Those who wave the Confederate flag, and decorate themselves, and their vehicles, with one, have no heart, and their mind belongs to a movement with only hatred as a vital force.

    I cannot imagine what it is like to be black and know you are hated to the point of your death, and the deaths of the loves of your life. And to look at the white people on the bus with you, or in the sidewalk crowd as you walk to work, or white visitors to your church with it’s “Everyone Welcome” sign on the front lawn, and wonder which of these bastards it will be with the gun blasting away. And to wonder that every day, your entire life long.

    And white politicians who encourage the hatred by tut-tutting it instead of railing against it, and making it crystal clear that disparaging, belittling, insulting, reviling, maligning, ridiculing, making fun of, or in any even slight way disrespecting a black person will not be tolerated any time ever, are guilty of creating an environment, and a culture, of hatred—and must be challenged to become the kind of leaders who exhibit, by the quality of their life, their commitment to the cause of “liberty and justice for all.”

    I do not know how to bring truth to bear upon those who have embraced a lie and call it God. I am as dumbfounded by it as Jesus was, who could only advise walking on to the next town, and leaving the dead to bury the dead. If they were content to bury their own dead, that would be one thing, but their life is consumed by their obsession with killing people innocent of everything but having black skin.

    There is no protection against stupidity, no immunity against rampant, willful, idiocy. But we will not grant them the floor, and will call them out at the slightest racist slur. They cannot be allowed to think that everyone is as they are. Silence is encouragement, and is viewed as acceptance. We will be noisy in our objection to white supremacists and their despicable racist ways. In every time and place.

    We good white people wonder why good Islamic people don’t oppose Islamic fundamentalism. Here is where we show them how, by opposing white supremacy at every turn—especially with those who are “only joking.”
  11. 06/19/2015 —  Duck Pond Panorama 02 — Freedom Park, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, June 11, 2015

    We have to understand that we get out of bed and go to work every day.

    This is not some lark.

    We are not on vacation except for the time we spend at our job.

    Our WORK is 24/7/12 with NO vacation, and time off only for meditation, reflection, realization, and rededication.

    We have to be alert to the situation as it unfolds before us,

    Attending what is happening and what needs to happen in response,

    Doing what needs to be done and getting ready for the next situation to unfold around us.

    What is appropriate here, now?

    What is missing here, now?

    What is called for here, now?

    What now? What next? Now what?

    There is no time to waste not knowing, not seeing, not hearing, not understanding, not doing what needs to be done.

    Our life needs us to live it the way it needs to be lived every moment.

    Mindfulness leads the way.

    We don’t think about it–

    We apprehend it.
  12. 06/18/2015 —  Pitcher Plant 08 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    We have to work with the impact of our experience with life.

    It helps to work with the impact of our experience with life,

    In light of the life that is our life to live–

    In light of the way life is to be lived.

    Nature’s way is the way of least resistance.

    Consciousness complicates the “natural” flow of life’s tendencies,

    By finding things to take into account that introduce complexity

    Into what appears to be the way of least resistance,

    And makes it more tangled and thorny than it seemed at first glance.

    ”Kill all your enemies!” seems to be the course of least resistance to peace and security, but

    When we work with the impact of our experience with life,

    In light of the way that life is to be lived–

    For instance, with liberty and justice for all–

    That puts a different spin on things,

    And we have to look for a path with a second, or third,

    Degree of resistance to it,

    But which is now less resistant than the first path.

    We have to work with everything in this way–

    Taking everything into account, and finding the response

    That serves liberty, justice, kindness, compassion and peace,

    And complicates things,

    And slows things down,

    And makes things better for all concerned.
  13. 06/20/2015 —  Smith Creek Panorama 05 – Anna Ruby Falls, Unicoi State Park, Cattahoochee National Forest, Helen, Georgia, April 15, 2015

    One of the things I hate about photography is how it disrupts the flow of my life.

    I have to be there when the light is.

    The photograph doesn’t wait for a time,

    And is not found in a place,

    That is convenient to me.

    It asks me to lay my life aside in order to live my LIFE.

    That is ridiculous.

    Why can’t they be more compatible?

    Why can’t my LIFE be as smooth and easy as I like my life to be?

    Why does what I love to do require me to do what I hate to do?

    Here’s the lesson:

    We don’t love all there is to love about what we love.

    We have to make sacrifices and concessions

    In the service of what we love.

    We can’t let what we don’t love keep us from doing what we love.

    We have to grow up,

    And do what needs to be done,

    Whether we want to or not.

    This applies to the things we love,

    And to the things we do not love.

    Growing up is the solution to all of our problems today.

    And tomorrow.
  14. 06/20/2015 —  In the Rain—Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    When I get in the car and drive off the backroads into traffic, it makes all the difference if I drive without will or opinion.

    I still drive with direction and preference, but without willfully insisting upon my rights, or imposing my desires—and without having any opinion of, or personal reaction to, what other drivers are doing.

    It’s like driving through a rain storm, or heavy fog, or ice and snow.

    We respond to the driving conditions without will or opinion.

    We do what is called for by the situation as it arises without will or opinion.

    And, when we arrive at your destination, and get out of our car,

    We carry the perspective of living without will or opinion with us through the day.

    Or better,

    When we leave home each morning, we check our will and opinion at the door.

    And when we come home in the evening, we tell them to visit us in our dreams,

    Because there isn’t much of a place for them in our life.
  15. 06/21/2015 —  Blackberry Foliage B&W Blended—Indian Land, SC, June 14, 2015

    We’re always dreaming.

    When we are walking along and slip over into a happy fantasy–

    Even if we begin by seeing a girl playing catch with her father,

    And are snatched back to playing sandlot baseball

    Behind the TV station (KNOE) in Monroe, Louisiana

    When we were in the 8th grade

    Things happen in our fantasy that never happened then and there,

    And, before we get to the house, the fantasy has morphed

    Thirteen times at its own direction

    With us just immersed in the show.

    The brain dreams constantly,

    We’re just too distracted by the business at hand when awake

    To notice.

    We are always processing experience,

    Turning things over,

    Rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing,

    Adjusting, adjusting, adjusting,

    Getting over the past,

    And preparing for the future,

    Trying to get our legs under us,

    And ready for what’s coming.

    We help things along by paying attention,

    And being conscious of themes played out over time.

    Our selves are talking to us here.

    The least we can do is listen

    With compassionate awareness

    To what is being said.
  16. 06/21/2015 —  Water Vapor—Duke Power Hydroelectric Dam on Lake Wylie, and the Catawba River, Tega Cay, SC, June 14, 2015. This photo was taken at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, and 94% humidity. A normally blue sky was graced with the haze of humidity, a deep south delight. Not!

    We can be mindful just by practicing being aware of what is happening within and without in each situation as it arises—without judgment or opinion.

    We can relax simply by focusing on our breathing—and exhaling slower and longer than we inhale.

    We can do more of what we like each day and less of what we don’t like.

    We can spend time with things we enjoy.

    We can indulge ourselves with music, art and nature.

    We can remember to see what we look at and hear what we listen to.

    We can ask the questions that beg to be asked, and say the things that cry out to be said.

    We can listen to our body, particularly to our stomach, and learn to read its signals.

    We can write down our dreams, and reflect on what they might be saying to us.

    We can enjoy what is to be enjoyed about each day.

    See how many of these things you can do in what remains of today,

    And how many you can work into tomorrow.
  17. 06/22/2015 —  Duck Pond Panorama 02 Detail—Freedom Park, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, June 11, 2015

    We have to take the initiative and start living our life the way we feel our life needs to be lived.

    Our life will take over from there,

    But we have to start the process.

    We cannot wait passively for our life to come ask us to dance.

    We have to decide what is “it” for us–

    And it may be what we wish were “it,”

    What we want to be “it”

    Or, even, what we are afraid might be “it.”

    It doesn’t matter what “it” is that we feel is our work,

    We just have to start in some direction,

    And allow our work to lead us along the way,

    Changing directions,

    Opening doors we never knew existed,

    Surprising us again and again with new ways

    To think of, and live, our life.

    But, nothing happens until we get up and go toward something,

    And then get out of the way.
  18. 06/23/2015 —  Trumpet Vine—Indian Land, South Carolina, June 14, 2015

    When I was in the preaching business, I was paid to talk to people about God.

    But.

    They didn’t want me to tell them anything they hadn’t already heard.

    I would try to work in something new.

    ”That’s not right!” they would protest.

    ”Tell it like it IS, Preacher!”

    Made for interesting times.

    They wanted to hear about the Christian God.

    Or, at worst, the Judeo-Christian God.

    They didn’t want to hear about God before God became a Jew.

    Or, after God gave up on Christianity.

    What did they think God was doing all that time waiting around for the Children of Abraham to make the scene?

    Who was God talking to then?

    They didn’t want to think about it.

    They just wanted to be told again “the old, old (But no older than that!) story.

    They were sure they would go to hell if they listened to anything else.

    The bad preaching got to them first.
  19. 06/24/2015 —  Lake Haigler Falls 2015 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Lake Haigler Access, Fort Mill, SC, April 25, 2015

    When we talk we have to talk about how it is with us and our work, the work we came to do.

    We have to talk about how we are working with the conditions and circumstances of our life in order to accommodate ourselves to our working conditions so that we might do the work that is ours to do.

    We are forever caught between our “situation” and Our Work.

    Our “situation” is the field of action, Our Work is what we are to do on the field of action as we are also “taking care of business” with regard to our “sitz im leben,” our “setting in life.”

    This is called Walking Two Paths At The Same Time.

    We have to take care of business on two levels.

    The baby needs to be changed and fed, the dog needs to get to the vet, we have a project report to make for our job, and duties and obligations to meet, all related to our setting in life.

    And we have to live there in certain ways—in ways that take into account the gifts, art, genus that are ours to bring to life in our life—in ways that do the work that is ours to do in and around the demands of our setting in life.

    We cannot relax this tension. We must bear consciously the pain of our twin responsibilities.

    We cannot r-u-n-n-o-f-t and join the circus, or the circuit of like-minded-world-renouncing-communes, or conversations, where we repeat our mantras and wait for the world to end.

    When we talk, we have to talk about our work and our setting in life and the difficulties we are having getting them together.

    Our setting in life is the matrix within which we do our work.

    It is necessarily difficult because the real work here is to grow up.

    Our work will grow us up IF we do it within our life setting.

    If we r-u-n-n-o-f-t to do our work, we abandon our work, and remain stuck repeating our mantras, our truisms, our trite, worn, sayings that have no meaning apart from our setting in life.

    Our conversations are to keep our “feet to the fire” and help us do the work that is ours to do.

    If they are helping us escape, deny, discount, discard either the work or our setting in life, they are doing harm, not helping us maintain the tension and work with what must be worked with on the two levels—not helping us “work it out.”
  20. 06/25/2015 —  Pearson’s Falls 2015 05 — Saluda, NC, April 18, 2015

    It takes being quiet to hear what is being said.

    We are always talking to ourselves, but we are not always listening.

    Our mind is on other things.

    10,000 other things.

    10,000 is the Taoist way of representing infinity.

    We never run out of things to think about that aren’t what we need to be thinking about.

    We need to be thinking about what we are saying to ourselves.

    We have to be quiet for a long time to get past the noise in our life

    That is jamming the signals and keeping us from knowing

    What we need to know

    To be doing what we need to be doing

    With our life in the time left for living.

    It takes a lot of listening to be able to hear.
  21. 06/25/2015 —  Smith Creek Panorama 03 — Anna Ruby Falls, Unicoi State Park, Cattahoochee National Forest, Helen, Georgia, April 15, 2015

    Our work is to align our conscious ego with our unconscious Psyche,

    So that they collaborate as one in the unfolding of our life,

    Within the terms and conditions of the time and place of our living.

    Get that down, and you have it made.
  22. 06/26/2015 —  Soque River 04 — Mark of the Potter, Clarksville, Georgia, April 14, 2015

    Our conscious ego has to be mature enough to see itself—to be transparent to itself.

    Nothing can happen until our conscious ego can be aware of itself.

    Can see itself acting,

    Hear itself speaking.

    Feel itself feeling,

    Observe itself wanting, hating, loving, resenting…emoting,

    Know itself.

    Once the conscious ego is capable of knowing itself,

    It is capable of knowing its Other Self.

    That’s when the fun begins.

    Everything is waiting for the conscious ego to wake up to itself,

    And to its Other Self,

    And say, “Let’s do it!”
  23. 06/27/2015 —  Lake Chico 02 Panorama—Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, May 22, 2015

    It’s the same work that has to be done every day:

    Look, listen, see, hear, understand what is being asked of us.

    Do it with compassion and grace.

    Be who we are, and who we also are.

    All of this without will or opinion.

    Live with direction and preference,

    Not will and opinion.

    That’s the most important thing.

    Repeat the process all day long,

    Within the terms and conditions,

    Nature and circumstances,

    Of our life.

    When you don’t know what to do,

    Look, listen, see, hear.

    Works every time.
  24. 06/28/2015 —  Carolina Jasmine 2015 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, April 6, 2015

    Meditation is the process whereby we, as conscious ego, seek alignment with ourselves, as unconscious psyche/self.

    We are seeking communion with the two million-year-old person (Carl Jung’s phrase) within.

    It is our place to learn the language of our inner self,

    And build a collaborative relationship with her, with him,

    So that our life becomes an expression of who we are capable of being,

    And we assume the roles of both mother and mid-wife,

    Of sculptor and stone,

    Birthing ourselves again and again

    Throughout the time left for living.

    Together with our invisible Other,

    We craft a life,

    And live the adventure of being alive.
  25. 06/29/2015 —  Cypress Swamp Panorama B&W 06 — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 2015

    Adjustment and accommodation, Kid. Adjustment and accommodation.

    Life is the art of putting ourselves in accord with our life–

    Both of them: The one we are living and the one that is ours to live.

    We find ourselves saying, “Whhaatt? Not AGAIN!” all the time.

    Our capacity for adjustment and accommodation

    Is a measure of our maturity.

    The people who cannot adjust and accommodate themselves to their life,

    Do not live very well,

    And do not enable others to live very well.

    When life has to be This Way, NOT That Way,

    It is going to be a long time to peace and contentment.

    Life is the art of finding out what you can get by with.

    Life is the art of finding out how much you can give up,

    And still have a good time.

    Life is the art of considering your possibilities,

    Not your misfortunes.

    Life is the art of seeing what you can do

    With what you have to work with,

    Today.
  26. 06/30/2015 —  Lake Haigler Summer Panorama—Anne Springs Close Greenway, Lake Haigler Access, Fort Mill, SC, June 29, 2015

    I live in the midst of a developing nation.

    Development is everywhere.

    I awaken to the sound of bulldozers, dump trucks and earth moving equipment

    Clearing the land,

    Making progress.

    Actually, they are making a profit

    At nature’s expense.

    There are earthquakes where earthquakes were not

    Because progress (Read: Profit) requires fossil fuel

    And fracking is the cheapest, fastest way to feed the beast.

    Of course, voices of protest have been raised over the course of time,

    But if a profit can be made, a profit will be made,

    And the economy grows lusty,

    And calls for M O R E N O W ! ! !

    The Sierra Club and Greenpeace can’t keep up.

    The only break came when the housing bubble burst.

    It takes a systemic shock to shut down rabid insanity

    Because we, as a species, lack the self-reflection-and-restraint

    Necessary for survival,

    And it’s an all-or-nothing world.

    But.

    The ice caps are melting.

    And the honey bees are disappearing.

    Nature’s way of reclaiming lost ground,

    And recovering from the failed experiment of homo sapiens.
  27. 06/30/2015 —  Cypress Swamp Panorama 08 — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 2015

    Just look.

    Just listen.

    Just see.

    Just hear.

    Just understand.

    Just know.

    Just do (what needs to be done in response to the above)

    Just be (the best person you are capable of being with the qualities and characteristics, gifts and abilities you possess, within the nature and circumstances of your life).

    And the world will be a better place,

    Because of you.
  28. 06/30/2015 —  Peaches 2015 04 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Lake Haigler Access, Fort Mill, SC, June 29, 2015

    We come into the world packed with all the help we need

    To meet our life square-up and deliver the goods

    (That would be what we have to offer)

    In each situation as it arises

    All our life long.

    How many babies have you known who didn’t know their own mind,

    And didn’t mind expressing it?

    We begin to lose our confidence and self-assurance

    All along the way,

    Until, by the seventh grade, we are looking around to see

    How it’s supposed to be done,

    And doing it like everyone else is.

    Too many of us never wake up

    And find our way back to ourselves,

    But die never having had an authentic thought in adulthood,

    Or acted on a personal urge for self-expression.

    And the help we need is always “right there,”

    Waiting to be turned to,

    And asked for assistance and direction.
  29. 07/01/2015 —  Lake Haigler Summer Panorama 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Lake Haigler Access, Fort Mill, SC, June 29, 2015

    Introspection, reflection, solitude.

    The watchwords for the second half (maybe the last third) of life.

    Carl Jung said, “For a young person it is almost a sin . . . to be too much occupied with himself; but for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity.”

    We have to reconcile ourselves to our life–

    To the life we have lived and the one we are living,

    And to the one we are called, even yet, to live.

    We have to see how things have fit together,

    And recognize the recurring imprint of grace at work throughout our life.

    Making our peace with the way things are,

    And living with gratitude for all that is and has been,

    Opens us to the offerings of each day,

    And to the wonder of life yet to be lived.
  30. 07/02/2015 —  Lake Haigler Loop Trail 04 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Lake Haigler Access, Fort Mill, SC, June 29, 2015

    Lions come with a built-in pattern for being a lion in place.

    And, they are born into a pride in which everyone there is doing it

    The way lions do it.

    No lion ever got confused about who it was or what it was supposed to do,

    And never even dreamed about being an elephant or an antelope.

    No lion ever had big ideas for itself and wanted to move to the city

    And be in the zoo.

    Lions live out their life, quite content to be a lion,

    With no one ever asking it, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    It’s different with human beings.

    We can override every human thing about us

    And live like we are pigs or parrots if we want to.

    Overriding the patterns in place from the womb,

    And imposing our idea of us on us,

    Creates problems.

    Can you imagine John Wayne

    Trying to be Momma’s Little Darling

    All his life long?

    The people with the best chance in life

    Are being who they are.

    Not who they wish they were.

    Where do you fall out along that continuum?

    How close to the patterns do you live?
  31. 07/03/2015 —  Sandhills Grasslands—Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 7, 2015

    There are three aspects of the spiritual journey,

    Which is also the Road to Maturity and Grace:

    There is who we are.

    There is what we do.

    There is how we feel about it.

    The work of the journey and the Road

    Is integrating these three things

    So that they merge together and are one.

    What we do is who we are,

    And we are at peace with who we are and what we do.

    Negotiation and compromise, Kid.

    Negotiation and compromise.

    And living transparent to ourselves,

    In each situation as it arises.

    We are the knight and the dragon and the treasure,

    The sculptor, the chisel, and the marble.

    The bard and the tale.
  32. 07/04/2015 —  Peaches 2015 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Lake Haigler Access, Fort Mill, SC, June 29, 2015

    It starts with what you care about.

    Your life begins there.

    The Spiritual Journey, A.K.A. The Road To Maturity and Grace,

    Starts there.

    Nothing happens until you care about something.

    It could be anything, but.

    You have to care deeply about it.

    You have to care deeply enough about it to do what you hate doing–

    What is inconvenient, exasperating, and no fun–

    To do what you care about.

    If you don’t care about anything deeply enough to do anything to do it,

    There is nothing I, or anyone else, can do for you.

    We are all standing around,

    Waiting for you to care about something deeply enough,

    To sacrifice yourself in its service.

    Until you are doing that,

    We are wasting our time with you.

    And none of us have enough of it to throw any of it away.

    Neither, of course, do you.

    So why are you wasting time not caring about anything enough

    To die for it?

    That kind of death is the path to resurrection and new life.

    You are already dead–

    Too dead to care about anything.

    Caring about something enough to die in its service

    Will raise you from the dead,

    Like nothing else will.

    But, you have to do it to know what I’m talking about.
  33. 07/05/2015 —  Faires-Coltharp Cabin Panorama—Anne Springs Close Greenway, Dairy Barn Access, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 30, 2015

    Your reactions to the events and circumstances of your life

    Are a mirror reflecting you to you

    (And to everyone else).

    What you do is you.

    How you react is, too.

    You are calling your attention to what needs attending

    About you,

    And you think it is the events and circumstances of your life

    That need attention, alteration–

    That your reactions are normal, reasonable and sound,

    And it is your life that is out of round.

    There is nothing wrong with you

    That having more things go your way

    Wouldn’t cure.

    Your life keeps sending you messages,

    You keep yelling at your life.

    Everything waits for you to wake up–

    For the shift in perspective

    That changes everything.
  34. 07/06/2015 —  Mingus Mill—Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee, NC

    When we live in sync with ourselves,

    integrated within and without,

    It is a smooth fit and flow.

    We are “in the groove,”

    ”On the beam,”

    ”At peace” with ourselves and our lot in life.

    There is nothing to fight against,

    So resistance disappears,

    And we respond as needed

    To each situation as it arises,

    With an offering appropriate to the occasion.

    What’s wrong with that for a way to live?
  35. 07/07/2015 —  Yellow on Black—Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    Notice everything.

    Notice what impresses you.

    Let the things that impress you be things like sunrises and sunsets,

    Moon rises and moon sets,

    Cloud formations,

    Rainbows,

    Natural things.

    Ask yourself, “What’s so impressive about

    Celebrities,

    Awards,

    Prestigious affiliations,

    And things money can buy?

    What’s so impressive about money?”

    Live to be impressed by things

    Worthy of your attention.
  36. 07/07/2015 —  Yellow on White—Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    We have to take our solace where we can find it, but.

    I recommend art—including literature and poetry—music and nature

    Over drugs, sex and alcohol.

    If you have been lost in the latter,

    Poke around a bit in the former.

    See if you can find something there

    That comes upon you as a blessing and a grace,

    Soothing your soul,

    Healing old wounds

    (And helping you avoid new ones).

    If your life isn’t working as is,

    Look at where you are spending your money,

    And where you are spending your time.

    I’ll bet it isn’t in the areas of art, music and nature.
  37. 07/08/2015 —  Sunflower 2015 04 — Sunflower Field, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    We need objective, expert witnesses, not only in the justice system (Why is it “criminal justice system” and not just “justice system”? Criminals aren’t the only ones in need of just and fair treatment), but throughout our life.

    We need someone to witness what is happening in our life, to share our experience, to confirm or correct what we perceive to be happening.

    We are thoroughly capable of responding appropriately to the situation IF we interpret what is occurring there correctly.

    We need an expert, objective witness with whom we might consult in determining the correctness of our understanding of what is happening.

    In the absence of such a helpful aid in time of trouble, we are on our own in the work to assess and evaluate what is going on and what needs to be done about it in each situation as it arises.

    It takes me a while to see things as they are.

    I don’t walk around being savvy, tuned-in and with it.

    I get blindsided and react defensively, aggressively, personally, and rarely recover from one event before the next one is unfolding before me.

    We need more time between situations.

    Time to recover, reflect, reconsider and regain our perspective—which is the emotional/physical distance required to see what the deal is from all sides, and determine what response would be most fitting to the occasion.

    We can’t do that “like that.”

    And, that’s the “whole problem,” as I see it.

    We are asked, no, required, to size things up and respond appropriately in no time at all.

    That’s ridiculous. Ain’t no way.

    It takes time to know what is going on and what to do about it.

    You tell them I said so.
  38. 07/09/2015 —  Yellow on Blue—Indian Land, South Carolina, July 8, 2014

    Most of what passes for conversation is deigned to keep from having to say anything.

    How much reflection goes into your conversations?

    How much new ever comes out of them?

    You may argue often,

    But how much insight is gleaned?

    How often do minds change?

    Enlarge?

    Expand?

    Deepen?

    How often do you follow worn paths to familiar destinations?

    Like cows,

    Going from the barn to the pasture,

    And back to the barn?

    Conversation is a cow path,

    From nothing to nowhere and back,

    Again and again,

    Everyday.
  39. 07/10/2015 —  Atlantic Dawn 02 — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October, 2008

    There are two of us,

    The one we are conscious of,

    And the one we are unconscious of.

    The one we are conscious of

    Is composed of the one I see and know,

    And you see and know,

    And the one you also see and know,

    But I do not see and know.

    And the one I see and know,

    But you do not see and know.

    The one we are not conscious of

    Is composed of the one we can become conscious of

    And the one that is there, and real, and impacts our life,

    But is beyond our ability to know,

    And the multitude of unconscious “contents”

    That influence us and make life interesting.

    We need to be told all of this early on,

    And taught how to relate to all that we are,

    And also are,

    For the good of the whole,

    Individually and collectively.

    We have to know what we know,

    And what can be known.

    Everything depends on it.
  40. 07/10/2015 —  Yellow on Blue with Green—Indian Land, South Carolina, July 8, 2015

    Every man has to be the best man he can be,

    And the best woman he can be.

    Every woman has to be the best woman she can be,

    And the best man she can be.

    The ideal male has to be compensated by the ideal female.

    The ideal female has to be compensated by the ideal male.

    Each of us works to get the ratios right among

    Reason, logic, practical, expedient, ambitious,

    Aggressive, devoted, empathetic, compassionate, accepting,

    Nurturing, understanding, receptive, open, imaginative,

    And all the other characteristics that comprise the species.

    We can be too much the man

    And not enough the woman,

    Too much the woman

    And not enough the man.

    We have to be balanced by our opposites,

    And seek the middle ground between the extremes,

    Bringing, Logos and Eros,

    Animus and Anima,

    To life with each of us,

    Neglecting neither,

    Honoring both
  41. 07/11/2015 —  Sunflowers 2015 02 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, SC, July 4, 2015

    We have to know what our place is,

    Where we belong,

    What our business is,

    And is not,

    Who our kind of people are,

    And are not.

    We have to work our side of the street,

    And trust the others to work their side of the street,

    And know where the line lies,

    And honor the line.

    When we blur the line,

    Or erase it,

    To earn the favor of those who won’t like us if we don’t,

    Or to exploit our position,

    And gain some advantage,

    We lose the way,

    And wander in a wasteland of our own making.

    We have to know what our work is,

    And do it.

    Everything flows from there.

    Everything stops flowing

    When we neglect our work

    In favor of some other consideration,

    And blur the lines,

    Or erase them.
  42. 07/12/2015 —  Atlantic Storm 05 — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    The National Park Service motto, “Your safety is your responsibility” applies across the board, around the table.

    Your life is your responsibility.

    That could be an AA motto.

    We are on our own with the problem of finding and living our life.

    Nobody can do it for us.

    Nobody can tell us how to do it.

    All the coaching and instruction in the world can’t tell us what we need to know in order to do what is ours to do.

    The group, the community, can encourage us, and can lead by example, doing its own work, living their own life, but.

    In the darkness at 2 AM, it’s just me and my life and the question of what am I going to do. What now? What next? Now what? I alone answer those questions.

    And the group, the community, encourages me to trust myself to find my own way to the life that is mine alone to live. They cheer me on. We cheer each other on.

    But, we do the work alone.

    The books on mindfulness don’t enable us to be mindful. We take up the practice, we do the work, on our own.

    The books on meditation don’t enable us to meditate.

    The books on sobriety don’t enable us to be, and remain, sober.

    The books on Spiritual Practice don’t enable us to reflect on our experience to the point of new realizations, or follow a healthy diet, or exercise regularly, or become transparent to ourselves…

    We do the work on our own.

    Talking about doing the work is not doing the work.

    Reading another book about doing the work is not doing the work.

    Are we doing the work is the only question.

    If not, why not is the other only question
  43. 07/12/2015 —  Baxter Creek Bridge 01 — Big Creek Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville, NC, 2008

    I’ve had enough of the stupidity of the deep south.

    I know stupidity isn’t a regional thing, but

    I’ve had enough of it in the deep south.

    There doesn’t seem to be much of it in Vermont

    And Oregon.

    I wish the deep south were more like Vermont

    And Oregon.

    The Affordable Health Care Act is a good thing.

    For everybody.

    What’s with not seeing that?

    Not understanding that?

    Not being all for that?

    Stupid willfulness is the only explanation.

    And, that is only one example.

    There are myriad more.

    All built upon the premise

    That “Ours Is The Right Way To See And Do Everything!”

    Or, as it is sometimes stated: “Nobody Can Show Us Nothing!”

    I can’t get far enough away from that.

    Not even Vermont and Oregon

    Are far enough away from that.
  44. 07/13/2015 —  Sunflower 2015 03 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    Our life is an operating manual detailing how to live our life.

    We discover everything we need to know about living by living.

    But.

    There is a catch.

    We have to live mindfully, compassionately, aware of what is happening (within and without us),

    And what we do in response,

    And what happens next.

    We have to experience our life,

    And our response to our life.

    We have to pay attention.

    Without judgment, will or opinion.

    Only preference and direction are allowed.

    That’s it.

    If you follow these instructions,

    You will have everything you need

    To live the life that needs you to live it,

    And follow the thread with your name on it,

    Through the circumstances of your living.
  45. 07/14/2015 —  Sunflowers 2015 05 – Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    It begins with what we care about–

    With caring about what we care about–

    With allowing what we care about

    To lead us into other things to care about.

    Caring about the things we care about

    Is the path of soul to soul by way of soul.

    Soul is here to express its love

    For the things it loves.

    We block the expression of soul in our life

    When we refuse to love what we love,

    And do not care about the things we care about,

    Because “it would hurt to much,”

    Or because “it would be too hard.”

    Or because of the ten thousand other reasons

    To wall ourselves in

    And not give a damn.
  46. 07/15/2015 —  Black-Eyed Susans and Purple Cone Flowers—Blowing Rock, NC

    Saying “YES!” to the way things are,

    And working with them

    To see what we can do with them

    In the time left for living,

    Transforms everything,

    And opens us to possibilities

    We never knew existed.

    This is the “transcendent function” (Carl Jung)

    Of imagination coming to life in our life,

    And the power Perspective Shifts

    To move mountains

    And to create doorways

    In the walls

    Boxing us in.

    We all are magicians in this way.

    We all are the magic wand we wish we had.

    Waiting for the jailer to let us out,

    We become the jailer keeping us in,

    Holding the key,

    Wishing we had a key.
  47. 07/16/2015 —  Dairy Barn HDR 03 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, Dairy Barn Access, June 4, 2015

    The truth within us has to recognize,

    Validate,

    And resonate with

    The truth outside of us.

    We are actively engaged in the transmission of truth.

    Truth doesn’t reside “out there,”

    To be “proclaimed” by the gurus,

    Masters,

    And disciples of the gurus and masters.

    Truth is as much “in here,”

    Waiting to be awakened,

    Deepened,

    Expanded

    By our engagement with what we find “out there.”

    When the truth within meets the truth without,

    Truth translates truth,

    Truth transforms truth,

    Truth merges with truth.

    Inner is affirmed and enlarged by outer.

    Outer is given shape and form,

    Made tangible, practical, actual and real by inner.

    And we complete one round

    In the process of realization,

    Recognition,

    Enlightenment,

    And make ready for the next.
  48. 07/17/2015 —  Falls Park Panorama—Reedy River Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    If we have a Father Complex,

    We either hate our father,

    Or adore him,

    And live trying to please him,

    Or displease him.

    Our father is continuing to mess with our life,

    After all these years.

    How do we get over “dear old Dad”?

    ”Mindfulness leads the way.”

    We make dear old Dad conscious–

    We become conscious of how living here and now,

    Is really living there and then,

    And how Dad’s influence is still

    Running, and ruining, our life–

    And that to live contrary to Dad’s influence

    Is still living under Dad’s influence.

    The only way out from under Dad

    Is to become consciously aware

    Of our own heart and soul,

    And to know what would be

    Genuinely, authentically, US

    Apart from Dad.

    That’s all there is to it.

    Becoming intently conscious

    Of the way things are,

    Transforms the way things are.

    It works with our Poor Old Mother, too.
  49. 07/17/2015 —  Greenhouse Orchid 09 — Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, Charlotte, NC, April 21, 2015

    Consciousness—mindfulness—without judgment, will, or opinion,

    but with compassionate, gracious, acceptance,

    Covers a multitude of ills.

    If you want to change something,

    Particularly about yourself,

    Become conscious of it.

    Know all there is to know about it.

    Be curious about it.

    Explore it.

    Interview it.

    Wonder what it is concealing,

    And what it is revealing.

    And, if you think you “know all about it,”

    Ask yourself what you don’t know about it.

    See how much you DON’T know.

    Ask it to reveal itself to you,

    And to reveal yourself to you in so doing.

    The world will change before your eyes.
  50. 07/18/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 03 — Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    The difference between being self-conscious and being self-aware

    Is the difference that makes the difference.

    Being self-conscious is seeing yourself with judgment and opinion.

    Being self-aware is seeing yourself without judgment or opinion.

    It is not enough to see yourself.

    Everything rides on “Then what?”
  51. 07/19/2015 —  Heron Dance—Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC

    ”To Thine Own Self Be True.”

    There is no better advice.

    It all starts with being who we are.

    But, we are a multiplicity of personalities, moods and dispositions!

    Will the real “us” please stand up!

    And, of course, they all stand up,

    And come forward,

    To claim us for their very own.

    It’s a joke being true to “our own self.”

    We wouldn’t know where to begin,

    And have no idea of how to find our way

    Back to “the face that was ours before we were born.”

    But.

    We know what we like and don’t like,

    What’s right for us and wrong,

    What’s good for us and bad,

    Where we belong,

    And where we have no business being.

    Start there.

    With what we know to be so about us.

    Be true to that.

    Notice when we override that

    For the sake of “appearances,”

    Or to keep things smooth and calm.

    Notice how often we are in Override Mode.

    Notice what we are doing

    That is not true to ourselves.

    See what happens.
  52. 07/19/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 10 B&W—Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    Focus and concentration, Kid. Focus and concentration.

    We cannot live accidentally.

    Intention and dedication, Kid. Intention and dedication.

    Our work requires more effort

    Than hitting a golf ball, or a baseball.

    Attention and devotion, Kid. Attention and devotion.

    Athletes practice.

    Musicians practice.

    Chess masters practice.

    Ballet dancers practice.

    Our work is our life.

    Allegiance and fidelity, Kid. Allegiance and fidelity.

    We cannot do what is ours to do–

    We cannot live the life that is ours to live–

    When nothing better is available,

    When the mood hits us,

    When we feel like it.

    Fealty and liege, Kid. Fealty and liege.
  53. 07/19/2015 —  Colors of Fall 07 — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, November 21, 2011

    What do you do wholeheartedly?

    How often do you do it?

    How long has it been since you have done it?

    Can you remember the last time you did something wholeheartedly?

    We measure “vital signs” by checking our blood pressure, temperature and pulse rate.

    That tells us that we are alive,

    But it doesn’t tell us how fully, completely, alive we are.

    We take our “vitality signs” by noting the number of things we do wholeheartedly,

    How frequently we do them,

    And how long it has been since the last time we did them.

    We cannot be partially alive.

    If our heart isn’t wholly in anything we do,

    We are only pretending to be alive.

    We may be 98.6 and breathing,

    But we aren’t dancing,

    We aren’t singing,

    In the rain, or anywhere else.

    Find what you can do wholeheartedly,

    And do it.

    Frequently.

    Often.

    Forever.
  54. 07/20/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 01 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    We find our life and live it amid the 10,000 distractions.

    Sex, drugs, alcohol, wealth and prosperity

    Present themselves to us as “really living,”

    Purport to be “what life is all about,”

    Rob us of our attention and focus,

    And leave us wondering what happened

    To all the bright dreams

    In the wasteland of our discontent.

    It doesn’t turn out as planned,

    And, that’s what we get for thinking we have a better idea

    For our life

    Than our life’s idea for itself.

    ”Be Quiet And Listen!”

    Should be the first lesson upon leaving the womb.

    But, by then, we already are not listening,

    And have to live a long time

    In the wasteland of our own making

    Before we know we don’t know as much as we think we know,

    And are ready, finally,

    To be quiet and listen—

    Past all of the distractions—

    To the faint beating

    Of the heart of life and being.
  55. 07/20/2015 —  Colors of Fall 02 — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, November 2011

    Look closely at the meaningful things in your life.

    Everything in your life is a mirror, reflecting you to you–

    A threshold inviting you to step across into you–

    Pathways to who you are, and who you are to become–

    Particularly, the things most meaningful to you.

    Make a list of the meaningful things in your life.

    Explore them slowly, individually, imaginatively, over time.

    Let them become living symbols of you.

    What do they say about you?

    How do they express, exhibit, you?

    What can you see about yourself

    Examining at the things that mean the most to you?

    As you see more clearly who you are,

    Work consciously to become who you are–

    To bring you forth more fully into your life.

    Live into the life you are living,

    And become there,

    Who you are,

    Who you show yourself to be,

    In the things that mean the most to you.
  56. 07/21/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 04 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    At each stage of life we have to decide

    What to carry forward,

    And what to leave behind–

    What to keep,

    And what to throw away.

    Too many of us try to keep everything,

    And never throw anything away.

    And the mental age of the culture is,

    What would you say,

    12? 13?

    How are we ever going to mature,

    Individually and collectively,

    If we never look at our life

    And decide what is valuable,

    And what is valueless?

    If the kingdom of heaven

    Is like fishermen culling the day’s haul,

    Deciding for themselves what has value

    And what does not,

    Where does that put us?

    When are we going to sit around our life,

    And keep this,

    And throw back that?
  57. 07/22/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 02 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    Sit and listen.

    And evaluate what you hear.

    Evaluating what you hear

    Means listening deeper, further, additionally.

    We’re always stopping too soon,

    In a “I Get It-This-Ain’t-Getting-It-Done-Let’s-Go!” fashion.

    Gotta get it done, you know.

    Now.

    It’s the American Way.

    Nothing is wrong with sitting and listening,

    And listening further.

    If you aren’t listening yourself into a quandary,

    You aren’t listening long enough.

    You have to listen yourself to the other side.

    When you can make equally strong cases for all sides,

    THEN you are ready for the next step.

    Sitting in the middle,

    And waiting to see

    What you decide

    Needs to be done.

    It takes time.

    It is not the American Way.

    It is counter-cultural as it gets.

    Sitting and listening.
  58. 07/22/2015 —  Colors of Fall 04 — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, November 21, 2011

    Facts are to truth as words are to music.

    There is how things are (yin),

    and how things also are (yang),

    and that is how things are (Tao).

    Yin plus yang equals Tao.

    We live on the boundary between yin and yang,

    embracing contraries,

    integrating opposites,

    reconciling contradictions,

    serving/producing Tao.

    When we do not serve/produce Tao,

    there is the way things are,

    and there is the way we wish things were,

    the way we want things to be.

    When we serve the way we want things to be,

    we produce a world we cannot live in,

    and wonder, “Why?”
  59. 07/24/2015 —  Horseshoe Falls 01 — Musgrove Mill State Historic Site, Clinton, SC, July 23, 2015

    If we were going to create the church as it ought to be,

    We would have to start of with the right kind of people.

    It takes the church to make the church.

    You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken poop,

    As they like to say in the deep south,

    Or, words to that effect.

    In order to be the church,

    The people who make up the church

    Have to be busy being the church,

    And I don’t mean singing in the choir,

    Teaching Sunday School,

    Attending Bible studies,

    Witnessing to other people about Jesus,

    And going on mission trips.

    I mean working their own, individual, personal program.

    You have to be working the program.

    The program is

    Seeing, Hearing, Understanding, Knowing, Doing, Being.

    Start with seeing.

    You have to practice seeing what you look at,

    Particularly when you look in the mirror.

    Not just once or twice a week,

    When you think about it,

    Or feel like it,

    But, all of the time.

    You’ve heard of “praying constantly”?

    Well, seeing constantly is equally important.

    While you are doing that,

    You have to hear what is being said,

    And hearing what you are saying.

    You have to understand what’s what.

    You have to know what the deal is on every level.

    You have to do what needs to be done in response

    To the situation as it arises,

    And you have to be who you are

    In ways appropriate to the occasion.

    You don’t have a church

    Until everyone there is working this program.

    You will notice,

    There is nothing here about theology and doctrine.

    That isn’t an oversight.
  60. 07/24/2015 —  William Henry Gist Family Cemetery—Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site, Union County, South Carolina, July 23, 2015

    William Henry Gist was the 68th Governor of South Carolina, serving from 1858 to 1860. He was a leader of the succession movement in South Carolina, and was one of the signers of the Ordinance of Succession on December 20, 1860, which initiated the Civil War.

    William Gist owned over 160 slaves at the start of the War, and represents well those whose life was a failure of justice, compassion, imagination and courage, and whose legacy was “willfully wrong and never in doubt.”

    His mansion and family plot remain today as reminders of the airs evil can put on in pretending to be other than it is—and of the blanket of denial that wealth, privilege and aristocracy bring with them into the lives of all who serve them—calling all visitors to vigilance, self-awareness, self-examination, and reflection in being transparent to ourselves—and just, compassionate, courageous and imaginative in our relationships with all others, in every situation and circumstance of life.

    We remember so that we will not repeat, so help us God.
  61. 07/25/2015 —  Black-eyed Susans—Indian Land, South Carolina, July 23, 2015

    We fight to free ourselves

    From the presumptions, assumptions, inferences, conjectures, speculations, suppositions, deductions, judgments, opinions and conclusions

    That form our perspective,

    Force us to live in a world we generate from within,

    And prevent us from seeing things as they are.

    Compassionate, mindful, awareness

    Transforms everything it perceives.

    May we all live to be so free.
  62. 07/26/2015 —  Yosemite Falls 02 B&W—Yosemite National Park, CA, April, 2006

    Everybody is dealing with something,

    Bearing some burden.

    Each one of us is struggling

    To come to terms with the way things are,

    Making our peace with the truth of our life.

    This is the work of maturity,

    The singular task of the spiritual journey.

    We are all growing up.

    The more conscious we are of the process,

    And of our place in it,

    The better it is for everyone.

    We do our part

    When we put ourselves in accord with our life,

    And live it as fully as it can be lived,

    Anyway,

    Nevertheless,

    Even so.

    I don’t mean lie down

    And let it run over you.

    I mean do what can be done

    About what needs to be done

    With the gifts that are yours to use–

    I mean “get in there and do your thing”–

    Every day for the rest of your life,

    And let that be that.
  63. 07/26/2015 —  Sunflower 2015 12 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 6, 2015

    The white side of the south has a fascination with it’s “heritage.”

    That’s like Christians being all pumped up and proud of the heritage of Adam and Eve.

    Our southern, white, heritage is one of shame and disgrace.

    It is a heritage of evil, dispassion, oppression, cruelty, bigotry, injustice, brutality, hatred, intolerance, discrimination, homophobia, xenophobia and racism.

    We who are white and southern, have inherited attitudes, perspectives, proclivities, tendencies and demeanor that are consistent with privilege and entitlement, on the one hand, and with condescension, superiority, disdain and disparagement, on the other.

    Our white, southern, ancestors were wrong to not only condone, but to also cherish, these qualities and characteristics that they so unashamedly passed along to us.

    It is our place to right those wrongs.

    To throw off the “heritage” of treating other human beings in ways other than honorable, respectful, compassionate, kind, just, merciful, and evidence of good faith and a deep desire to be helpful and encouraging across the board, around the table, to every human being without exception.

    To do that consciously, deliberately, intentionally, dependably and constantly—in every situation as it arises.

    And, in so doing, to create a heritage for our descendants they would be honored to maintain throughout the far and distant future.
  64. 07/26/2015 —  Colors of Fall 05 — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, November 21, 2011

    Every night our dreams show us how it is in our life,

    As if to say, “This is how it is—what are you going to do about it?”

    Every night, the same question:

    ”This is how it is.

    What are you going to do about it?”

    We grow up

    By facing up to how it is with our life,

    And doing what needs to be done about it.

    Every night we get a mirror:

    ”This is how it is in your life.”

    And a question:

    ”What are you going to do about it?”

    Every day, we get another opportunity

    To look in the mirror,

    And work out our answer to the question.
  65. 07/27/2015 —  Empty Tracks—Union County, South Carolina, July 24, 2015

    The Dalai Lama is not best friends with a lot of people.

    And, there are people within Buddhist splinter groups

    Who are on his Bad List.

    Differences to the point of division, discord, estrangement and alienation

    Exist even within the hallowed halls of peace and compassion.

    If there, then everywhere.

    We all do better when not in someone’s company,

    And when we are in the company of “our kind of people.”

    Be glad there are those who receive you well

    And enable you to breathe,

    Find your center and your ground,

    And live out of the truth of who you are,

    And of who you are not.

    And be wary of those who don’t.

    That’s my take on irrefutable and irreconcilable differences.

    I don’t know what the Dalai Lama would have to say about them.
  66. 07/27/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 05 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    A purpose beyond our purpose

    Works like gravity and time

    To fill the sea

    Regardless of what civilizations rise and fall,

    Or which country’s Conquistadors

    Wreak chaos and havoc on which countries,

    The Purpose is at work

    Calling us back to the source and ground of our life,

    To the Tao of Eden,

    To the Eden of Tao,

    To “the face that was ours before we were born.”

    To what purpose?

    As though there could be a purpose

    Beyond knowing

    And being

    Who we are!
  67. 07/28/2015 —  Sunflower 2015 01 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, July 4, 2015

    People who carry guns

    Are afraid, easily intimidated and lack confidence and self-esteem, or

    They are bullies who have to dominate, or

    They are insecure and have to imagine

    They are heroes looking for a chance to prove it

    In order to belong and have a place, or

    They enjoy hurting things

    And inflicting pain or the threat of pain.

    The west was won

    By the wholesale slaughter of American Bison,

    And the genocide of Native American tribes,

    And by having guns handed over upon entering towns

    And reclaimed upon leaving.

    The right to bear arms

    Did not apply to bars, restaurants, school houses, churches, movie theaters, air ports, hotels, train stations,

    Or other places of social interaction.

    Fear and insecurity create an atmosphere

    Which fosters fear and insecurity,

    And the circle is completely crazy.
  68. 07/28/2015 —  Horseshoe Falls 04 — Musgrove Mill State Historic Site, Canton, SC, July 23, 2015

    We all have been recipients of grace beyond comprehension,

    And we all have been victims of failures of grace beyond mention.

    Grace is what befell the Jewish man beaten and robbed and left to die in a ditch, when the person Jesus called the Good Samaritan—age old enemies of the Jews, then and now (The modern term for Samaritan is Palestinian)–came along, tended his wounds and paid for his recovery.

    A failure of grace would have been the story without a Good Samaritan in it.

    Our lives are filled with places without a Good Samaritan anywhere to be found.

    People have their agendas, and their plans, and their timetables, and their Manuals of Operation, and things must be done by the book, or else, you know, so no exceptions can ever be made, and no exemptions can ever be granted, and if you are beaten and in a ditch, you will just have to make out the best you can.

    We have to be open to the possibility of grace at work in our life.

    The Samaritan could have passed on by. He had his business to attend and the man in the ditch was a Jew, of all things. But, the Samaritan was open to the possibility of grace at work in his life.

    And, being open, he was moved by forces no one understands, to stop and tend the man in the ditch. And lives were changed forever.

    May we be blessed by the presence of those who are open to the possibility of grace at work in their life!

    And may we be those who are open to the possibility of grace at work in our life!

    Manuals of Operation and officially sanctioned ways of doing things notwithstanding.
  69. 07/29/2015 —  Cat Tails—Indian Land, SC, July 2015

    We walk two paths at the same time.

    We have responsibilities to the time and place,

    The context and circumstances,

    Of our living–

    Family, extended family, job, pets, bills etc.–

    And we have responsibilities to our deep Self,

    And to the gifts that are ours to bring forth and serve

    In expressing/exhibiting who we are

    Through the way we live our life

    In the time and place, context and circumstances, of our living.

    The two paths are one path when walked mindfully.

    The path of time and place is exactly what we need

    To awaken ourselves to who we are and what we are about

    In the deeper sense of Self and Gifts.

    We serve Self and Gifts when we live conscious of them

    In the time and place, context and circumstances, of our living.

    We do not abandon one path for the sake of the other.

    We bring both paths together in service to both

    By the way we see and accept

    What is true and what is also true,

    Integrate the opposites,

    And do the work of reconciliation,

    Knowing how things are,

    And being at peace with it,

    Laughing, with a foot in each world.
  70. 07/29/2015 —  Sunflowers 08 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    Fred Craddock said, “The message of the Messiah is, ‘There is no Messiah!’”

    The Messiah is NOT the Messiah!

    Our life is our responsibility.

    We have to find our life and live it,

    With none to help or point the way.

    Well, not quite.

    We have all the help we need to find the way–

    IF we will but attend it!

    IF we will but open ourselves to it!

    IF we will but learn its language,

    And spend the time necessary

    On a regular basis

    To listen!

    All the help we need

    Is as close as a heartbeat,

    As near as our next breath.

    But.

    There is a catch.

    We have to give up our way

    In order to be guided to the way.

    We have to hand over our quest

    For the life we have in mind for ourselves

    In order to live the life our Self has in mind for us.

    It is a dilemma as old as the ages

    From whence we come.

    All are called,

    But few have what it takes to heed the directions

    And find the way

    To the life that is theirs to live

    In synch with the heart of life and being.
  71. 07/30/2015 —  Iron Bridge — Tygre River, Union County, SC, July 23, 2015

    There is us, and the life we are living, and the life that needs us to live it.

    That’s it.

    We have to be aware of it,

    And get the ratios right–

    How much for us,

    How much for the life we are living,

    How much for the life that is ours to live.

    How much what?

    Time and attention,

    Devotion and loyalty,

    Focus and concentration–

    You know, that kind of thing…

    We get to work at the points of conflict.

    We generally don’t want anything to do with conflict,

    So we dismiss, discount, deny and ignore it,

    Thinking we can disappear it that way.

    But.

    Conflict denied becomes symptoms overnight,

    And it goes downhill from there.

    To disappear our symptoms,

    We have to be intently, and intensely, aware of conflict—

    Dig into it,

    Explore it,

    Examine it,

    Know it fully.

    Bear the pain,

    And work it out.

    Make it work.

    One conflict at a time.

    Our conflicts are the path

    To reconciliation, integration, unification, wholeness and peace—

    When walked with mindful, compassionate, awareness.

    It will kill us to deal with our conflicts,

    And it will bring us to life.

    It’s like death and resurrection.

    You’ll have to trust me in this.
  72. 07/20/2015 —  Sunflowers 2015 09 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    The culture is killing us.

    Mean Old Culture!

    That we create, demand, insist on, worship, serve and adore.

    The culture doesn’t force big screen TV’s on us.

    Or mobile phones.

    Or our addictions to action, plastic and noise.

    The culture is us.

    Is who we are.

    Take the culture away from us

    And we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.

    We are killing ourselves

    With a culture of our own creation.

    That’s stupid.

    We are the problem to which we seek solution.

    We seek to be saved from ourselves.

    That puts us in charge of our own salvation.

    We are killing ourselves

    And it is up to us to stop.

    What is stopping us from stopping?

    Momentum?

    Karma?

    Laziness?

    It is easier to die by our own hand

    Than to live the life that is the source of life

    For ourselves and all living things.

    We get out of bed each morning

    With the choice

    To live toward life that day,

    Or toward death.

    And we make the call.

    Everyday.
  73. Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion — 08/01/2015 —  Patchwork Dogwood Panorama—Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Gatlinburg, TN, April 2008

    We have to have something we are living to do—

    Something we will work the job we are working

    In order to pay the bills required

    To do it.

    We have to have something we care about,

    That we are in love with,

    That we can do with all our heart,

    That we can’t get enough of.

    Drinking beer and doing drugs don’t qualify.

    Meth labs and crack babies

    Are symptoms of a culture gone bad.

    We don’t fix that with a new round of politicians.

    We fix a broken culture

    By being who the culture needs us to be.

    It takes the right kind of people

    To produce the right kind of culture.

    We produce the right kind of people

    By making over ourselves.

    This is the new religion.

    Becoming who we need to be

    To live the life that needs us to live it.

    It starts with listening to your dreams.

    You can still get a hardback copy

    Of Anthony Stevens’ book, Private Myths

    For one penny plus $3.99 postage

    From the Used Books on Amazon.

    If you aren’t willing to do that, never mind.

    I’m talking to the people who are.
  74. 08/02/2015 —  Reedy River Falls 06 — Falls Park, Greenville, SC, July 16, 2015

    We look for the payoff.

    For the profit,

    The benefit,

    The advantage.

    We look for what we are getting out of all this.

    For compensation for all our troubles.

    We are looking for wealth and privilege so we won’t have any more troubles.

    The wealthy and privileged are looking for wealth and privilege.

    So they won’t have any more troubles.

    What is it with troubles?

    We are all running from our troubles,

    Running to Nirvana.

    We know it’s out there somewhere.

    We are sure we are only one major purchase away.

    Or one lottery win away.

    Or one mighty baptism in the Big Time away.

    We want our life to pay off for us.

    So we can be trouble-free.

    Sit down.

    Let me explain something to you.

    Life is trouble.

    Death is trouble-free.

    Stop looking for relief,

    And start looking for LIFE.

    And, go to any amount of trouble to find it,

    And live what is left of it,

    While the light lasts.

    Oh, here’s a hint:

    It’s not Out There like a bucket list item.

    It’s tucked away In Here,

    Hoping you will find a way to express it Out There.

    The life you seek is in you,

    Waiting for you to live it.

    Don’t pause to notice the trouble.
  75. 08/02/2015 —  The Warehouse—Chester, SC, July 23, 2015

    One of the surprising realizations upon entering retirement is that there isn’t enough time left.

    Specifically, there isn’t enough time left to spend with me.

    To listen to me.

    To get to know the unknown aspects of me.

    There isn’t enough time left for dreaming,

    For reflecting,

    For realizing,

    For reflecting…

    And there are too many people in my life,

    And it is my responsibility to give myself silence.

    Aloneness.

    Solitude.

    What I need is solitude.

    The soft places had their place,

    And filled a great need.

    Now I need listening room.

    Room in which I can listen to me,

    Spend time with me,

    Loving, attending, me.

    It’s great.

    The blog I’m putting together comes out of that.

    The photo work I’m doing on the computer comes out of that.

    And there is so much more to come.

    I relish looking forward to it,

    And I’m running out of time.

    And when I’m thinking about what someone else

    Wants me to think about,

    I’m not thinking about what I want to think about,

    Or reading what I need to read,

    Or doing what I need to do,

    So I don’t stop and chat with the neighbors.

    I have my appointed rounds,

    And I look forward to making them each day.

    Gifts of the day, from the day, to me.

    It’s good.

    Creation continues.

    And it continues to be very good.
  76. 08/03/2015 —  Sunflowers 2015 10 — Sunflower Field, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, SC, July 4, 2015

    What makes your heart sing?

    How long is your list?

    Live to lengthen it–

    To find ALL the things that make your heart sing.

    Live to let your heart sing as often as not,

    Then, more often than not.

    What would it be like

    To be your heart and never sing?

    A sad heart spills over

    Into all of life.

    So does a singing heart.

    When you live to let your heart sing,

    Your life sings along.
  77. 08/04/2015 —  Red Sky at Night—Blue Ridge Parkway from Rough Ridge, near Grandfather Mountain

    There are two things

    That are interrelated,

    And are the Two Most Important Things:

    We have to be compassionately, mindfully, aware

    To the point of being Transparent To Ourselves,

    And to the point of Doing The Work That Is Ours To Do–

    The Work That Makes Our Heart Sing.

    A quick self-inventory

    Will tell you

    Whether you have reached the point

    In your practice of compassionate, mindful, awareness

    To be living in ways which honor

    The Two Most Important Things,

    Or, if you need to be more intentional and deliberate

    In your practice.
  78. 08/04/2015 —  Lake Wylie Hydro-electric Dam Panorama HDR B&W—Catawba River, Tega Cay, SC, August 3, 2015

    If I could change one thing about my life,

    I would have better memories–

    Which, of course, would change everything,

    Including parents and point of origin,

    And then, at this point in that life,

    I would probably want better memories,

    And change all of that.

    Ad, as they say, infinitum.

    The whole karma thing

    Is about arranging to have better memories,

    And, eventually, coming up with a set of perfectly fine ones.

    I understand the necessity

    Of a lot of times around the block.

    In his later years, Joseph Campbell said,

    ”I remember the damnedest things.”

    The worst kind of things.

    And he had a charming life,

    A charmed life.

    If Joe Campbell can’t out live his memories,

    The rest of us don’t have a chance.

    My advice is welcome them to the table,

    And treat them well.

    They could use the kindness and compassion

    That were so completely lacking the first time around.
  79. 08/05/2015 —  Patchwork Dogwood Panorama B&W—Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, TN, April 2008

    It’s ridiculous to think that Jesus actually said, “Make disciples of all nations.”

    He didn’t “make disciples” of his own disciples.

    He followed the AA guideline: Attraction Not Promotion.

    That’s the way to do it.

    Start living your life and see who gravitates to you.

    Talk them into living their life and see who gravitates to them.

    Gravitation is the glue that sticks “disciples” together.

    And Jesus told his own disciples to grow up,

    Start living their own life,

    And stop looking to him for all the answers.

    He said, “You’ll do things I never imagined!” or words to that effect.

    ”Disciples have to become like the master in following no master.”

    That’s one of the 10,000 Spiritual Laws.

    We don’t find the way by walking in someone else’s foot steps.

    Throw away doctrine, theology and ideology.

    Do what makes your heart sing.

    That’s all the direction you will ever need.
  80. 08/05/2015 —  Sunflowers 2015 13 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, South Carolina, July 4, 2015

    Make an inventory of the things that mean the most to you.

    Consider each one.

    Does it enable you to live your life

    Or escape from your life?

    Is it a defense against life?

    A substitute for life?

    Does it connect you to life,

    Or protect you from life?

    What does each item represent for you?

    Do for you?

    Help you do?
  81. 08/06/2015 —  Lake Wylie Hydro-electric Dam 01 — Catawba River, Tega Cay, SC, August 3, 2015

    If you practice playing the piano,

    You will play the piano better

    Than if you don’t.

    Same goes for tennis, golf, basketball, walking, running, and cartwheeling.

    Same goes for living.

    We have to practice living with our eyes open.

    We don’t just climb out of bed each day and fall into our life.

    We have to work at living our life as though it were a piano.

    Living well is harder than playing the piano.

    Takes more practice.

    We spit more often that we practice living our life.

    We spit more often that we are aware of how we are living our life.

    If I ask my fourth-born granddaughter

    What she needs to do to improve her time in the breast stroke,

    She has a ready list of things she is working on,

    From entering the water, to breathing, to turning, to touching at the end.

    If I asked you what you need to do to improve the way you are living our life,

    You would change the subject.

    What do you call a blind deer?

    No eye-deer.

    We can’t live like a blind deer.

    We have to have an eye-deer of what we are doing,

    And what we need to do,

    To be awake, aware and alive.

    We have to practice living

    Intentionally, deliberately, consistently.

    Like we are playing a Rachmaninoff piano concerto.
  82. 08/07/2015 —  Woods Pond Panorama 02 B&W—Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, August 6, 2015

    ”How do you get to be larger than life?”

    ”Answer the question:

    ’How good is the good you call good?’”

    ”What’s the answer?”

    ”Your life is the answer.

    Some questions can’t be answered

    With an explanation,

    Or a definition,

    Or a recipe.

    ’What is love?’

    You have to live it to know it.

    ’What is Zen?’

    ’What, or who, is God?’

    All the good questions have to be lived to their answers–

    Insofar as they can be answered.”

    ”How good is the good YOU call good?”

    ”I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it.”

    ”Why don’t you ever answer a question?”

    ”I’m still trying to get to the bottom of all the good ones.

    The not-so good ones aren’t worth my time.

    Everybody is hung up on the not-so good questions.

    Nobody is larger than life.”
  83. Buddha on Black — Charlotte, NC, August 7, 2015

    Life keeps throwing things at us

    That we don’t like,

    Don’t want,

    And can make no sense of.

    How we deal with it

    Makes all the difference.
  84. 08/09/2015 —  Thunder Storm Panorama — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, August 6, 2015

    There is only one cure for vulnerability:

    Making your peace with it.

    Coming to terms with our vulnerability

    Is the sine qua non of a rich, full life well-lived.

    We hold ourselves back from life, trying to be safe, secure.

    We wall ourselves in,

    Kill our enemies before they kill us,

    Wash our hands 42 times before getting out of bed…

    We build our life around avoiding all,

    And warding off all evil,

    And being off limits to all untoward things.

    The Buddha died from eating poorly cooked pork.

    Jesus died from saying what needed to be said.

    They both said:

    “Come follow me and I’ll show you how to do it!”

    And we say, “But will we be safe and secure?”

    They laugh and walk on, arm in arm,

    To whatever their life has in store for them,

    Living all the way.
  85. 08/10/2015 —  Low Water Bridge Panorama — Once was a logging road for hauling out pine logs and turpentine, exposed by the draw-down of Pool H, Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, August 6, 2015

    It would be such a help if we wanted to do what needs to be done.

    Or, even, if we could fake it really well.

    We are stuck with not wanting to do what needs us to do it.

    And that’s the problem of a lifetime.

    How we work with it

    Through long years of negotiation and compromise

    Tells the tale.

    The theme of the Road to Maturity

    (AKA, The Spiritual Journey, The Hero’s Journey, The Spiritual Quest, and The Road Through Hell)

    Is doing well what needs us to do it whether we want to or not.

    To refuse to do that is called The Road To Hell,

    Because it’s hell to pay either way.

    Which one we choose for our life’s path

    Is a mark of our character,

    And a sign of grace at work in our life.

    Or not.

    Some people seem to have no character,

    And no grace at work in their life.

    Ponder that.

    What must that be like?

    That would put the rest of our problems to shame!
  86. 08/11/2015 —  The Window — Indian Land, SC, August 10, 2015

    All of the movies, plays, novels, history books, mythology, fairy tales and stories

    stick with the same basic themes,

    and no matter how it’s dressed up

    as Guilt and Redemption, Lost and Found,

    Death and Resurrection, Sickness and Health,

    Good and Evil, and whatever others there may be,

    it comes down to this:

    Who will stand up and step forward,

    and who will shrink back and turn away?

    Who will go forth and meet their destiny,

    and who will succumb to the empty hopelessness of their fate?

    It is the question we are born to answer.

    Will we ask the questions that beg to be asked,

    and say the things that cry out to be said?

    Or will we blame The Breaks,

    and cry out with Terry Malloy, “I coulda had class,

    I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody,

    instead of a bum, which is what I am”?

    We play to audiences unseen,

    and answer the question a dozen times a day.

    It is up to us to play our part consciously,

    and know when we are stepping forward,

    and when we are shrinking back
  87. 08/11/2015 —  Sunflowers 2015 11 — Sunflower Fields, Draper Wildlife Management Area, York County, SC, July 4, 2015

    What are you doing with your life?

    I don’t want your long range goals.

    I want to know what you are doing that needs you to do it,

    That you know needs to be done,

    Whether or not anyone else recognizes it.

    I don’t want to know about your job.

    I want to know what you do with the money you earn.

    What do you use money to do?

    What are you here to do?

    Not, what are you paid to do?

    Life is a function of living in the service of what you have to do.

    If there is nothing you have to do,

    And if you don’t know what to do with yourself if you aren’t at your job,

    The way is plain before you:

    You have to find what is yours to do, and do it.

    If anyone asks you what you are doing with your life,

    Tell them you are looking for what is yours to do–

    And mean it.

    Be diligent in the search

    And dedicated to it.

    The search for your life must become your life.

    You are looking for what is worth your life.

    You are not here to idle your time away,

    Lolling by the pool,

    Drifting into some movie,

    Texting your way through another day.
  88. 08/12/2015 —  After Papa Died 01 Panorama HDR — Union County, NC, August 11, 2015

    The key to being what is needed in each situation as it arises

    Is getting out of the way.

    With you out of the way,

    You are still a part of the situation,

    And your needs rank as high as any need there,

    But

    Your needs rank no higher than any need there.

    The key to being what the situation needs us to be

    Is equal need across the situation.

    No bias, no prejudice, no favoritism.

    No judgment, no will, no opinion.

    Seen objectively, what needs to happen in the situation?

    This is the way things are.

    What needs to be done about it?

    What does the situation call for?

    Money and power are leverage

    Tilting situations in the direction of those

    With money and power.

    If we have money and power,

    We get more of what we need,

    And they get less of what they need.

    That’s the name of the game.

    Living to be what the situation needs us to be–

    To offer what is called for by the situation

    Out of the gifts we have to give–

    Changes the game.
  89. 08/12/2015 —  McLeod Peaches — McLeod Farms, McBee, SC, August 6, 2015

    We will never figure it out

    Or be able to work it to our advantage.

    But, we can engage it as full participants

    In the action,

    And live in ways that serve the good of all

    At the expense of none–

    Regardless of whether that catches on,

    Goes viral,

    And renders all other ways of doing things

    Obsolete overnight.
  90. 08/13/2015 —  Daises — Pike Nursery, Charlotte, NC, August 7, 2015

    We all come complete with an Archetypal Companion

    Whose task is to steer us onto the right path

    Through all of the stages of our lifelong development.

    We each have a life that can be–

    And is to be–

    Lived out within the context and circumstances of our living,

    as an expression of innate capacities,

    Qualities and characteristics,

    The unique blend of which makes us

    The irreplaceable individual we are capable of being.

    When we frustrate the inner design

    By making choices incompatible with our life’s path,

    We generate what has been called “bad karma,”

    And live disorientated, aimless and empty,

    Among symptoms that know no end.

    It all goes so much better

    When we go to the trouble of aligning ourselves

    With ourselves,

    And living in accord with our life,

    Which our Archetypal Companion is more than willing

    To help us do

    With guiding dreams, nudges, notions and inclinations,

    When we acknowledge her/his presence,

    And place ourselves in the service of his/her direction.

    We generally have to be at the end of our rope

    To grasp for this one remaining straw,

    Because it seems too ridiculous to consider

    Until we have run out of rational options.
  91. 08/13/2015 —  Charlotte Skyline 02 Panorama — Charlotte, NC, August 13, 2015

    We are trying to squeeze into a life that doesn’t fit.

    We aren’t built for civilization,

    And the roles civilization requires us to play.

    When is the last time you did something that was purely YOU?

    That made your heart sing?

    Those things exist,

    But.

    We have to work them in–

    Consciously, deliberately, seek them out.

    Or pay the price.

    The price is complete loss of soul.

    And heart.

    We have to know

    We are being squeezed into a life that doesn’t fit.

    And compensate ourselves

    For the anguish of that experience,

    By immersing ourselves in what does fit,

    And relishing the wonder of a singing heart.
  92. 08/15/2015 —  Purple Cone Flowers 01 — Nursery Photos, Rountree Plantation Nursery, Charlotte, NC, August 13, 2015

    You will be amazed at how smoothly your life will flow

    Once you stop caring about the unimportant things.
  93. 08/16/2015 —  Past Prime 01 — Nursery Flowers, Rountree Plantation Nursery, Charlotte, NC

    We are always rushing to judgment,

    Jumping to conclusions,

    Hatching explanations that will neatly mesh

    What is happening with our expectations,

    And keep things in place,

    And unexamined,

    In our life.

    Heaven forbid that we should have to do something

    We don’t want to do,

    Like revise our understanding of the rules

    That govern our existence.

    We like the idea that thinking positively,

    And believing the right beliefs,

    Are all we have to do to arrange the universe

    To our satisfaction,

    And that somewhere, upstairs, perhaps,

    There is a man behind a curtain,

    Turning dials, pushing buttons, flipping switches, pulling levers,

    And arranging circumstances

    To our complete satisfaction and everlasting joy.

    It is just a matter of waiting for it all to be revealed to us.

    Until then, we will be pleased by our anticipation,

    If not by our experience.

    We are so glad this is the way it is,

    Because growing up is not what we have in mind.
  94. 08/16/2015 —  Succulent Display 02 — Nursery Photos, Rountree Plantation Nursery, Charlotte, NC, August 13, 2015

    If I were going to stand in some line for superpowers,

    I would ask for self-transparency,

    And the knack of going about my business

    Without needing to call attention to myself–

    My way of being unseen.

    Visible to myself.

    Invisible to others.

    If that caught on

    It would be a different world.

    Just being visible to ourselves would change the game.
  95. 08/16/2015 —  Veins 02 — Nursery Photos, Rountree Plantation Nursery, Charlotte, NC, August 13, 2015

    Every night before getting in the shower,

    I take a moment to mark the passing of time

    And reflect on the end of another day,

    As a way of keeping myself mindful of,

    And squaring myself with,

    The fact that I am–

    As we all are–

    Living toward the last one.

    Some nights are heavy with sadness,

    And some simply recognize

    That “none of us are promised tomorrow,

    Or even the rest of today.”

    Whatever the mood, the ritual is important

    As a way of being conscious

    Of living my way toward dying.

    I hand over another day

    (And soon, another year),

    And reflect on how much of the day has been mine,

    Serving ends that I cherish,

    And doing what is important to me–

    As a way of remembering that tomorrow is coming,

    And I need to be ready for it,

    Aware of it,

    For as long as tomorrows last.
  96. 08/17/2015 —  Charlotte Skyline Panorama 01 B&W — Charlotte, NC, August 13, 2015

    It’s like golf.

    Your life, I’m talking about.

    It’s you and the ball and 18 holes.

    Your role is clear:

    Get the ball in the holes with as few whacks as possible.

    The people who can do that

    Are better golfers than the people who can’t do it.

    Do do it well,

    You have to get everything else off the course

    But you and the ball and the 18 holes.

    When I say “off the course,”

    I mean “out of your head.”

    Your work is to clear your head of everything

    But you and the ball and this hole right here, right now.

    Or, it’s like photography.

    Your work is to clear away everything

    Standing between you and the camera and this scene,

    Right here, right now.

    You get together with your life

    Like it is a golf ball

    Or a camera

    And live it,

    Like it needs to be lived,

    Right here, right now
  97. 08/18/2015 —  Greenhouse Panorama 01 — Nursery Photos, Rountree Plantation Nursery, Charlotte, NC, August 13, 2015

    Romance is denial in that it takes our mind off our life,

    And enables us to think our true love

    Is the solution to all of our problems.

    It must be so,

    Because just thinking about our true love

    Makes our problems go away.

    That’s what denial does for us.

    Think of Honey,

    Or pop a top,

    And, POOF, no problems.

    As we grow up, we recognize

    That WE are the solution to all of our problems today,

    And tomorrow.

    Shelton Kopp said,

    “We solve our own problems every day

    For the rest of our life.”

    Jesus said, “Who made me your Keeper?

    Work out your own problems!

    Who do you think solves mine?”

    Or words to that effect.

    Denial just delays the inevitable.
  98. 08/18/2015 —  After Papa Died 03 — Union County, NC, August 11, 2015

    The Dalai Lama doesn’t watch TV.

    Tells you something about the Dalai Lama,

    And something about TV.

    The relationship between TV and our life is exactly what?

    If it isn’t helping you live your life,

    It’s keeping you from living your life.

    That rule applies to everything about our life.

    The rule has meaning

    Only to those who are living their life.

    Without a life,

    Nothing can help us live it.

    Our first order of business

    Is knowing what our business is,

    And tending it.

    Finding our life and living it

    Is the highest priority.

    The Dalai Lama understands that.

    And does it.

    It’s an idea whose time has come.
  99. 08/18/2015 —  Fern Panorama 01 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, August 6, 2015

    We have to care about what we care about.

    To fail, or refuse, to do so is commit high treason

    Against ourselves.

    We have to be strong in our own behalf

    Our entire life long.

    Denying our heart’s true song,

    And rejecting its plea to sing along,

    Is the unpardonable sin,

    And no amount of remorse and sorrow

    Will ease the grief of abject disloyalty

    To soul’s deep drift.
  100. 08/19/2015 —  Atlantic Storm 01 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, August 19, 2015

    There is what we cannot do,

    And, there is what we cannot help doing.

    We all live with these restrictions.

    Our life is lived between the limits

    Of what we cannot do and what we cannot help doing.

    These limits are generally the gifts of our parents unto us.

    PTSD actually stands for:

    Parentally Triggered Stress Disorder.

    It is experienced as what we cannot do

    And what we cannot help doing.

    Our place is to become conscious of our limits,

    And live to reduce the things we cannot do

    And cannot help doing,

    Counteracting the parental influence,

    And parenting ourselves the way we should have been parented

    By those who needed to be parented

    The way they should have been parented.
  101. 08/20/2015 —

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One Minute Monologues 026

04/24/2015 — 06/10/2015

  1. 04/24/2015 — Union Pacific 6831 01 — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 23, 2015

    Everybody wants to “make a difference”

    And “be happy.”

    Make a difference doing what?

    Be happy doing what?

    What do you want TO DO with your life?

    What is yours TO DO with your life

    Whether you want to or not?

    That’s the question that is yours to answer

    In the time left for living.

    And, in case you have misgivings,

    Once you start doing it,

    Wanting to do it will fall into place,

    And you won’t be able to imagine living without doing it.

    But, you’ll have to take my word for it.

    Sometimes, wanting follows doing.
  2. 04/25/2015 — Lake Martin Sunset 2015 03 — St. Martin Parish, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    How many people do you know who are enjoying their life?

    Who are glad to be where they are?

    Content with themselves and what they are doing?

    At peace with their universe and the way things are?

    Would you be one of those people?

    If not, what is keeping you from being one of those people?

    Take a regular reading of the emotional climate

    In which you “live, and move, and have your being.”

    Rate its level of negativity and toxicity

    On an imaginary “Death To My Soul Scale.”

    Consider how your emotional environment

    Is impacting your attitude and your life.

    Where would you go to find a different emotional environment–

    One that is better for you and your mental, emotional, health?

    Go there often.

    Relish it consciously.

    Soak it up.

    Bring back the laughter and the joy.
  3. 04/25/2015 — Lake Haigler in the Rain—Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 25, 2015

    Make listening time.

    Work silence and solitude into your life.

    Call it meditation, quiet time, or time out.

    How much? How much can you get by with?

    Start with that much.

    Regularly. Daily.

    Sit quietly.

    No music. No reading. No list making.

    Listening. Watching. Open. Receptive.

    What pops up?

    Reflect. Explore. Wonder.

    See what occurs to you,

    What connections you make,

    Where it goes.

    Don’t try to make anything happen,

    Or think something is supposed to happen.

    You are listening. Watching.

    Attending the inner you.

    Regularly. Daily.

    That’s all.

    Oh, if it becomes painful

    With memories, fear, doubt, shame…

    Bear the pain.

    It’s only pain.

    What? You’ve never borne pain before?

    What? You think the way forward is pain free?

    Welcome whatever comes when you sit quietly.

    Make room for all of it.

    Read Rumi’s “The Guest House.”

    Listen. Watch. Welcome it all.
  4. 04/25/2015 — Vicksburg Sunset 02 — Mississippi River, March 16, 2015

    One of nature’s recurring lessons is

    Give it your all

    With total emotional investment in the effort you make in the service of the good,

    And no emotional attachment whatsoever in the outcome.

    Grieve your losses and get back in the game.

    Sound harsh?

    Spend some time with the ecosystem of a small woods pond.

    Then put yourself into your life

    Like a mother duck with a dozen ducklings

    Among turtles, owls and hawks.
  5. 04/26/2015 — Lake Haigler Falls 2015 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 25, 2015

    Talking is 90% listening.

    I’m sorry you’re getting short-changed here, but.

    What can I say?

    Listen more than you speak.

    When you start preaching, stop.

    Look.

    Listen.

    It is the path to understanding.
  6. 04/26/2015 — Kisatchie Falls Panorama 02 – Natchitoches Parish, Kisatchie, Louisiana, March 18, 2015

    The two tools you will need on the spiritual journey,
     
    Which is the path to maturity and grace,
     
    Are mindfulness and courage.
     
    Mindfulness is conscious awareness of all things capable of being apprehended.
     
    Mindfulness implies being transparent to ourselves,
     
    Which implies living in good faith with ourselves–
     
    Not kidding ourselves,
     
    Not lying to ourselves,
     
    Not refusing to look at ourselves,
     
    Not denying the truth about ourselves
     
    (Or anything else).
     
    We cannot be mindful and  pretend things are not what they are.
     
    Mindfulness requires us to face the truth straight up,
     
    To look it in the eye
     
    And see how it is,
     
    And see all the things that can be done about it,
     
    And see which are important and needful.
     
    Then we’ll need the courage to do what needs to be done.
     
    Before we know it,
     
    We will be spilling over with maturity and grace,
     
    And people will be coming from across the sea
     
    To bask in our aura.
     
    Or, they will ask us to leave town
     
    Because they can’t bear the truth
     
    Our presence demands that they recognize.
     
    The Promised Land isn’t all peaches and cream.
     
  7. 04/26/2015 — Old Sautee Store Panorama 02 B&W – Sautee-Nacoochee, Georgia, April 14, 2015

    Libido is passion for life,

    Life energy,

    And cannot be limited to the sexual sphere.

    The Buddha under the Bo Tree,

    And Jesus in the wilderness,

    Resisted temptation

    On the basis of a love for that which claimed them at the core–

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way.

    That’s what your life will do for you when it says,

    “You’re mine,” in a way that cannot be denied or resisted.

    It is a “magnificent obsession/possession,”

    And will not likely be what we do to pay the bills,

    But what we pay the bills to do.

    May we all be so carried away

    In the service of our soul’s true joy,

    And not die without having lived!
  8. 04/27/2015 — Boggs Creek Panorama 02 — Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, along Hwy. 19 between Dahlonega & Blairsville, GA, April 13, 2015

    Our character is formed and shaped by our circumstances the way a stream is formed and shaped by it’s bed.

    We, in turn, form and shape our circumstances the way a stream forms and shapes its bed.

    We are all finding our way to who we are the way a stream finds its way to the sea.

    The key is to BE who we are, and not just let our circumstances hand us who we turn out to be.

    We enter consciously the struggle, the conflict, the work, the agone/agony of becoming ourselves,

    Or, we just take the course of least resistance all the way to the grave.

    We are brought forth by our wrestling with ourselves as much as with our circumstances.

    WE are the Cyclops standing in our way,

    And have to come to terms with all sides of ourselves

    In coordinating and directing our drift to the specific character we are capable of becoming.

    We don’t just pop out of some woman’s womb

    In a Here I Am! kind of way.

    We birth ourselves bit by bit throughout our life,

    Adjusting this, transforming that, embracing this, rejecting that,

    Through experience, reflection and realization,

    Until the “I” we are stands up and says,

    ”Give me the ball”

    In a game-changing shift toward the “Me” we can be proud to be.
  9. 04/27/2015 — Soque River 02 — Mark of the Potter, Clarksville, Georgia, April 14, 2015

    Your practice is what brings forth your gift, your genius, your daemon, the manifestation of God within you.

    Your work serves your gift, your genius, your daemon, the manifestation of God within you.

    Your life is to be the expression of your gift, your genius, your daemon, the manifestation of God within you.

    If none of this is happening, why not?
  10. 04/27/2015 — Cormorant Migration B&W—Pamlico Sound, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2013

    It takes a ridiculous amount of concentration

    To hit a curve ball.

    Or throw one for strikes.

    Or stay on the path.

    This is the meaning of Jesus’ observation,

    ”Straight is the way and narrow is the gate that leads to life,

    And those who walk it are few.

    But Broad is the way and wide is the gate that leads to death,

    And those who walk it are many.”

    The path is a tightrope walk between skyscrapers.

    You have to think about what you are doing.

    And what is yours to do,

    And not do.

    You can’t just slop along,

    Texting.
  11. 04/28/2015 — Greenhouse Daisies 01 — Gerber Daises, Wilson’s Nursery, Rock Hill, SC, April 27, 2015, An iPhone Photo

    As I get older, my physician and my acupuncturist are increasingly concerned about my energy level.

    ”How’s your energy level?” they both ask.

    A better question would be, “What are you most interested in these days?”

    Energy flows from interest.

    Follows interest.

    Is strictly dependent upon interest.

    You know depressed people?

    Consumed with worry, anxiety, fear, grief, despair, anger…

    Incapable of being interested in anything.

    You know schizophrenic people?

    Awash in other worlds,

    Not interested in any of them.

    What sparks your interest?

    Do. Not. Put. It. Aside.

    Be interested in what interests you.

    One interest leads to another.

    No interests leads nowhere.
  12. 04/29/2015 — Greenhouse Orchid 04 – Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, 209 McDonald Ave., Charlotte, North Carolina 28203, (704) 331-9659 – One of the hidden wonders in Charlotte, this is worth a walk-through even if you don’t need a plant. Tell them I said so. April 21, 2015.

    You have to draw your own lines.

    And you have to mean it when you do.

    Lines are lines.

    They are not requests.

    Certainly not pleas.

    Or suggestions.

    They are “Damnit, I said No! This is where it stops! Now!”

    End of the line lines.

    Everything rides on your being able to draw lines like that

    When and where they need to be drawn

    Through-out your life.

    I observe a 13 or more hour fast every day.

    I eat nothing after 7 PM or before 8 AM.

    That’s my practice.

    And it is a line.

    My practice also involves time in a day

    For silence and solitude,

    Reflection and meditation,

    With a strong preference for writing and photography as well.

    My practice is lines around me and my life.

    There are other lines as well.

    My lines clarify me to me,

    As well as to others.

    They say, “This is who I am, whether it is okay with you, or not okay with you.”

    You have to draw your own lines,

    And refuse to allow other people to erase them.

    Make drawing lines a part of your practice.

    You can’t have a practice without drawing lines.

    Or a Self.
  13. 04/28/2015 — Wild Ginger Blooms – McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 3, 2015

    There is a saying, “When God shuts a door, he (sic) opens a window.”

    There is another saying, “There is more than one way to peel an apple.”

    They say the same thing,

    And point to the way life works when life is lived attuned to the way things are and what can be done about it.

    It’s the way life works for those who live in accord with what is happening and what needs to happen in response.

    “This” means “that.”

    “What can we do about being unable to do “this”?

    “What can we do?”

    “What now?”

    “Now what?”

    Reflection and realization, Kid. Reflection and realization.

    Imagination and creativity, Kid. Imagination and creativity.

    Adjustment and accommodation, Kid. Adjustment and accommodation.

    We have to develop our capacity for seeing what is possible

    When everything seems to be impossible.

    The end of some line is the beginning of another

    For those who can see around corners

    And beyond their present circumstances.

    For those who trust there is more to them than meets the eye.

    For those who are eager to see what they can do with nothing.

    It all started with nothing, you know.

    Look around.

    Everything you see is where once nothing was.

    Everything.

    Nothing doesn’t mean nothing.

    Never has.

    Never will.

    Stop your whining.

    Start your imagining.

    Your creating.

    Your looking.

    Your seeing.

    Your listening.

    Your hearing.

    You are creating a new world for yourself.

    What’s with the whining?
  14. 04/29/2015 — Sweet Shrub 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 16, 2015

    Our part is to do our thing–

    Offering what we have to give

    In ways that are fitting in the time and place of our living–

    And to see it through,

    Play it out,

    No matter how it’s going,

    No matter what.

    We have to do our thing–

    Bringing forth our gift, our genius, our daemon,

    The manifestation of the God within us,

    Within the time and place of our living

    Whether we feel like it or not,

    Whether we are in the mood for it or not,

    Whether we want to or not

    Because everything hinges on it.

    If you are going to believe anything,

    Don’t believe nothing you do matters,

    Believe everything hinges on what you do and how you do it,

    Throughout the time left for living–

    And live as though it does.

    And have a little chocolate from time to time

    To keep your courage up.
  15. 04/30/2015 — Toccoa Falls Detail 01 — Tocco Falls, Georgia, April 14, 2015

    Abraham Heschel said, “We apprehend more than we comprehend.

    I don’t know who said, “The only questions worth asking are those that cannot be answered.”

    Sheldon Kopp said, “Some things can be experienced, but not understood, and some things can be understood, but not explained.”

    We live to see where our life wants to go (Is trying to go. Is going), and take it there.

    We live, when we are fully alive, in the borderland between consciousness and unconsciousness–

    between what we know and what we do not know–

    and seek to make conscious what is unconscious.

    We live, when we are fully alive, between knowing what we know and knowing that there is 10,000 (The Tao figure for infinity) times more than that which we do not know–

    and set about doing the work of knowing what we don’t know.

    There is no explaining you to you, or telling you what to do with yourself and your life.

    Everything is a mystery to be lived, explored, experienced, apprehended, marginally understood, never explained.

    Your task, your work, is to honor the mystery of life and being–

    of YOUR life and being, and that of all that is–

    probing it, experiencing it, exploring it, participating in it, deepening it, expanding it, swimming in it, relishing it, loving it, being one with it.

    If you are going to understand anything (at the start),

    understand that you live symbolically–

    that there is no factual, concrete, absolute, firm and final reality,

    but that it is all a threshold to a deeper, fuller, more vibrant and alive level of reality.

    Everything means something else,

    Generally about you.

    Your lover is a doorway to you.

    So. Is. Everything. Else.

    The things that mean something to you,

    either positively or negatively,

    are more YOU than the things that are invisible to you.

    Check them out (the things that mean something to you)

    for their YOU-potential.


The things that are invisible to you may be more YOU

than the things that are visible to you.

They will become visible in time.

There is more to you than you can imagine.

Live so as to let you show you who you are.

Live to see where your life is trying to go,

and take it there.

Don’t think you know anything.

Play like a rookie.

If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven,

Turn and become like a child,

Not knowing,

Wondering.

  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 04/30/2015 — Graham Cabin Door 01 — Billy Graham’s paternal grandfather’s home, Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 30, 2015

    Too many of us fail to enter the struggle

    Of reconciling the disparity

    Between how things are and how we want them to be.

    We do not work to consciously harmonize that contradiction,

    To integrate that polarity.

    With us, how we want things to be is our only reality–

    And when that Other, Denied, Rejected and Ignored, Reality

    Rises up to plant a big, juicy, wet one right on the kisser,

    We are appalled, outraged, undone.

    And, you wouldn’t believe the drama.

    It is as though we had been hurled into the middle of some soap opera.

    Oh, the remonstrating, protesting and denouncing!

    As though we did not understand wearing hose or a tie to work

    Was expected of those employed by the First National Bank.

    We live in our world

    And expect the Other World to make the necessary adjustments

    And bend itself to our preferences.

    Of course, we will have nothing to do with the concept of growing up

    And putting ourselves in accord with the way things work.

    Thus, the stand off,

    And the reason things remain as they do,

    Our whole life long.
  • 05/01/2015 — Smith Creek Cascades 03 — Anna Ruby Falls, Unicoi State Park, Cattahoochee National Forest, Helen, Georgia, April 15, 2015

    There is a sense in which our work is the same for us all:

    Seeing, hearing, understanding, expressing–

    What is to be seen, heard, understood and expressed.

    This general work takes specific form with each of us.

    I see with a camera.

    I hear by writing and reading.

    I understand by experiencing my life, reflecting on my experience, and coming to new realizations,

    I express this by interpreting it

    And sharing what I see, hear, understand with whomever is interested

    Through writing and conversation.

    The work of seeing, hearing, understanding and expressing

    Flows through, in and around, over and under,

    All of life.

    What we do and what is done to us form the framework

    Of seeing, hearing, understanding and expressing–

    Of experiencing, reflecting and realizing–

    Of waking up and growing up

    And being who we are.

    What happens to us and what we do about it

    Gives shape and direction to our work,

    But we live to see, hear, understand and express

    What is to be seen, heard, understood and expressed.
  • 05/01/2015 — Catesby’s Trillium 03 – Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, April 18, 2015

    My friend Chris pours himself into creating collages, clipping images and words from newspapers and magazines and pasting them in an arrangement that pleases him and says…What?

    What’s beyond words? What can be experienced but not explained?

    We are, with our work, experiencing, exploring, and expressing our connection with the invisible world.

    His work with collages is stirring me to explore collages with photographs.

    It’s a great exercise in focus, concentration and imagination.

    My first piece has started out with an orange-merging-into-red background because that is a very satisfying place to start.

    I’ve taken a picture of the window in our bathroom and added that to the background.

    I’m looking for an interesting door to photograph for the collection,

    and a potted plant.

    That’s all I envision to this point,

    but I am always on the lookout for the right door and plant,

    and anything else that may come up as belonging there.

    He has opened up a new world for exploration.

    We are not “just making collages” here.

    We are looking and listening here.

    Seeing and hearing.

    A collage done properly is a connection to the Invisible World.

    As is everything else.

    I wish they had told me THIS in Sunday School!
  • 05/01/2015 — Evening Primrose 2015 01 Blended – Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 01, 2015

    We are crafting a life here,

    Around the work,

    The character,

    The gifts,

    The genius,

    The daemon,

    The manifestation of the God within,

    We are called to bring forth–to birth–

    In the life we are living.

    We can’t be lolling around,

    Wondering where we might go shopping today,

    Hoping somebody calls us for lunch.

    We have to sense where our life is going,

    And take it there!

    What’s this looking for something to do?

    We HAVE something to do!

    Something that no one but us CAN do!

    Get out of the stands and into the game!

    Step into your life–

    And LIVE it!
  • 05/02/2015 — Blue Columbine 2015 01 Blended – Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 01, 2015

    If you are not living your life,

    You are escaping your life,

    Denying your life,

    Dismissing your life,

    Discounting your life,

    Ignoring your life,

    Substituting another life for your life,

    Wondering why you are dissatisfied

    And empty.

    And where all your symptoms came from.

    Duh.
  • 05/02/2015 — Bull Thistle 2015 01 Blended—Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 01, 2015

    This is important. Listen up.

    Or, as Jesus would say, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!”

    If you are not living with tension, create some!

    If you are not taking seriously the idea that you have a life to live apart from the life you are living,

    Create tension in your life by taking seriously the idea that you have another life that you must bring to life in the life you are living.

    If you are taking seriously the idea that you have a life to live apart from the life you are living, and are working to identify it and bring it forth in the life you are living,

    Create tension by not taking that too seriously—certainly not so seriously that you can’t lighten up and have a good time with the life you are living.

    It’s like this:

    You can’t ignore the life that you must also live, and

    You cannot hate, despise, reject the life you are living in puritanical devotion to the life you must also live.

    Not too little and not too much.

    You have to integrate your lives by doing right by both of them–

    By taking each of them with equal seriousness.

    You cannot be all one way or the other.

    You become whole, not by disappearing your opposites and whisking away your conflicts,

    But by recognizing, reconciling, integrating

    and living in the tension created by all of your polarities.

    Living in the tension created by your opposites is the path to wholeness.

    So, if you aren’t aware of any tension in your life,

    Create some by living in ways that are the opposite of the way you think you should be living.
  • 05/03/2015 — Dandelions Panorama 2015 01 — Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 2, 2015

    Everybody is looking for something to believe in.

    Or should be.

    Something to focus us, center us, ground us.

    Something to consolidate us.

    Something we can crystallize around.

    Oh, we believe in God, and Jesus, and Love, but.

    Our life is as disjointed, fragmented and directionless as any life.

    We need a Lodestar.

    An Organizing Principle on which to form our life.

    Money does it for a lot of people.

    And when money doesn’t work,

    Some of those people turn to beer.

    We flounder without something to believe in

    With all our heart and soul, mind and body.

    And, it’s right there all the while.

    We are what we seek.

    We only have to believe in ourselves.

    In our depth, and capacity, and capabilities…

    We are the source of miracle and magic.

    Infinite and eternal.

    The world has never seen anything like us.

    And we hide it under a basket,

    And treat it as though it is nothing.

    We despise ourselves.

    We are ashamed of ourselves.

    We think nothing of ourselves.

    Less than nothing.

    And we are disgusted to hear that we have a work to do

    That needs us to do it.

    We laugh it off

    And go looking for something to believe in.
  • 05/03/2015 — Used in Short Talks on Good and Bad Religion — View From Marshall Park HDR 01 – Charlotte, NC, Skyline, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, May 3, 2015

    There are a number of ways of doing it right–

    Just like there are a number of ways of washing the dishes.

    If you come out with a clean dish,

    What is it to someone else how you got there?

    Religion that puts you in accord with the sorrows and woes of this world

    And puts you in touch with the firm reality of the invisible world,

    And enables you to live in this world in synch with that world,

    Nails it,

    And there are any number of ways for religion to do that.

    Any religion.

    Yea for those that do.

    Boo for those that don’t.
  • 05/04/2015 — Dairy Barn Panorama 2015 01 – Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, May 1, 2015

    The natural, plant-and-animal, world lives to fulfill some unknown, unconscious, “natural” purpose.

    No one there knows what she, or he, is doing.

    No one there has a plan, much less a “life plan,” or an agenda, or a conscious purpose, or motive, or goal.

    They don’t know what a calendar is, or a clock.

    They operate on internal time, cosmic time.

    They “eat when hungry, rest when tired.”

    Everybody there is responding to instinctive, intuitive, rhythmic urges, pushes and pulls.

    We evolve toward a better, more efficient, less energy-consuming/depleting, idea.

    The rivers seek a straighter path to the sea.

    Yet, what do we do with all this energy we don’t spend, say, looking for food all the time?

    Now, that’s one Nature didn’t, doesn’t, know how to answer.

    There isn’t a plant or animal in the natural world that wonders “Now what am I going to do with myself?”

    They all just lie around waiting for some compulsion to come along and send them flying south for the winter.

    Consciousness evolved to save us from that kind of “hand to mouth” existence, but.

    We don’t know what to do with all this time on our hands.

    Once we take care of food, clothing and shelter,

    What do we do with the rest of our life?

    What purpose do we serve beyond our physical needs?

    Toward what end do we live?

    What do we do with ourselves?

    Now what?

    It isn’t very efficient to not know.
  • 05/04/2015 — Dairy Barn HDR 04 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, May 4, 2015

    In order to be who you are, you have to do things that are not like you at all.

    You are more than you think you are,

    And it takes the That Is Not Me

    To round you out

    And bring forth the ME

    In all of us.

    So, get out of character from time to time.

    Stop taking yourself so seriously–

    The self you take yourself to be–

    And give The Other You a chance to shine.

    You don’t know what you are capable of.

    You keep the Not Me under a rock,

    Locked away in the basement,

    Or the attic.

    Chained in the dungeon.

    Refusing to be the person you are capable of being,

    Because that is not like you at all.

    Funny,

    How we want to “grow”

    Without changing,

    With nothing being different.

    We are hilarious.

    Ridiculous.

    Growing up entails embracing all facets of ourselves,

    And rejoicing together in who all we are.

    So. Get out of character from time to time.

    Be who you also are.
  • 05/05/2015 — Graham Cabin Door 02 –  Billy Graham’s paternal grandfather’s home, Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina, May 4, 2015

    All of Jesus’ parables were reports of dreams he’d had the night before.

    “A sower went out to sow…” “A man had a vineyard…” “A man gave a feast…”

    Jesus would wake up and say, “Ain’t that the way it is, though?”

    And he would tell the people what he had dreamed, as though it were real, because it was.

    Our dreams tell us what is real about our life.

    Our dreams are parables of our life.

    Listening to your dreams is like listening to Jesus,

    Who listened to his dreams.

    We all talk (to ourselves) in our sleep.

    Wake up to what you are saying to yourself in your sleep.
  • 05/05/2015 — Pitcher Plant Flower 01 Blended – Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 5, 2015

    It isn’t a matter of figuring it out so much as playing along.

    What else are we going to do?

    Master the game?

    That’s a good one!

    If you get up with photography on your mind and it’s raining,

    You take rainy day pictures,

    Or read,

    Or cook…

    You play along.

    You for sure don’t fight it.

    Resistance is futile.

    Resistance has its place, but this isn’t it.

    The Dalai Lama said, regarding the Chinese occupation of Tibet:

    “If, in any situation, there is no solution,

    “there is no point in being anxious.

    ”If the forces at work have their own momentum,

    ”and what’s going on now is the product of what went before,

    ”and this generation is not in control of all those forces,

    ”then this process will continue.”

    The rain is going to continue.

    We can grow up about it.

    And play along.
  • 05/06/2015 — Pond H Panorama 01 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 5, 2015

    Our life has its own rhythm, direction and flow.

    We can trust it to know what it is doing.

    But we impose an artificial life on top of it,

    And bury it beneath layers of Shoulds, Oughts, Musts,

    Wants, Don’t Wants, Regrets, Fears, Ambitions,

    Envys, Jealousies, Hatreds, Resentments…

    And, before you know it, we are being blindfolded,

    Spun about,

    And thrown into one role after another

    With parts to play, and lines to recite forever

    Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Son, Daughter…

    Adrift in lives beyond counting,

    Lost to the life at the bottom of the pile

    With its own rhythm, direction and flow,

    Wondering where we are,

    And when we are going to show up,

    To take it where it wants to go.
  • 05/06/2015 — Through the Window—Schoolhouse window, Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 3, 2015

    Carl Jung said, “Take your dream in hand and carry it with you through the day. Walk around it. Poke around in it. Turn it over. Stir it up. Examine it from every angle. See what it has to say to you. Don’t let it go until you have gotten the good out of it!” (Or words to that effect)

    Every night, our dreams give us a picture of how it is in our life—of how we are in our life.

    You won’t stray far from the truth if you look at your dreams as compensating for some quality of being on your part, off-setting the real-time you with a caricature suggesting that you are too much that way, or too little.

    A Sunday School teacher might dream that she is a prostitute—not because she is too much that way, but too little. Too prim, too proper, to “untouchable,” too far from a warm, caring, human being.

    And that she is unconscious of her sensuous/sensual side, and needs to be more open to, and a part, of the physical, natural, aspects of life.

    Look closely at your dreams each day. Write them down. Reflect on them. See where it goes.
  • 05/06/2015 —  Pitcher Plants 02 Blended —  Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 5, 2015

    The role of the unconscious in our life is to wake us up to the reality of the unconscious, and to align us with its drift, direction, flow and truth.

    It strives to get our attention,

    And to have us live mindfully aware of its partnership

    In the joint, collaborative, production of a life worth living.

    Carl Jung said, “Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, other contents can also arise from it.”

    Slips of the tongue, flashes of memory, moods out of nowhere, unbidden fantasies, slipping into reverie and woolgathering,

    Are all ways the unconscious has of saying, “Hello.”

    Take every intrusion of the unconscious as an invitation

    To explore the connection with what is happening

    And what has happened,

    And what needs to happen.

    Read between the lines.

    If the unconscious could speak, what would it be saying

    With this sudden shanghaiing of consciousness?

    Wander among the possibilities.

    See what occurs to you.

    Read the moment as a message in a bottle from your soul.
  • 05/07/2015 —  Dwarf Crested Iris 05 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 18, 2015

    How could it be better for you?

    Seriously.

    Make a thorough list.

    How many things on the list require magic to happen?

    How many things are under your direct control?

    Concentrate on those things.

    Rank order them in terms of their importance to you.

    What can you do in the service of the Number One Item?

    Well?

    What are you waiting for?

    When do you start?
  • 05/07/2015 — Cypress Swamp Panorama 01 — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 19, 2015

    It’s called the Hero’s Journey for a reason.

    Only those who have what it takes to go up against the Cyclops again and again need apply.

    It’s called work for a reason.

    Awareness means paying attention.

    Seeing means seeing everything.

    Hearing means listening to everything.

    You can’t do that in your spare time.

    Growing up is a full time commitment.

    Here’s one for you:

    Who are your top file real life men?

    Your top five fictional men?

    Your top five real life women?

    Your top five fictional women?

    What do you like about them?

    What do you admire about their character and qualities?

    Live to be them in those ways.

    This is work–

    Requiring concentration, focus and practice, practice, practice.

    Do it.

    The next time you find yourself in a Situation,

    Play it like one of your Top Twenty People would play it.

    Be that person then and there.

    Do it like they would do it.

    You are growing up by embodying,

    Incarnating,

    What you admire about the people you admire,

    Who are, in some sense, more grown up than you,

    Because who admires immaturity and fluff?
  • 05/01/2015 — Piedmont Prairie Detail 01 — Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 7, 2015

    The path to the empty tomb winds through the Garden of Gethsemane and across the face of Golgotha.

    We aren’t talking about Jesus here,

    We are talking about you.

    Let me rephrase it for you:

    The path to your soul–

    Which is also the path to your life,

    So, we could say “the path to your life,”

    Or, applying this strictly to you,

    We could say, “The path to YOUR empty tomb”

    (Metaphorically speaking)–

    Winds through the heart of your conflicts,

    Incongruities, Ambivalences, Discordances, Opposites,

    Polarities, Dichotomies, Antithesises, and Antagonisms.

    That is to say, the things you most want to avoid dealing with.

    You get to life by “dying” through facing the truth of your contraries,

    And reconciling what can be reconciled,

    And integrating what can be integrating,

    And bearing the pain of opposites that simply must be recognized

    And borne–

    And we want nothing to do with THAT path!

    WE are looking for the path to LIFE!

    Not DEATH!

    And so we say, “Jesus died FOR me,

    So that I won’t have to!”

    We are so funny.

    Hilarious.

    And the joke is on us.
  • 05/08/2015 — Curlyheads 02 – Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 7, 2015

    Jesus said, “Eat what is set before you,”

    And, “Pick up your own cross and carry it every day.”

    These two phrases mean the same thing:

    Do what you need to do.

    Do what needs you to do it.

    Face what must be faced.

    Dance with what your life brings to greet you every day.

    Don’t be running and hiding from the things you don’t like,

    From the things you don’t want to deal with.

    Trials and ordeals, Kid, trials and ordeals.

    Escapes and addictions are no ways to deal with your trials and ordeals.

    Get in there and do what needs to be done every day.

    That’s what Jesus said do.

    And that’s what Jesus did.

    You wouldn’t spit on Jesus, would you?
  • 05/09/2015 — Golden Groundsel 01 Blended – Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 7, 2015

    What keeps us going has to be the love for the game.

    We do it because we love it–

    Because we love doing it–

    Because we love the whole experience–

    Not because of any profit we are garnering,

    Or any payoff we are anticipating.

    This. Is. It.

    If there is another level to life after this,

    That will have its own level of experience

    To love and live out.

    For now: This. Is. It.

    We have to do it because we love it.

    If we don’t love it, we have to do it differently–

    With our eyes open.

    With our heart in the game.

    We get our heart in the game

    By aligning ourselves with our heart’s true love,

    And doing the work that is ours to do.

    We cannot love a life someone hands us off the rack

    And tells us to live.

    We cannot play any game and love it.

    We have to play the one we are built for.

    Michael Jordan couldn’t play baseball.

    Fred Astaire couldn’t pour concrete.

    If you want to love what you’re doing,

    You have to do what you love–

    AND what you are built to do.
  • 05/10/2015 — Dairy Barn Panorama 03 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, May 4, 2015

    We think we are running out of time as we get older, and have to get it right because there is less time to recover from our mistakes.

    There is no time to waste in putting off what must be done,

    Or in avoiding what remains to be done, but.

    The process remains the same throughout our life:

    Learn as you go, Kid. Learn as you go.

    We have to be as careful with our life in our twenties as in our seventies.

    We have to be as awake at any point in our life as at any other.

    Our life needs us to live it at every point.

    We cannot wait until we are 80 to begin wondering how to live our life—how to get the most out of what remains to be lived.

    Our task is to field the hard ground balls that come our way in every day.

    In every stage of our life,

    We put on our uniform, pick up our glove, take the field and catch what is hit to us,

    And hit what is thrown to us—curve balls or blazing fast balls, sliders or knuckle-balls.

    We have to be prepared to life OUR life in any circumstance of life.

    We have what we need: Eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to understand.

    So, get in there and do your thing,

    And make adjustments as needed to meet each situation as it arises.

    All it takes is being mindfully aware of what is happening,

    And what needs to happen,

    And what we need to do about it.
  • 05/20/2015 — Country Cemetery Panorama 01 – Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 10, 2015

    What is meaningful to you?

    That’s where you are to start digging.

    Why would you walk past where you find meaning

    And look somewhere else for the treasure?

    Why not trust your own sense of value?

    I don’t mean what’s easy.

    I mean what is valuable.

    I mean what is meaningful.

    Why don’t you take yourself back from what appears to be the  easy way out,

    And hand yourself over to what is meaningful?

    And live in its service from now on?
  • 05/11/2015 — Evening Primrose 2015 02 – Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 7, 2015

    Growing up is another term for the spiritual journey.

    It has nothing to do with concepts, ideas, beliefs, teachings, sutras, doctrines, dogmas or thinking.

    It has everything to do with realization.

    With seeing, hearing, understanding.

    No one can explain the things you have to understand.

    Understand?

    We live our way into understanding.

    Into knowing  how to hit a curve ball, say,

    Or a blazing fast one.

    Some people never figure it out, but.

    It isn’t because they haven’t been told enough what to do.

    Growing up is that way.

    How many people do you know who have grown up

    By being told to “Grow up, for god’s sake!”?

    We grow up by seeing, hearing, understanding, realizing

    How things are and how things also are–

    Which is how things are–

    And putting ourselves in accord with how things are.

    That’s the Hero’s Journey along the path

    To Nirvana, The Land of Promise, and the Holy Grail.

    People who spend their lives

    Trying to put their life in accord with their wants, wishes and desires

    End up in the wasteland,

    Bitter and burned out.

    That’s one way to do it.

    Or, do it not.
  • 05/12/2015 — Honeysuckle 01 — Indian Land, Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 10, 2015

    Be clear about what you love.

    ”I love you” is a bit vague.

    What is it exactly, precisely, about the “you” that is loved?

    What would/do “you” bring to life in relationship with “me”?

    What are the qualities,

    The characteristics,

    that are loved?

    ”I love your eyes,” won’t do.

    What is it about “your eyes”?

    What do “your eyes” imply, suggest, reveal, disclose?

    What is seen in “your eyes” that isn’t present in other eyes?

    What attracts you to the beloved?

    Get to the bottom of it.

    Do not wander lost in a romantic fog.

    Then, work to become what you love.

    Bring forth in yourself what attracts you to someone else.

    Allow him/her to deepen, expand, enlarge, and bring you forth.

    Understand the nature of the gift.

    Do right by it.

    Do the work love requires.

    Be what you love.
  • 05/12/2015 — Graham Cabin Door 03 – Billy Graham’s paternal grandfather’s home, Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina, May 4, 2015

    Take how things are in one hand,

    And take how you want things to be in the other hand.

    How you get the two hands together

    Makes all the difference.
  • 05/13/2015 — Country Cemetery Panorama 03 – Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 10, 2015

    Sin is not immorality.

    Sin is stupidity.

    Sin is being wrong about what is important.

    Willfully, arrogantly, wrong.

    Sin may manifest itself as immorality, but.

    As one of the 10,000 Spiritual Laws states:

    Morality is the best-dressed form of sin.

    The Tea Party, for instance,

    Conceals its gross stupidity

    Behind a great, impenetrable, wall

    Of pronounced and impeccable morality.

    No one is more morally pure,

    Or willfully ignorant of what matters most,

    Than the Tea Party.

    Not even the Pharisees,

    Who were the Tea Party equivalent of their day.
  • 05/14/2015 — Horse Nettle 01 –  Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 14, 2015

    Our life is trying to gift us,

    And we want no part of it.

    We know what we want,

    And what our life wants of us is not it.

    So, we spit on our life and its desire for us,

    And go off to live out our own idea of how life should be.

    How’s it working, do you think?

    You’re spending all of your time trying to get away

    From all the roles you hate about the life you are living–

    Am I right?

    You’re the child of aging parents,

    The parent of an eternal child

    (Or the spouse of one).

    You are the owner of pets that wait to be waited on.

    Of a mortgage that has no end.

    Working a job that claims your complete allegiance

    And all of your time…

    And, like that, all the way down the list.

    What do you think about to keep from thinking about

    The things on the list?

    What do you do to escape?

    There are only two ready and reliable forms of escape:

    Addiction and symptoms.

    Both take your mind off your life–

    For a while.

    There is another alternative.

    LIVE YOUR OTHER LIFE!

    Focus your attention on finding and living the life that is yours to live.

    No kidding.

    You will be amazed at how your other life

    Parallels the life you are living,

    Except with a boost.

    It will provide you the energy you need–

    The enthusiasm you need–

    To take care of the things on The List.

    And it will put the sparkle back in your eye,

    And the skip in your step,

    And the song in your heart.

    Take it for a spin around the block.

    You will never be the same.
  • 05/15/2015 — Pool H Panorama 02 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 5, 2015

    When people seek to “find themselves,”

    Go in search of themselves,

    They are looking for their life–

    For the life that is truly their life to live–

    For where they belong–

    For what they belong to.

    They are looking for their heart,

    For their soul.

    Our heart is restless

    Until our heart finds

    What our heart seeks to be

    And to do.
  • 05/15/2015 — Goose Family 01 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 14, 2015

    Abraham left home and went in search of the Promised Land.

    Jesus said, “Who is my mother? Who are my sisters and my brothers? Those who seek the will of God and do it!”

    Jesus and Abraham (And Moses and all the prophets) were on the same page.

    ”The will of God” has nothing to do with some invisible Deity, like The Man Upstairs (There is no man, there are no stairs), willing us to “Get right with God,” and “walk the straight and narrow,” and be all moral, pure and perfect.

    ”The will of God” is a metaphor for “the drift of heart and soul.”

    It is the heart/soul, the Heart-Soul, seeking to find its own life and do it.

    It is the Heart-Soul seeking to find and do the things that are unique to it,

    The things that express—and through expression, expand, deepen, enlarge, develop—who it is and what it is about.

    Heart-Soul seeks expression and expansion through us,

    Through the life we are living.

    We live to be who we are,

    To do what is ours—our Heart-Soul’s—to do.

    Our home is with those who understand this

    And are doing it themselves.

    Our family are those who live in the service of their Heart-Soul,

    And help us live in the service of ours.

    We leave home to find home.

    We leave our family of origin to find our sisters and brothers,

    Who are with us in seeking to become who they are

    In the time left for living.

    Get it?

    Go!
  • 05/15/2015 — Whirling Butterfly 01 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 14, 2015

    Here’s my take on prayer:

    Prayer is what we feel, not what we say.

    Prayer is beyond words, a felt communion with experience, with life.

    Prayer is integrity, a way of being, a way of being in the world–

    A way of being at one with the world–

    Of recognizing our oneness with the world.

    And, of recognizing our helplessness, vulnerability, gratitude, thanksgiving, dependence, pathos, sadness, joy, etc–

    On a feeling level,

    With no words involved.

    Prayer is knowing,

    More than thinking or talking.

    Prayer is an attitude—

    A good faith connection with all living things—

    A frame of mind.

    Prayer is the spirit with which we go about our life.

    Prayer is the word for being right with our life.

    Prayer is the word for the direct experience of being alive.

    ”Sighs too deep for words.”

    When we try to put it into words,

    We break the spell,

    And can’t get it back

    With an entire dictionary at hand.
  • 05/16/2015 — Dairy Barn HDR 02 – Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, May 4, 2015

    The phrase, “the wrath of God,” is completely ridiculous.

    What? GOD has no choice?

    Just before wrath, what was there?

    Just before the alcoholic’s realization, “I need a drink,” what was there?

    What happened in the interval?

    Before, there was no wrath, no need of a drink,

    Then, there was wrath, or need of a drink.

    What instigated the shift?

    What was it God, or the alcoholic,

    Couldn’t handle?

    What exactly was the experience just before wrath,

    Or, “I need a drink”?

    I’m glad you hung around for the answer.

    Here it comes.

    A complex was engaged.

    If God has wrath,

    God has complexes.

    Something struck a nerve with God,

    And with the alcoholic.

    This phrase “struck a nerve”

    Is another way of saying, “engaged a complex.”

    We cannot attribute human characteristics to God

    Without giving God the whole bundle.

    If we don’t want God having complexes,

    We can’t give God wrath.

    If God has wrath,

    God has things God can’t handle,

    Just like all the alcoholics there ever were.

    God is an alcoholic

    Whose drug of choice is lakes of molten lava

    And all the joys of hell

    For those who stir up God’s wrath–

    Who dare to engage God’s complexes.

    It’s ridiculous.

    We have to start over.

    With a better script writer.
  • 05/16/2015 — Country Cemetery Panorama 03 – Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 16, 2015

    We have to play with our life, and dance.

    Our life’s work is to come forth in our life

    As a joyous, exuberant, inquisitive, playful, vibrant, exploring, instinctual, intuitive, mindfully aware child.

    Zen was created when Buddhism came to China and met Taoism,

    And said the search for truth was like a man riding his ox in search of his ox,

    And that if you make too much of anything, you lose the whole point of it.

    See what you look at!

    Ask questions that cannot be answered!

    Do what needs to be done!

    Laugh your way through each day!

    Let the situation show you what is required!

    Pull the rope–don’t push it!

    Zen and your life are like water–If you want to know water,

    Drink it, swim in it, bathe in it, sail on it or drown in it–

    But don’t talk about it.

    Those who know water don’t need to talk about it.

    Those who talk about it don’t know it.
  • 05/17/2015 — View from Marshall Park 02 – Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, May 3, 2015

    You are up to you.

    I am up to me.

    We can grow up,

    But.

    We cannot grow anyone else up.

    We can be responsible,

    But.

    We cannot make someone else be responsible.

    We can straighten ourselves up,

    And do what is right by ourselves and others,

    But.

    We cannot straighten anyone else up,

    Or get them to do what is right by themselves and others.

    Relationships require a joint,

    Good-faith,

    Commitment to maturation.

    If one person is growing up

    And the other person is happy to be infantile

    And taken care of,

    It is not going to be much of a relationship.

    If you ain’t growing up,

    You are stagnating,

    And beginning to decompose.

    Smell like it, too.
  • 05/17/2015 — Curlyheads 01 – Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 7, 2015 – Try looking this flower/plant up on some on-line flower ID site. There are flowers by the metric ton on-line, most of them are the same flower. There are flowers by the tens-of-metric tons that no one goes to the trouble of naming and displaying. You’d have to be a botanist to know all you need to know about flowers. Or live next door to one–but that relationship wouldn’t likely last long.

    We talk about religious liberty and freedom of speech.

    It’s a joke, all this talk about freedom and liberty.

    Did you read about the hacker-dumb-ass-guy-passenger who took over the computer system of a plane in flight?

    He hijacked the controls of the plane, hijacking the plane.

    “HaHaHa. Look what I can do. I’m so brilliant. Nobody is smarter than I am.”

    Well, now every terrorist cell in the world is hot into how to do it.

    And you aren’t going to be able to take a laptop, or a computer tablet, or a smart phone onto a flight.

    How free is that?

    Our freedom and our liberty are being disappeared before our eyes

    In the name of safety and security.

    We are giving up freedom to avoid being terrorized and hijacked.

    Is it working for you?

    Do you rest easy at night?

    Sleep well?

    All safe and secure?

    Freedom and liberty depend upon the good-faith civility of everybody else.

    Throw one dumb-ass-don’t-give-a-damn-er into the crowd

    And it all goes to hell.

    Rumi said it well:

    “If you are not here with us in good faith, you’re doing terrible damage.”

    Rumi may as well have added: “Damage that will last for generations.

    And you don’t care.

    And we can’t make you.”

    It’s called vulnerability.

    We cannot be free until we can be vulnerable.

    If you are going to practice something, practice that.
  • 05/17/2015 — Live Oaks with New Leaves—Avery Island, Louisiana, March 26, 2015

    I am well into my 71st year, and that may cloud my vision on every level, but.

    It seems to me that the world is going over to the sociopaths and the psychopaths–

    To the people who don’t give a damn about anything

    Except seeing you dead,

    Who will hand over their own life

    In order to kill you and/or those like you.

    Now, that’s an enemy for you.

    Try loving that kind of enemy.

    That kind of enemy makes a travesty of love–

    And of every other value valued by the species.

    That kind of enemy doesn’t care about a thing,

    But the deaths of everyone in the world,

    Including themselves.

    Try to mutually co-exist with an enemy like that.

    You cannot think they are just like you,

    Only with more disadvantages and childhood trauma.

    Civilization did not spawn them.

    They were enemies of civilization from the start.

    ”Let’s burn it down,” is their idea of a good time.

    Do not think they are really good people at heart,

    With a chip on their shoulder.

    We are back in the Old West

    With Billy the Kid

    And Cole Younger

    Riding into town.

    Things are, as they say,

    Getting interesting.
  • 05/18/2015 — Tombstones 06 – Country cemetery, Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 16, 2015

    Growing up is about putting yourself into accord with how things are.

    Stress (and suffering) is the gap between how things are and how we want things to be.

    No gap, no stress (no suffering).

    How you deal with the gap tells the tale.

    Speaking of gaps,

    What about the gap between who you are and who you need to be?

    Between the way you live your life and the way you need to live it?

    Between how you want things to be in your life and how they need to be?

    Our life can be out of alignment with how we want it to be,

    And we can be out of alignment with how our life wants us to be.

    Start saying, “Yes!” to whatever your circumstances may be,

    And see what you can do with them.

    Stop trying to hang onto life as it was–

    Stop trying to force it to be what you want it to be–

    And see what you can do with life as it is.

    Your life is trying to make something of you–

    Live to see what it is.

    Don’t die not knowing.

    Say “Yes!” to your life,

    And see where it goes.
  • 05/18/2015 — Cypress Swamp 08 — Lake Martin, St. Martin Parish, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, March 27, 2015

    You have to believe in your own life—and live it.

    You have to believe in your gift, your art, your genius—and serve it.

    I say this all the time,

    Because it is the only thing worth saying,

    The only thing worth hearing,

    The only thing worth doing.

    Everything hangs on it.

    Every. Single. Thing.

    Why would you not believe in your own life?

    Why would you discount, dismiss, overlook, ignore

    Your gift, art, genius?

    Why would you think it’s about money, success, fame and glory?

    Those are pretenders to the title.

    They have no life about them,

    And no life to offer.

    They are imitation, bogus, sham, artificial, pseudo, phony, wannabe, faux, substitutes for life.

    You have more life in a fingernail clipping

    Than they have in the full box of smoke.

    I wish I could get you to believe that.

    And live as though it is so.

    Because it is.
  • 05/19/2015 — Purple and Gold Panorama—Ragweed and Vetch, Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 14, 2015

    In the work to find your work,

    You can start anywhere.

    You have to start somewhere?

    What is your best guess about what your work is?

    About what your gift is?

    About what your art, your genius, is?

    Start there.

    Perfect your art–

    Perfect as much as you know—or think you know—of your art.

    See where it goes.

    It will go to practice and discipline straight away.

    We have to practice our art,

    And we have to be disciplined to practice anything.

    We can’t just pull our art out of the basket

    When we feel like it.

    Our art demands to be done in season and out of season.

    There is no “out of season” for our art.

    Practice your art—as much as you know of your art—constantly.

    Always be doing what is yours to do,

    What is yours that you must do.

    Start with what you think it may be.

    Practice it regularly.

    Your gift will take over from there.

    Allow yourself to be directed

    By forces you do not command, control, or understand.

    That’s all there is to it.
  • 05/19/2015 — Country Cemetery Panorama 10 — Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 16, 3015

    My ideal relationship is one in which both people are consciously working to grow up–

    And consciously working to assist each other in the work of growing up.

    And talk about their experience with the trials and ordeals of growing up on a regular basis.

    My experience of relationships is that both people are trying to get what they want with the approval of the other,

    Or at the expense of the other.

    We take turns, or fight it out, or control and manipulate our way to ends that are pleasing to us.

    Marriages are said to be “happy” when one person disappears into the other, smiling all the way.

    Count the number of equally mature, mutually helpful and mutually independent married people you know.

    It is takes more than one elbow, I’ll be amazed.
  • 05/20/2015 — Fern Frond 01 – Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, SC, May 14, 2015

    Something can be wrong in a way that makes it right.

    Picasso went a long way doing things wrong.

    His horses and his houses don’t look a thing like horses or houses.

    Henri Matisse did something similar.

    And  Claude Monet.

    The list is long of people who did wrong right.

    Don’t let the will of the people be your standard.

    The people only know how things are supposed to be.

    They know good and right only in terms that are popular at the time.

    They are clueless about also-good and also-right.

    You can’t let the masses override your heart.

    You follow your own lodestar.

    You set your own standards.

    You find what is good and right for you and serve it.

    That’s the way Jesus did it.

    And the Buddha.

    And Gandhi.

    Be wrong in the right way.

    All along the way.
  • 05/2/2015 — The Dairy Barn HDR 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, May 4, 2015

    Jesus said, “Let the children come to me.”

    And, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

    That’s because the one task of childhood is growing up.

    We are to be like children and give ourselves to the task of growing up in each stage of our life.

    I live in a community of mostly older people,

    Most of whom have not wasted any time growing up,

    And have no intention of beginning now.

    People seem to think that growing up is automatic with aging.

    When you turn 21, you’re an adult, and grown up.

    Not!

    Growing up is the conscious work of the spiritual journey.

    Growing up is the Hero’s Journey.

    It is coming to terms, at every stage of life–

    In each situation as it arises all our life long–

    With the gap between how things are

    And how we want them to be.

    I live in a neighborhood of old people who whine and complain

    Because their grass is too short or too long,

    And they want somebody to fix it for them.

    They want their Mommy!

    They wander in an infantile, childish, world,

    And have no capacity to be child-LIKE,

    Hard at work at the task of growing up.
  • 05/21/2015 — Fleabane 01 Blended—Indian Land, SC, May 16, 2015

    We find our heart, our foundation, our direction—we know what is important—by being still, quiet, open, aware, listening, looking, on a regular basis.

    We have to Check In from time to time.

    Get our bearings.

    Remember who we are and what we are about.

    Because the world is a crazy place–

    A crazy-making place–

    And we have to counteract the signals jamming our signals

    By stepping back, stepping out, seeking stillness and solitude,

    In order to reflect, take stock, breathe, remember,

    And ground ourselves in what is important,

    Regain our balance

    Reorient ourselves

    Find our way back to the path

    And be who we are

    In an environment that would prefer for us

    To take our place and do as we are told.
  • 05/21/2015 — Canada Geese 02 — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, March 9, 2015

    Our lives are too much ruled by stress and anxiety.

    How do we work to offset stress,

    And override anxiety?

    I recommend being conscious of it–

    Not peripherally aware of it,

    But particularly, especially, intentionally conscious of it.

    KNOW when you are stressed, anxious.

    Take a mental step back from the situation,

    And breathe.

    I also recommend a bevy of all the recommended

    Stress/anxiety relievers:

    Mindfulness, meditation, yoga and exercise,

    And, where possible, staying away from stress and anxiety producing circumstances.

    I have a long list of places I can’t be,

    Of people I cannot be around.

    And, I’m a lot better off honoring the list,

    Than I am dishonoring it.
  • 05/22/2015 — Duck Weed on Silver Creek 01 — Midnight, Mississippi, March 17, 2015

    Dark times are coming,

    Thanks to the willful, arrogant ignorance

    Of the Republican Party and Evangelical Christianity

    (And where DOES that line lie?).

    During dark ages, good people take cover,

    And live to keep the light alive.

    It is not enough to survive physically.

    We have to serve our soul’s need

    For the experience and expression of life and beauty.

    Live to create pockets of life and beauty

    Among the madness,

    And keep the light alive.
  • 05/22/2015 — Old Sautee Store Panorama 01 BW—Sautee-Nacoochee, Georgia, April 14, 2015

    What do you need to hear in order to live your best possible life in the time left for living?

    Tell yourself that, and get with the living of your life.

    What do you need to believe is so in order to live your best possible life?

    Believe it is so! And get with the living!

    Live as though what you need to be so is so.

    And get with the living of your life!

    Our life is up to us.

    If we are ever going to live it as it can best be lived,

    It is going to be because we decide to live it as it can best be lived,

    And do it–

    Day in and day out for the rest of our life.

    What are we waiting for?

    For it to be easy?

    To feel like doing it?

    To WANT to?

    Feeling follows action.

    Start walking.

    Let wanting to catch up if it can.

    Meanwhile, you have a life to live

    That isn’t going to be lived,

    Unless YOU live it.

    Override the objections,

    And get with the living of your life!
  • 05/23/2015 — Perfoliate Bellwort 2015 02– McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 20, 2015

    Our heart’s true love is not always our heart’s TRUE love.

    We can fool ourselves about what our heart loves.

    Cocaine, for instance, or beer, or sugar–

    Ice cream, say, after 10 PM. Or before.

    The list is long of the wrong things we love and can’t live without.

    Adam and Eve loved the Forbidden Fruit.

    When you are caught up in a compulsion it feels just like True Love.

    Takes a while to get it figured out.

    What works and what doesn’t.

    What is obvious to everyone else

    Takes a long time dawning on us

    When we are in the grip of a compulsion.

    There ought to be a way to avoid the embarrassment,

    Pain, destruction, devastation.

    ”Live and learn, Kid. Live and learn.”

    What we learn is

    If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck,

    It may not be a duck.
  • 05/24/2015 — Wintergreen 02 — Indian Land, SC, May 22, 2015

    Sex without intimacy, tenderness and affection is

    A welcome escape from intimacy, tenderness and affection,

    Which are entirely dependent upon truthfulness,

    And cannot be faked nearly so easily as sex without them can be.

    We have sex to keep from being intimate, tender, affectionate–

    To keep from being truthful–

    To keep from being real–

    Because Jack Nicholson nails us

    In his role as Col. Nathan P. Jessup

    With, “You can’t handle the truth!”

    Which only invites the stinging comeback,

    ”Neither can you Colonel. Neither can you.”
  • 05/25/2015 — Cypress Swamp 04 — Lake Martin, St. Martin Parish, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, March 27, 2015

    When did things change for you?

    When did you give up,

    Check out,

    And start going through the motions–

    Maybe with a chip on your shoulder,

    And a pebble in your shoe?

    Hobbling along with a “This is the best I’m gonna do,

    So don’t expect anything more from me,” attitude?

    When did you decide, “If this is the way life is going to be,

    Then I’ll show life!”

    And begin the slow slide to here, now?

    How long has it been since you were 100% invested in your life?

    What happened, back then,

    Just before you said “To hell with it,”

    And quit?

    Trip back there with me,

    And consider who you were then,

    And write yourself a letter.

    Take your time.

    Do a thorough job.

    Say everything you have to say,

    Everything you needed to hear,

    Feeling, acknowledging, everything you felt then,

    And feel now.

    Bearing all that had to be borne,

    And still must be borne–

    With full conscious awareness.

    Reflect deeply on your experience.

    See what new realizations dawn.

    And what your future holds.
  • 05/25/2015 —
    Lake Chicot 02 — Ville Platte, Louisiana, March 22, 2015

    If you don’t believe in something enough to go to hell for believing in it, you don’t believe in anything very much, do you?

    Don’t talk to me about your faith until you are ready to go straight to hell for what you believe.
  • 05/25/2015 — Greenhouse Coleus 01 – Pike’s Nursery, Charlotte, NC, April 28 2015

    We have to face the pain of our conflicts, of our defeats and disappointments, of our failures and losses, of our setbacks and betrayals, shocks and whams—

    We have to bear the full realization of the remorse and agony that weave through our life—

    And reconcile what can be reconciled,

    And reconcile ourselves to what cannot be,

    Living consciously in the tension of mutually exclusive polarities,

    As though it is done every day by everyone

    (Because it is),

    And refusing to let the truth of all of this

    Keep us from being who our life needs us to be

    In the time and place of our living.

    Our life isn’t what it could have been or ought to be, but.

    We are here to see to it that our present and future

    Are all they can be with us doing our part

    In each situation as it arises all our life long—

    Without hiding from the truth of the pain we carry.

    And, all the people said, “AMEN! MAY IT BE SO!”
  • 05/25/2015 — Pine Cone 01 Blended—Indian Land, South Carolina, May 25, 2015

    Practice saying Yes! to your life.

    Embrace everything that comes your way–

    Which means embracing what must be done

    To do what needs to be done with everything that comes your way.

    Embrace the pain, anguish, agony and trouble

    Required to deal with the things that come your way.

    And deal with it the way it needs to be dealt with.

    And say Yes! to the next thing that comes your way.

    And, when you meet an elephant coming toward you down the path,

    Say Yes! to what that means for you

    And get off the path!
  • 05/26/2015  — Wintergreen Blossom 02 Blended—Indian Land, South Carolina, May 25, 2015

    Recovery is slow, so take your time.

    Don’t try to hurry the process.

    Don’t think you ought to be back to normal by now.

    Devastation is the end of normal.

    Now, it is normal to wonder if things will ever be back to normal.

    Make a pact with yourself to wait it out.

    See how long it takes to hear yourself laughing again.

    It will be longer than you want it to be,

    But not as long as you are afraid it will be.

    In the meantime, be as stunned, overwhelmed and traumatized as you are,

    And give recovery as much time as it needs

    To do its work.
  • 05/26/2015  — Tombstones 03 — Country Cemetery, Lancaster County, South Carolina, May 16, 2015

    An AA slogan says, “All we ever wanted was smooth and easy.”

    We will sacrifice everything for “smooth and easy.”

    Another term for what we seek is “Momma.”

    We all are looking for Momma to smooth our way,

    Remove what is difficult and make it easy for us.

    The Return to Mother is the opposite of the Hero’s Journey.

    The Return to Mother is the regressive journey

    Of the Eternal Child

    Who refuses to grow up,

    And deal responsibly, appropriately and maturely

    With life’s daily deliveries.

    What is Heroic about each of us

    Is our willingness to stand up, step forward,

    And do what needs to be done–

    What needs us to do it–

    The way it needs to be done,

    When it needs to be done,

    As often as it needs to be done,

    All our life long.

    We become who we are in meeting what meets us in life,

    And responding to it in ways

    That are proper and fitting to the occasion.

    In seeking the safety of Momma’s lap,

    And the eternal lethargy of smooth and easy,

    We languish in the Netherworld,

    Never quite getting around to completing our birth

    In the land of the living,

    But abort ourselves aborning

    By hiding in some faux-mother equivalent,

    And refusing to do right by ourselves and our life.
  • 05/27 /2015  — Great Blue Heron—Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, 2013

    What are you trying to do with your life?

    What is keeping you from doing it?

    What are you doing about the obstruction?

    What’s the problem?

    The obstruction and how you are dealing with it

    Is more important in your work to grow up

    Than the end result you seek.

    The obstruction is the treasure.

    You think one thing,

    It’s another.

    What is the obstruction requiring of you?

    You are seeking to be rid of it,

    Yet, it is bringing you forth in ways you would never bring you forth.

    The barrier is a portkey.

    Every wall is a door.

    Eyes that see see something different

    From eyes that don’t see.

    See?
  • 05/28/2015  — Piedmont Prairie Detail 01 — Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Huntersville, NC, May 7, 2015

    “The instrument chooses the musician,”

    Much like “the wand chooses the wizard.”

    Our tools are us.

    They deepen us, enlarge us, expand us, show us us, introduce us to us, are the path to us…

    What we seek is in the tools—in the instruments—that will not let us go.

    A tin whistle in the hands of someone determined to get the most out of a tin whistle would be, for that person, what a basketball is for Steph Curry or Lebron James.

    There is no end to the path of seeking to get the best out of something–

    And, having no specific destination of our own in mind,

    Trusting it to take us where it needs us to go.

    Our instrument/tool of choice is as magical as any wand could be,

    In the hands of those who know how to get out of the way,

    And let the instrument/tool show us what we can do–

    If we cooperate with it from the heart.

    When we begin to think our instrument/tool

    Is ours to do with as we will,

    And begin to use it to our advantage, advancement, benefit, and boon,

    It goes all to hell,

    And we wake up in some gutter,

    Wondering what happened.

    We have to keep the right perspective:

    ”Thy will, not mine, be done.”

    I just carry the camera.

    It alone knows where we are going.
  • 05/28/2015  — Spider Lilies Panorama 02 — Rocky shoals of the Catawba River, Landsford Canal State Park, Catawba, SC, May 28, 2015 — Spider Lilies bloom each year between May 15 and June 15 over a quarter mile stretch of the Catawba River. Canoeists, kayakers, and bank sitters, gape and stare, and break into song at the sight—and gather the next year to do it again.

    The invisible world is the unconscious world is the spiritual world.

    Primal peoples have always understood the visible world to be grounded upon the invisible world.

    We think the physical universe is the only universe.

    We have a re-think coming.

    It starts with simple awareness/mindfulness of every time the invisible world “breaks into” the visible world

    With dreams and visions, hunches and intuitions, knowing that has no rational explanation (I knew when it was time to move to South Carolina, for example. I knew it was time beyond explaining, justifying, defending or excusing), serendipitous coincidences, the mysterious timing of events and circumstances, and all things woo-whoo, woo-whoo.

    Begin to treat the invisible/unconscious/spiritual world seriously.

    Listen to your Heart/Soul/Body/Mind.

    Consult your Heart/Soul/Body/Mind.

    Entertain the possibility that you have a Deep Self who knows more than you do,

    And has a sense of your life that you don’t have.

    Imagine ways of establishing, deepening and maintaining a relationship with your Deep Self–

    Who also has a relationship with the invisible/unconscious/spiritual world that goes back to the very beginning.

    Or do you have something better to do?
  • 05/29/2015  — Cypress Swamp Panorama 03 — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 18, 2015

    Where do we think we are going?

    Where are we trying to get before we die?

    What are we after?

    More money?

    How much will it take?

    Then what?

    What will more money do for us?

    What’s the point of money?

    All money can do is pay the bills.

    What bills are worth paying?

    We are running up bills on the way to where?

    Doing what?

    Showing off?

    ”Lookatme!Lookatme!HEY!LookatME!”?

    Allow me to explain:

    The only things worth having are an enlarged perspective.

    An understanding heart.

    A helping hand.

    The courage to face what must be faced

    And to do what needs to be done about it.

    In each situation that comes along.

    Money cannot buy those things for us, but.

    Seeing through money to the heart of the matter,

    And knowing what’s what,

    And living with compassion for the whole bowl of spaghetti

    Can.
  • 05/29/2015  — Spider Lilies 06 Panorama—Rocky shoals of the Catawba River, Landsford Canal State Park, Catawba, SC, May 29, 2015 — Spider Lilies bloom each year between May 15 and June 15 over a quarter mile stretch of the Catawba River. Canoeists, kayakers, and bank sitters, gape and stare, and break into song at the sight—and gather the next year to do it again.

    The Mother is the Dragon the Hero has to slay to claim “the treasure hard to obtain,” which is His, or Her, own Deep Self.

    (The Mother in this scenario can as easily be The Father. The point is that we have to tear ourselves away from dependence upon the source of safe, soft, smooth and easy, in order to claim our right to our own life [our birthright] and live aligned with our life’s [our Deep Self’s] will for us throughout our life.)

    Fear and Lethargy, says James Hollis, are twin demons standing in our way, keeping us “in our place,” and refusing to allow us to take our rightful place in the service of our own life.

    What is the Mother/Father equivalent in your own life, keeping you from “the treasure hard to attain,” that is your own life?

    Make the challenge conscious. Understand that we live mythologically—not logically, rationally. All of the old stories are OUR stories. They are about US, and the eternal questions of whether we will be who we are, or not, of whether we will live OUR life, or not, greet us each day in the Dragon’s, the Demon’s, the Cyclops’ present-day manifestation.
  • 05/30/2015  — Working on the Railroad—Catawba River Trestle, SC Hwy 75, Catawba, SC, May 28, 2015

    We grow up by doing what we don’t want to do over time, but.

    There’s a catch:

    We have to WANT to do what we don’t want to do,

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done,” kind of way.

    We have to do what we don’t want to do willingly–

    Not begrudgingly,

    Not resentfully,

    Not hopelessly,

    Forlornly,

    Remorsefully.

    Our heart has to be in doing what we don’t want to do.

    We have to do it as though it were the very thing we most want to do.

    We have to do it the way it ought to be done–

    As though it were our idea all along.

    This is called embracing our fate

    In order to serve our destiny.

    It’s the key that turns the lock

    That opens the door

    To the Treasure Hard To Attain.

    It’s the secret to life spilling over,

    Running over,

    Flowing forth

    Always and forever–

    Which, of course, no one ever understands,

    Believes,

    Or buys into.
  • 05/30/2015  — Red Barn White Fence Panorama 01 – Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    Carl Jung said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

    No one wakes up with everything going their way.

    There is no awakening, no realization, no awareness when everything is just right in your life.

    Yet, that’s what we strive for.

    We want everything to be the way we want everything to be.

    We want everything to be smooth and easy.

    We want harmony around the table, across the board.

    Serenity Now!

    And, we want nothing to do with the pain of conflict,

    Disruption,

    Opposition,

    Hostility,

    And the baby refusing to be a laughing little bundle of joy.

    We will pass on consciousness, thank you!

    Serenity Now!

    The Hero’s Journey doesn’t have a chance with us.

    We are packing up and moving in with Momma.

    And let her take care of the baby.

    Sorry to be the one to tell you, but.

    Joseph Campbell said, “The Treasure Hard To Find

    Lies in the cave you most don’t want to enter.”

    That would be the cave housing the pain of your life

    That you don’t want to face and deal with.

    Starting with the baby.
  • 05/31/2015  — Slow Water Paddling – Rocky Shoals Spider Lilies, Catawba River, Landsford Canal State Park, Catawba, SC, May 28, 2015

    There is no difference between a spiritual experience and a psychological experience.

    The two are one.

    Spiritual is “of the soul.”

    “Psychological” is a word derived from the Greek word, “psyche,” or “soul.”

    “Spiritual” and “Psychological” both speak of “soul.”

    Neither know what they are talking about.

    Both know they are talking about something that is real, and important, and is worth taking our time to experience and explore, but.

    Neither offer much in the way of practical advice when it comes to experiencing and exploring “soul.”

    They both offer doctrines and beliefs,

    But neither offers much in the way of specific practices for experiencing and exploring our “soul.”

    Neither talks very much about the “numen,” or “numinous reality,”

    And how to access it, encounter it, experience and explore it.

    Falling in love is an example of an experience with physical, emotional, spiritual/psychological implications.

    Falling in love is an encounter with the numen, with numinous reality.

    Things in the world of physical reality move us on an emotional/spiritual/psychological level.

    We need to explore those experiences through a combination of conversation, introversion, reflection and research.

    We are wasting our time by not exploring our experience on every level,

    Deepening our conscious, mindful, awareness,

    And knowing all that we can know about what is going on

    In the interplay between physical, emotional and spiritual/psychological reality.
  • 05/31/2015  — Old Stone Cemetery 01 Panorama — Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015 — With tombstones from 1777 to 1914, the Old Stone Cemetery is a silent reminder of the fact that nothing— not even cemeteries— is exempt from the Law of Age and Death. With enough time, nothing is left of anything. So. Live. Now.

    ”So. Live. Now.” could be our Psyche’s, our Soul’s, our Deep Self’s, simple message to us all.

    We come into the world as a bundle of libido—life energy—dying to be expended before we die.

    Expended in the simple effort to meet our life straight on,

    And do our best with what confronts us in each day!

    And we dodge all that can be dodged,

    And escape the rest, frittering life away on trivial pursuits,

    Looking for smooth and easy,

    Avoiding life’s pain and troubles

    (And denying what cannot be avoided),

    While it waits, panics, seethes and schemes to find ways of expressing itself while there is yet time.

    Time is life’s only hope.

    Time is all life has.

    If time isn’t spent living—in the fullest sense of the word—time is lost, never to be regained.

    The unpardonable sin is life unlived.

    Carl Jung said, “It is the sole purpose of the libido to strive forever forward—to lead a life that willingly accepts all dangers and ultimate decay.”

    And, if we refuse to cooperate with life’s purpose to be lived, hold back, hide from the terrors of the night, and refuse to sail into the heaving waves of the wine-dark sea, having nothing to do with the dreaded responsibilities and duties incumbent upon those who would find their own way and pay the price–

    If we say no to life, life says no to us, and we die dreaming of life we never lived, because we didn’t have the courage to meet the day’s demands, and take our lumps, and rack up our losses—laughing and loving it all, every bit, every day—LIFE, just as it is!

    Here, NOW!

    Or never.
  • 06/01/2015  — Landsford Canal Kayakers HDR — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    “It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” is a Deep South phrase meaning “Open your eyes! See it for yourself!!”

    The old Zen masters would say “Zen is like a man sitting on his ox, looking for his ox.” What could be more stupid than to not know you were sitting on what you were looking for?

    But, here we are, living life, looking for life.

    When all we have to do is wake up, and there it is, exactly where it has always been, right there.

    We are all just a perspective shift away from seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing, doing, being, and having it made.

    So, what’s the hold up?

    We don’t know.

    We don’t know what we don’t know.

    We don’t know that we don’t know.

    We are in too much of a hurry.

    We want somebody to explain it to us–

    To tell us what we need to know.

    But, if we don’t know what they are talking about,

    We will never understand what they are saying.

    The first step is taking the next step mindfully.

    If you can do that, it’s mindfulness all the way!
  • 06/01/2015  — Landsford Canal Kayakers 02 – Catawba River, Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    Our life is built on our choices.

    Our choices flow from our options and are limited by our resources,

    And are directed by what is meaningful.

    What is meaningful is the key that opens the door to our life.

    If you are going to be mindful of anything,

    Be mindful of what is meaningful to you.

    If you are going to be curious about anything,

    Be curious about what is meaningful to you.

    Where does meaning come from for you?

    What does meaning mean to you?

    What is meaningful about what is meaningful for you?

    How long does a thing’s meaning last for you?

    Upon what does a thing’s meaning depend for you?

    What is the most meaningful thing for you?

    How often do you do what is meaningful for you?

    To what extent does what is meaningful for you depend upon someone else?

    To what extent do you refuse to do what is meaningful for you because of someone else?

    If you are going to reflect on anything, reflect on what is meaningful to you.
  • 06/01/2015  — Portrait — Barred Owl, The Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, 2013

    Carl Jung talked about “the two million year old man” who dwells within us. He could have as easily spoken of the “two million year old woman.” He also said, “There is, within each of us, another, whom we do not know.” Our work is to know, and to collaborate with, the two million year old “other” in forming and living the life that is ours to live.

    The two million year old “other” is our most valuable resource in finding our way through the morass of obstacles, options, choices and possibilities in living our life within the circumstances and conditions of our living.

    Our place is to recognize the reality of this “other” within, open ourselves to him, to her, and develop our capacity to read and interpret the language he, or she, speaks in guiding our living.

    That language includes, but is not limited to, dreams, daydreams, fantasies, active imagination, nudges, urges, inspirations, realizations, ideas, hunches, yearnings, inklings and notions. We have to be mindful of everything, because anything can be an opening to the unknown.
  • 06/02/2015  — Diversion Weir – Catawba River, Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015 – Landsford Canal was a significant investment and well-constructed idea that went bust, like so many “good ideas” do by not taking everything into account that could be taken into account. For instance, high water on the river would be needed for this diversion weir to divert river water into the canal, with it’s locks to lift cargo boat traffic up and down to avoid the rocky shoals along the fall line of the river, insuring commercial success for the canal. Boat traffic on the river occurred during the summer and early fall when crops needed to get to market. High water on the river occurred during the winter and spring. Which gets us to:

    You have to listen to EVERYTHING you are capable of hearing!

    Mindfulness leads the way only when you take EVERYTHING into account–

    Even the things you don’t want to hear.

    YOU are the only thing standing between you and the VOID!

    You cannot just listen to you when you are hearing what you want to be told.

    You cannot dismiss, discount, ignore what you are ALSO saying,

    And say, “But, I always listen to myself!”

    Always listen to EVERYTHING you are saying, sensing, intuiting!

    Your instinct is your only defense!

    Your only weapon,

    Your only guide!

    You can pay attention to ALL you are telling yourself,

    Or you can pay the price.

    Your instinct speaks through your stomach.

    Your interest, sense of meaning and desire speak through your heart.

    Listen to your heart

    AND listen to your stomach.

    When all is well and they are in sync, GO!

    When your stomach doesn’t care, and your heart isn’t in it, DON’T GO!

    When your heart is cheering you on, and your stomach is in a knot, DON’T GO!

    When your head is giving you all the wonderful reasons to go

    And your stomach is in a knot,

    And your heart isn’t in it,

    DON’T GO!

    Am I being clear here?

    If the canal builder had listened to me,

    There wouldn’t be a canal at Land’s Ford on the Catawba River.

    Are YOU listening?

    To YOU?
  • 06/02/2015  — Landsford Canal Lock 01 — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, SC, May 29, 2015

    I have a quick and easy immediate improvement for every marriage and life partnership, and the experience of parenthood , if embraced and applied:

    I wish I had had me for a father,

    And, I wish I had me for a wife.

    Now, for this to work, my wife has to be working toward the same end.

    She has to be living so that she wishes she had had her for a mother,

    And, so that she wishes she had her for a husband.

    We have to be living together in a good faith relationship toward those same ends.

    Poof, like that, a marriage to die for.

    Of course, there is a catch.

    We aren’t always successful in actually doing what we say we are going to do.

    And, neither will you be, but.

    Don’t let that stop you.

    Live like you need to to be able to wish you had you for a father, or mother, a husband, or a wife, or a life partner.

    The improvement will be immediate and lasting, with your other’s joint commitment and participation.
  • 06/03/2015  — Landsford Canal 02 — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, SC, May 29, 2015

    We are all created to live in a certain way that we are not living.

    And, of course, we have problems because of that.

    When you are off center, out of sync, and your life has no rhythm

    About it, you know it.

    You feel it.

    We all have to find ways to get our groove back.

    To get back in the groove.

    To be one with who we are and who we are built to be.

    We need to get back to the home we never had

    And start all over

    With a different environment

    And better places to be,

    And people who are being who they are built to be all around us.

    The trip back, or forward, to that kind of place,

    And those people,

    Begins with, you know the word by now, mindfulness.

    How, exactly, is this place not like the place we need to be?

    How, exactly, are these people not like those?

    What, exactly, is the distance from who we are

    To who we need to be?

    We get from here to there by listening, looking, seeing, hearing,

    Understand, knowing–

    In a heart, stomach, kind of way–

    What is happening that is not right,

    And what needs to happen that would be right.

    Make you and your life as it is and your life as it needs to be

    The focus of reflection, examination, meditation, mindfulness,

    And see what realizations occur.

    Nobody can do this for you.

    And you have a lot more to do than this, but.

    Nothing better to do.

    And you know it.

    So?

    It’s up to you.
  • 06/03/2015  — Landsford Canal Lock Walls 01 — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 29, 2015

    Being mindful is seeing, hearing, feeling, perceiving, understanding, knowing what is happening internally and externally in each situation as it arises–without judgment or opinion.

    To know what is happening is to know what needs to happen in response.

    It is also to know what we are capable of doing,

    And what is capable of being done (what is possible) within the situation.

    Then it is a a matter of having the courage to do what can be done that we are capable of doing.

    It is possible to practice introspection and solitude in the middle of a crowded elevator.

    Don’t think you need the ocean or the woods to be mindfully aware of your surroundings and your inner response to them.

    Your life is your practice, wherever you are.

    Open yourself to every here and now, and notice what is going on.
  • 06/03/2015  — Landsford Canal Lock Walls 02 — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 29, 2015

    We can think that our life is our to do with as we please–

    That it is ours to conceive, imagine, plan, implement, establish, produce, achieve, retire from and be proud of.

    We can think that.

    And, we can think that our life is the most mystical, mysterious, spiritual event we can ever hope to encounter or experience.

    We can think that our life has a life of its own,

    And that we are privileged to be the means of its expression.

    If we choose the latter perspective, our role ceases to be that of planner, designer, architect,

    And becomes that of listener, seer, diviner, dowser, explorer.

    We do not live our life so much as collaborate with it in its unfolding.

    How is our life trying to be lived?

    What is the equivalent for us that light and water would be for an oak tree, or a pine?

    What does our life seek for nourishment and nurture?

    What can we do to assist our life in feeling at home in the time and place of our living?

    How can we better align ourselves with our life’s will for itself and its own expression?

    How might we go about initiating, deepening and continuing

    A dialogue with our life regarding its needs and interests,

    And how we might best assist it in the time left for living?
  • 06/04/2015  — Landsford Canal Lock Walls Detail 01 — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 29, 2015

    If there is something we cannot allow to happen in our waking life,

    We won’t be able to keep it from happening in our nighttime dreams.

    If we are always pushing ahead in “real” life,

    We’ll be driving a car down a steep mountain with no breaks in our dreaming life.

    If we are always striving to cover all our bases and be completely prepared for every contingency in “real” life,

    We will be naked, in a college class, taking an exam for which we are not prepared in our dreaming life.

    Dreams are great that way.

    Showing us who we are by forcing us to see who we cannot allow ourselves to be.

    Our dreams at night compensate for our excesses and deficiencies during the day.

    Calling us to the center.

    Asking us to be more of a Genera Practitioner,

    And less of a Specialist,

    In our life.
  • 06/04/2015  — Landsford Canal Lock Wall Detail 02 — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, SC, May 29, 2015

    I’m nearing the middle of my 71st year,

    And even if I live another 25 or 30 years,

    I’m not going to have enough time.

    I don’t have time to waste on entertaining pastimes.

    On frivolous conversations.

    On trivial pursuits.

    On distracting pleasures.

    Neither do you.

    We have bigger fish to fry.

    We have business to attend.

    We have a life to live.

    We have a 2 million year-old-self to get to know,

    And live to express–

    Within the context and circumstances of the 21st century.

    We have no time to fool around,

    Wondering what to do this weekend,

    And hoping it doesn’t rain.
  • 06/04/2015  — Queen Anne’s Lace 01 Blended — Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    You have to grow up into your own life,

    And I have to grow up into mine.

    We have different things that we REALLY don’t want to do,

    But, it is the same process that faces each of us.

    We have to square ourselves up

    To the discrepancy between how things are

    And how we want things to be,

    Stand up and do what needs to be done.

    And do it all again with the next thing that we don’t want to do,

    That needs to be done.

    Everything rides on our doing it just this way.

    Time after time after time.

    Everything.
  • 06/05/2015  — Pitcher Plant 07 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    There are things that cannot be said.

    Things we have no business trying to say.

    Things that are beyond words,

    Beyond explanation,

    Beyond understanding.

    You do things that need to happen,

    But you can’t say why you did them.

    You don’t know why you did them.

    We are prompted by another world–

    And act in this world in ways that are commensurate with that world.

    We are not in control of our own actions,

    Or, better not be.

    People who are in tight control of their own actions,

    Are, of all people, most to be pitied.
  • 06/06/2015  — Lily Pads in the Rain — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    One of the basic realizations is the connection between what happens, and how we respond to it, and what happens next.

    People who do not grasp that connection

    Freak me out.
  • 06/06/2015  — Butterfly Weed Panorama — Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 29, 2015

    You can’t hurry your adventure along,

    Or expect to “get to the finish line without running the race.”

    We do each day what needs to be done that day.

    Adolescence took forever.

    Both for us,

    And, then again, for our children.

    Do not live ahead,

    Or live looking ahead.

    “Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”

    Aim to be what the day needs you to be,

    And allow the journey to unfold in a way

    That is only apparent when it is viewed backward,

    To your surprise and astonishment

    At having been on a journey at all.
  • 06/06/2015  — Pitcher Plant 10 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    You have to do the work.

    No body can do it for you,

    Or tell you how to do it.

    Waking up,

    Standing up,

    Squaring up to how things are

    And what needs to be done about it

    And doing it with the gifts, talent, art, genus

    That lie latent within you

    Waiting on some situation to develop in your life

    That will call them forth

    To shine like lights in the darkness

    As blessing and grace upon all who witness the occasion

    Or hear about it.
  • 06/07/2015  — Catawba Canoe — Catawba River, Landsford Canal State Park, Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    We participate in the evolution of the Psyche by being conscious of what was then and what is now.

    The Psyche can only be what it was.

    It evolved over long eons of the same old same old.

    Yesterday was today and tomorrow in the really old days.

    Nothing changed ever.

    Well. The ice age changed things.

    And the end of the dinosaurs.

    The Psyche got a boost when the atmosphere settled down

    And life had something to count on.

    The Psyche likes to have things it can count on.

    Enter the Industrial Age.

    Don’t even think about the Space Age.

    Ages don’t last as long as they used to.

    The Stone Age, now THAT was an AGE!

    So, the Psyche is slow to catch up.

    Slower and slower as things speed up.

    Look around. You can see that things aren’t so good with this setup.

    Consciousness needs to get it’s work clothes on,

    And get down to business,

    Being awake to the discrepancy between how things were and how things are.

    “That was then, this is now,” is dismissive.

    It has to become a conscious source of realization.

    We have to know WHAT was then and WHAT is now,

    And how things have changed, and are changing,

    And sit with that knowing so that we understand

    What the problem Is between then and now,

    And how the Psyche might be reeling trying to deal with now

    As though it were then.

    To do that, of course, you have to begin to be aware of Psyche.

    Better get your work clothes on.
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 06/07/2015  — Graham Cabin Panorama 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, April 4, 2015

    Our conscious ego likes to think it is the only one in the house,

    And has free rein to will what it wants

    And live in the service of its wanting, willing, ways.

    A will that is bound to its wants is hardly free.

    The will’s freedom consists of the single choice to will what it does not want,

    To place itself in the service of wants other than its own,

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way.

    Our conscious ego’s freedom lies in its ability to sacrifice itself

    In the service of a will other than its own.

    This would be the will of the two million-year-old self within.

    When our conscious ego lives in the service of our psyche,

    Working out in our life the conflicts and contradictions

    Between the two worlds of psychic and physical reality–

    When we live to place ourselves in accord with both worlds,

    And bear in our body the agony of the tension that implies–

    All is well, and there is peace at last,

    Albeit with a price:

    The price of “Thy will, not mine, be done”!

    Which is nothing like the price we pay,

    In ignoring all conflict and doing it our way alone,

    With our normal, “Damn the shoreline! Full speed ahead!”

    Approach to (Ha, ha) happiness ever after.
  • 06/08/2015  — Water Lily 2015 01 — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    Introversion and solitude deepen awareness,

    Enhance mindfulness,

    And open the way to the Way of seeing, hearing, understanding,

    Knowing, doing, and being.

    The noise of life safely ensconces us in a cocoon of living

    That keeps us forever from having to be awake, aware, or alive,

    And leads us without thinking from the last thing to the next thing,

    World without end, or even a break in the action, Amen!

    You have to make your own breaks in the action.

    And withdraw from the swirl of life–

    Another term for “the heaving waves of the wine dark sea,”–

    In order to take stock

    Recollect,

    Reorient,

    And reform our life around a core that is OUR core,

    And not someone else’s idea of the life we should be living.
  • 06/08/2015  — Pitcher Plant 13 Blended — Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, McBee, South Carolina, June 4, 2015

    Waking people up to what they are doing,

    And to what they need to be doing instead,

    Is the task of the life we are living–

    So that we might begin living the life that is ours to live.

    Carl Jung said, “A person is ill, and that person’s illness

    Is Nature’s way of healing her, of healing him”

    (Or words to that effect).

    Our symptoms come to wake us up,

    So that we might realize what we are doing,

    And what we need to be doing instead.

    Waking up heals us,

    Whether we are cured or not.
  • 06/09/2015  — Red Barn White Fence Panorama 02 — Chester County, South Carolina, May 30, 2015

    Our life is our life.

    Reconciling ourselves with this life that we are living just as it is,

    Is the first step on the spiritual journey.

    The facts are not to be denied, resisted, hated, regretted, mourned, grieved, borne with depression and despair.

    The facts are to be recognized and accepted for what they are,

    In a this is how it is, and this is what can be done about it, and that’s that,

    Kind of way.

    We start with what we have done with our life,

    And what our life has done to us,

    Up to this point.

    And, then we listen to see what needs us to do it.

    We don’t think anything.

    We don’t try to figure anything out:

    “Maybe if I do this, maybe if I do that…”

    Mindfulness, solitude, silence are the keys to what follows.

    We sit, or stroll, listening, waiting, watching,

    Open to all (ALL) possibilities,

    Determined not to miss any door that opens.

    And eager, excited, expectant,

    As we look forward to seeing what it’s all leading to,

    Where it is going,

    With us as its faithful servant,

    Enjoying, at last, the ride.
  • 06/09/2015  — Boneyard Beach 12 BW — Botany Bay Historical Preserve, Edisto Island, South Carolina, January 2013

    On one hand, there is no time to waste,

    On another hand, nothing can happen before its time.

    And on another hand, going fast slows things down,

    And you can only speed things up by slowing things down.

    Paying attention to the time that is at hand

    Is the best way to spend the time,

    Any time.

    Just being awake, aware, and alive to the moment we are living.

    Seeing, hearing, experiencing, knowing

    What is happening here and now,

    And what needs to be done about it.

    Maybe nothing is happening,

    And nothing needs to be done about it.

    So we sit, watching and waiting.

    Intent on knowing when a door opens

    And whether we need to walk through—

    And what business we need to take care of,

    And what business we need to leave alone.
  • 06/09/2015  — Like the Sign Says — Rapides Parish, Louisiana, March 22, 2015

    Our stories take a turn toward a bad ending

    When defiant insistence meets defiant insistence,

    Or cowardly compliance.

    When good faith interest in the common good

    Meets good faith interest in the common good

    Things take a turn toward happy every after.

    Understanding this basic law of human interaction

    Would go a long way toward transforming the world.

    You would think.
  • 06/10/2015  — Vicksburg Sunset HDR 06 — Vicksburg, Mississippi, March 16, 2015

    God is the Stream of Life

    Flowing through us,

    Around us,

    Within us,

    Calling us to wake up

    And live in accord

    With the Stream of Life.

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One Minute Monologues 025In “One Minute Monologues”

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One Minute Monologues 029In “One Minute Monologues”

One Minute Monologues 025

03/12/2015 — 04/22/2015

  1. 03/12/2015 — Scott Creek Sunset 03 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    You find your life and live it by finding and doing what has life for you.

    If it brings you to life, DO IT!

    If it once brought you to life, but you put it aside because it was interfering with your life, pick it back up.

    See what happens, where it leads.

    In addition to giving yourself to the things that bring you to life,

    Immerse yourself in art, music and nature.

    Art, music and nature are the language of soul—ARE soul.

    You can’t get closer to soul than art, music and nature.

    If you can’t “do” art or “play” music,

    Allow yourself to be stopped by art, by music.

    And wander around in nature, allowing yourself to be stopped by what you find there.

    “Aesthetic arrest” James Joyce called it.

    Seeing, hearing, is knowing, feeling, being alive and swept up in the wonder of living.

    Relish that experience.

    Deepen, expand, enlarge it.

    Come alive to the LIFE that is all around you,

    Waiting for you to come to life in its presence

    So that it might baptize you in its waters

    And restore your soul,

    And lead you along the way of life everlasting.
  2. 03/12/2015 — Large Flowered Trillium — Blue Ridge Parkway near Little Switzerland, NC, May 2008

    You are in charge of your life.

    That means you are in charge of handing yourself over to your life.

    It means handing over your control of your life.

    It means noticing how much time you spend arranging your life according to your ideas for your life—

    Working to make this happen and to keep that from happening,

    Manipulating, controlling, directing, choreographing, managing, forcing what you think ought to, and ought not to, happen—

    And how much time you spend assisting, nourishing, nurturing what needs to happen,

    Tending, cultivating, guarding, protecting what is trying to happen.

    How much of what you call living is spent in the flow of your life,

    Toward what, you do not know,

    And how much is spent trying to direct the flow of your life toward ends and outcomes that are attractive to you?

    Your life has a life of its own,

    And it is your place to align yourself with your life’s life,

    And take it where it wants to go.

    You are in charge of your life,

    AND you are just along for the ride.

    Your responsibility consists of giving yourself over to your life,

    And getting out of the way.
  3. 03/12/2015 —  Trout Lily Panorama 01 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster, SC, March 12, 2015

    Nobody—you could look this up—ever grew up apart from trials and ordeals.

    Carl Jung said, “No one comes to consciousness without pain.”

    We have to be booted out of one way of looking at things into another.

    Nobody every volunteers for a change in perspective.

    We live our way into maturity, acceptance, peace and grace.

    The single indispensable element in the process of maturation is compassion.

    Without compassion, no one ever grows up, it doesn’t matter how many trials and ordeals they go through.

    There is nothing magical about trials and ordeals.

    They can send you into depression and a sour disposition in spite of heavy doses of medication,

    As easily as they can enlarge your perspective, transform your attitude and grow you up.

    Compassion is the key.

    If we could increase the compassion quotient of the species,

    What a wonderful world it would be.
  4. 03/12/2015 — Cane River Pier — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, July 2004

    There are no shortcuts, crib sheets, Cliff Notes, fast tracks, accelerated courses, or any way around living through all it takes to wake up.

    Talking about waking up isn’t waking up.

    There is no substitute for stepping into your life and dealing straight up with everything that comes your way.

    There is no path to enlightenment, understanding, realization and awakening that does not involve doing what is hard.

    You know every thing you have been through?

    That’s the only way you could be where you are.

    You know where you need to be?

    Get your dancing shoes on.

    You’re going to a party.

    With the Cyclops.

    He loves to dance.
  5. 03/13/2015 — Emerald Lake  01 — Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canadian Rockies, September 2009

    We just tough it out. Or go through the motions. Or cave in. Or quit.

    Those are ridiculous options.

    We need the way to LIFE and we get Netflix.

    The next best thing.

    Look around.

    Everything you see is “the next best thing.”

    You don’t see LIFE anywhere.

    That’s because it’s inside you.

    On its knees.

    Praying that you will open the door and let it out.

    You are what you seek.

    You are looking in the wrong places.

    Sit down. Shut up. And listen.

    To all of the voices.

    Just listen.

    Until you hear the one speaking the language of your soul.

    You remember your soul, don’t you?

    We all start out with soul,

    But we lose the connection early on,

    And spend the rest of our life finding our way back to where we started.

    Life is play.

    How long since you played?

    Your soul wants to play with you.

    You are listening for the voice of play and laughter.

    What could be the most fun you can imagine having?

    Go there, and listen.
  6. 03/13/2015 — Elk 02 — Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canadian Rockies, September 2009

    When things are right with us, we feel it.

    We sense it, we know it.

    And when things are not right with us, we feel it, sense it, know it.

    We know, when we stop to know what we know,

    When things are “a little off,”

    When things are “not quite right,”

    When “something is missing,

    Or “out of harmony,”

    Or “a bit off center” with us.

    We know when we are “in the flow,” “on the beam,”

    And when we are out of it, off of it.

    That’s all we need to know.

    When we are off track, get back on track.

    Let your Knower guide you.

    Follow your “feeler,” your “sensor,” your “knower,”

    From being “out of the flow,” and “off center,”

    To being “in the flow,” and “centered” in, “grounded” in what is LIFE for you.

    It all goes so much better for you when you are there,

    And so much worse for you when you are not there.

    Be there. Live there.

    As much as possible.

    That. Is. All. There. Is. To. It.
  7. 03/13/2015 — Flyover — Canada Goose, Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, March 9, 2015

    We take what we need from each other and move on.

    We have to remember to move on.

    The disciples prefer the company of the master,

    To doing their own work.

    “Tell us once more what ‘enlightenment’ is,” they say.

    Talk, talk, talk keeps them from doing anything.

    Oh, they have the chores and rituals of monastic life to keep them busy,

    But. They don’t have to deal with life on their own.

    “Tell us again what Zen is, we can feel ourselves almost comprehending the matter.”

    Talking about the doctrines, studying the scriptures, reciting the catechisms

    Keep the pupils from the experiences that would transform them into teachers.

    Truth is not in the books, lectures, discussions, sutras, sermons…

    Truth is found in the lived experience of day-to-day life,

    On our own,

    Far from the comforting presence of the master.

    Discomfort is the teacher.

    Living our own life is the lesson.

    Life is the teacher.

    Living is the lesson.
  8. 03/14/2015 — Forsythia 01 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC, March 12, 2015

    If you are not working with your dreams, you are missing the best part of you.

    Your dreams are symbolic of you. If other people you actually know, or situations that are actual situations, appear in your dreams, the dream situation does not depict the reality of those people or situations.

    Your mail delivery person is NOT having an affair with your husband or wife.

    The people and situations in your dreams represent your own tendency, potential, for viewing or responding to them, or the way you actually view or respond to them.

    Your dreams are about YOU, saying, “This is who and how you are,” or, “This is how it is in your life right now.”

    A dream is a nocturnal snapshot, or mirror, of your current life—unless it stirs something deep emotionally within you (an horrific nightmare, say), when it is probably not about you at all, but a view of a larger, perhaps impending situation, with collective implications for your society, culture or world. It would represent something that a lot of people are facing—homelessness, poverty, oppression, war…

    Your dreams are hints and guides showing you how it is with you and suggesting that you need to take what you dream into account as you wake up and step into your life.

    Your dreams generally compensate for your actual attitude and behavior, and could be encouraging to you if, for example, your actual fear during the day is inhibiting your ability to live appropriately.

    But, if you are living arrogantly and insensitively, your dreams will take a different tone, perhaps casting you as a drug dealer, or a prostitute.

    So, play the opposite game with your dreams, and consider that the dream is saying the opposite of how things actually are in your life to call you to see “the other side” of your daytime personality.

    Don’t miss what your dreams are offering you as balancing and guiding your waking life, and getting you back in synch with who you need to be.

    You get what you need for your life every night in your dreams (And if you don’t remember your dreams, or even remember that you dreamed, take it as a sign that you are close to perfection and don’t need to be counter-balanced by the invisible world).

    So wake up, pay attention, receive the gift!
  9. 03/14/2015 — Beach Still Life 02 — Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    In light of the video below, The Incredible Power of Concentration—Miyoko Shida:

    I’m balancing my feather,

    And you are balancing yours.

    Don’t try to help me with mine.

    I won’t try to help you with yours.

    For sure, don’t create turbulence for me,

    Cutting on fans,

    Spraying me with water from some garden hose.

    I’m balancing my feather.

    You balance yours.

    It is enough that we know what each other is doing,

    And what we are doing,

    And do it.
  10. 03/14/2015 — Pyramid Mountain 04 — Athabasca River, Canadian Rockies, Jasper National Park, Alberta, September 2009

    In light of the video below, The Incredible Power of Concentration—Miyoko Shida:

    The Cleveland Cavaliers have a catch-phrase that guides them through their life: Stay With It!

    One of AA’s motto’s is: Work The Program!

    Be centered in what is important, grounded in what is important, focused on what is important, concentrating on what is important, at-one with what is important:

    No. Matter. What.

    No matter what is happening, or not happening, or how you feel.

    You balance your feather!

    You live your life!

    You do your work!

    You do your best in each situation as it arises and don’t kid yourself about what your best is.

    You (in the words of Joseph Campbell) “get in there and do your thing, and don’t worry about the outcome!”
  11. 03/15/2015 — Trout Lily 06 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC, March 12, 2015

    Mindfulness is necessary in the work to build a relationship with your life.

    You have to watch what you are doing to know what you are doing.

    There is nothing like attentive, compassionate, presence—you being present in your own life—

    To get you where you are going.

    We all love attentive, compassionate, presence when it is directed to us.

    It is a rare experience, and we seek it out, and don’t want to leave it.

    Attentive, compassionate, presence is requisite for intimacy.

    And intimacy is requisite for awareness,

    And awareness is requisite for seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing, doing, being.

    Life flows from attentive, compassionate, presence.

    And we know that instinctively, and are drawn to it, seeking life—

    Seeking the security required to find and live our own life—

    But we don’t know consciously what we are seeking,

    We are simply starving for attentive, compassionate, presence,

    And are drawn to it from far away.

    What attracts us is striving to come forth from within us

    (That is one of the 10,000 spiritual laws—the laws of spiritual development, of maturation, of growing up and being who we are,

    Which is the spiritual task, the spiritual journey, the Hero’s Journey,

    The journey to the Land of Promise, etc. that awaits each one of us).

    We have to become an attentive, compassionate, presence to ourselves—

    And as we practice it with ourselves,

    It spills over and graces all of our relationships.

    As we become gently, mindfully, present with ourselves,

    We become that way with others.

    And life comes to life within and without,

    And the desert becomes a swamp, teeming with life,

    And the wasteland becomes the Promised Land,

    Where everyone finds what they seek and become who they are.
  12. 03/15/2015 — Scott Creek Sunset 05 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    No unexamined assumptions!

    No untested hypotheses!

    No unanalysed inferences!

    Make these three rules with no exceptions allowed—

    And vigorously uphold the high standard you have pledged to maintain!

    Live to bring mindfulness to bear upon each assumption, hypothesis, inference as  you make it.

    Inspect each one for its degree of validity with all things fairly considered,

    And the quality of good faith in your effort at seeing the validity of what you are saying.

    That, alone, will make more difference than you can imagine

    In the quality of your life,

    And in the caliber of your impact upon life around you.
  13. 03/16/2015 — Vicksburg Sunset 01 — I-20 Bridge, Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi, March 16, 2015

    Heart seems to me to be the Spirit with which we do things—

    The enthusiasm, dedication, determination, willfulness, good faith effort that we make in the service of what is important.

    How completely we are into what we do.

    Soul, or Psyche, seems to me to be our connection with the unconscious (because we are not conscious of it), invisible world

    Body is our collection of physical and psychological senses which orient us in relation to the physical and psychic worlds.

    Head, or Mind is our logical, rational way of figuring out what to do about what we sense/feel/intuit/know needs to be done.

    When we have Heart, Soul, Body and Mind aligned and working in sync, we are at one with all that is holy and divine.

    We can all say, “The Father and I are one,” and be right about it.

    And, if they say we are true human beings, they will be right about it.
  14. 03/17/2015 — American Buddha — Southern Cemeteries, 2015

    Being transparent to ourselves means knowing how we feel about our life.

    Not knowing how we feel about our life,

    Or denying that we feel the way we feel,

    Or immersing ourselves in the behaviors of denial

    (Generally referred to as “addiction”),

    And not knowing—or caring—how we feel,

    Or pretending that we feel some way other than the way we feel,

    And refusing ever to sit down with ourselves and feel what we feel,

    And know what we know,

    And decide what that means for us,

    And what we are going to do about it,

    Is the single thing keeping us from aligning ourselves with the life that is right for us,

    And working it into the life we are living,

    So that the life that is wrong for us has to make room for the life that is right for us,

    And the life that is right for us begins to redeem and transform the life that is wrong for us,

    And we become the savior we seek in all the wrong places,

    In all the wrong ways.
  15. 03/18/2015 — How Many Hopes — Southern Cemeteries, 2015 — “How many hopes like buried here.” Engraved on the tombstone of Anna Smith Bridgforth, January 28, 1873 – December 6, 1894

    We hate in others what we cannot face in ourselves.

    We love in others what we cannot see in ourselves.

    Strong emotion in an indicator of something not recognized in ourselves.

    The other people in your life will show you you—

    If you have the courage to look.

    The people who are always trying to clean up society?

    The Prohibitionists, the Teetotalers, the Abstainers?

    And their modern-day equivalents?

    A threat to every living thing—

    Because they do not see the Enemy in themselves.
  16. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 03/18/2015 — Kisatchie Falls 01 — Kisatchie Bayou, Kisatchie, Louisiana, March 18, 2015

    Contradictions run through the heart of life.

    God is conflicted and torn between justice and love,

    And, if you buy into Orthodox Christian theology,

    Jesus paid the price of God’s inability to find a way out of the corner he painted himself into.

    In the deep south, we would say to God, “Well. You did it to your own self! Don’t be asking us to be responsible for your shortsightedness! You should have seen this coming, what with omniscience, and omnivision and all.”

    My point is the contradiction is the heart of reality, both visible and invisible.

    And it is the gift of consciousness to be aware of it—

    To bring it to light, and reconcile what can be reconciled and to manage what cannot be reconciled.

    This is bearing our cross, and coming to terms with how things are and with how things also are, and squaring ourselves up to the facts that will not be squared up with each other.

    This is the work of growing up. It is the work of spiritual development. It is the work of psychological maturation. It is the work of wholeness.

    And it doesn’t get the press it deserves.

    It is the most important thing.
  17. 03/19/2015 — Cypress Swamp Panorama 02 — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 19, 2015

    We have to live out of our own personal authority in determining what is good for us, and what is bad,

    What is right for us, and what is wrong,

    What is now for us, and what is not yet, or never.

    What is life for us, and what is death.

    No one can hand us our life.

    We alone know where life is to be found.

    We have to trust ourselves to us,

    And do what we know needs doing.
  18. 03/20/2015 — Kisatchie Panorama 02 — Red Dirt District, Kisatchie National Forest, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 18, 2015

    We have to foster our own relationship with whatever we choose to call it, because no name suffices—

    The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.

    If we don’t want to take the time, make the effort, and go to the trouble of fostering our own relationship with Transcendent Presence, we make a joke of it.

    “Just tell us what to believe, Preacher!

    Just tell us what to think!

    Just tell us what to do!

    (But don’t make it too objectionable,

    And make sure it doesn’t interfere with our life!)

    Because we don’t want to get it wrong,

    And end up in the Bad Place for eternity!”

    Save me from those who would have me save them!

    Children in a room filled with toys have no trouble figuring out how to play,

    And it would be a violation of all that is good and right

    For adults to give them instruction in the matter:

    You play with this toy like this, not like that,

    And be sure not to play with those toys over there—they are Bad Toys!

    (What is it exactly that makes Bad Words bad?)

    We don’t have to be told how to pray

    Any more than children have to be told how to play.

    We are quite capable of figuring out our relationship with Transcendent Reality

    All by ourselves.

    All it takes is paying attention, being mindfully aware of all connects us

    With the Source and Ground of Life and Being.
  19. 03/20/2015 — Trout Lily 08 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC, March 12, 2015

    I don’t know what you are going to tell those inner accusers when they ask you (again) why you didn’t do better with the options, resources and prospects that were yours to work with,

    But, I tell mine, “I was, am, and will be, finding my way!”

    It isn’t as though I am deliberately screwing up,

    Misreading the signs,

    Shooting myself in the foot,

    Wandering off the path,

    Being stupid…

    It’s that I’m still figuring it out—

    How things are and what to do about it.

    This is not easy.

    And I wonder why my Inner Accusers wait for me to miss a cue to pounce.

    Why don’t they come forth with timely suggestions and directions BEFORE I miss the turn?

    “You would have a lot less to complain about,”

    I tell them, again,

    “If you would speak up ahead of time,

    Instead of waiting until after the fact

    To voice your opinions of my decisions and choices!”

    Shuts them up for a while.
  20. 03/20/2015 — Valley Hill — Westbound US Hwy 82 meets the Mississippi Delta approaching Lefore County and Greenwood, Mississippi, March 16, 2015

    What are you doing to nurture and nourish your life?

    To foster and enhance your relationship with your life?

    To be mindful of your life

    And of what your life is asking of you

    In each situation as it arises?

    Lao-tzu said, “The Tao adjusts excess and deficiency

    So there is perfect harmony.”

    It is our place to cooperate with the Tao,

    And maintain the harmony of our own life,

    Keeping excess and deficiency

    Within an acceptable range of balance and harmony.

    How much time and attention for you,

    And how much for everything else?
  21. 03/21/2015 — Vicksburg Sunset 05 — I-20 bridge and Old US 80 bridge and railroad trestle, Vicksburg, Mississippi, March 16, 2015

    We are here to grow up.

    And, we do that by not running from our life.

    We grow up by coming to terms with, facing, squaring up to and dealing with the trials and ordeals of life in space and time.

    There is no other path to the treasure.

    The trials and ordeals foster realizations that transform perspective and perception in ways that are referred to as “growing up.”

    Growing up is a way of seeing that produces a way of living that is recognized as being grown up.

    The trials and ordeals that result in one person’s maturation, result in another person’s flight into escape and denial.

    Living separates those who have what it takes to come to life and be alive from those who do not.

    Will there be life after birth is the question we all live to answer.
  22. 03/12/2015 — Yazoo River Delta Farmland Panorama — Midnight, Mississippi, March 16, 2015

    A sense of the transcendent source of life and being

    Is experienced as an encounter with the numinous, holy, sacred, invisible world beyond words, space and time,

    Through such thresholds as music, art, literature and nature.

    It can be as varied as planting tomatoes

    And translating the works of Aristotle from Greek texts.

    It has been described as a moment of “aesthetic arrest” by James Joyce,

    Wherein we are stopped by awe, wonder, beauty and held entranced,

    Not knowing how long we have been enthralled

    By the engagement with more than can be explained or understood.

    This is the ground of true religion,

    And has nothing to do with doctrine or dogma, theology or beliefs,

    But exists as a connection between the worlds of conscious, logical, physical, rational reality

    And unconscious (because we are not conscious of it), invisible, irrational reality.

    If you are going to go in search of something,

    Go in search of places that serve as thresholds to a reality beyond reality.
  23. 03/21/2015 — Never Had A Flat Tire — Vintage John Deere Tractor, the first one owned by Tay (Octavia M.) Parker, Tay Parker Place, Midnight, Mississippi, March 16, 2015

    Kindle a flame.

    Keep it burning.

    Dark times are a Tea Party away.

    Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and his appointees on the State College Board have decided to not renew the contract of Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones, who has worked successfully to remove vestiges of the Old South Confederacy from the image of the University.

    A glance at every Tea Party controlled state reveals regression.

    If you aren’t progressing, you are regressing.

    Let’s all gather around the book burning barrel, and raise our hymns of praise to the God of Regressive Religion and Politics!

    No, let’s not.

    Let’s realize what we are up against. Register to vote. Vote every time we get the opportunity (Increasingly restricted though they be), and Do Not Vote Republican!

    If you’re a RE-publican, you are RE-gressive.

    Should be a bumper sticker.

    Kindle a flame.

    Keep it burning.
  24. 03/22/2015 — Lake Chicot 01 — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana, March 22, 2015

    If we look and listen,

    We hear and see us everywhere.

    Everything is a message about us, to us.

    What we see and how we see it—

    How we react to the experience of our context—

    Tells us all we need to know about us,

    In order to change what needs to be changed and do what needs to be done.

    It is as though we are living in a dream,

    And the dream is trying to tell us what we need to know about ourselves

    So that we might get our feet under us,

    And live grounded in what is important,

    Toward what is important.

    We have to interpret the dream

    And put ourselves in accord with it,

    In order to be who we are,

    And live as our life needs us to live it.

    All we need to know is “right there’

    For those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands.

    We have to learn to read our life as a message from us to us about us.

    It takes reflection on our experience to form new realizations

    And shape our life according to our life’s idea of itself.

    When we serve our life’s need of us

    Things go better for us than when we try to wrestle our life

    Into alignment with our idea for it.
  25. Used in Short Talks On Contradictions, etc., 03/23/2015 — Kisatchie Falls Panorama 01 — Kisatchie Bayou, Natchitoches Parish, Kisatchie, Louisiana, March 18, 2015

    Disparity makes us whole.

    It is wrong to try to erase our contradictions, our discordances—

    To hide them (or hide from them), deny them, pretend them away.

    Pull them into the light.

    Acknowledge their existence.

    Honor them for the part they play in making you who you are

    (And forcing your to recognize who you also are),

    And become aware of the strengths

    That each brings to life in your life.

    We are oppositional to the core.

    Wholeness is polarity, recognized and embraced—

    And allowed to work its magic

    In helping us find the way of life

    Through life, into life, for all of life,

    To our everlasting astonishment and admiration.
  26. 03/24/2015 — Little Eva Plantation Panorama — Pecan Orchard, Natchitoches Parish, Cloutierville, Louisiana, March 23, 2015

    We have to be strong in our own cause.

    We are in charge of finding and living our own life—

    Of taking care of our own business.

    We can expect very little in the way of assistance and cooperation,

    And very much in the way of resistance and opposition.

    We prove ourselves to be worthy of assistance

    By being undaunted by resistance.

    Those of us who quit over hangnails and stumped toes

    Don’t begin to have what it takes to manage

    “The heaving waves of the wine dark sea.”

    We have to guard our own borders

    And draw our own lines,

    And be strong in our own cause.
  27. 03/24/2015 — Cypress Swamp Panorama 05 B&W — Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, March 19, 2015

    Our life takes shape around what is important to us.

    If your life isn’t working as it is—

    If you don’t feel at-one and at-peace with your life as it is—

    You change your life by changing what is important to you.

    Look at your list of “Non-Negotiables,”

    The things you aren’t changing for anything ever no matter what.

    That’s the list that is hanging you up.

    You are stuck in the life you are living because of the things you won’t change about it.

    Your life as it is currently is working out to your advantage.

    You get to whine, moan and complain about things being the way they are,

    And you don’t have to do anything to make anything different

    About the way you are living.

    That’s a deal worth dying for.
  28. 03/24/2015 — Lake Martin Sunset 02 2015 — Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    How’s this for a political platform?

    Those we can help have to help.

    Those who need help have to be helped.

    Whatever it takes to put that into effect is what we elect politicians to do.

    Government exists to help the people.

    Of the people, by the people, for the people.

    This was before corporations were people.

    And the Right To Life folks have to understand

    That Right To Life extends beyond birth to ALL of life—

    That babies and their mothers have a right to a full life,

    Including proper nutrition from birth through childhood and youth and adulthood,

    So that no one is without available food,

    And that affordable child care and health care are part of every child’s future,

    And part of every family’s foundation.

    Government starts with this basic premise,

    And this basic promise to all citizens,

    Inclusive and without exception.

    I don’t see anything debatable about this,

    Or why anyone would want to argue with it.
  29. 03/26/2015 — Fishing Pier Panorama B&W — Hayes Coulee, Avery Island, Louisiana, March 25, 2015

    Good in the extremes becomes evil.

    Take a good person and have him, have her, become proud of his, of her, goodness.

    Pride becomes inflation, becomes arrogance, becomes evil.

    I won’t say that evil becomes good, but I will say that

    Evil produces good in opposition to evil,

    And that some of the effects of evil’s impact are good.

    The idea of Absolute Good and Absolute Evil is a fiction

    That we are often asked to embrace as truth.

    Perhaps, we should think instead

    Of the blessings and grace of both good and evil.

    We are blessed by our experience with grace

    In the unfolding of our life.

    Do not think in terms of “good” and “evil,”

    But in terms of blessings and grace.

    We are blessed by the grace of evolving realization

    Through our reflection on our encounters with “good” and “evil.”

    We grow up in ways we could never have otherwise managed

    By our brush with “good” and with “evil.”

    Growing up is the ideal

    We grow up when we come to terms with life as it is,

    When we enlist ourselves in the service of what is important,

    And work to bring into being what needs to happen

    In each situation as it arises.

    Both “good” and “evil” enable us to grow up in this way,

    Sometimes “evil” produces better results than “good.”

    Life is strange that way—

    And countless others.

    We are blessed by the grace of our experience

    As we open ourselves to our experience,

    And reflect on it in ways that take everything into account.

    This kind of reflection is the heart of life and being,

    And is waiting to bless all who practice it

    With the grace of realization,

    Which is also called Enlightenment.
  30. 03/26/2015 — Egret Ballet 01 — Great White Egret, Avery Island Egret Rookery, Avery Island, Louisiana, March 25, 2015

    The compassionate acceptance of everything—

    Including our dispasionate refusal to accept anything—

    Is the foundation of life and peace,

    And the source of the transformation of the world.

    Everything that has happened to us

    Is exactly what we need to be who we are.

    And is exactly what we need to bring to life the good

    That is capable of coming to life in us and through us into the world.

    We are the artist.

    Our art is our life.

    We shape and form the gift we are to offer to the time and place of our living.

    We come not to receive, to get, to have, acquire, attain, achieve,

    But to give ourselves in the service of values worthy of us:

    Grace, mercy, kindness, peace and good faith with all living things.

    We bring our art into being with the compassionate acceptance of everything.
  31. 03/27/2015 — Egret Ballet 04 — Great White Egret, Avery Island Egret Rookery, Avery Island, Louisiana, March 25, 2015

    We feed the horse that carries us to meet our fate

    Or to serve our destiny.

    Our outcomes—and those generated by forces quite beyond us—

    Are the cooperative consequence between horse and rider.

    Some horse and some rider.

    Alcoholism and drug addiction are not accidental.

    Both evil and beneficence have long histories

    Of precedent and intention.

    We do not live in a vacuum.

    Our antecedents precede us,

    And carry us to destinations we acquiesce to in advance

    With indifference, disinterest

    And absent-minded neglect of our own purpose and direction.

    Who is guiding our boat on its path through the sea?

    Why aren’t we in the wheelhouse?

    Exerting conscious influence over our life

    By the way we hold the reins?
  32. 03/27/2015 — D U C D B? — Hovering Carpenter Bee, Lake Martin Rookery boardwalk, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 25, 2015

    You have to live out of your own personal authority—

    Out of your own sense of what is relevant and meaningful to you—

    Out of your own feel for what is valid and vital, good and right for you.

    When you catch yourself wandering without direction or purpose,

    Stop and listen within.

    The guidance you seek is there—

    You simply have to make yourself available to it.

    Where is the noise coming from in your life?

    What is drowning out, jamming, overriding, the signals from within?

    Your place is to listen to the You That Knows—

    NOT to the You That Wants.

    Learning to distinguish between those two You’s,

    And following the lead of the You That Knows,

    Will set you on track,

    And center you in the path with your name on it.

    The going may not be smooth and easy,

    But it will be exactly what you need to become who you are,

    And live as a blessing and a grace upon all who come your way.
  33. 03/27/2015 — Cypress Swamp 10 Panorama — Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    It is a popular self-help-spirituality notion to boo the ego.

    Bad ol’ ego is the root of all our problems,

    And if we just get rid of the ego, everything will be fine.

    This is called the Doctrine of the Evil Ego.

    “Ban the Ego and Be Well!”

    The ego is though of as “illusion.”

    Well. Who is it that is thinking the ego is “illusion”?

    Get rid of the ego and who is there to think at all?

    The conscious ego is all there is to connect us with conscious reality.

    To get rid of the ego is to blink out of consciousness,

    And to cease to exist as a conscious, willing, being.

    Who is there to be enlightened if there is no ego?

    Who is there to change the baby and feed the dog?

    Getting rid of the ego is not going to help us in any way.

    Waking the ego up is the path to take.

    Whom does the ego serve, is the question.

    The awakened ego can very well enlist itself in the service of mind, body, heart and soul—

    In the service of the good of our entire being.

    We can be one with that which is good for us,

    With that which is right for us,

    With that which is who we are and what we are to be about.

    An ego that is in full accord with highest good of mind-body-heart-soul

    Is my idea of a True Human Being,

    And well worth having around.
  34. 03/28/2015 — S! I C D B! D U? — Hovering Carpenter Bee, Lake Martin Rookery boardwalk, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    The most important thing is self-reflection, self-realization.

    The two are one.

    Self-reflection fails if it does not result in self-realization.

    Then it is like looking in the mirror and not seeing what is there.

    Self-reflection/realization is the essential act of being and becoming who we are.

    Self-reflection/realization is a solitary pursuit.

    The gurus can’t make a buck off of you if you are into self-reflection/realization.

    They have to block your way to the truth of who you are by telling you who you are—

    And who you are supposed to be.

    You are nothing if you aren’t paying to listen to some guru tell you The Truth,

    And explain to you the doctrines and sutras of their religion/philosophy/theology,

    And make you as they are.

    Where do you think the first guru got it?

    Self-reflection/realization.

    That’s enlightenment.

    Realization.

    Awakening.

    So.

    Go for a walk with yourself,

    Or, go sit down with yourself,

    And reflect on who you are and what you are about and how it is with you and what you are doing about it because of it,

    Until realization dawns

    And there you are.

    Now what?

    B. U.

    C?
  35. 03/28/2015 — Great Egret in Flight 01 — Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    Each of us has a nature that is peculiar to us, and partially shared by those who are similar to us.

    It goes better for us when we live in ways that are consonant to our nature,

    And it goes less well for us when we live in ways that contrast with our nature.

    If our job requires us to be an extravert,

    And we tend naturally toward introversion,

    We will be wise to factor in quiet time after hours

    To nourish and nurture that part of us which is tortured without mercy during the workday.

    Now that I am retired, I play the introvert card with abandon,

    Refusing to wear a watch, answer the phone, or return calls until it suits my fancy, as they probably still say in the deep south.

    I have a lot of catching up to do, and enjoy being slow about it.
  36. 03/29/2015 — Cypress Swamp Panorama 13 B&W — Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    The solution to all of your problems—and the origin of all of your Real Problems—with life is to find what you can do with passion, and do it with all your heart.

    When Jesus said, “Pick up your own cross every day, and follow me,” he was saying, “Don’t be surprised if it is hard to live your own life—do what is hard in the service of your life, as you see me doing that.”

    When Jesus died on the cross, it was as though he was saying, “Do not let anything keep you from living with integrity—that is living aligned with the life that is yours to live—living the life you can live with passion and purpose. Remember me when you think it is unbearable and that you must quit in the service of what needs you to do it, and do what is hard No Matter What!”

    When Jesus said, “Those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel’s will find it,” he was saying, “There are 10,000 ways to die. Make sure all of your deaths are all in the service of your life—the life that needs you to live it. And understand the gospel to be: Do what is hard in the service of what needs to be done, with the gifts that are  yours to give, and let the outcome be the outcome, because the way to life is doing what is hard in the service of life.”

    Jesus said and did what all those who know what he is talking about and doing have said and done.

    Yet, Jesus is preached by those who do not understand what he was talking about or what he was doing.

    And so, the mess that passes for religion and for life.

    But the solution to all of your problems—and the origin of all of your Real Problems—with life is to find what you can do with passion, and do it with all your heart. No matter if it is hard. No matter what.
  37. 03/29/2015 — Cypress Swamp 02 — Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    Ideally, your life will take shape around your general disposition.

    If you force yourself to “be who you are not,” and live in ways that are out of accord with the natural drift of your interests and spirit, you will be symptomatic and no fun to be around (even though you may be the center of all the parties you can squeeze into a weekend, or week).

    What do you enjoy and detest? How do you like to spend your money and your time.

    Plop yourself down in a shopping center with every store imaginable tucked into a ten acre plot, and which stores will you browse through and which will you avoid entirely?

    Or walk into the magazine section of a book store. Which magazines do you gravitate to, and which do you walk past without pause?

    Are you a morning person or a night person? Beach person or mountain person? Pet person or non-pet person?

    Do you thrive in a group of people, or do better with one-on-one conversation, or prefer the quiet pleasure of your own company?

    What are your tendencies and proclivities?

    Choose your beliefs according to how well they work with your disposition. No belief is authoritative and absolutely without question True Belief. All belief is opinion all decked out in its finest attire. So, choose beliefs that fit you well.

    If the spiel of orthodox fundamentalism strikes a cord with you, go with it, no matter who looks askance at the idea.

    If it feels better to believe in life after death, or the joys of heaven and the everlasting agonies of hell, than to believe death is just cutting out the light, have at it.

    Or have at it the other way, if that has a calming effect on your soul.

    You are in charge of listening to your body—it got here first, you know. You came along some time later. Let your body and your body’s disposition guide you in your living. You could pick worse guides, and they are aplenty.
  38. 03/30/2015 — Rosette Spoonbill Collage — Along the approach to Rip van Winkle Gardens, New Iberia, Louisiana, March 25, 2015

    As long as you have your wits about you, it is never too late to start living the life that is your life to live.

    It is never too late to start living mindfully aware and true to yourself—

    Transparent to yourself and

    In accord with both inner and outer realities.

    You only have to bear the pain of realization

    In order to receive the grace of realization,

    And, “Get in there and do your thing,

    (With compassion for “the whole catastrophe”)

    Without worrying about the outcome.”
  39. 03/30/2015 — Kisatchie Falls Panorama 03 — Kisatchie Bayou, Natchitoches Parish, Kisatchie, Louisiana, March 18, 2015

    We laugh or cry in the presence of truth.

    We generally say of truth that it is beautiful.

    The beauty of truth, the truth of beauty: One thing.

    What do we call it? Truth? Beauty?

    The experience is what we know and can’t say.

    Truth or Beauty as a word is far removed from the impact of the experience.

    We laugh or cry in response to the experience,

    But we rarely ever laugh or cry in response to the word “Truth,” or “Beauty.”

    The experience of Truth/Beauty, Beauty/Truth is an experience with the ineffable, the inexpressible, the numinous, the divine.

    It is an encounter with as much of God as we can encounter.

    Beauty is God is Truth.

    God is Truth is Beauty.

    Truth is Beauty is God.

    The words do not contain the experience, but point to it,

    As if to say, “Oh, you know, THAT!”

    THAT which brings forth laughter and tears.

    You know, THAT.

    You know?
  40. 03/30/2015 — Trout Lily 12 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 30, 2015

The path we follow is Nature’s path.

It isn’t something we make up,

Some goal we set for ourselves.

“I think I’ll be a ballerina. No! A chef! No! A professional bowler!”

We can’t be just anything, or something different every year.

Our compass is an internal gyroscope

Tuned to the Lodestar with our name on it from before we were born.

An acorn grows into an oak.

What’s your seed?

There you are.

Live against the grain and you won’t like it, or last long.

Put yourself in accord with your inner drift of soul

And you will reap benefits that have nothing to do with salary levels

Or signing bonuses.

If you wonder if a particular direction is right for you,

Sit quietly for a while, listening to your body.

Your stomach knows the things

Your mind is trying to figure out.

  • Used in Short Talks on Contradiction, etc., 03/31/2015 — Rue Anenome 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 30, 2015

    We have to work our life into our life.

    We have to honor the life that is ours to live AND live the life we are living.

    We live with a foot in each world,

    Walk two paths at the same time.

    It’s the original form of multitasking.

    We have to fit who we are into who the life we are living requires us to be.

    I looked out the window a lot when I was in school,

    But I was in school,

    And I knew I needed to be outside with the woods and streams,

    Lakes and ponds,

    And I knew staying in school was the path that served my path—

    Even as it denied access to it.

    Our contradictions are not always antagonistic.

    Perpendicular paths may form a circle of wholeness.

    We have to work it out,

    Doing this with that in mind,

    Never losing sight of the Lodestar,

    Never cutting ourselves off from the center of life and being,

    We do what sustains our life on two levels.

    We stay in school and look out the window a lot.
  • Used in Short Talks On Politics, 03/31/2015 — Bayou Boeuf Panorama — Lecompte, Louisiana, March 22, 2015

    When Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me,” and “Inasmuch as you have not done it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have not done it unto me,”

    He sets aside the idea of religion in any way freeing us from our responsibility to be helpful to those who need our help—no matter who they are or what we think of them.

    Those who can help have to help.

    Those who need help have to be helped.

    No one can be free from the obligation to be helpful.

    No appeal to “religious freedom” can remove us from the requirement of a cup of cold water to those who are thirsty,

    From the burden of coming “not to be served, but to serve” regardless of how inconvenient or distasteful that might be.

    Or from the call to “love one another,” to “love your neighbor as yourself,” to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

    What kind of religion is it that frees us from the fundamental concern for the well-being of other human beings?
  • 04/01/2015 — Round-Lobed Hepatica Panorama — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 12, 2015

We all have concerns, and we all appear to be unconcerned about them.

The commercials so people happily going about their lives, unconcerned about their concerns.

We seem to think that the idea is to live unconcerned about our life, enjoying ourselves, and looking for the next party or the next wonderful thing to buy.

I think we are here to deal responsibly and appropriately with our concerns.

Life is a full-time concern.

What are your concerns?

How are you facing them?

Dealing with them?

Caring about them?

What help do you need in facing, dealing with, and caring about them?

Where do you find the help you need in managing/living your life?

Where do you go to talk about your life,

What you are concerned about,

Afraid of?

People talk all of the time and say nothing of anything important about themselves and their life.

There is no place in our life to be concerned about our life.

Diversion, distraction, escape and denial are our primary concerns.

Netflix and a working remote are all we need.

  • 03/31/2015 — Cypress Panorama 13 — Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    Where had you rather be?

    What had you rather be doing?

    The answers to those questions open the door to who you are.

    When you find the place where you don’t want to be anywhere else,

    Doing anything else,

    You are at the center of who you are,

    Grounded upon your Foundation Stone,

    Anchored in your Self/Soul,

    Doing the work that is yours to do,

    In the service of your own business.

    There you are.

    Go there often.

    Do that.

    See where it goes.
  • 04/01/2015 — Forsythia 02 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 30, 2015

    Compassion is a way of knowing that surpasses all other forms.

    Via compassion, we know another, ourselves, all sentient beings.

    Without compassion, we think we know.

    With compassion, we know.

    Compassion cannot be faked.

    Scam artists can tell you what you want to hear,

    But they have no sense of YOU beyond your general similarity with others of your ilk.

    How YOU stand apart from the rest, they have no idea.

    And they don’t begin to hear you, see you, understand you, know you.

    And they certainly don’t care about you.

    How often in your life have you been cradled in the eyes of compassion?

    Heard with a heart that understands?

    We usually remember where we have found compassion.

    Have we learned to practice it, is the question.

    To be a source of it?

    To grace the world with compassionate presence?

    The world is dying for it, you know.

    Why would the world be different from the rest of us?

    Live to bring compassion to life in your life.

    And know the time and place of your living—yourself and your neighbors—

    Like these things cannot be know any other way.
  • 04/02/2015 — Cypress Swamp 03 B&W — Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    My doctor and acupuncturist are always asking, “How’s your energy level?”

    I’m always responding, “I have plenty of energy for the things I like to do and none at all for the things I don’t like to do.”

    There is where we belong,

    And, there is where we have no business being.

    What is your business? What is not your business?

    Where do you belong? Where are you out of place?

    Of course the catch is that what we have to do to pay the bills works against what we pay the bills to do.

    We do what we don’t like to do in order to do what we like to do.

    This is the essential conflict.

    And we have to make our peace with it.

    One way of life kills us and the other way of life restores us to life.

    Think of the way of life that is killing you as the sacrifice you make

    To live the way of life that enlivens you and is your soul’s true joy.

    Walk two paths at the same time.

    Consciously, deliberately, willfully, mindfully.

    And, when you don’t have to do what you don’t like to do—

    Don’t do it!
  • 04/02/2015 — Bluits 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 2, 2014

    There should be a rule:

    We have to face our own ghosts

    And call out our own demons.

    No running, escaping, hiding, pretending, ignoring, dismissing, discounting, denying.

    How much of our life has been spent under the burden ghosts and demons

    Unacknowledged, unnamed?

    Enough!

    Who are they?

    Drag them out in the open

    Look them in the eye

    And tell them how it is:

    “No more overt operations!

    My eyes are on you all and I will know when you are making my life hell—

    And I will call a stop to it!”

    We will never out live our past,

    So we must out-grow it.

    Face it. Square up to it. Acknowledge it. Accept the fact of it. What happened (or failed to happen) happened )or failed to happen).

    Now what?

    In what ways is that going to continue to impact your life from this point forward?

    In what ways is it NOT going to haunt you, inhibit you, harass you or harm you ever again?
  • 04/03/2015 — Bloodroot 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 2, 2014

    Wealth is a waste.

    Money is only good for a grubstake in the service of creativity and imagination—

    Which I take to be the essence of spirituality.

    Spirituality apart from creativity and imagination is as much of a waste as wealth apart from creativity and imagination is.

    Yet, think of how impoverished both wealth and spirituality are in the world as it is.

    You don’t look to wealth or to what passes for spirituality/religion to provide creativity and imagination.

    Spirituality is all bound up with rules, doctrines, disciplines that pass along The Way exactly as it was received 10,000 years ago, unaltered and unchanging.

    True Belief is Old Belief.

    It’s the way they did it way back then.

    Wealth is concerned only with producing more wealth and maintaining the wealth that has been produced.

    Both wealth and spirituality are closed circles, maintaining themselves, without point or purpose over time.

    In this way, they become like dragons guarding the treasure. Dragons never do anything with the treasure—what’s a dragon going to do with jewels and gold or virgins?

    The dragon is just there to make sure nothing ever becomes of the treasure it guards.

    That’s wealth and spirituality for you.

    Creativity and imagination are in the hands of the artists, and artisans, musicians, writers, poets, and stand-up comedians (the court jesters) of every age—

    Who dry up and shrivel away once they become wealthy or hailed as the spiritual artist and master of the age, and everybody starts doing art the way Whomever does art.
  • 04/03/2015 — Rue Anemone 2015 02 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 2, 2015

Ah, where would we be without our conflicts and concerns!

Ours is the on-going, eternal, never-ending task

Of making our peace with our life,

And no matter what our future holds,

We’ll have to make our peace with it,

On and on, song without end, amen.

Once we make our peace with having to make our peace—i

Instead of thinking, “This song should be over by now,”—

The quicker we get down to the business of making our peace

With whatever is the present source of conflict and concern,

And let nature take its course,

Through the trials and ordeals of our days.

We are forever growing up, it seems,

So we give ourselves over to it,

And are carried along by the currents of our life,

Like a cork on the water, enjoying what can be enjoyed of the ride,

And letting what cannot be enjoyed go without regret

When the time appointed for its leaving arrives

(Which sometimes cannot come soon enough!).

  • 04/01/2015 —
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  • 04/04/2015 — Peach Blossoms 2015 01 — Springs Farms Orchard, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 2, 2015 

    Carl Jung said, “Aging is not a process of inexorable decline, but a time for the progressive refinement of what is essential.”

    As we get older, we have time for fewer things.

    We have to decide what is important—what is essential—and what is not.

    “How important is this to me?” is a filter everything must pass through.

    We cannot do it all.

    The choices we make regarding how we will spend our time

    Are “the bard that tells the tale”

    About who we understand ourselves to be,

    And what we understand ourselves to be about.

    We are about “the progressive refinement of what is essential.”

    We are getting down to the heart of the matter.

    We have a wealth of life experience to guide is away

    From what is apparently important to what is actually important.

    We have to decide, consciously, for ourselves what matters most to us,

    And spend what remains of our life in the service of those things,

    Continuing to progressively refine our idea of what is important

    About the things we think are important

    Until we find the gold,

    The Grail, the Philosopher’s Stone,

    At the end of the Quest.
  • 04/0w/2015 — Dogwood Branch 2015 01 B&W — Indian Land, South Carolina, April 4, 2015

    We have to develop, and live out of, our relationship with the Self within—

    The Person at the heart of our soul,

    The center of our psyche.

    You would think they would tell us about this early on,

    And help us with the process.

    If anything, they hand us theology and doctrine

    And tell us to believe what they tell us.

    How much of what they told you to believe has been helpful?

    How much of it has been borne out in your experience?

    I’ll speak for myself:

    The way they told me things were

    Is not the way things are.

    We spend much of our life unlearning the things we were taught,

    And figuring out on our own

    How to find and live the life that is our life to live.

    Which starts with developing, and living out of, our relationship with the Self within.
  • 04/05/2015 — Peach Blossoms 2015 02 — Springs Farms Orchard, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 2, 2015 

    They don’t tell you that life can beat you to death,

    Beat you to wishing you were dead,

    Beat you beyond caring whether you live or die.

    They don’t tell you anything that enables you to live

    With life running over you with 18 wheelers and locomotives,

    And smashing you with one disappointment,

    One loss,

    One devastating tragedy,

    One heartbreaking catastrophe

    After another.

    They don’t tell you that living can take the life right out of  you,

    And what to do about it when it does.

    All they say with their bright, cheery, smiles,

    Is that God loves you,

    And to prove it, he sent Jesus to die in your place

    So he could get over being rejected by Adam and Eve

    (Never mind what that has to do with you, and don’t push them

    About that because it gets really sketchy there)

    And welcome you to heaven when you die

    (Which can’t come soon enough

    With all the things that are worse than death that keep coming your way).

    I have a different take.

    Jesus didn’t die to save you from your sins so you wouldn’t have to die

    (What’s that all about? Of course, we die!)

    Jesus died as an audio-visual aid,

    A living symbol,

    Saying throughout the ages,

    “This is how it is. Don’t think it won’t happen to you. How you take it makes all the difference.”

    Jesus did not sacrifice himself on the cross to pay any ransom.

    Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross

    Because self-sacrifice is the nature of life in this world.

    Self-sacrifice is the victory of life over death,

    Not just for Jesus, but for each one of us as well.

    We all give ourselves up for the sake of those who need us—

    For the sake of That Which Needs Us.

    And receive ourselves back,

    To give ourselves up again and again

    Throughout our life

    In a “Pick up your own cross every day and follow me” kind of way.

    In a “Those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake—because they understand my death to be their death, and theirs, mine—will find it” kind of way.

    When life kills us, we die, and are raised from the dead as a testimony

    To all who witness our living and dying and living again

    Declaring: “This is how it works!

    We die as a self-sacrifice in the service of LIFE!

    We give ourselves to That Which Needs Us—

    And do not let the savage nature of That Which Meets Us

    Slow us down!

    This is how to do it! Come on! Follow me!”
  • 04/05/2015 — Wisteria 2015 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, April 4, 2015

    Given three wishes, spend the first one wishing to know how to best use the two remaining.

    We have to get over thinking we know what is best,

    What needs to be done,

    What to wish for.

    There is a reason magic wands do not exist.

    Rearranging the world according to someone’s provincial, subjective, mood-of-the-moment idea of how the world ought to be

    Gives us a world that needs to be rearranged again.

    Quickly.

    It is better that we step into this world just as it is,

    And live here, now,

    In ways that serve the best we can imagine

    In each situation as it arises—

    And allow our experience to enlarge, expand, deepen, transform

    Our idea of what needs to be done,

    So that we change as much as we wish the world would change,

    And become who we need to be

    Over the course of our life

    In the world just as it is.
  • 04/01/2015 — Chickweed 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 2, 2015

    Here is essential conflict:

    My wife has always been faster than I am (except when it comes to walking through nurserys and shoe stores),

    And, is always saying to me, “Come on! I don’t want to miss anything!”

    And, I am always replying to her, “Slow down! I don’t want to miss anything.”

    Nobody is wrong. Everybody is right. What are you going to do?

    Well, what I do is walk at my natural pace,

    And, what she does is walk at her natural pace,

    And we haven’t lost each other yet.

    You have to be true to your own nature AND negotiate the conflicts that arise along the way.

    Negotiation and compromise, Kid. Negotiation and compromise.
  • 04/06/2015 — Carolina Jasmine 2015 01 — Indian Land, South Carolina, April 6, 2015

    Wisdom sees what it looks at and knows what to do about it,

    And when to do it,

    And how to do it.

    And does it.

    We live our way to wisdom by living with our eyes open,

    And reflecting on our experience

    To form new realizations–

    By trusting ourselves

    To know what our business is and what it isn’t,

    And what works,

    And what doesn’t work.

    Wisdom understands that life is more about enjoyment

    Than achievement,

    And enjoys being alive

    Through all of life’s comings and goings,

    Laughing without teeth,

    Dancing without music

    Or wine.
  • 04/07/2015 — Dogwood Branch 2015 02 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, April 6, 2015

    The Zen story, “The Lost Horse Returns,” exemplifies how luck is either “bad” or “good” depending upon our perspective at the time something happens. Given more time, our view of what is good luck or bad changes.

    A young boy forgets to secure the gate to the corral one evening and the family’s lone work horse escapes during the night.

    The neighbors upon hearing of it all lament, “What a shame! What terrible luck.” And the father replies, “Time will tell.”

    That afternoon, their horse returns leading two mares and a colt with them.

    The neighbors proclaim “What good fortune,” The father says “Time will tell.”

    The son, trying to rid the colt, is thrown and breaks a leg. “Bad luck,” say the neighbors. “Time will tell,” says the father.

    A group of men come through the village conscripting young men to serve in the army. They pass on the boy with the broken leg. “Good luck,” say the neighbors. “Time will tell,” says the father.

    And so it goes.

    The moral seems to be, “Just do your work, and luck will take care of itself.” Time will tell how good, or bad, our luck is. Our place is to see to it that our work is good, no matter what.
  • 04/07/2015 — Country Dogwood Panorama 03 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, April 6, 2015

    I care about the things I care about,

    And I’m not interested in the things I don’t care about.

    I’m quite contented with leaving it to others to care about those things.

    I don’t spend time with the things that drain me, deplete me, exhaust me–

    Like cocktail parties,

    And board games.

    If you wanted to get up a game of charades, I’d have to leave the room,

    Maybe the house.

    But, if you wanted to talk about what you care about–what you are interested in–

    I would be happy to be a part of that conversation.

    What are your primary concerns? Interests? Passions?

    I would stay in the room for that.

    But not for some TV show. Any TV show.

    Or talk about news, sports and weather.

    And I would be interested in pursuing how our interests and aversions

    Speak to us about us.

    What can we find out about ourselves by looking at what repels us, fascinates us, attracts us?

    Where are we hiding in what we love and hate?

    In what absorbs us, or captivates us?

    How are we trying to reveal ourselves to ourselves,

    While we play charades to keep from guessing who we really are?
  • 04/08/2015 — Peach Blossoms 2015 04 — Springs Farms Orchard, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 2, 2015

    Republican opposition to the nuclear arms treaty with Iran is grounded solely on the Religious Right’s (Evangelical Christianity’s) understanding of Armageddon and the Apocalypse, and the need for a nuclear war in the Middle East to usher in the End Times they think are predicted in the Book of Revelation.

    We aren’t dealing with rationality here,

    But with religious zeal and holy war “christian” jihad fervency.

    These people cannot be talked out of their position–

    They can only be recognized for what they represent

    And voted out of office.

    You have to register to vote–

    And talk everyone you know into registering to vote.

    Vote in every election great and small

    (Do not miss a single opportunity)

    And do not vote for a Republican in any of them.

    The Republican Party, thanks to the Tea Party influence,

    Has been captured by Evangelical Christianity and the Religious Right,

    And it is up to You, and You, and You, and Me

    To see to it that they do not capture the entire country (and destroy the world) as well.

    We are all that stands between them and the brink of total disaster.

    I wouldn’t kid you about this.

    If you are ever going to listen to me about anything,

    Listen to me here. And now.
  • 04/08/2015 — Carolina Jasmine 2015 04 — Indian Land, South Carolina, April 7, 2015

    Personal growth always means growing up.

    We grow up through the pain of changing the way we see things,

    Think about things,

    Do things.

    We grow up by doing things we don’t want to do, don’t like, and have nothing good to say about.

    Being happy, contented, and having everything going our way is not conducive to growing up.

    We have to be confronted with a problem that only growing up will solve.

    We never run out of such problems.

    We grow up forever.

    Another term for growing up, in addition to personal growth, is coming to consciousness.

    Realization, awareness, understanding, enlightenment are all synonyms for growing up.

    We once thought like that, and now we think like this,

    And the transition period was where we grew up a bit.

    Where we came to consciousness,

    Realized a thing or two,

    And changed the way we looked at things.

    All because we hit a problem that wouldn’t budge,

    So we had to–

    Budge that is.

    Another term for growing up.
  • 04/09/2015 — Bloodroot 2015 03 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 2, 2015

    I love learning and I hate being taught.

    Being taught entails someone teaching me what they want me to know.

    Learning entails seeking out those who know what I want to know and asking questions.

    It is pointless for me to be taught things I have no use for–

    For which I have no application.

    I’ve been taught tons of Photoshop and Lightroom techniques

    Which I vaguely remember “learning”

    But cannot begin to utilize when an occasional need appears.

    It is a wast of time for me to watch Instructional Videos

    That do not address my here-and-now needs.

    It’s better to be able to find what I need when I need it.

    I so doing, I pick up some things (like keyboard shortcuts) I can use every day and didn’t know existed.

    So, there is carryover from particular to general,

    But it starts with me seeking particular answers to peculiar questions.

    If we are not seeking answers to questions that are pertinent to our situation,

    We will be ignorant corks floating on the sea of knowledge all our life long.
  • 04/08/2015 — Wisteria 2015 03 — Rural North Carolina, April 9, 2015

    The Christian church needs to be more like Alcoholics Anonymous,

    With people gathering, not around the need to be free of their addiction,

    But around the need to find the life that is theirs to live and live it as it is meant to be lived,

    Within the life they are living.

    It would be a simple matter to come up with twelve or fifteen steps

    Around the themes of silence, reflection upon experience, new realizations, kindness and compassion, respect for all living things, transparency to oneself, the language of the unconscious, the mirror of strong emotion, the guidance of the body,

    The essential place of integrity as living aligned with that which is central to us,

    The primacy of living in good faith with ourselves and one another.

    The regular practice of experiencing beauty in art, music, literature and nature.

    The ethical imperative of living as a neighbor to all people,

    Of honoring the Golden Rule

    And of loving that which has always been experienced as God, self and one another.

    And whatever else that might be helpful in living the life of a true human being–

    Which would emerge organically, from the bottom up and from the inside out,

    And not be forced upon anyone via commandments and ordinances,

    Restrictions and obligations.

    No theology. No doctrine.

    Simply the quest for what works in living in accord with the inevitables of life and of the life that is ours to live.

    What’s Christian about that?

    It is what was Christian about Jesus!
  • 04/10/2015 — Wisteria 2015 Panorama 01 — Rural North Carolina Piedmont, April 9, 2015

    To get to truth,

    You have to throw away all you think you know about truth.

    Not that all you think you know about truth is wrong,

    But enough of it is wrong

    To keep you from realizing what you need to realize

    About the truth you already know,

    And from realizing what you need to realize

    About the truth you have never considered.

    We have to put all of it aside

    In order to be open to all of it.

    You cannot come to truth

    Thinking you know anything of truth.

    You particularly cannot come to truth

    Thinking you know all you need to know of truth.

    The more you think you know,

    The less you know that is worth knowing.

    Which puts all authorities, experts and consultants

    In their place,

    And underscores the significance of Jesus’ statement,

    “Unless you turn and become like children,

    You will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
  • 04/10/2015 — Wild Geranium 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 10, 2015

    We have to help people help us,

    And they, following suit, have to help us help them.

    Try to help someone who isn’t helping you help them.

    Call me up when you are about to.

    I want to watch.

    People aren’t as interested in being helped as you would think.

    Being helped means being changed a good bit of the time.

    It means taking some responsibility most of the time.

    It means accepting and agreeing to live on terms other than your own all of the time.

    That’s the part I’m most interested in observing.

    I can’t wait to see how you do.
  • 04/11/2015 — Foam Flower 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 10, 2015

    Insight and realization, Kid. Insight and realization.

    New ideas are the stuff of L I F E.

    If you are stuck in the eddy of seeing what you have always seen

    And thinking what you have always thought about it,

    And never pushing beyond what you have been told,

    You have to sit quietly with your life in your lap

    Until a question occurs to you that you have never considered.

    Don’t look for answers.

    Look for better questions.

    Let your questions generate questions.

    Good questions are answers to previous questions.

    Work up to the Best Questions in the history of questions.

    By then, you will have encountered insight and realization

    Beyond imagining,

    And will be wise beyond your years,

    All because you have asked some really good questions.
  • 04/11/2015 — Rue Anemone 2015 05 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 10, 2015

    It all comes out of the struggle, don’t you know?

    We would be nothing without the struggle. The Struggle.

    What would there be to pull you forth,

    Call you out,

    Force the best from you,

    If sliding by could do it?

    Athletes would not develop past the “getting by” stage

    If they weren’t contending with other athletes for the prize.

    It is the struggle–The Struggle–that gives us ourselves.

    We whine and complain about having to go forth again today,

    Every day,

    To meet The Struggle of job, or job search,

    Of relationships

    Of parenthood,

    Of childhood,

    Of life.

    Yet, in going forth each day, we come forth,

    We shine,

    We show ourselves to be who we are

    In the work that is ours to do

    And in the effort we make to do it,

    To meet The Struggle

    And give it our best–

    Without kidding ourselves about what our best is.

    Our life is The Struggle.

    Let’s live to be worthy of it,

    And to come forth in it,

    And shine,

    Shall we?
  • 04/11/2015 — Peach Blossoms 2015 03 — Spring Farms Orchard, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 2, 2015

    It’s about The Work.

    It all comes down to The Work,

    And flows from The Work,

    And revolves around The Work.

    Who you are cannot be separated from The Work that is yours to do–

    That is you doing/living your life.

    This is not typically what you do to pay the bills.

    It is what you pay the bills to do.

    Ah, but, you don’t know what your work is, perhaps.

    We are separated from our work soon after birth,

    And handed all manner of diversions, distractions

    That take our mind off who we are and what is ours to do,

    But it is there, yet,

    Waiting, hoping, praying

    That we don’t die before we turn and become who we are,

    Doing what is ours to do,

    Living the life that is ours to live.

    So, we either take up our work and do it,

    Or we take up our search for our work and find it,

    And then take it up and do it.

    My work is looking/listening/seeing/hearing.

    And so the photography and the writing,

    And the reading and the questioning and the seeking, seeking, seeking.

    Your work is waiting for you to know it for what it is,

    Embrace it, love it, serve it

    With all your heart and soul and mind and strength

    Through all the moments that flow from this one,

    For ever and ever.

    Amen. May it be so. Amen.
  • 04/12/2015 —  Flame Azalea 2015 01 —  McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 10, 2015

    I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would volunteer to be a house guest, or to host one.

    I’ve been that way from the start.

    Our character is remarkably consistent that way.

    Carl Jung said, “We are who we always have been, and who we always will be.”

    Psychotherapy can help us past the stuck places,

    Where we cannot do the things that truly need to be done,

    And need US to do them,

    But there are other things we never have any business doing,

    And psychotherapy can help us recognize those things,

    And stay away from them.

    We have to come to terms with ourselves–

    With who we are and who we are not–

    And make our peace with that,

    And let it be because it is,

    And live what remains to be lived of our life

    In light of that.

    Our soul would relish that

    And be glad.
  • 04/13/2015 — Bootlegger’s Last Run Panorama – Amicalola Falls Panorama 01 – Amicalola Falls State Park (which also boasts the Trailhead to Springer Mountain, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail), Dawsonville, Georgia, April 13, 2015

    You take your circumstances in one hand,

    And your character, values, nature, tendencies, proclivities and temperament in the other hand,

    And you fit them together in a life that honors what is in both hands.

    Throughout the time left for living.

    That. Is. All. There. Is. To. It.

    Why would I lie?
  • 04/14/2015 — Amicalola Falls Panorama 01 – Amicalola Falls State Park (which also boasts the Trailhead to Springer Mountain, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail), Dawsonville, Georgia, April 13, 2015

    You have to know what your business is

    And what it isn’t.

    Your business is your life.

    Your life is minding your business,

    Tending your business,

    Taking care of your business.

    Everything else about your life supports and sustains your business.

    You live to do your business.

    That is living with integrity,

    And having things ordered properly,

    And your priorities nicely arranged.

    If that is not how it is with you,

    Your first order of business

    Is to get your business front and center in your life.

    Start with knowing what your business is,

    And what it isn’t.

    Things will come together in time

    Around that central focus:

    Is.

    Isn’t.
  • 04/15/2015 — Spring Barn Panorama 01 – White County, GA, April 14, 2015

    Live out of your own sense of how your life needs to be lived–

    Always with an eye on what is happening

    Without and within,

    And what you think needs to be done about it–

    How you think you need to respond to it–

    Regardless of what anyone else thinks,

    Including God.

    What do YOU think is the question.

    What are YOU going to do is the other question.

    Live to know what you know,

    And to do what you know needs to be done–

    And let all your outcomes instruct you

    In the art of knowing what you know

    And doing what needs to be done about it

    All your life long.
  • 04/15/2015 — Amicalola Path Panorama – Amicalola Falls State Park (which also boasts the Trailhead to Springer Mountain, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail), Dawsonville, Georgia, April 13, 2015

    You know what resonates with you

    And what does not,

    Where you belong

    And where you have no business being.

    Know what you know.

    Know when you are overriding what you know,

    And when you are dismissing what you know.

    When you are discounting what you know.

    When you are denying what you know.

    When you are conflicted over what you know

    And what you also know.

    But, know what you know,

    And decide what to do about it,

    In light of all things considered.

    That is being consciously, mindfully, responsible

    For who we are, what we do, and how we live.

    If we all lived that way,

    It would be a better world overnight.
  • 04/16/2015 — Flame Azalea 03 – Amicalola Falls State Park (which also boasts the Trailhead to Springer Mountain, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail), Dawsonville, Georgia, April 13, 2015

    I have my work to do,

    My business to tend,

    My life to live,

    And, you have yours.

    If I can do what is mine to do

    In ways that help you do what is yours to do,

    Fine.

    If you can do what is yours to do

    In ways that help me do what is mine to do,

    Fine.

    If we do what is ours to do

    In ways that are of no help whatsoever to the other,

    Fine.

    It is enough that we do what is ours to do

    And, in so doing, help those who can be helped,

    Without trying to be helpful

    In ways that would be harmful

    To what someone needs to be doing.

    Ours is the old song’s refrain:

    “Take what you can use,

    (In the work that is yours to do)

    And leave the rest behind.”
  • 04/16/2015 — Spring Barn Panorama 02 – White County, GA, April 14, 2015

    The voice of change and transformation has always had an audience,

    Though not, necessarily, a large one,

    And it is generally a tough gig,

    Transitioning from one way

    Of hearing, seeing, thinking, doing and being to another.

    But the Word is a living Word,

    And new ideas have a way of outliving the opposition—

    Stout and determined and armed with atrocities though it be.

    The antecedents of every new age

    Are tucked away in the present age

    Waiting for the time of their coronation

    To be at hand.
  • 04/16/2015 — Anna Ruby Falls Panorama 01 – Unicoi State Park, Cattahoochee National Forest, Helen, Georgia, April 13, 2015

    Who you are shows through.

    “Truth will out,” they say,

    Which is a strange way of saying

    Truth will be apparent over time,

    No matter how we try to conceal it,

    Deny it,

    And pretend it is not so.

    And people pick up on the discrepancy

    Between who we are and who we are pretending to be.

    They get a funny feeling that something is not right somehow–

    Off center,

    Out of sync,

    Off key,

    Not what it appears to be.

    And they will spend more time out of your company

    Than in it,

    Because they are uncomfortable around you

    Without knowing why.

    On the other hand,

    If you are who you are,

    In tune and in sync with yourself,

    People will enjoy being around you

    For no apparent reason,

    And dogs will follow you home,

    Even if you don’t like dogs.
  • 04/16/2015 — Catesby’s Trillium 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 16, 2015

    Your life is your gift.

    As in your gift to you from the murky depths of the unconscious–

    Because we are not conscious of it–

    Origin of life,

    And, as in your gift to all living beings–

    What you offer to them to lighten their load

    And help them along the way.

    Receive your gift,

    And offer it,

    Mindfully aware of it

    As a blessing and a grace

    Upon you and all others–

    Intent on living so that it is exactly that.
  • 04/17/2015 —  Spring Barn Panorama 03 – White County, GA, April 14, 2015

    Can you do what it hard

    And necessary?

    Will you?

    All of our tests are tests for everyone associated with us,

    Even in the most remote kind of way.

    We are all either

    Having what it takes

    To do what needs to be done

    In the situation as it arises,

    Or not.

    What we do,

    Or do not,

    Has implications for everyone,

    Now and in generations yet to be born.

    If you are going to do something not,

    Do not live lightly.

    Live in the light,

    Cognizant of what you are doing,

    And doing not.
  • 04/17/2015 — Pearson’s Falls 2015 03 – Near Tryon and Saluda, NC, April 17, 2015

    There is the unforeseeable, and there is the unforeseen.

    Living mindfully enables us to see what we are

    Overlooking,

    Ignoring,

    Dismissing,

    Discounting,

    Denying–

    And saves us from avoidable grief, agony, anguish and suffering.
  • 04/17/2015 — Yellow Trillium 2015 01 — Pearson’s Glen, near Tryon and Saluda, NC, April 17, 2015

    We suffer from misplaced loyalty and allegiance.

    We plight our troth to the wrong thees.

    Our life is our rightful love.

    The life that is ours to live.

    The life lived around the character that is ours to cultivate,

    The nature that is ours to develop

    With conscious awareness of who we are

    And how that needs to be expressed

    Within the time and place of our living.

    We are to be true to ourselves

    In ways that are appropriate to the occasion,

    And, compassionate, gracious and kind–

    And, strong in the service of a good beyond our good.

    If we think something else is more important,

    We need to go sit quietly

    And sort things out.
  • 04/17/2015 — Wake Robin 2015 01 — Pearson’s Glen, near Tryon and Saluda, NC, April 17, 2015

    The task of maturation and the goal of the spiritual journey (Maturation IS the spiritual journey, and vice versa)–the way to the Land of Promise–

    Is waking up to the truth of how things are and how things need to be–

    To the truth of who and how we are,

    And of who and how we need to be,

    And undertaking the work of transitioning from one way of doing/being to the other way of doing/being.

    This is called “repentance,”

    And there is no avoiding it on the part of those who would grow up

    And be whole.
  • 04/18/2015 — Columbine 2015 01 – McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 16, 2015

    If you aren’t taking it to nature

    And seeing what nature can do with it,

    You only have yourself to blame.

    All those conflicts you’re walking around with?

    All those things you can’t do anything about?

    Go walk slowly through some aspect of the natural world.

    Sit by a waterfall,

    Or a stream,

    Or the ocean.

    Water is good for quenching thirst on more than one level.

    Do not run from your conflicts.

    Take them to nature.
  • 04/19/2015 — Dwarf Crested Iris 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 18, 2015

    Knowing the truth is knowing the truth about ourselves,

    Is knowing the truth of the way things are

    And the way things need to be.

    Knowing the truth

    Is a divine imperative

    To do something about it.

    Jesus said, “Those who hear these words of mine

    DO something about them!”

    Or words to that effect.

    We can’t just “know the truth.”

    The truth sets us free from bondage to the way things are,

    And puts us in motion,

    Doing what needs to be done about the way things are,

    Breaking the chains of oppression,

    Injustice,

    Discrimination,

    Bigotry,

    Intolerance,

    Racism,

    Sexism,

    Homophobia,

    And honoring all people for the wonders they are.

    So don’t be bragging about “knowing the truth,”

    If you aren’t doing something about it

    In a way that sets us all free

    To do something about it in our own way!
  • 04/19/2015 — Peach Blossoms 05 — Springs Farms Orchard, Fort Mill, South Carolina, April 2, 2015

    We say we want help with our life,

    And believe it.

    That’s what makes alcoholics and addicts so convincing

    When they say they want to be sober.

    They believe it themselves.

    We all believe we want help with our life.

    But.

    What we want is escape.

    Deliverance.

    We want to tag out

    And let someone else be us

    While we go off into the bliss of being responsible

    For not one thing.

    Sheldon Kopp said,

    “We have to solve our own problems every day for the rest of our life.”

    That’s putting it to us.

    We don’t want help with solving our own problems.

    We want to be rid of problems.

    We want someone else to solve our problems for us.

    That’s the hidden joke behind all self-help groups and books.

    Self-help is a smoke screen.

    We aren’t interested in self-help.

    We are interested in self-deception.

    Saying we want help when we want out is deception.

    We want out.

    Our life waits for us to wake up,

    Realize it is up to us,

    Summon the courage to step into the life that is waiting for us,

    And live it as it needs to be lived,

    Solving our own problems as they arise

    Every day for what remains of the time left for living.
  • 04/19/2015 — Spring Fern 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 18, 2015

    Knowing the truth puts us on the path of setting things right–

    Of “getting right with God,”

    So to speak.

    Of putting ourselves in accord with the way things are,

    Aligning ourselves with how things need to be,

    And living in the tension

    Between how things are and how things need to be–

    Striving to bring forth the Ought To Be within the Is.

    This is the work of integrity, harmony and wholeness.

    It is the task of true human beings in every age,

    And become true human beings through the work of reconciliation.
  • 04/20/2015 — Toccoa Falls 01 — Toccoa Falls, Georgia, April 15, 2015

    Your conflicts are your salvation.

    You are saved when you wake up

    To how things are

    And who you are

    And what is important

    And what needs to be done about it

    And do it.

    Your conflicts save you

    By forcing realization and awareness on you

    Perhaps, against your will.

    But, what do you know?

    Your conflicts are here to show you

    There is more to know than you think–

    There is more to it all than meets the eye–

    And, you have to keep looking if you are going to see.

    And seeing is the point–

    Seeing, hearing, knowing, doing, being–

    Growing up and being who you are,

    Where you are, when you are, how you are–

    Being you, here and now,

    Doing what is yours to do

    (Which is always more than you have in mind,

    Or want to have anything to do with)

    About what needs to be done.

    And your conflicts are the threshold to all of it.

    It is the conscious struggle with your conflicts

    That open the door to new realizations

    And realization is the path to the Land of Promise.

    Don’t let a conflict go

    Until you have gotten the good out of it,

    And thanked it for its time.
  • 04/20/2015 — Dogwood Branch 2015 04 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, April 6, 2015

    I have a long list of things I enjoy,

    And I indulge myself often.

    I had more fun in my younger days,

    Going faster and farther,

    Doing more,

    Relishing sugar in all of its myriad manifestations.

    All of which has been relegated to the class of distant memory,

    Soon, no doubt, to be lost altogether.

    But, I am enjoying more as an older person.

    I enjoy practically everything

    That isn’t forced on me

    As obligation, duty, responsibility.

    And, can even enjoy those things as intrusions

    That make their absence a cherished delight.
  • 04/21/2015 — Violet Wood Sorrel 2015 01 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 18, 2015

    A “gathering of sojourners,”

    Or a “community of innocence”

    (Innocent in the sense of having nothing

    At stake in one another,

    And nothing to gain from one another,

    Beyond the mutual benefit of

    Help for the journey)

    Coming together around the uniting focus

    Of each person finding her, finding his, own life and living it

    Would be a welcome aid in the work that is ours to do.

    I imagine a covenant of agreement

    Wherein we would commit ourselves

    In good faith

    To the practice of being transparent to ourselves

    Through dreamwork,

    Reflection on our experience,

    Exploration of personally meaningful symbols,

    Examination of our individual tendency for projection

    And of our emotional responses to our environment—

    All with the goal

    Of seeing, hearing, knowing and understanding

    What we are saying to ourselves

    About what is happening in our life,

    What needs to happen in our life,

    And what we need to do about it,

    In order to be who we are,

    And live the life that is ours to live

    In the time left for living.

    If you can put together a community like that,

    You will have something

    We all could use in our own life.
  • 04/21/2015 — Greenhouse Orchids 02 Panorama — Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, 209 McDonald Ave., Charlotte, North Carolina 28203, (704) 331-9659 — One of the hidden wonders in Charlotte, this is worth a walk-through even if you don’t need a plant. Tell them I said so.

    Your life will turn on you. Turn with it.

    Dance.

    Your life leads. You follow.

    You start out with a plan, a war comes along.

    The stock market crashes.

    The bottom drops out of the housing market.

    The unforeseeable stops by for a visit.

    Everybody has a plan until they step out the door.

    From then on, it’s “Now what?” to the end of the line.

    Trust your life to know what it’s doing,

    And look for the openings.

    See what you can you do with what you meet

    On the other side of the door.

    Bring your imagination into play.

    Enough already of despair and hopeless resignation!

    Where’s the creativity and the quest to know what you’re made of?

    Get in there and do your thing with compassion for all of life,

    And bear the pain of all your conflicts consciously,

    And magic will happen.

    You will be amazed.

    You owe it to yourself to find out if I’m right.
  • 04/22/2015 — Greenhouse Orchids 03 Blended – Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, 209 McDonald Ave., Charlotte, North Carolina 28203, (704) 331-9659 – One of the hidden wonders in Charlotte, this is worth a walk-through even if you don’t need a plant. Tell them I said so.

    We have to read each situation as it arises

    And will what is right for that situation,

    And enlist ourselves heart, mind, body and soul

    In the service of our will-to-good,

    Regardless of the implications for us personally

    (Although sometimes what needs to be done

    Will be done in the service of what is good for us personally).

    Each situation is better off in some ways than in others,

    And it is our place to make things right–

    Insofar as that is possible–

    Using the gifts that are ours to give

    In the service of what is fitting and appropriate

    To the situation,

    All things considered.

    What is right here and now?

    What is called for here and now?

    That is all we need to know,

    And do.
  • 04/22/2015 — Fleabane Daisy 2015 01 Blended — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 18, 2015

    The magic happens only when our will for our life

    Is aligned with our life’s will for our life.

    We have to hold in highest esteem

    Our life and what needs to be done in service to our life.

    We “Forsake all others”

    And “Plight Thee our troth”

    In a holy marriage to the life that is our life to live,

    Living in each situation as it arises

    In ways that serve our life

    With loyalty and allegiance

    Above and beyond all other interests and concerns.

    This is the courtly love of the troubadours,

    And the knights with their ladies,

    And the ladies with their knights,

    Properly understood.

    It is taking our life

    As The Bride of Christ

    And living in its service

    At whatever cost,

    No matter what,

    For as long as life as possible–

    And love lived like this never ends.
  • 04/22/2015 — Bloodroot 2015 02 — McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 2, 2015

    The watchword for living well is

    Awareness Awareness Awareness.

    Seeing/Hearing is Knowing is Understanding is Doing is Being.

    Mindful awareness is the solution to all of your problems

    With knowing what your life is and how you need to live it.

    Whenever you catch yourself wondering what to do,

    Become mindfully aware of your situation as a whole.

    The path will open before you.

    I’m not saying you will want to have anything to do with it.

    Not knowing what to do is often used as an excuse

    For not doing what we don’t want to do.

    Mindful awareness takes all things into account,

    Leaving us without excuse.
  • 04/22/2015 — Greenhouse Orchids 12 — Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, 209 McDonald Ave., Charlotte, North Carolina 28203, (704) 331-9659 — One of the hidden wonders in Charlotte, this is worth a walk-through even if you don’t need a plant. Tell them I said so.

    We have to grow ourselves up.

    This is the spiritual journey.

    It isn’t knowing the teachings of the masters that does it,

    But doing what is hard.

    Doing what needs to be done.

    Doing what needs us to do it.

    Being the right kind of mother or father, for instance,

    Or the right kind of son or daughter.

    The right kind of brother or sister.

    The right kind of person in the role our life is asking us to play.

    It’s John Wayne or Betty White playing John Wayne or Betty White

    The way only John Wayne or Betty White could play those parts.

    It’s you playing you the way only you can play you

    In the improvisational situations that crop up throughout your day.

    We have to grow up in order to be ourselves the way we need to be ourselves in all of the situations that come our way.

    No pouting, whining, moaning, complaining, not showing up allowed!

    And we have to be the one who sees to it that we show up

    And do the right thing in the right way.

    That will grow you up like nothing else will.

    Certainly not memorizing the books of the Bible in order.
  • 04/23/2015 — Dwarf Crested Iris 2015 02 – McDowell Nature Preserve, Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, April 18, 2015

    You have to wrestle with your own alligators.

    Your life is an alligator come to eat you alive,

    And will do it in a minute if you let it.

    Don’t be thinking that your life is some soft, friendly, cushy

    Loll by the pool.

    There are alligators in the pool, and sharks, hoping for a chance at you.

    Your life is not some walk through the park,

    Some stroll through the meadows of spring.

    Some lap dog eager to do your bidding.

    You have to live your life like you mean it,

    Like you are the Boss of your life come to show it a thing or two

    About how living is done.

    You have to climb onto your life and tell them to open the chute.

    You are here to ride the thing through all eternity,

    Not just some eight seconds on some stop watch.

    If you can’t stay with it longer than eight seconds, why bother?

    Just roll over and go back to sleep.

    Don’t be looking for soft and easy

    Laughing with a beer in hand looking for good times to roll with.

    You are here to roll with the punches,

    And to manage the rolling waves of the wine dark sea.

    Your attitude has to be that of Homer,

    Who said through Odysseus:

    “I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship / and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces, then I will swim!”

    Homer was a blind poet

    Who knew life was a Cyclops come to eat him alive.
  • 04/23/2015 — White Violets 2015 01 — Unicoi State Park, Cattahoochee National Forest, Helen, Georgia, April 13, 2015

    No one can save you but you.

    You save yourself by waking up, growing up, squaring up with how things are and how things need to be, getting up and doing what needs to be done about it.

    Every day for the rest of your life.

    You have to find your own life and live it.

    You keep thinking it should be easy.

    And fun.

    It is hard and not much fun, but.

    Every minute is to be enjoyed–

    As a jolt that wakes you up, if nothing else.

    You keep painting yourself into corners.

    The corners are there to wake you up.

    What you are doing isn’t working.

    The corner reminds you of that.

    You have to stop painting when you reach a corner–

    And reflect on how you got there.

    And stop doing that.
  • 04/23/2015 — Greenhouse Orchids 15 — April 21, 2015, Campbell’s Greenhouse and Nursery, 209 McDonald Ave., Charlotte, North Carolina 28203, (704) 331-9659 – One of the hidden wonders in Charlotte, this is worth a walk-through even if you don’t need a plant. Tell them I said so.

    Let your life live you.

    Your life knows what it likes,

    What it needs.

    You don’t have to think any of it up.

    Just listen.

    Just pay attention.

    Your life is constantly trying to catch your eye.

    You are so the servant of your agenda–

    Of your idea for your life–

    That you dismiss, discount, ignore

    The signals you are sending yourself.

    Call time out from time to time,

    Sit down

    Become mindful

    Of what has been happening,

    Of what you have been missing.

    Filter it for the gold.

    Every day the gold washes through your life,

    But you aren’t panning for it.

    You have eyes for other things.

    Pan the gold.

    Let your life live you.
  • 04/24/2015 — Trout Lily 13 Blended — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, South Carolina, March 30, 2015

    Everybody wants it done the way they want it done.

    Nobody wants to reflect on what needs to be done and how they need to do it.

    Parents dictate to children.

    Children dictate to parents.

    Husbands dictate to wives, wives to husbands, partners to partners.

    The news of the day is about someone pushing their way onto someone else

    And someone else pushing back.

    Push, shove, dictate, force, compel, berate, lambast…

    Drones and suicide bombers are delivering explosives as I write–

    Blowing up what they hate in the name of what they love.

    The hatred is apparent and real.

    The love is pretense and charade.

    Nobody owns their hatred,

    Everybody professes their love.

    “I don’t hate gays,” they say,

    But the gays can’t tell the difference.

    You may as well hate me if I can’t tell that you don’t by the way you treat me.

    Everybody is kidding themselves.

    No one is transparent to themselves–

    Radically honest with themselves.

    No one lives in good faith with themselves.

    Everyone hates everybody–

    Including themselves.

    To change the world

    We have to start with ourselves.
  • 04/22/2015 — Rosette Spoonbills in Flight — Rip van Winkle Gardens, New Iberia, Louisiana, March 25, 2015

    We go to war to force our way on others,

    Or to keep others from forcing their way on us.

    Anybody can see there has to be a better way.

    Why are we blowing each other up?

    What’s the good of thinking if we can’t think up something better than what we have?

    We think up better ways to kill people.

    What are we thinking?

    Any thinking person can see this is stupid.

    What are we living to do?

    Have our way and keep from having someone else’s way forced on us?

    Past that, what are we living to do?

    What do we have to do that is so important we will kill everyone who stands in our way?

    What. Are. We. Living. To. Do. ?

    You can see, if you think about it, that we aren’t living to do one damn thing.

    We’re just killing people who aren’t doing it our way.

    But, if they were all dead, we wouldn’t be doing anything.

    We. Wouldn’t. Be. Doing. Anything.

    Which means, we are just here to kill people.

    That’s all we do.

    Kill one another.

    Killing and avoiding being killed absorbs our life,

    Supports our economy,

    Keeps the world running.
    Where is it going?

    What are we doing?

    This is stupid.
  • 04/24/2015 — Cypress Swamp 02 B&W — Lake Martin, St. Martin Parish, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, March 24, 2015

    What are you doing with your life?

    With the time that is yours for living?

    What are you living to do?

    Life is not a spectator sport.

    You are not here to observe, take notes, drink beer, make jokes.

    What is the most meaningful thing you do?

    The most meaningful thing you have done?

    The thing that means most to you?

    How often in a week do you do what is meaningful to you?

    How long do you do it?

    What can you do to increase the frequency and duration?

    We are alive to the extent that we are meaningfully engaged with our life–

    To the extent that we are immersed in meaningful work

    (Which is not necessarily what we are paid to do,

    But what we live to do).

    If you don’t know what that might be,

    You have the time left for living to find it,

    And do it.
  • 04/22/2015 — Duck Weed on Silver Creek 02 — Midnight, Mississippi, March 17, 2015

    The Quest is for our life

    And the courage to live it.

    To do what is ours to do

    The way only we can do it.

    We have to understand that we have a gift,

    A genius, a daemon, a holy spirit, within

    Which begs expression.

    Carl Jung said, “There is within each of us

    Another whom we don’t know.”

    Our invisible twin desires to be known,

    To be brought forth,

    In the life that is common to both of us.

    We are the conscious, thinking, evaluating,

    Logical, reasoning part of the equation,

    And our invisible other

    Is the sensing, feeling, knowing, guiding, creating, imagining part.

    Together, we are a True Human Being

    With a world to transform.

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One Minute Monologues 024

01/25/2015 — 03/11/2015

  • 01/25/2015 — Mill Pond Trail 04 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    We cannot live any old way and have a life worth living.

    We have to consciously, consistently, live toward the best we can imagine,

    Expecting the best of ourselves,

    Intentional and deliberate about showing others,

    And finding out for ourselves what we can do,

    Through all of the reasons to lay it aside and “grab the gusto,”

    Or just sleep in and not worry about it,

    Because we are funny that way—

    Determined to give it our best effort,

    And see where it goes.
  • 01/25/2015 — Young Buck 03 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 6, 2014

    Your focus is to live grounded upon the Foundation Stone,

    The Philosopher’s Stone,

    The unifying, integrating, intention

    That forms the core of your heart and soul.

    Your charge is to live out of that which is most YOU,

    Toward that which is most YOU—

    So as to bring YOU forth in your life,

    And be who YOU are

    As a blessing and a grace upon all who come your way,

    Rippling through them to all sentient beings everywhere.
  • 01/25/2015 — Charlotte 01 — A portion of downtown (Okay, they say, “Uptown.” Why, I do not know) Charlotte, NC from Marshall Park, January 25, 2015

    You make a splash by being you.

    The way you carry yourself.

    The way you interact with others.

    The way you help people feel.

    The mindset you carry with you into your life.

    The mood you create.

    You step into your life and create ripples.

    You are a wave machine.

    You make tidal waves.

    Tsunami’s.

    Washing over the world.

    Making all things new.

    Leaving life in your wake

    You’re hosing ‘em down with living water.

    Just by the way you walk,

    And talk,

    And treat the people in your life.

    Look at you!
  • 01/26/2015 — Young Andrew Jackson 02 BW — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC, January 24, 2015 — Lancaster County is the birthplace of Andrew Jackson, born March 15, 1767, and became the 7th US President.

    Our heart might be in it at the beginning—whatever “it” may be.

    But then, we come upon drudgery, and opposition, and a lack of cooperation.

    It stops being fun.

    It isn’t easy.

    We have to call upon courage and resolve, determination and resiliency, to see us through.

    And those horses have been let out to pasture,

    And are nowhere around when we need them.

    We discover that heart is the easiest thing to lose,

    And the hardest thing to find.

    So it is said, “Those who put their hand to the plow and look back are not fit for the kingdom of heaven.”

    Why pour the foundation if we aren’t going to build the building?

    Can we do it, is the question.

    Will we do it, is the other question.

    We can know all about what needs to be done, and how to do it.

    The theory and the blueprint for success are not the problem.

    Toughing it out is the problem.

    Doing the work is the problem.

    Living with heart through all the tedium, detours, delays, and dead ends is the problem.

    We are the solution to the problem.

    Will we see it through,

    Or cut our losses and go back to the house?
  • 01/26/2015 — Common Tern 07 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, January 17, 2015

    The will to do and to be is difficult to sustain over the long haul.

    We are worn down by the weight of time and circumstance.

    All of us are.

    And all of us must find the source of our own rejuvenation,

    And make the pilgrimage to it often.

    Where do you go to “recover from the past and store up for the future”?

    What does it take to revitalize your heart and soul?

    The experience of beauty in art, music and nature does it for many.

    Touching the earth, and being touched by it, in Hugh Prather’s sense of the term,

    Is restorative and enlivening for those who return regularly to receive it’s blessings.

    The grace of symbols and ritual can carry us beyond the apparent finality of the facts that define our existence—

    And, in transcending the obvious end of hope and courage,

    We know there is more to it than meets the eye,

    Take heart, and join forces with the Force Beyond All Thought And Reason,

    And do what needs us to do it, the way it needs to be done—

    Which we could not have done

    Without our return to the source of life and being.

    May we return often, and be of good courage, and strong hearts,

    For the long haul.
  • Used in Short Talks On Good And Bad Religion — 01/27/2015 — Beach Erosion 14 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    All of the symbols of the Christian church—and of any church—are beautifully, wonderfully appropriate for every age, but. They have to be reinterpreted for each age.

    The current symbols of the Christian church were partially updated in 1643 by the Westminster Divines as the Westminster Confession of Faith, and are no more appropriate for today than a medical textbook of that period would be.

    Each age must find its own way to God with symbols and metaphors and myths that are appropriate to the age.

    We do that by reinterpreting the symbols, metaphors and myths of previous ages—by re-imagining them in light of our present experience and world-view.

    There was no Garden of Eden in an actual literal sense, but. The Garden of Eden remains vibrant and valid through all ages as the launch pad of spiritual life and understanding.

    No one approaches the need for a Spiritual (Hero’s) Journey, or the search for the Land of Promise (another metaphor that has to be updated and reinterpreted), except from the standpoint of the loss of the blissful state of innocence where everything was in place and made sense.

    It is only when we wake up to the realization that the way we have been told things are is not how things are, that we begin the Agone, the Agony, of finding our way to a unifying vision that holds it all together, makes sense to us, and fills us with vitality and enthusiasm for our life.

    Every Biblical metaphor, every symbol of that Old Time Religion, has to be reformed, rethought, reimagined, reshaped, reformulated and reclaimed in order to serve us as food for our soul, and sustenance for the journey.

    And every one of those metaphors, of those symbols, has the power to do that—to be exactly what we need to be who we need to be in the life we are living, “from this time forth, and forever more.”

    As we do the work of bringing them to life, they return the favor and bring us to life, and it becomes “a new world Goldie,” for everyone.
  • 01/30/2015 — Scott Creek Sunset Panorama 03 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    The trick is to live knowingly.

    When we live knowingly, we live transparent to ourselves.

    When we live transparent to ourselves, we live “transparent to transcendence” (A phrase Joseph Campbell attributed to Karlfried Graf Durkheim).

    When we live transparent to transcendence, we are as good as God, as one with God as Jesus was.

    And that would be something.
  • 01/31/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Graveyard Beach at Sunrise 02 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    Live knowingly.

    Knowing what you are doing doesn’t mean knowing how to do it, or how it is to be done, or what you are supposed to be doing, or how you are supposed to be doing it.

    It means knowing that you are doing what you are doing, and that you are doing it the way you are doing it, and why you are doing it the way you are doing it, and what is happening as you are doing it.

    It means seeing yourself in action, doing what you are doing, and being aware of everything in the field of the action surrounding what you are doing, internally and externally.

    If you know that much, you will transform your life, and the world.

    You can’t know what you are doing without changing things—without things changing.
  • 01/31/2015 — Sheldon Church Ruins HDR 03 — Yemassee, SC, January 27, 2015

    Jesus said, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

    And, to a man working on the Sabbath, he said, “If you know what you are doing you are blessed, but if you don’t know, you are cursed and a transgressor of the law.”

    Jesus said, “When you give to the needy, don’t do it to be seen. Do it in secret so that no one knows—let it be so secret that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing.”

    In other words, do what you do knowingly—and, knowingly, take no notice of it. Know what you are doing and don’t make anything of it. Just. Do. It.

    If you know what you are doing, in the sense of knowing what is happening as you do it, internally and externally, in the field of action surrounding you and what you are doing—you will be hiding nothing from yourself and making nothing of yourself.

    You will just be doing what you are doing, being who you are, and that will be that.

    This is mindfulness in action. Mindfulness in every day life. All it takes to transform the world.
  • 02/01/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 07 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    At every stage in our life—

    At every transition point—

    We are an egg waiting to hatch.

    We hate waiting for anything.

    DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING—STAND THERE!!!

    They all say that when you just stand there.

    Just standing—or sitting—there is not permitted.

    Is anathema.

    Is a scandalous outrage.

    Is the desolating sacrilege.

    The unforgivable sin.

    You can do anything but nothing.

    Chicks spend a lot of time doing nothing,

    Waiting to hatch.

    Waiting to know what to do.

    Waiting to know when to do it.

    Waiting for clarity and direction.

    At every stage in our life—

    At every transition point—

    We are an egg waiting to hatch.
  • 02/01/2015 — The Grove HDR 01 — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015

    There are a lot of people who cannot hear what I have to say.

    But.

    I keep talking.

    That’s what I do.

    It’s my work.

    Saying what I have to say.

    And, I repeat myself a lot.

    Trying to say better, or differently, or just again,

    What I have to say.

    I believe in it.

    I’m talking about life, mine and yours.

    I’m talking about living.

    About being alive.

    About living our life as a full, whole, true human being.

    If you’d rather do something else, okay.

    A lot of people had rather do something else.

    I have to say it nonetheless.

    That’s the way it is with our work—our life.

    It’s our work—our life.

    And we have to do it, live it, no matter what.

    In one way or another,

    We all say, along with each other and Captain Jack Sparrow,

    “I have no say in the matter, Gibbs—It’s the pirate’s life for me. Savvy?”
  • 02/02/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Graveyard Beach at Sunrise 03 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    In the grip of strong emotion. we do the damnedest things.

    Remember your first marriage? And your second?

    We are slow learners when it comes to strong emotion.

    “How can something so wrong feel so right?”

    The lemming’s rush to the sea

    Is just another mass movement gone awry.

    It’s what mass movements do best.

    The anti-vaccine movement is the latest in a long line.

    Emotion disguises itself as thinking—

    Parades around as Rational and Logical,

    As Absolute Truth,

    Innocently shrugging off the devastation in its wake.

    We smoothly justify anything we feel strongly about.

    It’s the emotional high that does it.

    We will do anything to ride that wave—

    To be gripped by that conviction.

    There is no better antidote to the uncertainty and insecurity,

    To the fear, agony and angst, of life on the edge of the Void.

    It feels just like being alive.
  • 02/02/2015 — Scott Creek Panorama 03 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    I have to play the introvert card more often these days.

    People, either too many or too long, disrupt the inner harmony and disturb the quiet waters of my soul—

    Something the extroverts in my world cannot comprehend.

    So, I leave them to make sense of it as well as they can,

    And find a quiet corner,

    In which to sit for a while.

    I cannot tend internal affairs and keep up my end of the conversation

    About the drama surrounding politicians, movie stars, family members and neighbors—

    None of whom I can impact in any way,

    So why bother with the latest of who has done what to whom and what might happen next?

    But, that’s where all the world goes to have its social needs met.

    When I die and go to hell, God is going to put me on a Carnival Cruise Ship through the universe for eternity.
  • 02/03/2015 — 02/03/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 02 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    May you rise to every occasion,

    And do what is asked of you by each situation that arises,

    In ways that bring forth who you are

    As a blessing and a grace

    Upon the occasion and the situation.

    If you go into your occasions and situations

    Doing what is expected,

    You are not seeing what is being asked of you—

    You are merely a functionary fulfilling a role.

    If you go into your occasions and situations

    Looking to exploit them to your advantage

    You are not seeing what is being asked of you—

    You “on the make,”

    “On the prowl,”

    Scouring the landscape for your next kill.

    Your occasions and situations are not there

    For your dutiful service,

    Or for your good pleasure.

    They are there to grow you up and bring you forth—

    To reveal you to you,

    To show you who you are and what you have to give.

    To bless you and grace you with you.

    Often, against your will.
  • 02/03/2105 — The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 06 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    You are being forced to do something that is—to live in ways that are—killing you.

    Don’t tell me you are not.

    All of us are.

    Our life is killing us.

    Look around. Everyone you see is living a life that is killing them.

    It’s how things are.

    We have to wake up to it and come to terms with it, or die.

    There are 10,000 ways to die.

    Each one is some form of addiction, diversion, distraction, despair, and/or denial.

    The only alternative is awareness, reconciliation and transcendence.

    We have to do what is killing us mindfully, knowingly.

    We have to embrace it as Jesus embraced the cross,

    And willingly, even joyfully, accept the circumstances and conditions of our life—

    Participating fully in the experience of living our life on its terms,

    And doing everything that is required of us exactly as it ought to be done—

    Knowing what we are doing, embracing it and loving it because it is our lot,

    Because it is how things are,

    Because, “This, too. This, too,” is our life,

    And cannot be rejected because it is part of the whole—

    “The whole catastrophe” of life, living, and being alive.

    Those who know the secret of doing what kills them

    Live through dying—live through death—to resurrection,

    And life and peace eternal and everlasting,

    Beginning here and now in this life that they are living exactly as it is.

    This is the shift in perspective that is at the core of all Bodhisattvas,

    And it lifts us to a level of living that is beyond anything having our way in the world has to offer.
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradictions, etc., 02/03/2015 — The Old Sheldon Church Ruins HDR 07 — Yemassee, SC, January 27, 2015

    What does thinking about sex keep you from thinking about?

    What do imaginary lovers help you avoid facing about your actual life?

    What quandaries, contradictions, dead-ends, fixes, messes, plights, predicaments and difficulties do you

    switch off when you switch on a tryst with the hunk or the babe?

    It’s your life you are escaping.

    Your life that is calling you to live it by facing what must be faced, dealing with what must be dealt with,

    oing what must be done and growing up.

    If you are going to imagine something, imagine that!

    Your life is the Cyclops, and you are Ulysses.

    You don’t get anywhere saying, “Oh, but this is too hard!”

    Or, “I know I need to grow up, but…”

    There is no but.

    There is your life that needs you to live it—

    By doing what is hard,

    And facing what must be faced,

    Deciding what needs to be done about it

    And doing it

    About all of the things you want to run from, and hide where you can’t be found.
  • 02/04/2015 — Edisto Eagle 02 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    Carl Jung said, “What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.”

    FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

    When we live unconscious of how our fear is driving us, we create something to Really be afraid of.

    It was Hitler’s fear of the Jews that led to the destruction of Germany, not the Jews Hitler feared, and thus hated.

    The anti-vaccine crowd is afraid of imagined monsters, but, rather than deal with their fear, they are creating the Real possibility of an epidemic that is certainly something to be afraid of.

    Alcoholics are created as much by the people who cover for them and squelch their fear of what might happen to them if the alcoholic is ever found out, as by their unquenchable thirst for a place to hide from their own fear.

    Unconscious fear, greed, despair and laziness—the unwillingness to face, confront and deal with all that is unconscious—drive us and create Real Life situations that force us to meet our demons, which, by then, are Truly demonic.

    Moral: Face the fact of unconscious reality, and deal with it early-on. You will reduce the level of corporate pain by bearing consciously your personal pain, and the world will benefit greatly from your courage.
  • 02/04/2015 — ACE Basin Collage — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015

    When you are standing grounded on the Foundation Stone, no one can knock you off.

    The Japanese word for this position—this connection with the heart of Being—is Hara.

    “Hara” in Japanese means “belly.”

    It is the body’s center of gravity—the fulcrum, the pivot point, “the still point of the turning world.”

    Grounded at that point, we are one with the Way for us and all of creation.

    And we cannot be moved.

    Find your center of gravity—your connection with the Foundation Stone.

    What is it that is so YOU that no one can knock you off of it?

    That no one can laugh you off of it?

    That no one can shame you off of it?

    It is so YOU that you cannot imagine life apart from it—would not consider it—will not budge?

    This is one of your grounding realizations.

    What is another one? What are the other ones? The places you are so YOU nothing can budge you?

    Practice realizing your YOU-NESS in those places, around those things.

    Develop your sense of being anchored to YOU there—

    Of being one with the ground of Being.

    Live out of that sense of groundedness as you go through your day.

    Be grounded in YOU.
  • 02/04/2015 — The Village of Edisto Beach, SC Panorama — Scott Creek, Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC

    When our first granddaughter was 4 years old, she called my wife EZ. My sister-in-law took it upon herself to correct Katy, and teach her the proper way to address her grandmother.

    “This is Grannie,” she said, “Can you say ‘Grannie’?”

    Katy said, “Grannie.”

    “That’s RIGHT!”, said the sister-in-law. “Grannie! This is Grannie!” (pointing to my wife).

    “Now, who is this?” she asked, pointing again to my wife.

    “You say ‘Grannie,’ said Katy, “but I say EZ.”

    That’s living out of your own authority.

    When your center of gravity is zeroed in on the Foundation Stone,

    Nothing can bump you off.

    Your task is to find what is Truly YOU,

    And say what YOU say,

    And do what YOU do,

    Within the terms and conditions,

    Context and circumstances of your life,

    And nothing can touch you, in the sense of destroying your foundation, or causing you to lose your way.
  • 02/05/2015 — The Grove 05 — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015

    Listen to your stomach,

    Not to your heart.

    Your heart can be taken in by glass beads and silver mirrors,

    Or by the forbidden fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

    The heart is open to the serpent’s logic:

    How can something this good be bad?

    Not only that, but also, heart is the easiest thing to lose,

    And the hardest thing to find.

    Heart is all exuberance and enthusiasm at the start,

    But let things drag out,

    Let the going get tough.

    The people thought the trek to the Promised Land was going to be a lark,

    But at the first sign of inconvenience, they are ready to head back to Egypt.

    The heart, above all things, is deceitful and easily corrupted.

    Not so, the stomach.

    “Gut feelings” are to be trusted in all situations great and small.

    Check things out with your stomach before launching some crusade,

    Or marrying some dark haired doozy your heart just flipped over.

    Follow your stomach into war, or out of the job interview.

    Your stomach aces stuff your heart doesn’t grasp,

    And has the heart for things your heart can’t stomach.

    Listen to your stomach.

    Your stomach knows.
  • 02/06/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Graveyard Beach Sunrise 01 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    Get your life under you!

    If we were riding horses, we couldn’t go anywhere until we got our horse under us.

    Here’s one for you: We are riding horses.

    We have to get in the saddle.

    And commune with our horse.

    Remember the book/movie “The Horse Whisperer”?

    We all have to become horse whisperers where our life is concerned.

    Our life is our horse.

    Try telling a horse what to do.

    Try bossin’ a horse.

    Try willing a horse to do your will.

    Milton Erickson tells a story about taking a lost horse home.

    A horse showed up at his family’s farm one day, and Milton’s father told him to take the horse home.

    The horse was a strange one. Milton had no idea where the horse belonged.

    Milton got his horse under him, and kept the horse from eating grass.

    The horse took himself home.

    Your life is your horse, and you have no idea where home is, what the goal is, even where the path is.

    Your horse knows.

    Get your horse under you,

    And start listening to your horse.
  • 02/06/2015 — Scott Creek Sunset Panorama 02 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    We are not tourists on some Orient Express,

    On some Carnival Cruise Line tour of the world,

    Talking about what we like and don’t like along the way.

    We are heroes on a mission to live our life and transform the world.

    You cannot deny that how you live your life transforms your world.

    You have the power to redeem and save,

    To destroy and discard.

    How you live makes all the difference—

    To you and to the people impacted by your life.

    And you have no way of knowing who all is, and is not, impacted by your life.

    We are all Jimmy Stewart in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

    We all face the options he faced,

    To spit on our life and give up on the thing,

    Or to take it as it is and do what we can with it—

    Being exactly what our life needs us to be whether it appears to be doing any good or not.

    There are 10,000 ways to run from your life,

    But, if you live it, you’re going to have to learn to hit a curve ball.
  • 02/06/2015 — The Old Sheldon Church Ruins HDR 01 — Yemassee, SC, January 27, 2015

    God is not a fact.

    Theologians during the Middle Ages came up with the formula:

    “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere.”

    How factual is that?

    God is a symbol for more that can be said, or thought, or comprehended, or grasped, or imagined.

    God is a metaphor of Transcendent Being itself.

    Whatever that is.

    We do not know.

    We are unconscious of it.

    It is The Unconscious.

    God is the source of light which dwells in deep darkness—

    As the Good Book might say—

    As near as our next breath (or our last one),

    And as distant as the boundaries of our soul,

    About which Heraclitus said,

    “You would not find out the boundaries of the soul, even by traveling every path: so deep a measure does it have.”

    Nor could you find a God worthy of the title who could be defined, explained, clarified and made plain.
  • 02/07/2015 — Coot Scoot — Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, part of the ACE Basin National Estuarine Research Reserve, near Bennett’s Point, SC, January 29, 2015

    John Redhead said, “God has no grandchildren.”

    And Thelma Foster said, “Each generation has to find its own way to God.”

    Each of us has to find our work and do it, and find our way to God, working out for ourselves who God is and how we and God are one in each situation as it arises.

    We had rather the preacher’s do the work for us.

    “Just tell us what to believe, Preacher!”

    “But be sure to leave the way, turn aside from the path, and tell us no more of the holy one of Israel!”

    Who is always out before us in the wilderness (or in Galilee, which is another kind of wilderness), waiting for us to catch up and apply ourselves to the task of finding our work and doing it—or, in the terminology of the Bible, of finding our way to the Land of Promise.

    And we want nothing of it.

    “Just tell us what to believe!”

    We don’t believe anything someone hasn’t told us to believe.

    We wouldn’t think of living our way into our own beliefs.

    How lazy is that?
  • 02/07/2015 — Birds of a Feather — Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    Insight is realization gained through reflection on experience.

    It is the experience of experience.

    It is the probing, inquiring, exploration, investigation of experience.

    We have to think about what happened, what is happening,

    And think about our thinking about what happened, what is happening,

    And make connections with what has happened before,

    And what we have thought before,

    And been told before,

    And how that stacks up against what is happening now.

    No unexamined assumptions, or presumptions, or inferences allowed!

    It is in making new connections, transforming or discarding old connections, that we see things differently and change the way we live.

    It is how we think about our experience that opens us to experience and makes all things new.
  • 02/07/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 04 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    We are better observers of reality than we are interpreters of reality.

    Something happens, or doesn’t happen, and we are all over it with conclusions, judgments and verdicts about the worthless state of our affairs, and the complete non-existent status of our prospects.

    “It’s all useless, hopeless, pointless, futile, absurd, and coming to a very bad end!”

    So why wait, we think, let’s just end it now!

    No one ever in the entire history of the universe has been in greater need of a perspective transplant than we are much of the time.

    We have to evaluate our experience from a standpoint different from what it means to our wants and desires that our life is going the way it is.

    What we want and desire is a skewed way of determining what something means.

    The table is tilted. The deck is stacked. Against us. The house—that would be us—is going to lose much more often than not.

    We have to start with a different assumption.

    Here’s one: We aren’t here to have our way and get what we want—we are here to find our life and live it.

    And our life has nothing to do with what we want. It has entirely to do with what is being asked of us—with what is ours to do.

    Now, it doesn’t matter what happens or doesn’t happen—it matters what we do about it, in response to it.

    It matters how we dance with what happens or doesn’t happen so as to rise to the occasion and bring forth the character, gift, genius, art, daemon, that is ours to unfurl in each situation as it arises, in doing right by the situation and the highest good of all concerned.

    It isn’t a question of what happens or doesn’t happen.

    It is a question of what we need to live our life—the life that is our life to live—within the life we are living, and meeting well all that is happening, or not happening there.

    What do we need to meet the day well, and offer what is needed to the situations that come our way?
  • 02/08/2015 — Scott Creek Sunset Panorama 04 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    We think there is a recipe.

    We think if we can just find the right ingredient,

    And add it in the right amount

    At the right time,

    We can tweak the recipe just enough to make all things grand.

    There is no recipe for grand.

    For escaping the grind of living our life as it is each day.

    There is only coming to terms with the way things have been,

    And with the way things are,

    And of finding the way of living today the way today needs to be lived,

    And letting that be that.

    There is only waking up to how things are,

    And doing what you can think to do about them,

    In light of what needs to happen,

    While living in good faith with yourself and with all sentient beings.

    And letting that be grand,

    Seeing that it is beautiful too, just as it comes.
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 02/08/2015 — Blue Ridge Moon — Julian Price Memorial Park, Price Lake and Grandfather Mountain, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, April 2007

    How frequently do you have fresh realizations?

    Realizations are the products of reflection on experience.

    If we aren’t pondering, examining, exploring, questioning, thinking about, looking at—and into—our experiences, convictions, assumptions, inferences and suppositions, we aren’t creating new realizations.

    We are going through the motions of living without being alive.

    Look at everything until you see it, and then look for what else there is to see about it!

    All conclusions are tentative!

    The Foundation Stone is, itself, rooted in a world that is, itself, whirling about the Sun that is, itself, whizzing through the galaxy, that is, itself, blazing through the universe,

    Which makes stability a nice, comforting, aspiration tucked safely away in its own little castle in the air.

    Turn everything over again, looking endlessly for new realizations.

    Find a nice pair of contradictions, and refuse to leave them alone until they share the realizations they have to offer.

    Relish conundrums for the realizations that hide under their wings.

    Pray for encounters with mutually exclusive truths.

    Your life is lived from one realization to another.

    They are the steppingstones to life,

    Way stations on the path to the Promised Land.
  • 02/08/2015 — Balcony House Ladder 02 — Mesa Verde National Park, Mesa Verde, CO, September 2007

    We have to find our horse and ride it for the rest of our life.

    Our horse is my metaphor for our LIFE—the life that is ours to live—

    The life that only we can live.

    Everything else in our life serves as the supporting cast to our LIFE.

    All of our responsibilities, duties, obligations, wounds, traumas, memories, etc.,

    Have a place—a role to play—in preparing us for our LIFE

    And bringing it forth into the time and place of our living.

    Your life has been preparing you to live your LIFE all your life long.

    Get into the saddle and RIDE!
  • 02/08/2015 — Fall Leaves 2008 — Greensboro, NC, November 2008

    Living your life will save your life.

    It’s the only thing that can.

    When you are at the end of your rope,

    With nowhere to turn,

    Turn to your life.

    Not the life you have been living.

    Look where that got you.

    The life that is your life to live—

    The life that only you can live—

    The life that has been waiting for you to get to this point,

    So you can get your other life out of your system

    And get yourself lined up with the life that has been yours from the start.

    Turn to that life,

    And say, “Okay. I’m all yours. Let’s go.”

    The only catch is that you have to mean it.

    Like you have never meant anything else. Ever.

    And then what, you say?

    Wait. Watch. Listen. Look.

    For something to shift.

    For the door to open.

    When it does, walk through.

    It may not look like much.

    It’s testing your will and your spirit,

    To see if you have what it takes,

    Because it will ask hard things of you,

    And you have to have a willing, willful, spirit

    To keep faith with your LIFE.

    If you’ll throw in with it for the duration,

    Your LIFE will save your life.

    It’s the only thing that can.
  • 02/09/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 07 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    Joseph Campbell wrote a book titled, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” that would be me and you, and it’s a lot more than a thousand faces.

    He also wrote a four volume work called “The Masks of God.” That would be “the very present help in time of trouble” that helps all of us heroes along the way. There are more than a thousand masks of God, too.

    Jesus called God, “Father.” Carl Jung referred to God as “the ten million year old man (or woman)” inside each of us. The Greeks and Romans, and the Hindus, come closer to the God behind the masks with their pantheons. They never met a God in other cultures they couldn’t fit into their compilation of the Masks of God.

    God is help for the journey, and IS the journey, just as WE are the journey, underscoring the truth that Jesus invited us to embrace: The Father and I (and you, and you, and you over there) are one!”

    You’ll never begin to understand what I’m saying by thinking about it.

    You will not have a clue until you take up the journey, start out on the path, thinking, maybe, you are going to some far off Promised Land, when you are actually going home. To you. To God.

    But that, too, won’t make much sense until you pick up your walking stick and hie out along the way that is your way home to you. To God.

    Abraham, you know, had to leave home to find home. So do we all. Discovering, as we will, as Carl Jung said, “We are who we always have been, and who we will be.”

    And throughout the way, we will be led by invisible hands, guiding us along the strangest possible path, into the company of people you would never peg as the right kind of people, to the very heart of ourselves, which is the very heart of God, and there we are.

    It will be good to see you. What a time we will have! All along the way!
  • 02/09/2015 — Glade Creek Mill 01, Babcock State Park near Fayetteville, WV, October 2007

    Jesus called God “Father,” and Carl Jung said God was the “Two million year old man” within. And Friedrich Nietzsche said “God is dead.” Who is right?

    Jesus said what Jesus had to say. Carl Jung said what Carl Jung had to say. Friedrich Nietzsche said what Friedrich Nietzsche had to say…

    What do YOU say, is the question.

    If you say, “What Jesus said is the TRUTH!”, I’ll ask you what leads you to believe what Jesus said was the TRUTH—that is, more truthful than anything anybody else has ever said, or will ever say, or could ever say?

    And after some hemming and hawing, you’re likely to say, “I take it on faith!” At which point, I will ask you, “Why do you take that on faith and not something else instead?”

    And we’ll go round and round, but come out at the point where someone you know, or know of, told you Jesus said the TRUTH, and WAS the TRUTH because he said he was,” and they said it in such a convincing way that you took it for the truth and have believed it ever since, and have been confirmed and validated in your choice of what to take on faith from that point on.

    Fine. Jesus said what he had to say, and whomever told you that what Jesus said was the TRUTH said what he, or she, had to say, and you now say about all that what you have to say.

    And what YOU say is what matters most.

    Your word is the only word that matters. What YOU say goes, for you. So, it’s to your lifelong advantage to weigh carefully what you say and leave unsaid, and not just take someone’s word for something that you haven’t thought through on your own.

    What you “take on faith” is your business. We all have to say what matters to us—and live as though it does. We all have to say what WE have to say.

    What do YOU say, is the question. Never mind what somebody else might say. It is what YOU say matters that matters.
  • 02/09/2015 — Glade Creek Mill, 02 —  Babcock State Park near Fayetteville, WV, October 2008

    We are all millers, and “everything is grist for the mill.”

    We are milling our life here.

    We are milling maturity, realization/insight, compassion and grace.

    We are milling enlightenment and understanding.

    We are milling character and integrity.

    And the rule we live by is: “Whatever it takes!”

    Whatever it takes to wake up—

    To realize who we are and what we are about—

    To see what is happening,

    And know what needs to be done about it,

    And get up and do the thing,

    With the gifts, art, genius, knack, ability, flair, faculty and aptitude

    That set us apart and make us us.

    It took being where we have been to be where we are,

    So no whining, no moaning and complaining

    About bad breaks and rotten starts, and disastrous turns of events!

    Our life has been preparing us to live it!

    We have exactly what it takes to step into our future,

    And be there what is needed there.

    So gather yourself for the journey that begins in this moment,

    And look forward to the adventure of a lifetime!
  • 02/09/2015 — Mud Stones 03 — Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California/Nevada, February 2007

    Bill Hamilton tells of going to visit his friend Alan Stacell and finding him bringing paintings on stretched canvas out of his storage shed, loading them in the back of his pickup to haul to the dump—to make room to store his newest work.

    He told Bill, “I paint like a dog wags its tail.”

    And he wasn’t into keeping and selling what he painted.

    Alan understood the nature of the work that is ours to do.

    We aren’t in it for what we might get out of it.

    We do it because we have to—not because we want to—because we cannot Not do it,

    Anymore than a dog can Not wag its tail.

    What do you do because you have to? Because you cannot Not do it? Working in the yard, maybe, cooking, maybe, riding horses, maybe…

    The list of possibilities is a long one.

    As you look for your work, you are looking for something you have to do.

    Like a dog wags its tail.
  • 02/10/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 08 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    I’m looking for invisible religion. It’s hard to find. I can’t get past people waving it in my face. They want me to know they are religious, because I would never guess if they didn’t tell me.

    I’m looking for invisible religion. Until I find it, I’ll have to content myself with practicing it.

    My idea is to forgo all of the trappings of religion, and content myself with practicing good faith presence—

    Which would be the same thing as being transparently present—

    In the lives of others.

    And having little to do with those who don’t return the favor.

    Finding good faith is likely to be as difficult as finding invisible religion.

    The two are the same.
  • 02/10/2015 — Spruce Tree House Ladder — Mesa Verde National Park, Mesa Verde, CO, September 2007

    There are 10,000 possible ways to live our life—and 10,000 is just a symbol for infinity. We have an endless array of options. At least to start with. We have fewer as time goes by, because our physical abilities begin to decline, but, even then, we have thousands of ways to live our life.

    What are we going to do with the time that is ours to live?

    Find the thing that is yours to do, is my suggestion. And do it!

    Find the thing you have to do—the thing that won’t leave you alone. The thing you must do.

    I stop the car and turn around to get the picture.

    And if I’m in the house, I get my camera, get in the car and go out looking for the picture.

    Or, if I’m on the way to take a nap, and think of something that needs to be written, I delay the nap and go write the thing.

    You have to be seized by something, by the thing that is yours to do.

    You have to be grabbed by it, compelled to do it. You have to be obsessed with the thing. Possessed. Haunted. Hounded.

    You have to find the thing that won’t leave you alone until you do it, and then won’t leave you alone until you do it again, and again.

    You can’t just play bridge, or golf, or bingo until you die. You can’t just pass the time.

    You are here to burn yourself alive—to ignite and be ablaze in the service of your work.

    You can’t be dragging though another day of not knowing what to do with yourself, day after day, hoping maybe the undertaker will come for you today. That isn’t what “It’s a good day to die” means!

    Live so that there is nothing left to bury when you die! Burn yourself up!

    And, if you don’t know where to start finding something you can do with all your “heart and mind and soul and strength,” sit still and see what comes up in your imagination. Follow it, and see where it goes.

    Or imagine that you are in a place you enjoy being, and see what meets you there and what happens.

    Or, before you go to sleep tonight, ask your dreamer for a guiding dream, and see what comes.

    Don’t try to think of something. You can’t think this up. This is the kind of mythological thing, the kind of mystery, that cannot come from you. It has to come upon you. You just have to place yourself in liege to it and allow it to carry you away.
  • 02/01/2015 — Green River Mesa — Green River Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Moab, UT, September 2007

    People think they can dial up an adventure.

    They buy a rucksack and go hitchhiking across Europe.

    Big whoopee.

    That’s no adventure. That’s avoiding your responsibilities and thinking how cool you are.

    Read all the stories. No adventure starts out with somebody buying a rucksack and going in search of an adventure.

    Adventures come out of nowhere and nail someone who has something else in mind.

    Luke Skywalker says, “Not me. I got a life.”

    Moses says, “Not me. Take Aaron.”

    Adventure is the last thing on a hero’s mind.

    Even Indiana Jones isn’t after adventure. He’s after treasure: “Fortune and glory, Kid. Fortune and glory.” Adventure tracks him down.

    That’s the way it is with adventure. It looks you up, and says, “Let’s go.”

    The people with the rucksacks hitchhiking across Europe looking for adventure, miss the adventure that is looking for them back home at the place they used to work.
  • 02/11/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 08 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    There are lulls even on the Journey.

    “Action packed” is only in the movies.

    In real time, we move into doldrums and the dog days of summer,

    Even in the winter,

    And have to remember that we don’t run the show,

    Just like at the movies.

    In the whirling mist of the adventure of our LIFE,

    We have to wait for instruction,

    For inspiration,

    For revelation,

    For direction,

    For The Time To Act—

    For there is a time to act and a time to refrain from all action.

    A time to sit and rest,

    A time to cook dinner,

    A time to go for a walk,

    While we wait to be grabbed again,

    To be seized with incentive,

    And hurled again into That Which Needs Us To Do It.

    The time between the times of our visitation

    Has its place.

    We spend that time “recovering from the past,

    And storing up for the future (Robert Ruark).”
  • 02/11/2015 — The Grove HDR Panorama 01 — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015

    Alan Watts once asked Joseph Campbell, “Joe, what form does your Yoga take?” Campbell replied, “I underline passages.”

    Some Yogis are cut out for all the positions.

    Some are cut out for underlining passages.

    Jesus said, to a man he saw working on the Sabbath, “If you know what you are doing, then you are blessed—but if you do not know what you are doing, you are accursed and a transgressor of the Law” (Luke 6:5, Codex Bezea).

    We have to know what we are cut out for, and be right about it, and do it.

    Nobody can hand us our Yoga and tell us to do it.

    We find it for ourselves.

    And we know it when we see it, but.

    We can’t just grab this, or that.

    We can’t just settle for any old life.

    Pick one off the sales rack, put it on and wear it right out of the store.

    We have to know what we are doing.

    Which means, we have to pay attention to what we are doing.

    Does the life we are living fit us?

    Is it right for us?

    What life would be right for us?

    Not some lazy, sitting on the beach and drinking beer life—

    Not some escape from life, some way of avoiding life,

    But of living it to the fullest?

    What would you be doing to live your life to the fullest—

    Putting all that you are into it,

    So that it was the fullest possible expression of YOU?

    What would you be doing to exhibit your loves, interest, gifts,

    And be YOU to the hilt?

    How can you begin to work that into the life you are living?
  • 02/12/2015 — Kisatchie Falls 2009 – Kisatchie Creek, near, well, Kisatchie, LA, July 26, 2009

    My sister Ellen says “No one is where they are.”

    Everyone is somewhere else.

    In check-out lines, they are talking to their friends at the beach.

    At the beach, they are back with their friends in check-out lines.

    How can we hope to live well without being mindfully present in the moment,

    in the time and place, of our living?

    We are never “here, now.”

    We are always relieving ourselves of the present moment

    in favor of different company,

    another time,

    another place.

    “Anywhere but here, now!”
  • 02/12/2015 — Norfolk Southern 9026 02 — Steele Creek Trestle, Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, February 12, 2015

    If you’re talking, you’re not listening.

    Listen more, talk less.

    Give up preaching/lecturing/giving your personal testimony about the value of doing it your way.

    Be quiet for long stretches of time.

    Listen.

    Look.

    See.

    Hear.

    Do only what needs to be done.

    The world will shift toward the good overnight.
  • 02/13/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 06 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    Willpower gets all the press, but Awareness is the key.

    You don’t have to will yourself thin.

    You have to be aware of what you are doing.

    Sit with eating, and see it for what it is.

    Rigidity is the enemy.

    Flexibility is the friend.

    All of our symptoms are rigid systems of living unconsciously.

    Compulsive is rigid, is unconscious.

    Obsessive is rigid, is unconscious.

    Flexibility is fluid and conscious.

    We move from rigid to flexible by way of awareness, not will.

    Once we see how things are, we adjust ourselves appropriately, automatically.

    “Oh, NO we don’t! I KNOW when I am gorging!”

    When is the last time you talked with gorging? Listened? Understood.

    Knowing what you are doing in the sense of “I KNOW when I am gorging!” is knowing THAT you are doing something.

    There is more to be known.

    Gorging the rigid, automatic, unconscious response to what?

    Make what you don’t know known.

    Explore what you think you know in order to discover all you don’t know about it.

    Get to know all you don’t know.

    Be sure you understand what it is trying to do for you—

    How it is attempting to help.

    All of our internal enemies—including rigidity in all forms—are trying to help.

    They are just offering the wrong kind of help in the wrong kind of way.

    Make what is unconscious conscious.

    Transform rigidity into flexibility throughout your life.

    With awareness. Not willpower.
  • 02/13/2015 — Beech Trees HDR — Greensboro, NC, October 2009 

    The best way to be human is in service of the gifts, genius, art, daemon, aptitude, interests, knacks, talents, loves, abilities that came with us into the world.

    What’s your thing? Do it!

    What are you built for? Do it!

    What is your heart’s true love? Do it!

    Where is your life found? Do it!

    If you don’t know the answers to these questions, meditate on them until enlightenment awakens you to YOU.
  • 02/14/2015 — Oregon Inlet Sunset — Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Nags Head, NC, October 24, 2010

    Life is motion. When living things are still, it’s because they are waiting for something, watching for something, like dinner.

    A cat, for instance, can be very still with a bird in sight.

    They can be still when they are sleeping.

    A dog, for instance, can be still for hours.

    Otherwise, they are in motion.

    We think the idea is to freeze our life in place—

    To get things just like we like them, and yell, “FREEZE!!!”

    We like things nice and rigid.

    The more inflexible and unbending, the better.

    We want it done the way it has always been done.

    We want it done the way God wants it done.

    We put up the Ten Commandments all around town.

    Get everybody in line and freeze them in place.

    That’s our idea of really living.

    No worries, no pain.

    So what if we are mostly dead?

    Life calls us away from the comfort of safety and security,

    And knowing what you are supposed to do in every single moment of your life.

    “Wing it, Baby!”

    Like a bird in the air.

    All your life long.

    A still bird is dinner for the cat.
  • 02/14/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 10 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto, Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    We are here to offer ourselves to the world—

    To bring ourselves forth and BE who we are, who we are capable of being.

    We do that by following our interests and doing what we love,

    By being alert to what has life for us and what doesn’t—and staying with what does.

    By sitting with things until we see what we are looking at,

    And hearing what is being said to us—

    Looking beyond the apparent to the real—

    So that we know what we know,

    And live in ways that are appropriate to the occasion.

    Why hold anything back?

    Why not live like it is our only shot at life?

    At seeing what we are made of,

    And showing ourselves what we can do?

    Why die not knowing what we could have done?
  • 02/15/2015 — False Hellebore 2009 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, VA, April 30, 2009

    We have to hear what we are saying to ourselves, and do what needs to be done about it.

    We ignore, dismiss, discount, deny what we tell ourselves on a regular basis.

    And, it’s killing us.

    We are killing ourselves by living as though we do not exist.

    We make ourselves invisible to us by refusing to see ourselves jumping up and down, waving frantically, placing stop signs and red flags in our path and holding up flashing neon arrows pointing to The Way.

    We think we know what we have to say.

    And we think we can’t do anything about it.

    We don’t want to listen because we are so hellbent on doing it our way,

    Or so helpless to do it any other way.

    It takes courage, imagination and faith in ourselves to listen to ourselves and do what needs to be done about what we have to say.

    Courage comes from living courageously.

    Imagination comes from sitting quietly with The Situation and playing with the possibilities.

    Faith in ourselves comes from believing there is more to us than meets the eye, and trusting ourselves to what we do not know.

    There isn’t a better way to live the life left for living.
  • 02/15/2015 — Price Lake Sunset — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, June 2008

    We think it’s about being reasonably happy and contented, with plenty of pastimes and entertainments, and enough friends to keep us company.

    Ask anybody what life is about and they will tell you it’s about having enough money to live on and be able to enjoy your life until you die.

    Nowhere in this wildly popular scenario is any mention of responsibility to an Inner Other Whom We Do Not Know.

    There is no idea of having an actual, specific, particular life to live that we have to discover and endeavor to approximate if not actualize in and with the life we are living.

    We think our life is up to us, and we have complete freedom to design and live it with, well, reckless abandon—being “anything we want to be.” Doing “anything we want to do.”

    You think Sisyphus had a tough job. How about mine? Convincing you that you have an Inner Other with a specific life in mind for you, and that it is your task to bring your life into alignment with the life that is yours to live. Sisyphus wouldn’t consider trading.

    He would just laugh and ask me, “How’s it going?” I’d have to admit it’s a hard sell.

    Telling people they have innate qualities, values, character, temperament, perspective, etc., that are theirs to incarnate and bring to life in the way they live.

    That they are here to give shape and form to their particular ratio of human traits and attributes,

    And bring them forth in specific ways in a specific life.

    I’m generally interrupted in mid-sentence with, “Have you seen my skateboard? I keep forgetting where I left it.” Or something equally relevant.
  • 02/16/2015 — Crabtree Falls Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway near Little Switzerland, NC, May 2008

    We have to do the work—live the work—of communing with the Invisible Other Within and consciously incarnating the invisible world, the values, qualities and character exhibiting who we Really Are, in the visible world of normal, apparent, reality.

    We have to bring ourselves forth to meet the world every day—intentionally, with mindful, compassionate attention to both the inner and the outer worlds.

    We have to work it all out. We have to make it work.

    We—our conscious self—are the contact point between worlds, and have to make the connection come alive, with sparks, and fire, and “What was that?” by the way we live with a foot in each world.

    It takes thinking and it takes doing. We have to practice doing what we know needs to be done: Listening to the inner world via dreams and fantasies, slips of the tongue, wrong turns, mistakes, insight, symbols, etc.

    We have to be always looking for ways to make our gifts, genius, daemon, art real in the outer world, bringing ourselves forth into the light of day, and being who we are.

    This is the work that cannot be put off until a more propitious and favorable time.

    At the same time, we have to be aware of “the times,” and that what is called for here isn’t called for there, and living so as to be and do what is appropriate in each situation as it arises—and true to ourselves across all situations.

    Attention, awareness, mindfulness and compassion are always in season, and we have to be attentive, aware, mindful and compassionate through all circumstances, in every situation: What here? What now?

    We can’t just think about doing the work—though we must think about it—we have to do it.

    The work of being who we are, where we are, how we are, when we are—in each here-and-now of our life is not to be neglected or delayed
  • 02/16/2015 — Repair Work — Deer Isle, ME, October 2009

    To see what needs to happen in a situation, we have to see the entire situation.

    And, we have to be committed to serving motion, movement and flow—

    Not rigid, static, unbending, immobile policies, procedures, positions and practices.

    That would be maintaining the status quo at all costs.

    We cannot do that.

    We cannot go into a situation thinking, before we know anything about the situation, that it is our place to keep things in place and to prevent anything from happening.

    To see what needs to happen in a situation, we have to see the entire situation, and be strong in the service of helping happen what needs to happen.

    The attitude of Alabama’s Chief Justice is NOT the kind of attitude that situations need.

    We have to read the times, and know when they are a-changing—

    And, more than that, know when they need to be changed even before anyone else catches on,

    And serve the need for change in ways that help it become apparent to all that the times need a-changing.

    We have to be so sensitive, so alert, to each situation as it arises that we see what is going to be necessary before anyone sees the necessity of what we see.

    This is the place of prophets who are, by definition, ahead of their times.

    Whoever heard of a prophet who was behind the times?

    We are to see what needs to be done, and live in its service, and let the world wake up to the truth that was true long before it became obvious to anyone.

    Seeing what is happening, and what needs to happen, is the kind of vision we work for and serve, taking up the legacy of the prophets of lore, and changing the world.
  • 02/17/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 04 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    Seeing, hearing, understanding and knowing how things are

    Lead to doing what needs to be done about them

    And being who we are.

    Being is realized, exhibited, incarnated and expressed in doing.

    We don’t know who we are until we see ourselves revealed in what we are doing.

    Doing brings us forth—often against our will.

    We think we are what we have done in the past—generally, the far distant past.

    “That isn’t me,” we say, as though we know what all is me and what all is not me, and dare not offend any gods by besmudging ourselves with the Not Me in the least little way.

    No one ever became Me except through experimentation with Not Me. Lots of endless, on-going, experimentation.

    We lead ourselves to Me by trusting ourselves to do what needs to be done even if that entails a brush with Not Me, and risking a rendezvous that transforms the way we think of ourselves.

    The people who are rigidly encased in Me and refuse all escapades with Not Me are dead long before they die—citizens of Zombie Nation, going through the motions of living without being alive.

    Doing expands being, enlarges and deepens being, and wakes us up to who we Also Are.

    None of which we will into place.

    All of which we allow and encourage simply by Seeing, Hearing, Understanding, and Knowing what is happening and what needs to be done about it.

    Awareness is the ground of doing and being.

    Only those who don’t see are safe from the requirements of life.
  • 02/17/2015 — The Grove HDR Panorama 07 — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015 — The Big House now serves as the office of the refuge.

    We have a numinous core, but we can be distracted—consumed—by the 10,000 things. This, you might say, is the heart of the problem.

    We have divided allegiances.

    On the one hand, we want to be at peace with ourselves,

    And on the other hand, we want everything else as well.

    What’s it going to be?

    It has all devolved into the current mess of our own making.

    We want spiritual oneness with the heart of the universe,

    And we want all our little heart desires.

    Show of hands here: Anybody ever heard of making a choice?

    We give up this to get that.

    We can be spiritually attuned to the numinous core of life, but.

    That means living aligned with—serving and exhibiting—qualities, character and values at odds with what passes for “the good life.”

    That would be the life hawked by the culture of capitalism, commercialism and consumerism.

    Name me a legitimate prophet, master or guru with a big screen TV.

    Jesus is ROTFL. NO! Throwing up. NO! Crying. All the churches these days have big screen TV’s.

    The life you are living is interfering with the life that is waiting to be lived.

    We can be spiritually aligned with our numinous core and still pay the bills, but.

    They will be different bills.

    When we change our mind about what is important, everything changes.

    What’s it going to be?

    Don’t tell me—let me guess.

    We are going to say this is important and live as though that is.
  • 02/18/2015 — Otter Point Morning — Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, ME, September 2009 

    My best advice to us at this point in the day:

    Get on top of your game!

    Realize who you are, where you are, when you are, how you are, why you are, what you are and what’s going on around you at all times!

    Know what is happening and what you are doing about it, and what needs to be done about it!

    Don’t miss anything!

    Pay attention!

    Be awake! Aware! Alive!

    To the moment you are living and the time that is at hand!

    What you need to know is plain before you in each situation as it arises! Don’t walk past it unknowing!

    What you do about it is your business.
  • Used in Short Talks On Good And Bad Religion — 02/08/2015 — Alligator Pond B&W — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015

    Good hands you spirituality without any theology, dogma and doctrine attached.

    Good religion hands you spirituality straight from the heart—

    From the heart of good religion straight to your heart—

    Without any of the embellishments, improvements, alterations and enhancements

    That bad religion is so proficient in producing and providing.

    I wish we had another word for “spirituality,”

    Because that is so encumbered with theological augmentation

    That you can’t possibly be a spiritual person without “good theology,”

    As though what we think is more important than what we know.

    Spirituality is knowing that can’t be thought, told, defined or explained as in:

    “The Tao that can be said is not the eternal Tao.”

    Spirituality is our connection with the Invisible World—

    With the Unconscious World.

    It is unconscious because we are not conscious of it—

    Because it is more than can be made conscious,

    Except through symbols and metaphors.

    We have to talk about the unconscious world of Spirit,

    Of Spiritual Reality,

    With symbols and metaphors because we cannot say directly

    What we know to be so,

    Because what we know cannot be said.

    So we talk about “the wellspring of living water,”

    But it isn’t an actual well,

    Or actual water,

    And how can water be alive, anyway?

    The entire vocabulary of spiritual discourse is such

    That you have to know what I mean

    Before you can understand what I’m saying,

    And without the experience of the Invisible World,

    There is nothing that can be said

    To enable you to understand

    What I’m talking about.
  • 02/18/2015 — Scott Creek Silhouette Panorama — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, January 28, 2015

    Carl Jung said that we have to feed the Inner Person—

    That, unfed, She, He, begins to rumble and stir around,

    Looking for something to eat,

    And creates all manner of trouble in the outer world of normal, apparent, reality.

    We feed the Inner Person by consciously participating in the Mystery of Symbol and Metaphor.

    Systematic Theology has exorcised Mystery from its rich trove of symbols and metaphors

    By carefully explaining and defining each one.

    The Cross is no Mystery.

    It is where Jesus died to save us from our sins.

    Nothing more to say.

    And so it is with every last symbol in the church’s possession.

    The Bread, the Wine, the Water of Baptism…

    Our place is to recover the symbols and the Mystery at the heart of each one.

    And to participate consciously and wondrously

    In their Resurrection from the Dead.

    They all mean more than they have ever been said to mean—

    But to explore the world of  “more than words can say”

    We have to abandon Good Theology

    And swim in the waters of pre-theology,

    Which, of course, would be Paganism from the theologians point of view.

    True Belief, from mine.
  • 02/18/2015 — Mud Stones 01 — Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California/Nevada, February 2007

    How many stop signs do you generally run through before the crash?

    How many crashes do you think it will take to get you to start heeding stop signs?

    Our guides are present and reliable, but.

    We. Have. To. Read. The. Signs.
  • 02/19/2015 — The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 16 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    What is your idea of optimal living? Better have a clear one to guide you to what you are doing here, and to direct your choices about how to live your life.

    Here’s mine. We’ll call her Marion. She lived just off a gravel road in the rural deep south. She was in her late fifties, early sixties. She had been in the Peace Corps, had worked as an activist, had a PhD, had been a therapist, and left it all to come live in a barely standard wooden frame house in the deep south.

    Her life consisted mostly of piddling around, cooking, doing chores, growing vegetables. She made pottery and sold some. Fed the birds. Weeded her garden. She was the local therapist and helped people more as drop-bys than as having a scheduled appointment. She took a fee if it were offered, but it might come in the form of eggs or tomatoes or squash.

    She was completely who she was, centered and grounded upon the foundation of values that had proven themselves to be valuable to her through the course of her life. What she believed to be important and how she lived were one thing.

    She was present and aware without being pushy or willful. She lived her life and let life be lived about her without trying to interfere or insert herself into life in any way. She was quite content to let the world go the way of the world, while she went the way of Marion.

    She enjoyed what was to be enjoyed about every day. Grieved what was to be grieved. Mourned what was to be mourned. Rejoiced in what was to be rejoiced in. Did what was needed to be done. Participated in life to the extent she felt like her participation was called for, and lived as one appropriately engaged with her life and her world, responding to each moment in a way that was proper for the moment.

    She had a life that would bore most people, and would appeal to very few, and it was just right for her. Quiet, compassionate, reflective, present, secluded-but-engaged.

    It’s a life I have been living toward, without consciously intending it, all my life. Now, I am consciously intending it.

    Find the people who are doing it the way you think it ought to be done, and see how much like them you already are.
  • 02/19/2015 — Steele Creek Trestle Panorama 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, February 12, 2015

    When I am doing what is legitimately My Thing,

    And you are doing what is legitimately Your Thing,

    We are doing the same thing.

    The sameness of the thing will be the unifying factor uniting all things,

    In one of those miraculous kind of ways.

    The sameness of the thing may well be at first imperceptible.

    It may appear that the two things are poles apart and mutually exclusive.

    They come closer together the closer we look,

    And as we talk about Our Things, we will immediately find ourselves saying, “Me, too!” “That’s right!”

    The same with me!”

    And the fact that you are riding horses and I’m writing these little snippets will recede into the distant background,

    And what will be the same One is the two of us who are doing our thing.

    A note on legitimacy.

    Our thing is legitimately our thing when it is no one else’s idea.

    When we aren’t doing it to be like someone else,

    Or to be liked by someone else,

    Or to make someone else happy,

    Or to get something other than doing it from it.

    It is our thing when it springs from us like a sprout from an acorn.

    It is our thing when it grabs us by the nape of our neck and hurls us into its service, against our will and better judgment.

    It is our thing when it charms us with its spell and steals our heart as true love at first sight.

    It is our thing when we wake up to its claim upon us, and spend our life in liege to its service.

    If you have something like this going for something, it is Your Thing.

    Do it.
  • 02/20/2015 — Edisto Beach Sunrise 12 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, January 29, 2015

    We have to make our peace with our life each day.

    We make our peace with the day each day.

    Each day brings some other inconvenience, some additional wrinkle, something else to adjust to, to work around and fit into our life.

    We don’t get it smoothed out and in place just like we like it.

    We constantly work with “the whole catastrophe,” with the gestalt, the overall “situation” of our life, fitting ourselves into it anew each day.

    That is part of the work of being alive.

    Being alive today is different than being alive yesterday.

    Today asks new things of us.

    Or, old things come back around, to be dealt with again.

    Growing up requires us to take it all in stride,

    To take what the day brings and do what needs to be done about it, as though for the first time.

    We are not to be surprised, shocked, undone, overwhelmed that this is how it is,

    Because this is how it is.

    It’s like breathing.

    We have to breathe all the damn time.

    One breath after another, every day, why doesn’t it leave us alone?

    Breathing, breathing, breathing, always breathing, why don’t we get a break from breathing?

    All the inconveniences and disruptions are part of the framework, like breathing is.

    Accept it, because it isn’t going away, make your peace with it, step into it, and do what you can with it today.

    Tomorrow is coming with it’s own armload of inconveniences and disruptions.

    You have to get over, and deal with, today’s today.
  • 02/20/2015 — Scott Creek Sunset 01 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    The Unconscious is geared to helping us express who we are.

    We realize who we are in the act of expressing who we are—

    Not by thinking about it.

    My fifth grade teacher told my mother in one of those parent-teacher conferences,

    “Jimmy spends a lot of time looking out the window.”

    I still do.

    What we do shows us who we are—

    Not what we say we will do,

    And not who we say we are.

    The Unconscious’ only mission is to bring us forth,

    By having us do the things that bring us forth.

    The Unconscious only wants us to be who we ARE,

    Not who we pretend to be,

    Not who we wish we were,

    Not who we say we are,

    Now who we will ourselves to be,

    But who we ARE.

    The Unconscious is with us to birth us into being.

    We cannot use the so-called “power of the Unconscious”

    For any other purpose.

    We can align ourselves with the Unconscious

    Or oppose it all the way to the grave.

    Carl Jung said, “We count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”

    The Unconscious is with us to see that we do not waste our life

    But we can trump the Unconscious by willfully serving our own ends.

    To live our life or waste our life is our call to make.
  • 02/21/2015  —  Edisto Beach Sunrise 01 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    Our life is wasted if it doesn’t wake us up.

    Our life is wasted if it isn’t waking us up.

    Awake is not a steady, static, state of being.

    Awake is the path of awareness

    That winds through the heart of Gethsemane

    And across the face of Golgotha

    To the empty tomb.

    May all of our tombs be empty!

    The path there is the one that tells that tale!

    How awake were we on the path carrying each of us to the tomb?

    That question is the cross we carry,

    That each must answer for herself, for himself,

    All along the way.

    If you think you are awake, take up Sudoku.

    That will wake you up to how much you are missing

    That is right before your eyes.

    There is nothing to Sudoku if you see what’s there.

    Same with being alive, with being awake.

    The two are one.

    We are alive to the extent that we are awake,

    And awake to the extent that we are alive.

    A lot of people wake up just enough to be hopeless and despondent.

    How awake is that?

    But you can’t wake them up any more than you can wake up those who are sound asleep.

    “We SEE!” they say, “And it is SOOOO HOPELESS!”

    Everything is a doorway, a threshold, to seeing something else, something more.

    Hopelessness is just another doorway, just another threshold.

    Keep looking. Keep listening.

    There is always more than meets the eye.

    Any eye.
  • 02/21/2015  — Two Rocks B&W — Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine, September 2004

    Art and literature, music and nature

    Are how we experience and express numinous reality.

    If you are empty, burned-out, dejected and depressed,

    And can’t remember the last time you were alive,

    You have to reconnect with the numinous

    Through art, literature, music and nature.

    It will help if you are quiet, mindful and reflective

    Throughout, and following, the experience.

    It is also essential that you return regularly

    To participate in the wonder and beauty of the experience

    In what remains of the time left for living.

    Throw in good food and good conversation

    And you’ll be rolling in life abundant in no time.
  • 02/21/2015  — Cypress Fire — Down East North Carolina, November 2004

    Here is an example of how I work with my dreams. This is from last night:

    A group of us are concerned about launching an undersea rescue operation to release an undetermined number of people encased in a large bubble somewhere under water.

    There is a plan to send a navy submarine to penetrate the bubble and save the people, but we don’t know how many people there are, or what impact on the bubble the submarine’s penetration would have—and the whole affair seems absurd to me.

    We don’t know if the people want to be saved, or how they got there, or if they prefer life in the bubble to life on the surface. I’m for leaving them to their fate, no matter what that might be.

    Upon Reflection (after awakening):  The sea is the unconscious and the bubble is consciousness doing its part to make the unconscious conscious.

    I can imagine the people in the bubble with their faces pressed into the surface of the separating membrane, straining to see what they can of the contents of the unconscious as they swim in and out of view.

    They enlarge the bubble by the work they are doing to be attentive to, aware of, and engaged with the unconscious contents—to the extent that they are able to do that.

    We, on the surface, are surface consciousness with our theories and intellectual understanding being limited to perceived threats and dangers, talking about sending a military vehicle on a rescue mission—an arc of salvation to save those who don’t need saving.

    What would happen, I wonder, if we, individually, began to swim out to see, diving underwater in search of the bubble?

    Would we find that we have our own individual, personal, bubble that would keep us breathing while we made our way to the larger, corporate bubble of consciousness?

    We won’t know by thinking about it. We have to take the plunge to find out.

    I do this king of thing each morning with the dreams of the previous night, some times pondering the dream throughout the day to see what occurs to me. Writing it down soon after awakening makes it possible to remember it and return to it during the day.
  • 02/22/2015  —  Sunrise at Schwabacher Landing — Grand Teton National Park, Jackson, Wyoming, September 2004

    We commune with our life and live it.

    Our life is not something we think up.

    Our life is like an idea.

    We do not think up our ideas.

    An idea is not the result of a rational, logical process.

    We don’t list all the possibilities of ideas,

    And then make a list of all the pros and cons of each one,

    And decide by a process of elimination

    Which idea is the best idea to have.

    An idea comes to us from beyond us.

    We are had by our ideas.

    An idea possesses us, blessing us, graces us, transforms us.

    That’s the way it is with our life.

    Our life is an idea with our name on it—

    That claims us for its own,

    And enlists us in its service for our lifetime.

    We make ourselves available to our life

    By realizing it isn’t what the culture tells us it is,

    And looking at possibilities we have rejected, dismissed, discarded

    Because they weren’t going to provide us with wealth and security

    And the admiration of our friends.

    What are we fighting to keep from doing?

    What do we know that it is and hope that it isn’t because someone wouldn’t like it if it is?

    We have to commune with our life and live it.

    Pay the fare, and ride the ride.
  • 02/22/2015  —  The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 13 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015 

    I’m developing a routine that is conducive to my life. To the life that is my life to live.

    You’ll probably have to wait until the kids are out on their own and you’re retired from the world of necessity, obligation and duty before you will be able to do something similar.

    And, if the world of necessity, obligation and duty follows you into retirement, it’s your own fault, and  your place to do something about it.

    Not that necessity, obligation and duty don’t encroach, but they sure don’t run, and ruin, every day.

    The Japanese of lore held that spiritual development was the task of old age, with youth and middle age reserved for family and career.

    It remains a good model to follow—giving old age a purpose beyond golf and bingo, drinking heavily and sleeping late.

    Old age has its own business to tend, its own work to do: Living here and now in ways that enable us to enjoy the moment,

    And bringing ourselves forth to meet the challenges, trials and ordeals of the last part of our life,

    No longer are we consumed by the responsibilities of life in the working world—now our LIFE is our responsibility, and we have to live it in the way it needs to be lived so as to express who we are, and to do what is ours yet to do.

    How shall we live to serve our LIFE in the second half of life? That’s our problem to work out for ourselves, and we have to be about it with intensity and intention, because we are running out of time.

    We have to develop a routine that takes our life into account, and is more than just filling up empty hours.

    I recommend working into each day time for meditation, silence, recollection and reflection—in order to foster new realizations that transform our perspective and provide shape, substance and form to the life that we have yet to live.

    And, while you cannot devote yourself full time to this kind of work until you retire, you can honor it with gestures in its direction—small segments of time devoted to focusing yourself on the life that upholds, sustains and waits beyond this life, as true love might keep you going to the happy reunion at last.
  • 02/23/2015  —  Scott Creek Sunset 02 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    In developing a routine conducive to your life—to the life that is your life to live, and not the one you just fell into—

    You have to develop your sensitivity to what is your life and what is not.

    It’s the Hot/Cold game of childhood:

    Now you’re getting warmer, oops, now you are getting colder, oh, you are freezing to death now, now you are on fire…

    You feel it. You know it. Nobody can talk you out of it.

    “I’m freezing to death here on the beach in 90 degree weather.”

    “I’m blazing away here on the ski slopes in 28 degree weather.”

    Or something like that, in times and places appropriate to you.

    You know where you are fully alive and where you are quite dead.

    Tune into that,

    And know when you are on the beam, and when you are off of it.

    And, develop a routine for living that is conducive to life on the beam.

    You won’t get much cooperation.

    You will get a lot of opposition and resistance.

    From within and from without.

    Jesus said it: “Straight is the way and narrow is the gate that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Broad is the way and wide is the gate that leads to destruction, and those who find it are many.”

    It is easy to be dead. It is difficult to be alive.

    You are your own salvation and your own damnation.

    You are the key to life or death—to living in ways that bring you to life or to living in ways that are death all dressed up like the Life of the Party.

    You develop and serve the routine that leads to being alive or that leads to being mostly dead.

    What you say goes.
  • 02/24/2015  —  Black Birch B&W— Rocky Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway, Vernon, VA, March 2005 

    Our life is the most direct route to God.

    Our life is the ONLY route to God.

    Our life is the ONLY way to LIFE.

    God and LIFE are one entity.

    You can’t get to God except by way of your LIFE,

    And you can’t get to your LIFE except by way of God.

    You can’t get to God, or think of God, using the terms and concepts of Orthodox Christian Doctrine.

    Or any doctrine,

    Of any religion.

    Here’s what Carl Jung has to say about God:

    “The Absolute, the Eternal, is transcendental. It is something we cannot grasp at all, for we are not yet eternal, and, consequently, can say nothing about eternity, our consciousness being what it is.”

    “We can only form an opinion about it (the eternal), with the help of the unconscious.”

    Our idea of God is an opinion based on our experience with unconscious (because it is beyond consciousness), numinous (because we sense it to be holy/divine and beyond words) reality.

    And, we live our way there IF we live with our eyes open.

    “Asking, seeking, knocking,” to use Jesus’ expression.

    Those who don’t ask, seek or knock—who don’t have eyes to see, ears to hear, or hearts that are capable of understanding, and minds that are capable of knowing more than they have been told—are simply sitting around, waiting for a miracle.

    They are “Waiting for Godot.”

    Our life—our LIFE—is where we experience as much of God as can be experienced on this side of eternity.

    If we are going to know God, here and now, we are going to have to be alive to our life—the life that is LIFE for us—and live it to the fullest, doing our best by it—and not kidding ourselves about what our best is—every day throughout the time left for living.
  • 02/24/2015  —  The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 09 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    I think Mindfulness Meditation (Check out Jon-Kabat Zinn’s books on Mindfulness Meditation and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) offers the best process for finding your life and living it.

    Mindfulness is a way of being aware of what is happening and what needs to be done about it—and what your part is, or could be, in doing what the situation calls for.

    “The Situation” could be anything from a leaking roof, to how you pay the bills, to whom you marry and whether you have children. It covers everything.

    You cannot think your way through these things. You have to live your way through them, trusting yourself to know what to do after you have thought yourself into a cul-de-sac and can find no exit—in a “I’ll know what to do when I find myself doing it” kind of way.

    Thinking has its place. Reason, logic and intellectual consideration play an important part in the process of finding and living our life. Good judgment, like mindfulness, takes everything into account. Every. Thing.

    And allows what needs to happen to percolate up from the depths of unconscious knowledge as the right fit for this here and this now.

    We cannot wait for a problem to begin meditating. We prepare the way for the life that needs us to live it by doing the things that nurture it into being: Meditation, working with dreams and symbols, and practicing mindfulness.
  • 02/25/2015  —  Zabriske Point Panorama 01 — Death Valley National Park, California, April 2006

    There is no protection, immunity or indemnity.

    We are on our own, alone, and up against the Powers and Principalities at work in the world,

    Represented by members of our own family (The Aunt, The Brother, and The Sister-In-Law, etc. — You know the ones I mean, unless they are you, and then you have no idea what I’m talking about, which is an indication that you need to re-examine your interaction with family members and all other people).

    Simply put, we are all victims, or potential victims, of all that is mean, heartless, ruthless, cruel and evil at work in our world.

    We need help. And, wouldn’t you know it, like that, help is at hand. But. It asks hard things of you.

    God is a very present help in time of trouble.

    Now, you need to read back over a few of these recent posts to find the one where I talk about God, so that we are clear about what I mean when I use the word. It isn’t what they told you in Sunday school. But.

    “Invoked or not invoked, the God is always present.”

    In order to enjoy the full protection, for what that is worth, of the God who is always present, we have answer the question:

    How do we live so that our relationship with the God, and with ourselves, is exhibited and expressed—made plain—by the quality of our relationship with all other sentient beings?

    We answer the question by the degree of good faith and integrity of being that we exhibit and express in our relationship with all sentient beings.

    We have to live in good faith with ourselves and all sentient beings,

    And we have to live with integrity of being—transparent to ourselves and to all sentient beings.

    As we do that, the God is with us for good in all things—

    And our best line of defense is sensing early on and staying far away from the people and places that lack good faith and integrity of being.

    If we hang out with the wrong people and/or in the wrong places, not even the full presence and protection of the God is going to keep bad things from happening to us.

    We will, as they say in the deep south, “have done it to our own selves” by running the stop signs, and red lights, and through the road closed barriers to our own sorrow and remorse.

    The National Park Service motto is fitting for every life situation:

    Your Safety Is Your Responsibility.

    The more we live with good faith and integrity of being, the better able we are to sense that in other people—and to sense the absence of it in other people.

    We are to hang with those who have it and avoid those who don’t.

    And, if you choose to ignore the truth of what I’m saying here, and live like you want to, it is only a matter of time until “you will have done it to your own self.” Again.
  • 02/05/2015  —  Mesquite Dunes and Grapevine Mountains 11 — Death Valley National Park, California, April, 2006 Sit down. I’m sure you are not ready for this.

    We sometimes wonder what God would have us do in a particular situation, what God has in mind for our life, what it would take to make God happy.

    Here it comes. Straight from God to me to you.

    When you are living transparent to yourself, at one with who you are, exhibiting on the outside who you are on the inside, with full integrity of being and in good faith with yourself and all living things, you are, ahem, God.

    You are doing you better than God could do you.

    In Jesus’ terminology, the Father and you are one.

    Then your life is coming right out of you in response to the time and place of your living.

    You are spontaneously being you doing what you need to do in the dance with what is happening now.

    You don’t have to get it from God.

    It would disrupt your flow if you called time out and had a prayerful chat with God.

    God doesn’t want to talk to you.

    That would be like some ice skater in the Olympics stopping her routine to go talk with her coach about the next jump. What???

    It’s YOUR life! YOU do it just exactly the way YOU would do it if it were you doing it.

    It IS YOU doing it!

    Don’t worry about what God would like or not like.

    You focus exclusively on getting you into your life, being fully who you are, so that body, mind, heart and soul are one and you are all synched up and aligned inner with outer, and you are doing what is truly you without a hitch in your stride.

    You get you down and do it the way you would do it, and God is going to be just fine.

    That’s the way Jesus did it.

    And the way Jesus did it is the way to do it.

    Get in there and be YOU.

    Ride the bull the way YOU would ride it, ‘til the bell rings.
  • 02/26/2015  —  Edisto Beach Sunrise 11 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    We are always waking up.

    Our life is always circling back around,

    Looking to see what we are ready for now.Looking to see how much we can take,

    What we can see,

    Now.

    We live our life—the one that is ours to live—in stages,

    A little at a time.

    We never are fully-blown-at-our-prime-who-we-are.

    We are always more-or-less-who-we-are-in-the-process-of-becoming.

    Yet, we are always hiding in there—in the life we are living—somewhere,

    And, if you know what to look for,

    You can see us through all that is Not Us

    In an “Oh, THERE you are, Peter!” kind of way.

    But we would never win an Oscar

    For the closeness of our approximation

    Of the me we are striving to be.
  • 02/26/2015  —  Cathedral Rock Panorama — Yosemite National Park, California, April 2006

    Check me out on this.

    Run your own experiment.

    Here’s the theory that has been so far borne out in my life,

    But that’s a small population sample,

    And I have no idea if what I’m saying applies to anyone but me:

    Knowing how things are and what is happening—

    Insofar as that can be known—Both internally and externally,

    Leads automatically, spontaneously,

    To doing what needs to be done in response.

    All we have to do is get out of the way,

    And allow the right response to flow from us to the situation as a hole.

    The less we think about what to do, the better.

    Thinking about what we ought to do to achieve some correct outcome

    Interferes with our ability to simply see what is going on

    On all levels.

    It’s the right seeing that leads to right action.

    Knowing is doing—

    If we don’t get in the way with our idea of how things ought to be done,

    Or what outcome needs to be THE outcome.

    Be aware of everything you can be aware of—

    Internally and externally—

    And get out of the way in terms of imposing your preferences on the situation.

    Be aware of your preferences along with everything else,

    And see what you do,

    And how things turn out.

    It’s an experiment with life,

    And a way of connecting with—

    And trusting yourself to—

    The Other World of invisible, intangible, unconscious

    (Because we are not conscious of it)

    Reality
  • 02/27/2015  —  Once a Pier — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    Carl Jung said, “Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul … And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of the mill.”

    We have to understand that “the mill” supports us in living “the symbolic life.”

    We settle for too little

    We work at “the mill” to make money to pay for food, clothing and shelter—and our entertainments and pastimes—

    And think about retirement, which consists of nothing but entertainments and pastimes—

    Ignoring “the symbolic life” altogether.

    We put aside the essential,

    And live in the service of the non-essential,

    And our life becomes a mechanism for denying the emptiness of our living.

    We have to recover our original purpose,

    Find and live “the symbolic life”

    With all our heart, soul, mind and strength—

    With all our heart and soul, body and mind—

    As though everything depends upon our living symbolically,

    Alive to the symbols that uphold, sustain, direct and guide us,

    Because it does.
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradictions, etc., 02/28/2015  —  Cypress Morning — Down East North Carolina, November 2004

    We live between doing what is “right,” that is, what is expected of us,

    And doing what is Right for us—what is instrumental to us and “food for our soul.”

    We have responsibilities to the external world and to the internal world,

    And it is our place as conscious human beings to make it right with both worlds—

    To live in the space between worlds

    And bear consciously the pain of the tension of the contradictions, contraries, discordances and dichotomies between the worlds,

    And make peace—

    Working things out, reconciling, integrating, aligning, synchronizing, creating harmony and good will—

    Between incompatible aims, interests and desires.

    That’s a task worthy of the title Mission Impossible.

    And, it’s great!

    It is who we are, what we do, making peace between the worlds,

    And bearing in our bodies the pain of the cross of contradictions.

    We all have a life that cannot be lived,

    And, yet, we have to live it—a life that is at odds with itself.

    And we need help doing that—being conscious, aware, mindful of that—

    We need help remembering “This can’t be done!”

    And we need help doing it.

    The kind of help that helps is to acknowledge the absurdity,

    and to know that we belong to the world of our soul,

    and are only living in the world of normal, apparent reality, with its rules and structures.

    We live out of one world, with our heart in that world, belonging to that world,

    And we live in the other world—

    and we have to know where we belong.

    We have to be grounded in the invisible world

    as we do what is necessary to pay the bills in the visible world.

    But the visible world does not own our soul—

    it does not own us.

    We are of the other world, in this world.

    And have to remember that, and work it out.
  • 02/28/2015  —  Dorys — Rockport Harbor, Maine, September, 2004

    Do not force your way upon the world,

    Or willfully pursue your good at the expense of the true good of others,

    But live in the service of that which is trying to come forth

    In the times and places of our living

    As blessing and grace upon all who live there with us.
  • 02/28/2015  —  Edisto Beach Sunrise 05 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    You can’t coach heart.

    You can’t give heart to someone who doesn’t have it.

    But, you can lose heart just like that.

    Heart is the easiest thing to lose,

    And the hardest thing to find.

    Heart and soul are inseparable,

    And loss of soul is right up there with death itself

    For being the end of life on every level except the 98.6 and breathing one.

    Without heart and soul we are as good as dead.

    You would think there would be more in the way of instruction

    Regarding the care and feeding of heart and soul.

    What nourishes heart?

    What nurtures soul?

    That should be the stuff of graduate degrees,

    At the very least, a class required of all entering freshmen.

    Instead, there is nothing.

    We are all left to our own devices,

    With a heart and soul already thinking about wandering off

    In search of a more considerate host

    Dedicated to their well-being.
  • 03/01/2015 —Pamlico Sky — Pamlico Sound, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2006

    We have this idea that if everything would just go our way, we would be fine.

    Our way never includes anything that would require us to grow up.

    Or change our mind.

    Or see things differently.

    We can be wrong about every single thing and still be “fine” with everything going our way.

    And everybody thinks that way.

    Which means we are always running into people who have a different idea about the way things should go.

    It’s a hot item these days just to kill those people.

    It isn’t as though you are actually killing someone.

    They are all Nobodies with ways like theirs!

    It doesn’t hurt to kill people like that.

    The world would be better off without them in it.

    OUR world would be.

    So we X them out.

    That’s the CIA Solution.

    Except that in the Kremlin it has a different name.

    And it’s called the ISIS Solution in the Middle East.

    It’s been around for a long time,

    And it doesn’t work, but everyone believes in it.

    Just kill the people who aren’t doing it your way,

    And soon, only your way will remain.

    I’m here to talk you into stepping back from your way.

    I’m here to talk you into seeing how Not Your Way

    Is trying to get you to see, hear, think, BE different.

    It isn’t like you have always thought it is.

    Wake up.

    Change your ways.

    Accommodate yourself to your life.

    Waking up means growing up.

    It means being friends with the opposition.

    So that no one is X-ed out,

    And everyone enjoys the company of everyone.

    And everyone is waking up,

    And growing up.

    And loving being alive.

03/01/2015  —  Eclipse Sequence — Greensboro, NC, 2008 

An idea has to hit us between the eyes for it to be worth anything.

We have to feel it.

We have to be moved by it.

If we have to be talked into it, it is no good.

Every doctrine formulated by every religion in the world falls into the category of an idea we have to be talked into.

Revivals are where you go to be talked into ideas that miss everyone   by a wide margin and would not move us at all if it weren’t for the people yelling at us.

Give me an idea that has merits of its own, which are immediately obvious, strike a cord and inspire us to action.

“Anybody feel like pie and ice cream?”

There’s an idea whose time has come!

  • 03/02/2015  —  The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 10 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    Immortality has been an intriguing concept from the start.

    A lot of people have put a lot of stock in living forever.

    And have tried to find the secret of the Fountain of Youth through the ages.

    But.

    All of the people who have wanted to live forever have wanted to live on their terms.

    Forever on some terms would be unbearable.

    Hell, for example, is not what the seekers of life unending have in mind.

    Life is no good without the accompanying stipulations.

    Adam and Eve thought the Forbidden Fruit would be a good thing to add to the list.

    Everybody has their own ideas.

    Some people think in terms of sex forever.

    “What would life be without that?”

    Whatever constitutes “that” for us is the heart of the matter.

    It isn’t so much life forever as it is “that” forever.

    What is your “that”?

    What is it that life without would be hell, or just not worth the trouble?

    There is your meditative focal point for the day, or several.

    Ponder “that” if you will.

    See what is at the heart of the matter for you,

    And what you think of “that” as your core.
  • 03/02/2015  —  Zen Sun — Wayna Bald, Nantahala National Forest, near Franklin, NC, October 2004

    I can’t find anything in my experience more sacred than conversation.

    But, don’t think that is commonplace.

    We spend a lot of time talking.

    Very little conversing.

    Conversation is where I listen as you talk about you,

    And you listen as I talk about me—

    And neither of us butts in to change the flow of the conversation,

    Or to co-opt it entirely in an “I know just what you mean, let me tell you about MY mother-in-law (foot surgery, root canal, etc.) kind of way.

    Conversation is listening as much as talking.

    Where do you go to be heard, these days?

    If we were talking, I would like to know what is working in your life right now,

    And what is not working.

    Where your deepest joy is found

    And your greatest fear/dread/anxiety.

    What do you know to be true that no one has told you?

    In what ways have things turned out to be different than what you expected them to be?

    Than what you have been told they would be?

    What would have helped to know early-on about how things are?

    What are the conflicts that you are working to reconcile, integrate, accept?

    What are your gifts that you are living to bring forth in your life?

    And all the other questions, and all the questions that come as follow-ups to all the questions.

    We could talk a long time.

    Every time.

    Without ever once mentioning the weather,

    Or Those People over there. And there.

  • 03/03/2015  —  Medicine Lake Bed — Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, September 2007

    You know how John Wayne was always John Wayne, no matter the movie?

    And Cary Grant? And Jimmy Stewart? And Audrey Hepburn? And Bette Davis? And Katharine Hepburn?

    That’s the idea.

    You have to be YOU, no matter the movie!

    You have to get so into YOU, into YOUR character and qualities—

    Into your ESSENCE—

    Into the Essential You,

    That you are YOU no matter what.

    Win the lottery as YOU.

    Lose your job as YOU.

    No matter what happens, or fails to happen,

    There YOU are!

    Play your part, your role, the way only YOU can do it

    In every scene that comes your way in a day.

    Be the YOU at work that you are on the beach.

    Be YOU everywhere you go.

    Sink into, and live out of, the solid core of YOU

    Through all of the times and occasions of your life.

    Get YOU down.

    Do YOU all over town.

    There is nothing more to it than that.

  • 03/04/2015  —  Moraine Lake Panorama — Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, September 2009

    You are the focal point of your life.

    Your life revolves around you.

    You—your tastes and interests,

    Your aptitudes and abilities,

    Your gifts and genius,

    Your knacks and proclivities,

    Your enthusiasm, heart and soul—

    Are the organizing principle of your life.

    Your life takes shape around you—

    Assumes the form that is YOU.

    Your life does that with your conscious participation and will

    Or with your unconscious absence of willing collaboration on your part in its production.

    Your place is to willingly align yourself, inner with outer, with the life you are living,

    So that the YOU visible and apparent in your life

    Is the same YOU invisible and seeking expression within your heart and soul.

    YOU are comprised of the Who, the What, the How, the Where and the When.

    It is your place in your role as your conscious, willing, self,

    To coordinate, choreograph and orchestrate

    The production of YOU in your life.

    You integrate the Who, the What, the How, the Where and the When.

    And bring YOU forth in your life every day.

    And, if you are not doing that, it’s time you started.
  • 03/04/2015  — Hatteras Sunset — Along the Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2004

    You are going to live on separate tracks—

    What you do to pay the bills is not likely going to be what you pay the bills to do.

    This is called walking two paths at the same time.

    The key is to do that consciously, willingly, deliberately and intentionally.

    Changing diapers is not likely to be the way you would prefer to come forth in your life, but.

    When the baby needs to be changed, change the baby.

    This is also called walking two paths at the same time.

    And you do come forth in your life by the way you do what you do to pay the bills,

    And the way you change diapers.

    There is You and there is Not-You,

    And you, your life, is a swirling blend of both worlds.

    Swirl consciously, willingly, deliberately and intentionally.

    “Now I am being ME!”

    “Now I am being NOT-ME!”

    Know who you are—and who you are not—at all times, in all places.

    Willingly, willfully, even joyfully, participate in your life in all of its shades and variations of You and Not-You.

    This is called being you even when you are not being you.
  • 03/01/2015  — 03/01/2015  —  Yellowstone Canyon — Canyon Village, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, September 2005

    When the dichotomy is too great among the Who, the What and the How in the When and the Where of your existence, you have a problem.

    Your primary role in your life is to oversee, integrate and align

    The Who, the What, and the How within the When and the Where of your living.

    You coordinate who you are with what you are doing and how you are doing it within the time and place of your living.

    You do that consciously, mindfully, compassionately, deliberately and intentionally.

    When you accept your role and play it well, things go well.

    When you do not accept your role and refuse to play it,

    Or when you do not play it well,

    Things go less well.

    So …

    How are things going?
  • 03/04/2015  —  Edisto Beach Sunrise 14 — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, January 29, 2015

    Our life is not ours to do with as we will.

    It is not as though the whole world is filled with possibilities at our disposal.

    Our life exists as a potential independent of us—

    As a potential expression of who we are at the core of our being—

    At the foundation—

    Of who we are essentially,

    In our essence,

    The essence of who we are.

    Our life exists as a potential expression of who we are capable of becoming,

    Of what we are capable of doing.

    But the master mechanic says, “I think I’ll be a surgeon,”

    And the landscape artist says, “I think I will paint houses,”

    And the ballet dancer says, “I’m going to be a bull fighter.”

    All close, but no cigar.

    And most are not even close.

    Yet, WE are the one who has to get who our life needs us to be

    Together with our life.
  • 03/05/2015  — Trains 07 — Morant’s Curve, Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies, Alberta, Canada, September 2009

    Once a mother (father) always a mother (father), but.

    You have to ease up on the mothering (fathering) over time.

    You have to push the babies out of the nest and tell them to go find their life.

    You have to model what you mean by finding and living YOUR life.

    Your children are not your life.

    You are not their keeper.

    Like every other role we play,

    Mothering (fathering) is a dance with pace and timing.

    It is not fixed, static, rigid and unbending.

    You have to grow up if you expect your children to grow up.

    If you don’t expect anyone to grow up,

    You’re interfering with the natural process,

    Damming the river,

    Stopping the flow of life,

    Creating lasting problems for a lot of people.

    And there is nothing that can be done for you,

    So, you can quit reading this now,

    And I will talk to the people who know what I’m saying.

    You have to grow up if you expect your children to grow up.

    You have to find and live your life,

    And refuse to let them get in your way.

    They have had their time with you,

    And now it is your time with you.

    Tell them good-bye and become a different kind of mother (father),

    Mothering (fathering) yourself in the right kind of way,

    Growing up and living your life over what remains of your life.
  • 03/01/2015  —  The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 15 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    I am in your life to help you live your life.

    You are in my life to help me live my life.

    That is the limit of our responsibility to the other,

    And the only reason we have for being with the other.

    If we are not helping each other live our respective life.

    We are helping each other escape our life.

    We are kidding ourselves and each other,

    And wasting our time,

    Which is all that is left for us to do

    If we are not living our life and have no intention of ever living our life.

    Intending to NOT live our life ever

    Is a complete waste of life, yours, mine and everyone’s.

    Our first obligation to ourselves and each other

    Is a good-faith assessment of our intentions,

    And a frank declaration of them to the other.

    Are you here to grow up, find and live your life no matter what?

    Not to talk endlessly about it,

    But to do it, by doing what it takes to do it, beginning now?

    If yes, then what needs to change about your life?

    What can you do beginning now to live in the service of that change?

    Knowing that change means change?
  • 03/05/2015  — Beaver Pond — Bass Lake, Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, NC, May 2009

    If we are depressed, we are trapped.

    We are stuck with mutually exclusive options.

    Awash in conflict and contradiction.

    Unable to do anything because everything depends on that not being done.

    And nothing can happen until something else happens first.

    Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

    No exit.

    Our depression is something trying to happen.

    It’s the only acceptable response available to us in our situation.

    We cannot allow ourselves to be down on being down.

    Anyone would be down dealing with what we are dealing with.

    Fear on every side.

    No place to turn.

    Nowhere to go.

    We have to admit, that’s depressing.

    The way is the way of being depressed.

    Consciously, deliberately, courageously bearing the pain of our place in life—

    And NOT taking our own life!

    Our place, sorry to say, is not to escape the agony,

    But to embrace it and bear it consciously, mindfully, intentionally.

    ANYONE would be depressed being where we are,

    And we can’t be anywhere else because of the 10,000 things keeping us where we are.

    So, we square up to them.

    Each one.

    Every one.

    Of the things preventing anything from happening to shift our circumstances and lighten our load.

    We can’t do anything because of what?

    List all of the things standing in the way.

    Spend time with each one of them.

    Getting to know our jailers.

    And all—ALL—of the things keeping the things in place that are keeping things in place.

    We can’t just FEEL it. We have to KNOW it. ALL of it.

    Quick—and this is the most important part—what is your reaction to this idea?

    What is the source of your resistance to doing this one thing that can be done,

    because you aren’t doing anything but getting to know things fully, as they are?

    Why not do that?

    Because it won’t do any good?

    So?

    Not going it won’t do any good either.

    So do it.

    The one thing you can do.

    Do it.

    Get to know all of the reasons you can’t do anything.

    Not just list them. KNOW them. All about them. Understand them. Have compassion for them.

    Have compassion for all of the things keeping things in place.

    That’s doing something without doing anything.

    We can’t possibly be threatening to the stability of the situation

    that is keeping us from doing anything by regarding it with compassion.

    Now, you think I’m crazy don’t you?

    Anything to keep things as they are.
  • 03/05/2015  — Alligator Pond — The Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Run, SC, January 29, 2015

    Let’s say you are on a basketball team with a losing record toward the end of the season, and the team has completely lost heart.

    There is no chance of post season play.

    No chance of a winning record.

    Who are we kidding?

    Why try?

    Why play with heart?

    What good would it do?

    Just play it out and get it over with.

    How do you restore heart when heart is lost?

    How do you get a basketball team back on the beam?

    Back playing its best basketball?

    When the importance, or even the likelihood, of winning isn’t there?

    We have to play it out the way it needs to be played out—

    The way it needs us to play it out—

    No matter what.

    We are back to my foundational hypothesis:

    It is all useless, hopeless, pointless, futile and absurd—

    And coming to a very bad end.

    And how we live in the meantime makes all the difference.

    Why wouldn’t you believe that how you live makes all the difference—and live as though it does?

    Why would you prefer to believe that how you live makes no difference at all—and live as though it doesn’t?

    Back to the basketball team.

    Forget restoring the team’s heart.

    Forget getting the team back to life.

    Get your own heart in your game, in your part of the game, in playing your part well.

    Dribble, pass, guard, shoot and rebound to the absolute best of your ability—

    And don’t kid yourself about it being the best you can do.

    That’s your work.

    Your work is to do your job the way it needs to be done no matter what.

    “Get in there and do your thing, and don’t worry about the outcome” (Joseph Campbell).
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 03/06/2015  — Athabaska Valley — Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, September 2009

    The trick is to be conscious of all that is unconscious.

    That’s the best trick in the entire book of tricks.

    And, since all that is unconscious is beyond knowing,

    We will never pull it off, but.

    That’s what we are about: Becoming conscious of all that is unconscious.

    I suggest we start with dichotomies, anomalies, contradictions—

    The things that don’t add up,

    That don’t square up,

    That don’t feel right.

    Children and dogs (and cats) are good about sensing these things.

    Adults say one thing, and children (the dog, the cat) sense something is wrong with this picture.

    Adults say, “I love you,” when they are physically abusing the child (the dog, the cat).

    Adults see no disconnect.

    Children (the dog, the cat) are bludgeoned by the contradiction.

    Adults get by through ignoring all that is unconscious,

    Pretending theirs is the only world,

    Even as they move between worlds.

    One world has nothing to do with the other worlds.

    But they come down hard on children for having invisible friends.

    Invisible friends are more trustworthy than the kind who live in the adult world.

    But, adults are so out of it, they can’t begin to understand the place of invisible friends.

    If we are going to become aware of all that is unconscious,

    We are going to have to “turn and become like children.”

    And open ourselves to all we don’t know

    Because we wouldn’t know what to do with it if we did.
  • 03/06/2015  — Charlotte Panorama 02 — View from Marshall Park, Charlotte, NC, January 25, 2015

    My hypothesis (or one of the many)

    is that our life needs to be a collaboration among all the sides of us

    we think of as being who we are,

    and all the sides of us we also are.

    We are influenced by an unknowable number of Also I’s.

    We need (according to the hypothesis)

    to know as many as possible over the course of our life,

    and invite them to the table (The Round Table, of course)

    to discuss, contemplate, decide how we are going to live our life.

    This means we have to live a well-considered life,

    And not just whiz around the room like nuclear powered ping-pong balls.

    It means we have to slow down and pay attention—

    Looking, listening, seeing, hearing, knowing, understanding on all levels, visible and invisible.

    We have to live (according to the hypothesis)

    conscious of what is normally unconscious,

    making the unconscious conscious,

    Taking the unconscious (what we are not conscious of) into account,

    And being aware of not being aware,

    and becoming aware of more than we are generally aware of.

    Reconciling contradictions, integrating opposites, honoring polarities,

    And living in ways that take all of it into account.

    That would change things, for sure.

    Maybe for the better.
  • 03/07/2015  — Jasper Wetlands Panorama — Canadian Rockies, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, October 2009

    The more people you have in your life,

    The more you have to fight for your life.

    The more people you have in your life,

    The more difficult it is to live your life.

    “Oh, But! People ARE my life!”

    People are NOT your life!

    People are escapes from your life!

    Distractions from your life!

    Substitutes for a life of your own!

    People can be YOUR life only to the extent

    That it is a deliberately reciprocal arrangement

    And YOU are THEIR life,

    And you all are intent on living your own, personal, life.

    You and your life partner have to be living

    So as to say the other one is getting the best deal—

    And you both have to be right about it.

    Children are a different matter.

    With children, someone is going to be squeezed.

    There are too many people, too close together,

    With too many competing needs, interests and desires.

    With children, you have to make sure that you are the one

    Who is squeezed.

    But not squeezed out.

    Even with children, you have to work out how much of you for them,

    And how much of you for you.

    And you have to be squeezed consciously, deliberately, voluntarily.

    It has to be a realized sacrifice that you are making,

    Setting yourself aside for their sake

    FOR THE TIME BEING!

    After high school, you begin to get yourself back.

    You may have to take yourself back.

    After college, you are yours and they are their own responsibility.

    Make sure they know that early on,

    And remind them of it often.
  • 03/07/2015  — Castle Mountain 01 — Canadian Rockies, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, September 2009

    Here’s the thing about self-sacrifice—

    It has to be conscious, deliberate, intentional, willing, willful, and voluntary.

    You lay your life down, AND

    (And this is the part that is never discussed, recognized, realized)

    You take your life up.

    It is self-sacrifice on both ends.

    It applies to your marriage, to parenthood, to your job, and to all that your life impels you to do.

    Let’s take your children as an example of what is required of you.

    When you have children, you hand yourself over to your children

    Until they are at the age of being responsible for themselves, then they have to take themselves over.

    They sacrifice themselves, then, to take care of themselves, and so it is passed.

    But, you also have to sacrifice yourself again, then, and get out of their way so that they can, must, have to, sacrifice themselves.

    You pick your life back up when it is time,

    And go your way, and let them have their life, and let them go their way.

    It’s like sending them off to day care or pre-school or kindergarten.

    It’s like dying all over again,

    For you and for them.

    Self-sacrifice is always like dying.

    It is a real sacrifice.

    And it has to be done with full realization, willingly, willfully, voluntarily.

    We are always sacrificing ourselves to our life—

    To what our life is requiring of us in the time and place of our living.

    It is the nature of growing up that it requires us to die again and again.

    We like to think it ends with our actual, physical, death.

    We are probably wrong about that.
  • 03/07/2015  —  Sleepy Elk Sequence — Canadian Rockies, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, October 2009

    We make amends by making changes.

    We redeem our past by the way we live in our future.

    I look at old photographs

    And think, “I should go back there and take it like I should have taken it then.”

    But the time for taking it was then, when the clouds were right,

    And the light was right, and the wind was right,

    And the only thing wrong was the shutter speed.

    Waiting for all that to be right again just for the sake of that photo

    Would not be worth the trouble.

    I’ll redeem that one with the next one similar to it that I take.

    And every one after that one.

    Let your past transform your future.

    It’s the only thing that can.
  • 03/08/2015  —  Adrift — Penobscot Bay, Deer Isle, Maine, October 2009

    As I devote myself to creating a routine conducive to living my life, I am increasingly taken by the regimen of holy orders through time, around the world, in all religions and spiritual practices.

    We cannot live any way at all and be alive to that which is striving to come to life in us.

    Without a steady routine, we are at the mercy of whim and chance, and have no basis for living out of a foundation that grounds us and an orientation that directs us.

    Our physical routine is a centering, focusing, aid to living centered and focused afloat on the crashing waves of the wine dark sea.

    I recommend, for starters a 12 to 14 hour fast each day. That simply means, don’t eat after 7 PM or before 8 AM—and adjust the hours to fit what your schedule may require/allow.

    Our routines have to fit our schedules.

    “Routine” sounds rigid, inflexible, unbending, but routine has to take “schedule” into account.

    We have to fit our LIFE into our life, our routine into our schedule.

    We have to regulate what can be regulated upon the heaving waves of the wine dark sea.

    Start with a daily fast.

    Work in time for quiet reflection.

    Work in additional time for meditation—count your breaths for rounds of ten or twenty inhales and exhales, or whatever the waves permit.

    Read something meaningful.

    Write down your dreams and revelations/realizations.

    Take a walk—short or long, but walk for exercise and not to go to the bathroom—each day.

    Fold in the things that are grounding, centering, focusing, directing for you.

    Do this regularly, religiously, every day.

    And listen for what is trying to come to LIFE in your life.
  • 03/08/2015  —  For Rent — Lake Louise, Canadian Rockies, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, September 2009

    Your life is your witness.

    Your life says all that is to be said about you,

    Pro or con, Yea or Nay, for you or against you—

    Not from the standpoint of how you measure up against social, cultural, and religious norms and standards,

    But how you measure up against yourself.

    Your Self—

    The Who it is yours to exhibit and express,

    Become and to be.

    Your are not yours to make up and drape with costumes of your own design.

    You are yours to wake-up to, realize, acknowledge, incarnate and serve.

    We live to realize and reveal who we are through the life we live.
  • 03/08/2015  —  The Oak at Springer’s Point — Teach’s Hole, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, NC, October 2009

    I don’t know how to break this to you.

    You aren’t going to like it:

    You have to start doing what’s hard.

    I know, I know:

    “My whole life is HARD!

    Easy is nowhere to be found!

    If you knew how hard my life is, you would change your tune!”

    You have to start volunteering to do what is hard,

    And stop whining, moaning, complaining, griping about it.

    Do what is hard consciously, deliberately, intentionally, willingly, willfully, voluntarily, sacrificially!

    Because it is going to deepen you, expand you, enlarge you, raise you from the dead, and help to grow you up.

    If the dishes need washing, go wash the dishes.

    You get the idea.

    Opening your arms to what is hard,

    Welcoming what is hard into your life,

    Embracing what is hard,

    Dancing with what is hard,

    Doing what is hard,

    Puts you in right relationship with what is hard,

    And understands what is hard as the threshold to being fully alive.

    Jesus said, “If you want to become my disciple, pick up your own cross every day, and carry it like I carried mine.”

    He meant, “Do what is hard the way it needs you to do it.”

    It is the path to realization, understanding, enlightenment, wonder and LIFE.
  • 03/10/2015  —  Mallard Hen Landing — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, March 09, 2015

    Growing up is hard.

    We have to come to terms with everything.

    Square ourselves up to how things are,

    And how things also are–

    See what we look at,

    Know what we know,

    Rise to every occasion,

    Stand up and do what needs us to do it

    The way it needs to be done.

    If we aren’t living our life in this fashion,

    We are escaping our life.

    Andy Dufresne said, “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

    If we aren’t living, we are dying.

    Pretending to be alive and well.

    When we grow up, we stop pretending,

    And step into our life just as it is,

    Such as it is,

    And live it exactly as it needs to be lived,

    As it needs us to live it,

    As we need to live it–

    And, like that, our life becomes our LIFE,

    All because we began to live it the way our LIFE would have us live it.

    The only things that changed were our attitude

    And our way of living.
  • 03/10/2015  —  Big Creek Fall 2004 A — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN/NC, November 2004

    My ideal form of government would be a small group of people of   compassion and good will, who liked and cared about each other, and who were non-religions

    (Because religious people are incapable of good judgment and sound decision, and the more religious they are the more toxic they are for themselves and others, and the more incapable they are of seeing what they look at, understanding what they are dealing with, and being free to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises),

    And free of ambition and greed, and therefore incapable of corruption, and beyond exploiting circumstances for their own personal good or ideology,

    And completely capable of seeing things as they are,

    And listening to all sides with a stake in each situation that comes along,

    And issuing judgments based on their best sense of what needs to happen in the service of the true good of those concerned.

    I wonder why Congress can’t be like this.
  • 03/10/2015  —  Cypress Light — Down East North Carolina, November 2004

    What are the meaningful aspects of your life?

    How does your life revolve around them?

    Flow from them?

    How often do you engage in doing the things that are meaningful to you?

    How would I know they were meaningful to you by looking at your life?

    When is the last time you did something that was meaningful to you?

    What can you do to work time spent with what is meaningful on a daily basis?

    When will you start?
  • 03/11/2015  —  Goose Landing — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, March 9, 2015

    Religious people have an agenda—THE Agenda—God’s Agenda,

    And live to impose it upon all the world.

    The Tea Party is composed of those who at heart are religious fanatics who Know Best And Must Be Pleased,

    And are engaged in a holy war

    Against the Infidel in their own country

    And around the world.

    Jihadists in business suits

    Justifying all means necessary in the service of their end,

    Which is clearly in sight and well-within their grasp.

    Comes to mind Paul Simon’s song:

    “The nearer your destination/The more you’re slip-sliding away.”

    We all are within reach of a wider, broader, world—

    A slight perspective shift away from seeing, hearing and understanding—

    In the service of agendas and ends not worthy of us,

    Certain that our way is The Way,

    Lost in a wasteland of our own making,

    Sitting on our ox looking for our ox.
  • 03/11/2015  —  The Ghost Trees of Boneyard Beach 14 — Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island, SC, January 28, 2015

    You have to find your own life and live it

    Within the life you are living.

    The life you are living is the container—

    The crucible—

    Of your other life, your LIFE, the life that is yours to live,

    The life that only you can live.

    The life you are living is your fate—

    The life that met you at birth:

    When and where you were born, your genetic, sexual, racial makeup,

    Who your parents were,

    What your resources have been and are,

    And your prospects,

    The life you go to sleep in every night and wake up to each morning.

    The LIFE that is yours to live is your destiny,

    The adventure that has been waiting for you to be ready,

    The calling that is perfectly suited for your character and qualities,

    Your gifts and proclivities:

    YOU are waiting for you to show up and say, “Let’s go.”

    Your mission is to bring forth your destiny within your fate,

    By finding what you can do with all your heart, and doing it,

    And riding that ride the rest of the way.
  • 03/11/2015  —  Canada Geese 01 — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, March 9, 2015

    You find your LIFE, your destiny, by finding what is meaningful to you and doing it.

    When you incorporate meaning into your life by doing what is meaningful to you—

    By giving yourself to what has meaning for you—

    And not letting yourself by knocked off that horse

    By those who laugh and make jokes about “that old nag,”

    And wonder why you aren’t spending your time on something important—

    Not letting them shame you, or ridicule you, or shun you

    Into being as they are,

    Into being who they think you ought to be,

    But living your own life in your own way,

    With your rhythm, and your sense of timing and direction, and sense of flow, and sense of meaning,

    Doing what is important to you because why would anybody do what is unimportant to them?

    Then your life will lead you straight away to your LIFE,

    And you will discover that you have been living your LIFE all along,

    Realizing your destiny by doing what is meaningful to you

    Whether anyone else sees its value and congratulates you on your choice.

    You are the one—the only one—who knows what is YOU,

    And what is NOT YOU.

    It’s your life. Live it like it is. Smiling, like you know a secret

    They don’t know.

    You do.

    They don’t.
  • 03/11/2015  —  Hatteras Morning — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2004

    No one ever wondered–you could Google this–about the meaning of life who was doing what was meaningful with her, or his, own life.

    The question of the meaning of life doesn’t mean anything to someone whose life is meaningful.

    Ask a kid who is skateboarding or playing soccer what the meaning of life is and she will be polite but care nothing for your question.

    It just doesn’t matter, because something else does.

    If it’s a problem for you it’s because your life is empty and you aren’t doing what has meaning for you.

    You solve the problem of the meaning of life the instant you begin living your life in a way that is meaningful.

    If nothing means anything to you, spend some time remembering the last thing that had meaning for you.

    Wander around in your memory of that thing.

    See what begins to stir to life within you.

    Let the last meaningful thing point the way to the next meaningful thing.

    And cooperate with the process!

    Don’t resist the movement with some sour, wet-blanket, you can’t make me happy so don’t even try response to the last meaningful thing.

    Be a sport here. Be gracious and kind, generous and compassionate.

    To yourself.

    Let yourself show you where meaning is yet to be found,

    Even given all your losses, defeats, sorrows and grief.

    Meaning will live again in your life if you let it.

    Let it, won’t you?

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One Minute Monologues 023

12/09/2014 — 01/25/2015

  • 12/09/2014 — At the Dock Panorama 01 — Shrimp Boats on Battery Creek, Port Royal, SC, December 5, 2014

    All religion is a system of denial.

    Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and all the others that ever have been, are, or will be, are our attempts to adjust ourselves to the status quo without having to do anything about it.

    Everything Buddhism doesn’t like is an “illusion.”

    That’s handy.

    If you don’t like it, just close your eyes

    Go, “AAAUUUUMMMM,”

    and make it go away.

    Christianity disappears everything it doesn’t like

    By saying, “Have faith and wait to die and go to heaven.”

    Death is the final answer to all of life’s conflicts and difficulties

     For Christians who are sure it will all be made up to us in heaven.

    Religion is the Great Mother,

    And we are all babies on the Great Mother’s lap,

    Refusing to grow up,

    Face what must be faced,

    And do what can be done about it

    In the time and place of our living.

    Denial is the solution to all of our problems today.
  • 12/10/2014 — Beach Erosion 01 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014 — Rising ocean levels and high tides are destroying the barrier islands of the Atlantic Seaboard. Where the waves once stopped is no longer where they stop, and they are creating an increasingly new coast line before our eyes. My Beach Erosion series depicts the changing of the landscape via wind, tides and time.

    Nothing is more basic and essential to life than the land we walk on, the air we breathe, the water we drink.

    Nothing is more conducive to our death than taking our life for granted.

    Science serves us as eyes and ears. We cannot deride scientists and denounce and deny what they report because it is not what we want to hear—or set science aside in favor of what our religion says about how things are when we are living in a world our religion never faced, imagined or conceived.

    The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

    And everything hinges upon the response we make to it.

    Everything.

    That is much more than an inconvenient truth.

    It is an essential truth that each of us has to understand and honor—

    Beginning now.
  • 12/10/2014 — Beach Erosion 03 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014 —This is how it works. The wave action at high tide washes away the supporting sand and soil, and the trees topple. This one survived, but the next high tide may have done the job.

    We have to do the work of finding our live and living it—of listening to our soul: seeing, hearing and understanding the things soul is saying to us—and joining soul in in the collaborative effort of bringing soul forth in the life that is ours to live, in the time and place of our living.

    This is high adventure and great fun—a lot better for us and more important for the world than anything we can think up on our own.

    We could begin by paying attention to, and interpreting correctly, tonight’s dream (or dreams).
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 12/11/2014 — At the Dock Panorama 02 — Buccaneer, Shrimp Boats on Battery Creek Dock, Port Royal, SC, December 5, 2014

    I am most conflict-free in the early morning with music and writing,

    and in some scene with the camera.

    Peace is watching the light play on water, or change color during the day.

    It seems to be a solitary thing, peace, and the absence of conflict.

    And that can end when I am aware of needing to be doing something else,

    or a conflict of interests occurs between scenes, for instance,

    and I have to work it out.

    With people, there is conflict everywhere to be recognized and negotiated,

    integrated and worked out

    again and again.

    As far as I can tell, that’s the nature of relationships,

    negotiation and compromise over conflicts of needs and interests

    over time.

    Carl Jung said that no one can become a complete, a true, human being in a Tibetan cave, cut off from human interaction.

    Our conflicts bring us forth.

    Our contradictions make us real.

    Grow us up.

    Give us shape, and form, and substance—

    character,

    and the qualities worthy of the term “human being.”

    A turtle is conflict free

    and completely at one with its place in life

    all the time.

    A turtle doesn’t work anything out.

    It just does what it does.

    A turtle gets older but it never grows up.
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 12/12/2014 — Beach Erosion Panorama 22 —Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    We are on our own and it is all up to us—

    And we cannot do it alone.

    This is one of the conflicts, contradictions,

    At the heart of life and being.

    We stand between equally true and mutually exclusive—

    And mutually dependent—polarities,

    Understand how they are extensions of one another,

    Make our peace with them,

    And make peace between them,

    And enjoy the wonder of a life that is richer and fuller

    Because of the opposites, the contraries, that make life possible

    And bring life forth.

    All of our dichotomies are false dichotomies:

    Good and Evil,

    Darkness and Light,

    Right and Wrong,

    High and Low,

    Rich and Poor,

    Smart and Stupid,

    True and False…

    Wait for us to make the connection,

    See how one flows into and out of the other,

    And dance with them joyfully all along the way.
  • 12/12/2014 — Carolina Girl Panorama 01 — Shrimp Boats on Battery Creek, Port Royal, SC, December 5, 2014

    We come into the world connected to God at the level of the soul.

    The connection remains in place throughout our life.

    It can be enhanced and deepened through compassionate, mindful, attention.

    It can be diminished to the point of disappearing through callous, uncaring disregard.

    We create a vibrant, vital, connection with God by establishing a vibrant, vital connection with our soul—

    Learning the language of soul (symbol, image and metaphor),

    And the avenues by which soul communicates (instinct, intuition, hunches, bodily sensations, dreams and visions, serendipitous events, synchronicity, flights of fantasy, inspiration…the list is long),

    And honing our ability to apprehend and interpret soul’s drift and leanings,

    And apply them appropriately in the world of normal, apparent, reality by the way we live.

    The primal peoples always understood the spiritual world to be the foundation of the physical world,

    And knew the physical to be an extension of the spiritual world,

    Upheld and supported, guided and directed, by invisible means and influence.

    William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, said it only takes believing in the validity of the spiritual world to know it is so (or words to that effect).

    Well? What exactly do you have to lose, in living as though the invisible world is real?
  • 12/13/2014 — Beach Erosion Panorama 01 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    The test of our faith–

    Of what we say we believe–

    Of what we say is the fundamental truth upon which we base our life–

    Is how well it enables us to live our life.

    Is how well it enables us to meet the day.

    Is how well it enables us to stand up and do what needs to be done

    The way it needs to be done

    As often as it needs

    For as long as it needs to be done

    And needs us to do it–

    Whether we feel like it or not,

    Whether we want to or not,

    Whether we are in the mood to do it or not.

    The quality of our faith–

    Of our realization of the truth that is fundamental to life–

    Is expressed, exhibited, incarnated, made known, realized,

    In, by, and through

    The quality of our life.

    How well we are living is an indication of how well we are believing.

    It isn’t what we say we believe,

    It’s what we do,

    That matters.

    We can believe anything we want to believe,

    As long as it enables us to keep getting up,

    And doing what needs to be done

    The way it needs to be done–

    The way it needs us to do it–

    Every day for the rest of our life.
  • 12/14/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 51 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    Complete peace is found in not caring about anything—not even whether we live or die—the essence of a drug-induced high—taken away from it all to a blissful state of being, which is non-being, which is not being at all, because to be is to care deeply about being.

    To not care is to not be.

    We can live peacefully, and be peaceful, by caring about the right things and not caring about the wrong things.

    We care about way too many things.

    Most of which are not important.

    The highest state of being is clear about its values and lives in light of them—lives to serve them—while not caring at all about the things it has no business caring about.

    Live your life caring about the right things, and not caring at all about the wrong things.

    How much of your peace right now, at this very moment in your life, is being disturbed by the wrong things?

    Joseph Campbell ran track for Columbia, and returned there for a track meet in his later years—and said about that experience that he couldn’t do that again because it stirred up the wrong emotions in him. It robbed him of his peace.

    Athletic events cause us to care about things that don’t matter—to will outcomes that can’t be willed, for one thing, and have no significance for another (beyond being able to talk about our glory days, and give us a little bit of an escape from a life that is, itself, not worth our time—because we are not giving ourselves to the things that ARE worth our time).

    People bet large amounts of money on athletic events, and other things that don’t matter—because their life doesn’t matter, and they are escaping that reality by giving themselves, heart, mind, body and soul to something else that doesn’t matter.

    Caring about the wrong things is at least caring about something—giving us some reason to get out of bed each day.

    We care about the wrong things because we don’t care about the right things.

    The spiritual journey is the trek to values that matter.

    The spiritual journey is the trip to things that burn us alive, that consume us with intensity and purpose and drive and compassion and LIFE.

    To things that give us peace by destroying our peace in the service of the right things:

    “The peace of God/It is no peace/But strife closed in the sod/Yet, brothers (and sisters) pray for but one thing/The marvelous peace of God” — William Alexander Percy

    Let LIFE kill you! Let LIFE kill the lifeless life you are living! Let LIFE bring you alive and break your heart, and pierce you like a sword through your heart, and wring you out, until there is nothing of you left to burn!

    Care about the right things as though they are the only things!

    Because they are.
  • 12/13/2014 — Orchard Fall 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Jesus knew what was important—what mattered most—and lived his life in the service of it.

    That’s all you need to know about Jesus.

    Throw away everything else you know about Jesus

    And live your life in the service of what is important—of what matters most.

    It’s as simple as that.

    Joseph Campbell said, “When we forget the deities, we build a life on a program run by the head. The energies coming from the body are ignored, and become threatening to the head values, which we have chosen to live for.”

    The problem is, we don’t know what to live for, so we make up something: money, power, status, prestige, privilege and all of the things we live for that do not satisfy.

    Our body knows. Our heart knows. We feel what is important in our body. And what is unimportant. The body knows what matters.

    We have to take our life back from the things that don’t matter, and live in the service of the things that do matter.

    The spiritual quest is the search for the things that matter.

    Nobody can tell us what matters. Nobody can tell us what should matter. What matters to us is a question that only we can answer. If it doesn’t matter to us, what does it matter if it matters to everyone else?

    The things that mattered to Jesus didn’t matter to anyone else in his world. That didn’t keep him from serving the things that mattered to him. He didn’t do what somebody else told him mattered. He did what he knew mattered.

    That’s all you need to know about Jesus. Go and do likewise.
  • 12/14/2014 — Fripp Inlet Sunset 01 — Hunting Island, SC, December 5, 2014

    Joseph Campbell said ideally, we would spend the first half of life collecting experiences, and we would spend the second half of life exploring and reflecting on those experiences in order to form new realizations and gain a spiritual sense of meaning and purpose with which to face the inevitable end of our days.

    Of course, it doesn’t work that way.

    But, the potential exists. It only takes sitting and reflecting. Or standing. Or walking. And reflecting.

    I would add confession and repentance to the process. Reflection begs confession and repentance. And forgiveness. Contrition and absolution.

    This is a crucial step that is missing from all of our lives.

    We do not live 70 or 80 or 90 years on this earth without accumulating a wealth of “shortcomings and offenses.”

    Our sins of omission and commission litter the path from past to present. “We have not done those things we ought to have done, and have done those things we ought not to have done, and there is nothing we can say in our behalf.”

    We have betrayed our deepest loyalties, disappointed our highest hopes, and not kept faith with ourselves or our neighbors.

    We cannot sit remembering for ten seconds without wincing in remorse and leaping to vacuum or to wash the car—anything to keep from facing the truth of the past!

    We “can’t handle the truth,” yet we must.

    So, we remember and make a full confession—to ourselves. We are both condemned and accuser AND penitent and priest granting remission and pardon.

    We face ourselves—and forgive ourselves.

    And to those who protest that only God can forgive sins, I’ll posit this one: Is it easier for God to forgive you or for you to forgive you?

    Besides, Jesus laid to rest for all time the contention that “only God has the power to forgive sins.”

    You, knowing all you have done and not done, face yourself as often as it takes for the truth to be heard, and declare from the heart, “Your sins are forgiven!”

    And see what happens.
  • 12/15/2014 — Steele Creek Trestle Panorama — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, December 4, 2014

    When you are out of rhythm, and the flow isn’t there, and you keep stumbling into walls and encountering obstacles,

    Be one with the absence of rhythm and flow.

    Be one with the walls and the obstacles.

    Be in sync with being out of sync.

    Receive the day as it is,

    Not asking it to be more than it is.

    The day has its own sense of rhythm and flow.

    We have to dance with the day.

    Let the day play itself out,

    Taking its natural course.

    Stand aside

    Without trying to force anything.

    Get out of the way.

    Read a book.

    Take a nap.

    Be like the tree with wind.

    The tree doesn’t shout orders:

    That’s too hard!

    From the wrong direction!

    This isn’t how you are supposed to do it!

    I like it steadier!

    You’re being too gusty!

    I don’t like all these lulls!

    I’m loosing leaves here!

    I liked you better yesterday!

    Oh, I wish tomorrow would come!

    Be with your day like a tree with the wind.
  • 12/15/2014 — Four Girls II Panorama — Shrimp Boats on Johnson Creek, Gay Shrimp/Fish Company Dock, St. Helena Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    The conscious mind has its business:

    Paying taxes, mowing the lawn, preparing dinner…

    The unconscious mind has its business—

    Of which the conscious mind knows very little.

    The unconscious mind evidently has an interest in—

    And something at stake in—

    The conscious mind and the time and place of physical experience.

    What, we do not know.

    It goes less well with us when we ignore the reality

    Of the unconscious mind,

    And live as though the intent and purposes of our conscious mind

    Are the only reality.

    It is as though unconscious energies seek physical expression—

    Seek to become conscious,

    With concrete, tangible, actual existence.

    When we live in ways that ignore, dismiss, and disregard

    The unconscious mind’s drift toward recognition and realization,

    We have only fear and desire to guide us,

    And have a sadder, emptier, life than we might have had.

    Our destiny is to align ourselves with the unconscious mind’s

    Intention for us—

    To consciously embrace the unconscious,

    Seek to align ourselves with its ends,

    And collaborate with it in the joint production of a life

    We can be proud to have lived.
  • 12/15/2014 — Sand Art 03 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2013

    We have to tend the fire—

    The creative flame that burns us alive in the service

    Of our art, our work, our gift and passion.

    We can’t turn it on when we feel like it,

    When we are in the mood for it,

    When it is convenient and we don’t have anything else to do.

    I know people who don’t write

    Because they don’t know what to write,

    And are waiting for an inspiring idea to grab them

    And hurl them at the keyboard.

    They sometimes call it writer’s block.

    I think writer’s block is trying to write what doesn’t want to be written.

    If you have writer’s block, try writing what wants to be written,

    Whether you want to or not.

    We have to know what it takes to feed the flame,

    And feed it.

    Regularly.

    Your art is you.

    It is not your path to fame and glory,

    Riches and privilege.

    It’s your path to you.

    Practice your art for you.

    Because it is life for you.

    Let it have you.
  • 12/16/2014 — Old Sheldon Church Ruins Panorama — Yemassee, SC, December 5, 2014

    When the Christ says, “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me”

    (An aside here. Jesus also said, a few verses before this, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws her or him.” Put the two together and you get: The way to God is the way of God, and in order to know God, you have to be godlike. Which gets us where we are going here and now)

    And, “I am the wellspring of living water, and whomever drinks of me will never thirst again,”

    He’s saying: “Find your LIFE and live it!”

    Jesus is not talking about himself as a single individual—Joseph Campbell said, “The heart of idolatry is mistaking the symbol for the reference,” for what the symbol represents

     Jesus is talking about the way to the heart of God being who he is, that is, the single-minded pursuit of the life that is our life to live.

    We do it the way Jesus did it in terms of being absolutely devoted to the work of finding our work and doing it—

    Of finding our life and living it.

    Campbell said the virgin birth “is the realization that there are aims in life other than the maintenance and reproduction of our animal species”—that “You are It.” We are what we seek and the way to life is the way to our own heart and soul—and when we live connected with the heart of who we are, and live to exhibit that in the life we are living, we are at “the still point of the turning world,” and no one can take that from us, and nothing can knock us off that center—we are at-one with the wellspring of living water and will never thirst again.

    When we are centered in the truth of ourselves, and living the life that is truly our life to live, we touch the numinous within, and are divine-and truly-human beings, the son and the daughter of God, talking to people who aren’t there about things they can’t understand until they wake up and realize there are aims in life beyond their own personal goals and ambitions—that there is a life with their name on it and their task is to find it and to live in its service.

    It is as simple and as difficult as that.
  • 12/16/2014 — The Gracie Belle HDR Panorama B&W — Beaufort waterfront, Beaufort River, Beaufort, SC, December 7, 2014

    Why aren’t you living your life?

    The life that is your life to live?

    The life no one but you can live?

    Why aren’t you living that life?

    These are the questions our unconscious mind—the aspect of our mind we are unconscious of—asks us incessantly.

    Wake up and answer me!

    What is it going to take to wake you up and get you to live the life that is your life to live?

    We are our unconscious mind’s worst nightmare.

    Imagine all your hopes for the conscious realization of your unconscious energies and potential riding on you.

    That is the burden our unconscious bears to our grave.

    Our unconscious will do anything to get our attention.

    Will use anything to wake us up.

    All of the Biblical descriptions of Israel apply to us:

    “A hard-hearted and stiff necked people”

    “They made their hearts as hard as flint”

    “O Land, Land, Land! HEAR the word of the Lord!”

    That’s our unconscious mind speaking, pleading with us to turn and align ourselves with the life that is waiting even yet for us to live it.

    Why won’t you live your life?

    Why won’t you live it?
  • 12/17/2014 — Peggy’s Cove 2008 — Nova Scotia, September 2008 —

    We have to live privately as we live publicly.

    We can’t be racist or sexist or homophobic anywhere.

    We can’t “just be kidding” anywhere.

    What do we think?

    That it doesn’t matter how we live when no one is looking?

    It MATTERS how we live!

    There has to be a direction and flow to our life—

    A current declaring who we are—

    Throughout our living!

    We cannot pretend to be one way there

    And be who we are really here.

    Who do we think we are kidding when we are “just kidding,”

    When we are “not really” being who we are?

    What is the point of not really being who we are?

    Why would we waste time not being who we are?

    What do we mean not being who we are?

    It is NOT OKAY to belittle, ridicule, deride, denigrate, disparage anyone!

    It is NOT OKAY to make fun of anyone!

    It is NOT OKAY to have fun at anyone’s expense!

    Ever!

    If you do it, stop it!

    If you hear someone else doing it, call them out.

    Tell them that’s not the way to do it.

    Tell them they can do better than that.

    We cannot allow inhumanity to pass by unchallenged.

    When we do, we participate in inhumanity ourselves,

    Regardless of who we are really.
  • 12/17/2014 — Late Light in the Smokies HDR 01 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, November 2, 2014

    Is what you are doing living your life or escaping your life?

    How is what you are doing helping you live your life—the life that is your life to live?

    What are you doing, doing things that are not LIFE for you?

    Doing things that are not helping you live your LIFE?

    “If it ain’t life that you’re doing, it’s a waste of life!”

    “If you ain’t livin’, you’re dyin’! And you may be dead!”

                                               —The Lost Sayings of Jesus
  • 12/18/2014 — Beach Erosion 05 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    A true human being lives with complete freedom to do what needs to be done in the moment of her, of his, living—

    Has the ability to dance with his, with her, circumstances,

    Rise to every occasion,

    And respond appropriately to any situation as it arises.

    She, he, is not bound by some everlasting code of behavior,

    Or stuck to following the dictates of ancient commandments

    Or contemporary social codes

    In reading the moment of her, of his, living—

    Taking everything into account—

    And acting in ways that are right for that time and place—

    And acting in ways that may be entirely different

    In the next time and place,

    Though conditions there may appear to be the same

    As they were in the present one.

    This is called the freedom to be inconsistent

    And unpredictable

    In responding to what needs to be done

    In every here and now of our living.

    The only catch is you have to know what you are doing

    And be right about it being the right thing to do.
  • 12/18/2014 — Atlantic Afternoon — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    You’re missing the point if you think your art is supposed to support you and your family, and pay your way.

    Your art is not here for you.

    Your art is not here to serve you.

    You are here to serve your art.

    The worst thing you can do for yourself and your art

    Is to think it is good,

    Or, even worse, is to try to make it salable.

    An art director told me, “Jim, you’ll never sell any of your prints. There is too much blue in them.”

    She was apparently right.

    There is still too much blue in them.

    And they are not selling.

    Too bad. My Eye seems to love blue.

    To spit in your own Eye for the sake of selling a few prints

    Is stupid.

    Our Art is here for the soul’s own joy.

    Our Art is our soul’s avenue of self-expression.

    If someone wants to buy it, fine.

    That falls into the category of “Don’t muzzle the ox.”

    But, we aren’t here to sell our art.

    We are here to serve our art by bringing it forth,

    For our soul’s own joy and delight.

    Our art is our soul’s way of saying,

    “Look what I’ve found! Look at the beautiful blue!”
  • 12/19/2014 — In the Fog 01 — Lake Townsend, Greensboro, NC, September 2008 

    The Law of Compensation is always at work in our lives.

    Somebody has to suffer the pain, carry the weight, bear the load.

    If everyone is not shouldering their fair share,

    Someone else is doing double duty.

    If the husband is Mr. Do It All Right And Never Flinch Or Complain,

    The wife is likely to be a mess.

    Or one of the children.

    Or the people who work for him.

    You see it all the time in Preacher’s Kids.

    The Dad (or Mom) is the shining example of How A Real Christian Ought To Be

    And his (or her) children are beyond redemption.

    Understanding how it worked,

    My daughters turned out just fine

    Because the communities we lived in were appalled at MY behavior.

    Somebody has to be the scapegoat.

    This means you have to suffer your own pain,

    Carry your own weight,

    Bear your own load.

    I’ve known people who were workaholics,

    Having to get there early and stay late to serve their clients.

    Their office workers were wrecks and the turn-over was high—

    Because the spill-over was pouring out all over the place.

    We have to be responsible for the wake we create,

    Or others will be drowning in it.

    We have to see what we are doing beyond what we see we are doing.

    And bring ourselves back to the center,

    Away from the extremes.

    They may not all say “Thank you!”,

    But they will all be relieved

    (Of the burden of you).
  • 12/19/2014 — Beach Erosion 06 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 06, 2014

    All there is is experience

    And interpretation of experience.

    The keys are

    How fully we experience our experience—

    That is, how fully aware we are of what we are experiencing—

    And how accurately we interpret our experience.

    If we are fully aware of our experience,

    And interpret it accurately,

    We have all we need to know

    To respond to it in an appropriate manner.

    That is all that can be asked of us ever.
  • 12/19/2014 — The Catch — Great Blue Heron with brunch. James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014 

    We have to put ourselves in accord with our life.

    It is hell.

    We cannot do it without swearing or crying, or both.

    It is such an agony to adjust ourselves—to accommodate ourselves—

    To that which is not to our liking,

    But is, nevertheless, the way things are.

    We do not live well at odds with the way things are.

    We’ve all known people who have done it,

    Who pouted or whined and moaned, or resented and hated,

    Their way all the way to the grave.

    They lived in protest against the way things are—

    As if to say, “If I can’t have things the way I think they ought to be,

    I’ll have nothing to do with any of it!”

    And were of no help to anyone.

    That’s one way to do it.

    Withdraw and scowl, or mourn.

    Better to come to terms with what we don’t like about our life,

    And do what we can to make things as good as they can be.

    Better to live so that other people are glad to see you coming,

    And sorry to see you going.

    Those who live in accord with their are sources of blessing and grace

    Unto all of life,

    And make every circumstance a softer, kinder, place

    By the quality of their presence.

    If you are going to be some way, be that way.
  • 12/20/2014 — Lighthouse Light 02 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    My greatest fear, dread, and source of angst is becoming abstruse and unintelligible.

    Makes sense for me to be afraid of making no sense.

    Nonsense is anathema to those striving for clarity and discernment.

    Hermes was the Greek god of interpretation, the god of meaning, the messenger of the gods, making clear to one god what another god had said—had intended to be heard and understood.

    Hermeneutics has always been my thing.

    It was natural for me to be a preacher, clarifying obscurity and getting to the point of things week in and week out—something I continue to bang away at with these little soliloquies and vignettes.

    And, if they make sense to no one else, at least they make sense to me.

    To stand on the brink of a future which could well hold strokes, dementia, and total disorientation is to balk at taking on THAT manifestation of the Cyclops on my way to wherever it is that I’m going.

    But, that may be where I’m going.

    We don’t get to choose our choices, or our destinations, no matter how much effort we put into willing what cannot be willed or guaranteeing what cannot be made certain.

    We have to go trusting into the night. And allow ourselves to be carried along by forces we do not direct or control, determined only to make the best of things no matter what they are.

    So, if you should ever hear that one who has spent his entire life finding it has lost it, say simply, “That’s a damn shame,” and know that’s the way it is sometimes.

    But don’t let that stop you from pursuing your thing, and living in the service of it, all the way to the end of the line, however that may turn out to be.
  • Wrapped in Wire — Haywood County Barn near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    There is a psychological shift that may be experienced as a physical “click”—

    As when things “click” into place, or when you “click” on a light in the darkness—

    When we move from one way of experiencing reality into another way of experiencing reality.

    Joseph Campbell talks about the “joyful, voluntary, participation in the sorrows of the world,”—the willing, joyous, embrace of life just as it is.

    Before it’s all woe-is-me-ain’t-it-awful-living-as-we-all-must-in-this-vale-of-tears,

    And, then, with the decision to LIVE there by God, and do it RIGHT,
    exactly as it ought to be done—and DOING it, in each moment, no matter what,

    Something happens.

    Death goes over into life,

    And we are no longer at the mercy of a “cold, cruel, world.”

    Now WE are in charge of the way we respond to our life,

    We are LIVING in the same world we always lived in,

    But it is transformed by the nature of our life,

    And nothing is as it was, or ever will be again.

    This is resurrection to life being lived out in our life.

    Resurrection does not wait on our physical death,

    But hinges on our psychological death,

    On our moving from one way of perceiving our life,

    Into a different way of perceiving our life.

    With the shift in perception, in perspective,

    The world shifts,

    And life becomes possible where, before,

    There was only suffering, misery and death.

    We can’t pretend to embrace life as it ls,

    And act as though we are living there as though we mean it.

    We have to mean it.

    From the heart.

    And that’s the kink in the hose.

    But, get that kink worked out, and it’s a “New World, Goldie!”
  • 12/21/2014 — Four Girls II Panorama 01 — Low Tide, Gay Shrimp/Fish Company Dock, St. Helena Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    You better know what your interests are and pursue them.

    If it is watching the Weather Channel, you missed something along the way,

    And better go back and pick it up.

    Our life can be taken from us by the way we live it.

    As we age, we have to get our life back,

    Or pay the price.

    If you are in your eighties and worried about your golf swing,

    You missed a turn.

    You drove through a rite of passage,

    Maybe two. Or three.

    You have to do some sitting and reflecting—

    Some coming to terms with the life you lived,

    And with the life you didn’t live.

    Go where it is most uncomfortable to be,

    And look around.

    Square yourself up with that time and place.

    Come to terms with it.

    Be clear about the mistakes you made,

    The missteps,

    The missed chances to grow up.

    Make a full and compete confession,

    To yourself.

    It’s too late to be who you would have been

    Without your mistakes and failures,

    And refusals to grow up.

    But you can be who you are with them in full view.

    And make amends where you are able,

    And stop looking to golf to take your mind off your business.

    The business of squaring yourself up with your life—

    The one you lived, and didn’t live, and still may live yet.
  • 12/21/2014 — Watkins Glen 02 HDR B&W — Watkins Glen, NY, Adirondack Park, October 2, 2014

    Our task is to find our life and live it–not our idea for our life, but our life’s idea for itself.

    Our life is constantly calling us—

    And an aside here to say that we talk about “being called” in terms of God’s Call To Do This Or That For God. We need to rethink the whole calling thing. To be called is nothing special. We are all being called by our life to live in ways that are aligned with our life’s idea of itself. Our LIFE is calling us. All the time, to do this, not that, or to do that, not this—

    To wake up and begin living the life that is our life to live, that only we can live, that no one but us can live,

    The life with our name one it, the one uniquely designed for us.

    We have to learn to listen to our life and align ourselves with it.

    If you can afford it,

    Find a Jungian analyst in your neighborhood,

    Tell her, tell him, you need help finding your life and aligning yourself with it.

    You can avoid the expense by taking up the work of becoming compassionately, mindfully, aware of all that is happening in your life and inside of you as you live your life.

    You probably can’t be that attentive on your own,

    But you can take up the practice of becoming attentive.

    You can’t find your life without being attentive to your life.

    A Jungian analyst would cut down the time it takes you to be attentive on your own.
  • 12/21/2014 — Smoky Cascade 03 — Big Creek District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville, NC, October 31, 2014

    Don’t tell me.

    Let me guess:

    Everything is just fine in your life—

    You’ve found the right dosage to keep your symptoms manageable,

    You have a job you like,

    The kids are making good grades and aren’t into drugs,

    Your dreams are crazy and beyond anybody’s comprehension,

    But all you need is to get to the beach more often

    For things to be exquisite.

    The clock is ticking,

    Your life—the life that is your life to live—is drumming its fingers,

    Looking at the time,

    And you’re thinking

    Your next bonus is going for a larger TV.

    Tick… Tick… Tick…
  • 12/22/2014 — Dawn Silhouettes 01 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    It’s easy to let your life go, thinking you are a failure and a washout in true Terry Malloy fashion (“I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”)

    It’s easier to let your life go, thinking you are somebody because you are the champ of the world.

    The trick is to live your life

    Through it all.
  • 12/22/2014 — Sand Art 01 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Some people have a hard time being where they are.

    They are in a hurry to be where they are not.

    Fresh Market is a wonderful place for me to be,

    Especially this time of year,

    With treats of every imaginable configuration

    Stacked high on tables creating isles for holiday shoppers.

    I’m thrilled and amazed,

    And stroll gleefully agog among the wonders.

    Who would think there could be so many ways to deliver sugar

    To the adoring masses?

    Past me in my state of awe push people with their carts

    To some more important place to be.

    They have to get to the bread isle,

    And they can’t be at the bread isle,

    Because they have to get to the meat counter,

    And they can’t linger at the meat counter,

    Because they have to get to the coffee section,

    Or, perhaps it’s the hair dresser,

    Or, or the oil change station…

    Wherever they have to be, it’s somewhere other than where they are.

    And there you are.

    Who is ever anywhere long enough to relish the good

    And rejoice?
  • 12/22/2014 — Nova Scotia 2008 06 — Peggy’s Cove, September 2008

    The silence of sacred places is innate and required.

    You whisper there, if you speak at all,

    And walk through the reverence of generations of pilgrims

    Quietly honoring the touch of holy land upon the heart.

    We build churches and install organs—

    each with a new record for pipes and stops—

    And play them at full volume,

    Or build mega-churches with commercial entertainment systems

    Guaranteed to be louder than the ones down the street

    Or across town.

    Old people have to wear hearing protection

    To sit through a service,

    And young people should.

    But, if you make it loud enough, they think they have heard something.
  • 12/22/2014 — Beach Erosion 11 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Getting older isn’t a matter of thinking about getting older and following some prescribed pattern—a recipe for aging.

    It’s a matter of paying attention—

    Of attending the ebbs and flows,

    And the drift of soul.

    What is happening and what needs to be done about it

    Will become apparent in its own good time.

    The important thing is to not pretend that nothing is happening,

    To not live in denial of the facts, of the reality, of the time and place of your living.

    Live to see what you can get by with.

    Don’t stop eating—just stop eating what you can no longer eat.

    And let things go when the time for going is upon you.

    And let things come when the time for coming arrives.

    This is called recognizing the fullness of time

    And receiving it well,

    Allowing it to play out in your life as it will.

    Step into your later years with no expectations,

    No agenda,

    No stipulations or demands.

    Go with curiosity and imagination,

    With creativity, playfulness and an abiding sense of humor—

    And you will do just fine.
  • 12/23/2014 — Price Lake and Grandfather Mountain 2008 — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 2008

    Live from the center.

    Your center is found between the poles—the extremes—that pull you in opposite directions.

    Find your conflicts, then find the center.

    Stand/live consciously between the conflicts at work in your life.

    You want to lose weight and you refuse to eat wisely and exercise.

    Square up to the reality of each pole,

    Listen fully to the truth of each one—

    Paying attention to your dreams as you do the work of listening—

    And move to the center.

    You can’t live in one extreme and listen to it,

    Much less, listen to the other extreme.

    Simply honoring your extremes begins the shift to the center.

    When we consciously take our place

    In the center between extremes,

    We initiate the shift in perspective,

    That relaxes tension and enhances understanding.

    The center is the place of seeing, hearing, knowing and understanding.

    The extremes are the place of war and sabotage.

    Recognize and respect the extremes,

    And live from the center.
  • 12/24/2014 — Late Light C — Edisto State Park, Edisto Island, SC, November 16, 2013

    We all have to learn to hit a curve ball.

    In each situation that arises, we are coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the bases loaded down one run, facing a pitcher who only walks a batter to set up the next hitter and throws a mean curve ball.

    My situation, here and now, is knowing that everybody has to learn to hit a curve ball, and having only a limited number of sentences to work with in order to hook you into allowing me to tell you what I know about hitting curve balls and, thus, helping you hit your own curve ball in each situation as it arises the rest of your whole life long.

    Here we go. I’m standing at the plate now. The pitch is on the way.

    There are three kinds of people. The kind that know what they are doing, like Dick Cheney, say, and are intent on working the system in their behalf and in behalf of their friends and loved ones, and never saw a curve ball they couldn’t crush. But, here’s the problem: They think they are hitting a curve ball, and they are striking out. Knowing what you are doing is the most persistent illusion—and the greatest curve ball—in the book of illusions and curve balls (All the really good ones are the greatest ever). Gets ’em every time.

    And the kind that know they don’t know what they are doing—and believe it doesn’t matter, because the game is stacked against them and they don’t have a chance with every pitcher throwing mean curve balls to them at every at bat.

    And the kind that know they don’t know what they are doing and are eager to know more of what they don’t know in order to work a broken system to serve the needs of all concerned, and keep swinging at every curve ball, connecting often enough to keep swinging.

    We all work with a terribly broken system. The system has always been broken. It will always be broken. We have to work with a broken system. It’s the pitcher with the meanest curve ball in the business.

    Michael Brown—and now Antonio Martin—Eric Garner, Officer Rafael Ramos and Officer Wenjian Liu are the most recent victims of a system that isn’t working—and that is what we have to work with: a terribly broken system.

    That’s the meanest curve ball in the book of curve balls.

    Here’s how we do it: We live out of our own integrity in each situation as it arises.

    Integrity is living in ways that are integral with what is deepest, truest and best about us.

    We hit curve balls by living out of our own integrity in facing what faces us, and dealing with it in ways that do right by ourselves and right by the situations and circumstances of our living.

    To hit curve balls, we have to know who we are, and who we also are, and who our life is asking us to be in each situation as it arises, and bringing forth what we have to offer there apart from any agenda, ideology, fear or desire that might be impinging upon us and at work in the time and place of our living.

    The system is broken. All systems are broken. The Tao is ignored. We are out of accord with the way things are and with the way things need to be. And we only have ourselves to work with.

    Our practice is learning to hit curve balls in each situation as it arises.

    That is the hope of the world.
  • 12/25/2014 — Price Lake Sunset — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, July, 2008

    Everyone has to hit a curve ball.

    Each one of us has to do her—has to do his—own work.

    No one can do anything for anyone else other than listen with compassionate understanding to the struggle and anguish—

    And ask the right questions in each situation as it arises.

    The work of learning to hit a curve ball

    Includes the work of reclaiming the images of the Bible for ourselves

    In each new age of our life.

    The images of the Bible are not about then and there, but here and now.

    They are not facts that have to be revered and adored and believed with all our heart.

    They are symbols and metaphors which open us to the fact of the work of our own awakening, realization, becoming and being.

    Where is the manger to be found in your own life?

    Where are you facing the prospect of bringing yourself forth—birthing yourself—in inhospitable conditions, circumstances, situations?

    Where is your Mary being asked to give birth to your Jesus?

    Where is your Jesus being asked to sacrifice his ties to the comfort and pleasures of life in the here and now

    For the sake of his own integrity—living in ways that are integral to that which is deepest, truest and best about him—in bringing his own life forth in the midst of the way life is being lived about him?

    The baby born in the manger is YOU. The man dying on the cross is YOU continuing to birth YOU into a life not so conducive to your living. The cross is just another manger.

    And YOU are hitting another curve ball as you move through different lives at different ages in your life into the life that is required of you—offered to  you—in that age.

    We are always being born symbolically, metaphorically—and we are always dying to the things that would keep us from being born.

    Birth is death. Death is birth. Again and again. Throughout our life.

    Batter up!

    Merry Christmas! Again! And again!
  • 12/25/2014 — The Watchman and the Virgin — Zion National Park, Springdale, UT, May 20, 2010

    It begins with a good faith commitment to find our life—the life that is our life to live—the life that no one but us can live—and live it.

    That good faith commitment implies learning to hit curve balls.

    When life—the life within which we find and live our life—throws us a curve ball, we hit it out of the park.

    We deal with it better than Jesus or the Buddha—better than Jesus AND the Buddha, operating as a tag team—could deal with it.

    Living our life means mastering curve balls.

    It takes swinging at a lot of curve balls to get it down.

    Our commitment is to keep swinging until we know what we are doing—

    And do it like there is nothing to it.

    And we have to have the chutzpah, the courage, the audacity, the heart for the task—

    Why kid ourselves about it?

    It isn’t as though our life doesn’t know we don’t have what it takes,

    And will sink it’s last dime into outfitting us for a journey we will never take.

    Our life knows us well by now.

    It’s in if we are, but there is no hedging or holding back.

    We have to mean every word if we say, “Okay. Let’s do it.”
  • 12/26/2014 — Dawn Silhouettes 02 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    If you are going to understand anything, understand that other people are not like you.

    If you are going to understand anything else, understand it is not your place to make them as you are.

    If you are going to understand anything else, understand that you are not like other people.

    If you are going to understand anything else, understand that it is not your place to become like them.

    If you get those four things down, you will be where you are,

    And they will be where they are,

    And that’s how it needs to be.

    When someone comes at you with a Plan Of Salvation, or an agenda of any kind for your life,

    Amway, say.

    Tell them you have to go feed the horses,

    And walk far away.

    All those signs saying “Everyone is welcome!” in front of all those churches means

    “Everyone is welcome to be as we are!”

    Don’t walk into any crowd thinking you can be different.

    You only need a handful of the right kind of people

    To help you stay connected with what you know to be so,

    Grounded in what is important,

    Centered in your heart’s true sense of direction,

    Balanced and aware of your own polarities,

    Focused on bringing yourself forth in the work that is yours to do

    By living in ways that are integral with what is deepest, best and truest about you,

    And bringing forth what you have to give to each situation as it arises.

    When someone begins to interfere with any of that,

    Tell them you have to go feed the horses.
  • 12/26/2014 — Atlantic Dawn — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, September 2008

    You have to say no when no needs to be said,

    And you have to take no for an answer when no needs to be heard.

    When you get this down, you will have it made,

    As much a you can have it made.

    In spite of anything else I may tell you,

    This is all you need to know.
  • 12/26/2014 — Before Dawn — Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse, Nova Scotia, September 2008

    Everything starts with a purpose.

    Honor your purposes, no matter how absurd, foolish, outlandish, weird and indefensible they may be.

    You owe it to find out where they lead.

    If it’s riding bulls, give it your best shot.

    You are looking closer at what catches your eye.

    Maybe it isn’t riding the bull so much as doctoring bulls

    And you wind up in Vet school.

    You don’t know where you are going when you allow your purposes to lead you into your life.

    Pay attention to the things that stir your heart.

    Your soul is whispering to you from the back of a bull.

    Start with that.

    Trust yourself to it.

    See where it goes. 
  • 12/27/2014 — Before Dawn B&W — Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse, Nova Scotia, September 2008

    You are what you seek.

    Be what you need.
  • 12/28/2014 — Beach Erosion Panorama 07 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    What are the sources of discord, discordance, discontinuity in your life?

    These are the places you are being asked to grow up, face what must be faced and do what needs to be done.

    But. Do not rush to war.

    And do not seek peace at any price.

    Do not assume that you know what needs to happen.

    Sit with the situation.

    In any situation, there are the things that can be changed,

    And the things that will never change,

    And the things you assume can be changed,

    And the things you assume will never change.

    The trick is to know which is which.

    What is the greater miracle:

    Standing up and walking,

    Or accepting the fact that you will never walk again?

    Are you willing what cannot be willed?

    Forcing what cannot be forced?

    Or willing what must be willed?

    Forcing what must be forced?

    What is at stake in the situation?

    The places of discord and disharmony are the most important places.

    Do not hurry through them to some appearance of peace.

    Listen to them.

    Experience them.

    Let them work their magic.

    Allow them to bring forth what needs to come forth—

    And don’t assume you know what that is.
  • 12/28/2014 — Grotto Falls 2008 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, Gatlinburg, TN, April 2008

    What are you doing–and what does that have to do with the life you need to be living?

    With the life that is yours to live?

    With the life that no one but you can live?

    How is what you are doing enabling you to live that life?

    If it isn’t helping you live that life, why are you doing it?
  • 12/28/2014 — Price Lake and Grandfather Mountain 02 2008 — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 2008

    Joseph Campbell (in The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers) said, “If the work you are doing is the work that you choose to do because you are enjoying it, that’s your life.”

    But, he said if your life catches your eye and “you think, ‘Oh, no! I couldn’t do that!’ that’s the dragon locking you in.”

    He goes on to say that in living our life, we save the world. “The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.”

    Find what has life for you and live it!

    Now, you have to evaluate every invitation and opportunity that comes your way in terms of its Life Quotient. “Is this life or an escape from life?”

    The Forbidden Fruit wasn’t growing on the Tree of Life—and a lot of things that look like life are death in disguise.

    So, look closely at the things that catch your eye.

    If it is life that looks back at you, climb on and go for the ride of a lifetime, and don’t let anything knock you out of the saddle!
  • 12/29/2014 — Four Girls II Panorama 02 — High Tide, Johnson Creek, Gay Shrimp/Fish Company dock, St. Helena Island, SC, December 7, 2014

    We are scattered, at loose ends, looking for something we don’t have, settling for anything bright and flashy, noisy and loud, to take our minds off our emptiness, our hollowness, the absence of a grounding foundation to our lives.

    Money won’t do it.

    Money and entertainment are all we know.

    It’s time to shift the focus of our search.

    The entire culture is outwardly focused.

    It’s out there, up there, over there, back there…

    Anywhere but here, now.

    And don’t ask us to look within.

    There is nothing there.

    That’s what they said about Nazareth.

    The stone the builders reject becomes the chief cornerstone.

    Sit down. Shut up. And get to know who you are.

    The spiritual quest is for a life worth living.

    A life worth living is not found out there, over there. No one can tell us what is worth our time. Only we know that—and we know it by listening, by looking, within.

    Joseph Campbell said, “The spiritual quest is to find the inward thing that you basically are.”

    The theme that runs through all of our stories from the beginning is the search for the organizing principle of our life—for what is “I,” “ME”—for who, for what, “I AM”—for what resonates with me and pulls me forth into its service, its expression, so that my life is the conscious incarnation, the conscious coming forth, of Who I Am into the world of normal, apparent, reality.

    Now, of course, we all know what it is that we are, that we seek. We know it when we see it, when we hear it, “out there, over there.” We are attracted to it all our life, but we do not recognize its true value. We do not incorporate it into the life we are living—we are too busy living like we are supposed to live, in the service of money and security or fame and glory.

    But we know who we are, and only have to know what we know, by listening and looking within.
  • 12/29/2014 — Viaduct Fall 2008 03 B&W — Linville Cove Viaduct, Blue Ridge Parkway, Linville, NC, October 2008

    All of our problems are personality problems.

    If we had a different personality, we would have different problems.

    Even the problems which seem to have no relationship with our personality—environmental, say, or genetic, etc.—are the problem they are because of our personality—because the way we perceive and respond to “the problem” makes it the problem it is for us.

    We cannot solve, or fix, our problems without adjusting our personality—without becoming a different person in response to, in relationship with, the problem.

    We cannot live our life—the life that is our life to live—without a “personality adjustment,” perhaps a “personality transplant.”

    We cannot grow up without changing, without becoming a different person—a recognizably different person.

    Our life—the one that is our life to live—changes us even before we begin living it, and continues to change us throughout what remains of the time left for living.

    It is the grandest of all adventures—becoming who, okay, whom, we are.
  • 12/29/2014 — High Falls 2008 — Little River, DuPont State Forest near Brevard, NC, May 2008

    Marvel Comics has the ideal of the Hero down to the last scene. The Avengers are how all heroes ought to be.

    This is to say there is a universally recognized standard for heroes, and the Avengers are squarely in the center of the bell-shaped curve.

    May it be said so of all of us in all the roles we play.

    Or, may it be said, that we were just enough off-center to make it interesting and lively for everyone.

    There are norms at work governing the way we are to perform all of the parts we play.

    Moms and dads, grandmothers and fathers, bosses, employees, thieves and scoundrels, lovers and friends…

    All of the roles have a normal distribution of behaviors and attitudes associated with each one.

    We know how to be a teacher, for instance, even though we have never taught a class. We know how teachers are ‘spozed to do it.

    And auto mechanics. Auto mechanics are not supposed to put sugar in gas tanks. And surgeons are not supposed to leave scalpels in their patients.

    When we depart from the normally accepted standards governing our behavior and attitude, we enter a state of imbalance. We are “on the edge,” “out of sync,” or just, “out there.”

    Everyone knows it. Including our own psyche/soul.

    Now, our psyche/soul is interested in our living aligned with its idea of a normal distribution curve for the life it has in mind for us—for the roles it would have us play if we were living in sync with its ideal.

    But, living aligned with psyche/soul may well put us at odds with our family and culture—as it did with Jesus and the Buddha and all the other real life heroes that ever have been or will be.

    We have some choices to make: Who is guiding our boat on its path though the sea? How well do we collaborate with the guide in piloting our boat, in living our life? Whose idea of a normal distribution curve do we recognize as normative for us?

    Our life is our answer to these questions.
  • 12/30/2014 — Beach Sunrise 2008 — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    “Getting back to the center,” “Being centered and grounded,” “Centering ourselves,” are all about aligning ourselves with the mid-point of the normal distribution curves governing our behaviors and attitude for our current place in life.

    We have “lost the center”—across the board, around the table. Around the world.

    We don’t know who we are, what we are about, or who we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to be about.

    And we want finding it all to be smooth, soft and easy.

    Just take the idea of “growing up,” or of being a “grown up”—or the idea of a “true human being.” How far are we all (across the table and around the world) from the center of one of those normal distribution curves?

    We all are Adam and Eve, refusing the roles we are asked to play, to live, and seeking the things that are “good for food and a delight to the eyes,” and are off and running, away from the center, and into the far extremes of self-gratification and profit—and pleasure—at any price.

    All of the mid-points of all of the normal distribution curves require us to be self-disciplined in the service of the values and principles that are to be honored, respected and up-held by the standards governing behavior and attitude at work in those particular roles and ways of being.

    To be more specific, the mid-points of those normal distribution curves require us to live with the intention and purpose at the heart of those roles and ways of being.

    We cannot live any way we choose and be centered, grounded, whole, and at-one with ourselves and at peace with one another.

    We have to recognize the value of the values at the heart our roles and ways of being, embrace them with our will—our intention and purpose—and serve them with our life.

    Or drift without direction or foundation through the rest of our days.
  • 12/31/2014 — In the Fog 03 B&W — Lake Townsend, Greensboro, NC, October 2008

    There are romantic, idyllic, roles and images, like a Norman Rockwell painting, and there are practical, down-to-earth, how-it-is-in-real-life roles and images, like a day in the life of Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof.

    We can try to shape our life into a Norman Rockwell world—which exists only in a nostalgic reformulation of the way things never were but could have, might have, should have, been.

    And we can live, as Tevya did, in spontaneous response to the trials and ordeals of our life—in light of purposes and intentions aligned with what needs to happen there for the true good of all.

    A true human being is not interested in imposing a prefab order on the situation as it arises,

    But in serving the good of the whole within the limits and conditions of the time and place of this here and this now.

    Chances are somebody will be left out of that good.

    We all take our chances, and we all live to see to it that no one is left out of the good consistently, dependably, reliably, in a “they are used to it,” or a “that’s the way it is,” or an “it can’t be helped,” or a “that’s what they deserve,” kind of way.

    Compassion is the cross every true human being bears and lives to serve.

    Not ideology or romanticism, or sentimentality.
  • 01/01/2015 — Dawn Silhouettes 05 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2017 

    We have to live with intention and purpose.

    We cannot just hang out at the mall until we die,

    Or live from party to party,

    Just wanting to have fun,

    Rolling with the good times as long as they last.

    Our life is the canvas and we are the brush.

    We paint ourselves into being through the way we live our life.

    We will paint ourselves into some variety of being.

    The idea is to do it with intention and purpose,

    Meaning to find what is our to do—

    To find what is who we are—

    And do it so as to be it, to become it,

    And express ourselves, incarnate ourselves, reveal ourselves

    Through the quality and character of the life we are living.

    We will do that intentionally or unintentionally.

    It goes better for us and for all concerned when we live

    With the intention of being who we are

    In and through the life we live.
  • 01/01/2015 — Sunrise — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    Here’s all you will ever need for a New Year’s Resolution:

    “I will consciously strive throughout the year

    To see what I look at,

    And to live like I mean it!”
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 01/01/2015 — The Watchman and the Virgin 02 — Zion National Park, Springdale, UT, May 2010

    In a few days, I will enter my seventh decade, quite aware that it could be my last.

    My family and friends do not like to hear me say that,

    In a, “No Jim, this shall not happen to you!” kind of way.

    “You don’t know that,” they say. “Don’t say that! Don’t talk like that!”

    I say we have to live toward our death

    In a “Don’t waste my time arguing with me, I have things to do before I die” kind of way.

    This is not a Bucket List of things to do, as in sights to see, airplanes to jump out of, and beer to sample before I die.

    It is a clear awareness that I only have a short time left in which to see what I may yet see, and say what I may yet say.

    So I have to give myself to what needs me to do it while the light lasts.

    I have to be looking, listening, seeing, hearing, pondering, realizing, grasping, understanding, making connections, exploring contradictions, coming to terms with the discrepancy between how things are and how I wish they were, and growing up.

    There is much yet to be grown up about.

    In doing what is mine still to do, I have to be alone.

    My work is solitary work,

    As was Beethoven’s and Michelangelo’s, and all the artists and musicians and poets there ever have been or will be.

    Solitude is not isolation.

    It is not exclusion or banishment.

    It is the environment of perception and perspective, examination and realization.

    After seventy years, I have a lot to think about, to mull over, to explore and reexamine, and make sense of.

    I can’t do that if I am chatting about news/weather/sports, or listening to the latest episode in the “you won’t believe what just happened” drama of somebody else’s life. They have their life to live. I have mine.

    I have to go feed the horses in order to be grounded in what matters most to me in the last, or the next to last, or the next to the next to last, decade of my life.

    There is much to be done, and too little time—no matter how much that may turn out to be—left in which to do it!
  • 01/02/2015 — Adams Mill Pond Panorama 07 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    Your place is to coordinate the needs of your heart, soul, body and mind, and the time and place of your living—

    To collaborate with heart, soul, mind and body in respecting and living within the conditions and circumstances of your life.

    That’s it.

    In pulling this off, you have to be aware of the different manifestations of WILL at work in your life.

    There is your personal will.

    There is the will of your culture, your society, your family—extended and nuclear, your job/boss, the individuals who play a part in your life, the will of your heart, soul, body and mind, the will to live—to be alive, and the will beyond all these wills calling you to a particular work—or expression of the art of you in your life.

    The trick is to align your will with the will of your heart, soul, body and mind and with the will willing itself to life, to expression, through you in the midst of all of the other wills at work in your life.

    Placing your will in the service of the will of heart, soul, body and mind is to connect yourself with the will willing itself to life through you.

    Then you have to negotiate your way through the maze of conflicting wills imposing their idea for your life on you.

    Your will, intention, purpose aligned with the will, intention, purpose of the will willing itself to life through you is a power to be reckoned with—but it is a power you participate in.

    You do not own or direct it, and it is not yours to use in the service of your idea of  how things ought to be.

    Your place is to learn what it means to say, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”

    And say it.

    And live it out in your life.
  • 01/02/2015 — Miss Lily Panorama B&W — High Tide, Gay Shrimp/Fish Company Dock, Johnson Creek, St. Helena Island, SC, December 7, 2014 

    Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate…for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

    The Tao and Zen speak of “the razor’s edge,” “the slippery slope,” and the “dangerous path.”

    The flow of my life as I experience it is faint and unobtrusive, and requires mindful, compassionate (as opposed to willful and demanding) attention to ascertain the indistinct, soft, gentle, “still, small voice,” saying, “This is the way for you, here and now.”

    Distractions abound. Diversions are abundant. Or as Jesus would say, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and those who find it are many.”

    We live meditatively, taking all things into account—considering carefully the input from body, mind, heart and soul—and proceeding attentively and conscientiously along the way.

    Confirmation and compensation, or correction, are as close as each night’s dreams, and we we would do well to honor them as communion from body, mind, heart and soul, and adjust our living accordingly—noting trends and themes over time, rather than letting one dream determine major life decisions.

    We go slowly to way-points throughout our life, reading the signals, interpreting the signs, and walking the razor’s edge.
  • 01/02/2015 — Eagle in Flight 05 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    Our willful, wanting, self is always inserting itself into the driver’s seat, demanding to take the wheel, certain it knows where to go and the best way to get there.

    Our sensing, knowing, self is always listening, looking, feeling, waiting to read the signals from heart, soul, body, mind in order perceive the way as it opens before us and proceed slowly, mindfully, attentively and compassionately along the path.

    We have to be alert to our tendency to forge ahead, forcing our way—OUR way—in the service of our willful, wanting, self,

    And wait for the other guides to report in,

    As we pick our way through our options in search of Ariadne’s Thread to lead us through the maze in living the life that is our life to live within the life we are living.

    “A dangerous path this is,” this life-within-life-to-life, and one to be walked conscientiously, and intentionally—lest emotion and enthusiasm consume us, and lead us into one disaster after another.
  • 01/03/2015 — Adams Mill Pond Panorama 06 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    It could be that we don’t want to know who we are.

    It could be that we don’t what to go to the trouble of knowing who we are.

    It could be that we don’t want to go to the trouble of being who we are.

    It is certain that we don’t know who we are,

    And that we have created elaborate social and cultural mechanisms to save us from having to know who we are.

    We live on escape and denial.

    Ask anyone, “What do you work in order to do?”

    They will say, “What do you mean?”

    Follow up with, “What is your life—what do you live to do—that you work in order to do?”

    They will say, “I’m just doing good to get from pay check to pay check.”

    They work to work.

    They don’t have a life.

    They have no idea of the life that is theirs to live.

    If they won the lottery, they would spend it all on escape and denial.

    Life is just what happens to you between birth and death.

    What we do there doesn’t matter

    Beyond being good so we will go to heaven when we die.

    It all starts after death.

    Being enraptured for eternity

    And going to angel concerts.

    Woopi.
  • 01/03/2015 — Field Road HDR 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 14, 2014

    If I could give you one thing it would be silence.

    It all starts with silence, flows from silence.

    If you have a problem with your life, you aren’t being quiet enough.

    Things happen in the silence.

    Things like realization, awareness, awakening…

    The word “Buddha” means “The Awakened One,”

    Or “The One Who Woke Up.”

    Guess what he was doing when the Great Awakening happened.

    He was being quiet. Very quiet.

    A noisy environment doesn’t get much good press

    As a place where awakening is likely to occur.

    Unless waking up to your need for silence counts.

    Meditation is at least 20 minutes of silence every day.

    Go for at least that much, but don’t call it “meditation.”

    Call it “Quiet Time,” or “Time Out.”

    “Daddy/Mommy is in Time Out.”

    Just sit quietly. No reading. No music. Nothing.

    For 10 minutes twice a day.

    Or for 15 minutes twice a day if you can make that work.

    Let your mind wander as it will, but if you start a train of thought, ruminating, worrying, problem solving, list making, stop and consciously bring yourself back to the silence.

    Silently count each inhalation. Silently think the word “And” with each exhalation.

    If you fall asleep, no problem. Just, I can’t help it, wake up.
  • 01/04/2015 — Adams Mill Pond Panorama 11 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

    When our unconscious directs our life consciously—

    That is, when we live consciously, intentionally, deliberately—

    When we seek to align ourselves with the unconscious,

    And willfully lay aside our will in a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way–

    We call it destiny.

    Joseph Campbell said, “Your fate is the vehicle of your destiny.”

    And, “Your life evokes your character.”

    Our life, unconsciously lived, is our fate, bringing us forth, against our will,

    Asking us again, and again, throughout our life,

    “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Are you waking up yet? Are you awake at last? What’s it going to take to wake you up?”

    Our life, consciously lived, is our destiny,

    Is who we are,

    Is what we are built for,

    Is what we are called to do.

    We can live with our eyes closed, or with our eyes open.

    The life we are living is doing its best

    To open our eyes to the life that is ours to live

    In the time left for living.
  • 01/04/2015 — Young Buck 02 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    The Hero’s Journey always winds between polarities.

    What we want to do is offset by what we need to do, what ought to be done.

    The good is countered by the also-good.

    The right thing to do is opposed by another right thing to do.

    And we don’t know what to do,

    Yet we must choose,

    And the future hangs in the balance.

    “A dangerous path this is, like walking the razor’s edge.”

    Who can make such a decision?

    One after another?

    No wonder there are so few heroes these days.

    “Let’s go bowling, Dude!”
  • 01/05/2015 — Dawn Silhouettes 06 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Waking up is waking up to what is ours to do,

    And to what is not ours to do.

    We have to work our side of the street,

    And leave the other sides of the street to someone else.

    “Being all things to all people” has to do with compassion,

    Not with minding, or taking care of, their business.

    We come alive in different places, in different ways.

    No one can thrust their way on us,

    Or we on them.

    We each find our own life, and live it, tend it,

    Doing the work that is ours to do

    With the gifts, art, talent and proclivities that are ours to bring forth

    As blessing and grace

    Upon all who are capable of being blessed and graced

    By who we are and what we have to offer.
  • 01/05/2015 — Immature Bald Eagle 02 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    The darkness we see so well in others resides in ourselves.

    We begin to reconcile ourselves to the fact of our own darkness,

    And take up the work of integration—

    Do not think you can destroy the darkness within, or will it away,

    Or be ever free of it, for it is who we also are,

    And has a definite place in our life, and a role to play

    In the work that is ours yet to do—by becoming aware of our darkness,

    And being ever mindful of its presence within.

    Rumi thought of darkness as “the cradle of light,”

    And the darkest dark is found in those

    Who aspire to be nothing but light.

    We live best in the center of all dichotomies.

    As we move toward one extreme,

    The other shadows every move.

    We are kidding only ourselves when we think we are

    Incapable of evil of any kind.

    Our families know, and our best friends, and total strangers.

    We gain nothing by denying our dark potential,

    And need to invite a new member to the Inner Council

    Which guides our daily path,

    Honoring all available wisdom in the work of finding our way.
  • 01/06/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 36 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We are just along for the ride.

    We don’t have to worry about making anything happen.

    We are responsible only for being who we are—

    For bringing forth what is ours to offer

    And offering it

    Without trying to exploit it, or pave our way with it, or make it pay off.

    We are here to serve—

    In both senses of the word—

    The gifts that are ours to give—

    And collaborate with the guides

    In finding the best path down the mountain—

    And enjoy the ride.
  • 01/07/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 50 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, December 10, 2014

    We have to believe in our work—in the work that is ours to do—and do it.

    This is the heroic task on the hero’s journey.

    This is the work that puts everything in order,

    That returns everything to its proper place,

    That restores harmony, heals divisions, reconciles extremes and makes peace.

    We have to believe that believing in our work and doing it

    Is the Philosopher’s Stone,

    The long sought elixir of life—

    And live as though it is.

    We are creating momentum here,

    Turning the tide,

    Producing karma,

    Changing Mind.

    The World Mind is lost, hopeless, aimless, adrift, without foundation, intention, purpose, compassion or any affiliation with the values that make us human.

    We have to change that Mind, that Drift, that Orientation.

    We do that by engaging our purpose and serving the High Values

    Through finding our life and living it—

    Believing in our work and doing it—

    In every situation as it arises,

    No matter what.

    Living with focus, direction, clarity and mindful devotion

    To the life that is our life to live

    Is the contribution of the individual part

    That transforms the whole.

    It only takes one person living with direction

    To change the direction of the world.

    If you don’t believe that,

    Live as though you do,

    And you will change your mind

    In the act of changing the Mind of the World.

    And that will change everything.
  • 01/08/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 24 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014 

    Joseph Campbell said that we are seeking experiences in our physical life that resonate with us at the level of our innermost being and deepest reality.

    We are seeking, he said, the experience of being fully alive, so that our inner being and reality are at one with our external being and reality:

    One being, one reality, one life.

    Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.”

    Jesus said, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.”

    Oneness with the Father and oneness with our LIFE is one thing.

    There you are.

    How do we get there?

    The way is at once easy and difficult.

    It is as easy as knowing what resonates with us and what does not—

    As easy as knowing what has heart for us—for where our heart comes to life—for what we can do with all our heart—and what does not.

    And it is as difficult as being still and quiet, paying attention to what we are attending, and being mindfully aware of each situation as it arises—and doing what we sense needs to be done in response to it.

    Where have you lived with all your heart in what you were doing lately?

    How aware are you of what is going on within you in each situation as it arises?

    How aware are you of what is happening there and what needs to be done in response?

    That’s how close you are to being at one with yourself and at one with your life—

    To being fully, completely, alive.

    Get that down and it will be quite a New Year.
  • 01/08/2015 — Beach Erosion Panorama 10 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 9, 2014

    It takes faith in what we are doing to do it, and go on doing it, in spite of the lack of supporting evidence as to its value.

    Believing in the value of what we are doing in the face of its obvious lack of value is crazy.

    Or courageous.

    Stupid,

    Or far-sighted.

    Either way, to continue in its service is to risk looking bad in the eyes of Those Who Know Better And Let You Know It.

    And, it doesn’t help to know that we could be wrong in 10,000 ways.

    We owe it to ourselves to find out if we are wrong.

    And to know the jury may be out deliberating that verdict long past our lifetime.

    We are building blocks of transformation.

    How many people lived their life in the service of the conviction

    That slavery was wrong before the Emancipation Proclamation?

    In the service of the conviction that human rights are the highest values

    Before the Civil Rights Movement and Selma?

    Do. Not. Quit. In. The. Service. Of. Your. Heart.

    No matter what Those Who Know Better say.

    Or do.
  • 01/09/2015 — Dawn Silhouettes 03 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 06, 2014

    We have to take our life in our own hands and live it all the way.

    To do that, of course, it has to be our life we are living—

    The one with our name on it—

    The one no one else could possibly live—

    The one that needs us to live it.

    And we have to live it with compassion and respect for all.

    What’s a life without compassion and respect?

    Without recognizing and living as though

    “Thou Art That”—

    Without understanding we are all the Christ, the Buddha,

    That we are the other and the other is us?
  • 01/10/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 01 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014 

    We negotiate our way through all of the facts defining, limiting, enabling, expanding, deepening, enlarging our living.

    The facts of life are at once a wall and a door, a dead end and a threshold to limitless possibilities.

    Heraclitus said “If you went in search of it, you would not find the boundaries of the soul, though you traveled every road-so deep is its measure.”

    That is exactly the scope of our life.

    We are in search of soul, seeking soul,

    And the facts of our life are springboards, stepping stones, on the journey.

    A fact is nothing but a doorway to soul,

    But it takes being soulful to know that that it is so.

    We have to live soulfully to know soul.

    Soulfulness starts with seeing facts for what they are:

    Optical illusions flashing glimpses of soul.

    Joseph Campbell said that facts evoke our character—

    Connect us with our character—

    Bring forth our character.

    Character and soulfulness are the same thing.

    No one has ever been soulful who didn’t have character.

    No one has ever been in full possession of their character

    Without being soulful.

    When you find soul, you find YOU.

    When you are soulful, you are YOU.

    YOU and soul are one thing.

    One beautiful thing.

    Don’t let the facts of your life stand in your way.

    Walk through them to worlds beyond worlds,

    Laughing, dancing, singing in the rain.
  • 01/10/2015 — Beach Erosion Panorama 21 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    We cannot hear what we are not ready to hear,

    No matter how much those who are speaking may be ready for us to hear it.

    Hearing cannot be forced before its time.

    Readiness is a matter of maturation and grace.

    Both are incalculable factors in human development.

    The time may be right for some but not for others.

    Those who speak can do nothing more than say what they have to say,

    And let nature take its course.

    Those who hear can no more give credit to those who said what they needed to hear,

    Than to all of those who prepared the way for it being heard.

    Hearing is no more the result of speaking than it is of listening.

    Who gets the credit, then, for hearing?

    Who gets the blame for not hearing?

    Not having heard is preparation for hearing at last.

    Everything is grist for the mill,

    And nothing can happen apart from maturation and grace.
  • 01/10/2015 — Cooperstown Cemetery B&W — Cooperstown, NY, September 27, 2014

    What stands in your way?

    On every level?

    What is holding you back?

    Keeping from the full realization of your potentialities?

    Of your innate possibilities?

    Preventing your coming forth?

    Arresting your development?

    Refusing the discovery of your own voice?

    The exercise of your own authority?

    The living of your own life?

    The exhaustive search for what stands in your way

    Is an appropriate focus of meditative concentration

    For as long as it takes to get to the bottom of things.

    Don’t dismiss the assignment

    In an “Oh, I know it’s the trauma of childhood,

    Or Viet Nam,

    Or my fear of failure,

    Or of success…”

    KNOW all about all the things that stand in your way.

    KNOW exactly what is keeping you from the fullness of your own life

    In a Who, What, Where, When, How, Why, And Now What kind of way.
  • 01/11/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 02 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    There is no immunity, no escape, no exit—

    We are on our own with our life.

    We transcend, and transform, our situation by trusting ourselves to it

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way.

    Our life needs us to live it.

    Our gifts need us to give them.

    Our heart needs us to serve it.

    And we want smooth and easy.

    Everything waits for us to say,

    “Okay! I’ll do it YOUR way,”

    And mean it.

    Everything waits for us to find our life and live it,

    To know the YOU within who wants us to do it her, his, way,

    And step into the future that has been waiting for us

    Since the day we were born.
  • 01/11/2015 — Field Road HDR 05 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 14, 2014

    Our life is an experiment with living our life.

    We’re on the beam, we’re off the beam.

    Now we’re getting warmer, now we are cooling off, now we are a block of ice.

    We attend each moment.

    We listen to the guidance of The One Who Knows within.

    We look for the signals and signs in dreams and symptoms.

    We are sensitive to the nudges of instinct and intuition.

    And we meditate on the flow and direction of our life

    Throughout each day.

    It’s all part of the practice of being who we are

    In the time and place—

    The here and now—

    Of our living,

    And evidence of our devotion

    To the work that is ours to do

    In bringing forth the gifts that are ours to give

    For the true good of all.
  • 01/12/2015 — Dawn Silhouettes 04 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Make your LIFE your life!

    Live to live your LIFE!

    We live in a culture that would have us live to take our mind off of our LIFE—and off of our life.

    We live in a culture that would have us believe life is not worth living as it is—

    That we can’t live our life, and have no LIFE, until we can afford the luxury of entertainments around the clock.

    To live is to be entertained in this culture,

    And, more than that, it is to talk, talk, talk, about the great time we are having,

    The great times we’ve had

    And the great times we are going to have in the very near future.

    Let the great times roll.

    We invented Viagra so the great times could roll right up to the end.

    Our work is cut out for us.

    We have to separate ourselves from the culture

    And from the thinking that pervades the culture.

    We have to isolate ourselves—seclude ourselves—from the impact of the culture,

    So that our LIFE might find us,

    So that we might find our LIFE.

    We don’t believe we have a LIFE.

    We have to believe we have a LIFE

    And lie in wait,

    Watching for it,

    So that we might rush to meet it when it comes along,

    As it does every do often, just to check on us,

    Just to see if we are ready yet,

    And live it with all our heart

    Throughout the time left for living.
  • 01/12/2015 — Lake Crandall Fall 03 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Don’t think your life is the means to some end.

    Any end.

    Happiness ever after (Or just happiness).

    Heaven.

    Nirvana.

    Don’t think you are going somewhere.

    You are BEING somewhere.

    Here. Now.

    That’s it.

    If you can’t be here, now, why not?

    Where do you have to be when in order to be there, then?

    If you can’t be here, now,

    What makes you think you can be there, then?

    You’re kidding yourself.

    If you can’t be here, now, when you get there, then,

    You’ll be afraid of losing it and won’t be able to enjoy it.

    The fear of it being taken away takes it away.

    Where can you simply enjoy being here, now?

    What’s keeping you from being able to enjoy being Here, Now?

    Your life is for the enjoyment of living.

    If you aren’t enjoying living, why not?

    How do things have to be different for you to simply enjoy

    The experience of being alive?

    What would it take for you to simply be alive to the experience of being alive?

    Here and now?
  • 01/13/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 03 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    There are people who have never been listened to in a way that allowed them to be heard,

    Looked at in a way that allowed them to be seen.

    There are people who live unknown and unknowing.

    Live your life so as to reduce the number of those people.

    Start with yourself.

    Listen to yourself. Look at yourself. Know Thyself.

    Make it one of your life goals—your life’s work—to see you, hear you, know you before you die.

    Start with The Five True Statements.

    Write five things that are true about your life.

    And five more things that are true about life in general.

    Take each of those statements and write five things that are also true about each statement.

    You are creating a mental picture of your life.

    You are seeing how you see things.

    Hearing how you think about things.

    You are asking yourself, “What is true? And what is also true?”

    And listening to what you have to say.

    Every time you make a statement about yourself, your life, or life in general,

    Catch yourself in the act of saying what you take to be so,

    What you hold to be true about yourself, your life, or life in general,

    And ask, “What is also true?”

    Expand what you know to be true to take into account what you also know to be true.

    You are creating polarities, realizing polarities, looking for what else is true—for what ALL is true—about you, your life, and life in general.

    We don’t know who we are until we know who we also are.

    Look until you see. Listen until you hear. Ask, seek, knock until you know and understand.

    Do not die unknown and misunderstood.
  • 01/13/2015 — Catawba Trestle — Norfolk Southern crossing the Catawba River near Rock Hill, SC, April 2, 2011

    What would it mean for you to “stand on your own two feet,” living on the basis of your own authority, with your heart fully in what you are doing?

    How often do you do that?

    What is preventing you from doing that more often?

    What would it mean for you to live in ways that expressed and exhibited—incarnated—who you are, in ways that are exactly YOU, for all to see?

    How often do you do that?

    What is preventing you from doing that more often?
  • 01/14/2015 — Beach Erosion 03 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    I know at least this much about you:

    You spend too much time caring about the wrong things,

    And you spend too little time caring about the right things.

    You are swamped and overwhelmed by the wrong things.

    And you are frustrated because  you can’t get to the right things

    With all the wrong things in your way.

    I have only this to offer in the way of a fix:

    Your priorities are your responsibility.

    You have to decide for yourself what is right for you and what is wrong.

    And, you have to live more toward what is right for you,

    And live less toward what is wrong for you.

    This goes for the people in your life as well.

    Spend more time with the people who are right for you,

    And less time with the people who are wrong for you.

    Spend more time caring about the right things,

    And less time caring about the wrong things.

    The way to do that is simple:

    Become increasingly mindful of, conscious of, aware of,

    What the wrong things are,

    And what the right things are.

    Know when you are caring about the wrong things,

    And when you are caring about the right things.

    Knowing is good.

    Not-knowing is bad.

    Knowing is the right thing.

    Not-knowing is the wrong thing.

    Know what is good and what is bad,

    And watch what happens.
  • 01/14/2015 — Pawley’s Island Moon — Pawley’s Island, SC, December 16, 2013

    I have observed that, for the most part, people are not who they say they are—

    And they are afraid to say—to be—who they actually are.

    And the discordance between who they say they are and who they are

    Is the source of much grief, pain and suffering.

    But, it is not a simple thing, dropping the pretense, and being who you are.

    Thus, I recommend moving slowly, imperceptibly,

    Yet, steadily and irresolutely,

    Over the rest of your life,

    Away from the act and toward the reality.

    Live to be who you are.

    Live to get your appearance aligned with your heart and soul,

    So that who you say you are is who you are

    And everyone can take you at your word,

    And know your part of their world is firmly set on the foundation stone.
  • 01/14/2015 — Maine Fern — Stonington, on Deer Isle, ME, September 2010

    Trust yourself to your life—not to your feelings about your life.

    There is more at stake in your life than you can know or imagine.

    Trust that to be so, and do not think that you see all there is to see,

    Or that your assessment is accurate.

    Assume that you don’t know what to make of things,

    And hand yourself over to your life—

    Making your best effort to do right by your life,

    And determining to ride it out, to see it through.

    Commit yourself to the long haul,

    In an, “I’m in it for the long haul,” kind of way—

    And let your life show you what you are capable of.

    Don’t let your feelings determine what you do.
  • 01/15/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 05 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    We aren’t looking for the gold ring (or the brass one)

    In order to grab it and have our dreams come true.

    We aren’t here in the service of our dreams.

    We are looking for our life

    In order to live it—

    In every time and place,

    Context and circumstance,

    Of our living.

    We are here to live our life.

    Not the life that serves our dreams.

    The life that exhibits, incarnates, expresses, reveals

    Our heart, soul, character, essence.

    We are here to bring ourselves forth,

    To birth ourselves anew,

    In each situation as it arises

    All our life long.

    Our dreams and desires notwithstanding.
  • 01/15/2015 — Field Road HDR 07 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Think of Karma as a mindset that quickly, in no time at all, becomes a way of life, or a lifeset.

    Karma as attitude, as orientation, as the way we see and act and are.

    There’s the Good Time Charlie mindset/lifeset.

    The Head In The Sand mindset/lifeset.

    The I’ll Deal With It One Day…

    The Mamma Says/Daddy Says…

    The I’ll Do It My Way Or Else…

    The list is long.

    We create what meets us

    By the way we approach our life.

    Be aware of your mindset/lifeset.

    Be aware of what you set in motion by the way you deal with your day.
  • 01/16/2015 — Beach Erosion 04 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Do not judge your work by existing standards and measures of success.

    Let the vitality found in and flowing from the work create its own enthusiasm for the work, and let that be enough.

    You can kill the vitality and enthusiasm for the work by expecting more of it than vitality and enthusiasm.

    Expecting results, for instance. Expecting recognition, honors, standing room only…

    The work is its own reason for being. It is not a means to some other end. It is good in itself.

    It is good for you. It is good for you to do it.

    And the experience of that goodness is enough reason to keep it going.

    The right work is good for your heart and soul.

    It is self-validating, self-affirming, and a source of vitality and life.

    Here’s a hint for you, a place to get started in living the work that is yours to do—the life that is your life to live:

    Find something you can do with all your heart, and do that.

    Find something that you love to do to such an extent that you lose yourself in it, and you don’t know what time it is, or how long you have been doing it, and do that.

    Find something you enjoy so much that you can’t believe it’s been forever since you’ve done it, and do that.

    See where it goes. Go with it.
  • 05/16/2015 — Pelican 02 — Murrell’s Inlet, SC, January 16, 2015

    We make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be.

    Never satisfied.

    We could always do better.

    Try harder.

    Be more like somebody else.

    More like we ought to be.

    Less like we are.

    Nothing like we are.

    See what I mean?

    Whose side are we on?

    Our life would be better in a snap

    If we just got off our case about how much better we have to be.

    It’s like this:

    When you are wading in the surf you’re doing that as well as it can be done.

    You aren’t grading your beach walking.

    You’re just enjoying walking on the beach.

    Now, look at everything you do as though you are wading in the surf at the beach.

    Enjoy it if it can be enjoyed, and if it can’t be enjoyed do something as soon as you can that CAN be enjoyed and enjoy it fully.

    And. Get. Off. Your. Back.
  • 01/17/2015 — Moon Rise Sun Rise 01 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, January 17, 2015

    If you aren’t enjoying your life, why not?

    What are you waiting on?

    Things to fall in place?

    Mr or Ms Right to come along and find you to be Mr or Ms Right?

    What?

    You are here to enjoy your life—

    In every context and circumstance of living.

    Enjoyment does not depend upon things being just peachy across the board, around the table.

    If you don’t automatically, spontaneously, find things to enjoy about your life every day,

    You are going to have to take up the work of conscientiously, determinedly, relentlessly seeking out things to enjoy about your life every day.

    Instead of looking at your day to find things to support you in your contention that yours is a sorry lot,

    And you can’t possibly be expected to find anything to enjoy about it,

    Because the gods who oversee such matters

    Might think you are not suffering enough in payment

    For your shortcomings and deficiencies,

    And increase the degree of misfortune and tribulation in your life.

    Help yourself out here.

    Take up deliberate enjoyment as a daily exercise in noticing

    And acknowledging the things that provide a lift

    And a sense of grace at work in your day.
  • 01/18/2015 — Winter Landscape Panorama 01 B&W — Indian Land, SC, January 15, 2015

    You have to be ruthlessly honest with yourself on every level,

    About everything.

    You cannot hide anything from yourself.

    You have to see yourself as you are and as you also are.

    No secrets allowed!

    Where are you kidding yourself?

    Where are you failing to keep good faith with yourself?

    In a, “I am fastidious, you are somewhat anal, he/she/it is excessively rigid and overbearing to the core,” kind of way?

    This is called The Declension of Self-Deception.

    “I am pleasantly plump, you are a bit overweight, he/she/it is a waddling fatso.”

    Get the idea?

    Practice it with yourself relentlessly and regularly—

    In order to catch yourself in the act of deception and denial,

    Looking the other way, sticking your head in the sand,

    And pretending that what is so with you is not so.

    You cannot hope to find the path with your name on it,

    Or the life that is yours to live,

    With your eyes closed tightly to how it is—and also is—with you.
  • 01/18/2015 — HB Pelican 01 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, January 16, 2015

    Concert pianists practice diligently, intensely, and then think they can live their life without thinking about it.

    So do football players, and basketball players, and tennis players, and soccer players…

    Everyone thinks there is nothing to living their life.

    Playing the piano is hard but living is automatic.

    We are in the mess we are in, personally, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally because we think we don’t have to think about our life, much less treat it as something that requires practice.

    Ask around:

    “What are you trying to do with your life?”

    “What’s working right now about your life?”

    “What isn’t working?”

    Really.

    Make it a, ahem, practice to work these questions into your conversations.

    See where it goes.

    Answer them yourself.

    We have to start thinking about the life we are living,

    And putting ourselves into it as much as we put into developing our golf swing,

    Or our backhand.
  • 01/19/2015 — Through the Grass 01 — Great Blue Heron, Huntington Beach State Park, January 17, 2015

    Forgiveness is way overrated.

    Accountability is the crux of the matter.

    Don’t waste my time talking to me about forgiveness.

    Let’s see some accountability.

    Bad faith relishes forgiveness.

    Good faith recognizes the necessity of accountability.

    Forgiveness hinges on the demonstrated experience of good faith over time.

    We earn forgiveness by being worthy of it—

    By exhibiting repentant behavior

    And demonstrating our accountability and good faith

    Over time.

    Oh, but Jesus FORGAVE our sins on the cross and we should do the same!

    How about, “Depart from me! I never knew you evildoers!”?

    Or, “Leave the dead to bury the dead!’?

    Or, “Go—and sin no more!”?

    And if sinning no more is an option, forgiveness isn’t what keeps us out of hell, but accountability!

    Jesus demanded accountability.

    “Throw them into the Outer Darkness!” he said, “Where there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

    “Take his talent and give it to the one who lived up to the task,” he said.

    “I curse you to your roots for not bearing fruit—don’t give me any excuses,” he said.

    “Show me what you got!” he said (Or words to that effect).

    Forget forgiveness!

    Demand accountability!

    In yourself and everyone else.

    It’s how we live from this point on that tells the tale—

    Not whether we are forgiven for past wrongs.

    Show me some accountability,

    And we’ll see about forgiveness.
  • 01/19/2015 — HB Great Blue Heron in Flight 01 — Huntington Beach State Park, January 17, 2015

    I was walking carefully along a frosted-over board walk on the way to a sunrise, an hour or so before this photo was taken, thinking I wouldn’t trade the pleasure of slipping along to a sunrise for anything I could bring to mind.

    And sitting with a camera, waiting for a wading bird to fly by is to be above time, beyond time, in the timeless state of the Eternal Now.

    Eternity breaks into temporal time, to be experienced here and now, by those who find the doorways and walk through.

    I don’t know what your door is, but I know you have one. And, it’s up to you to find it. It would be wrong of you if you didn’t.

    The Unpardonable Sin, you might say.
  • 01/19/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 06 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014 

    Acceptance is seeing things as they are—which includes seeing how we feel about the things we see.

    Our emotional reaction to things as they are is a part of things as they are.

    “This is how things are, and I don’t like it one little bit! And that’s how things are!”

    If we can see that as it is and let it be as it is without repressing it, suppressing it, denying it, hiding from it and trying to escape it in addictions and symptoms, that’s acceptance.

    Acceptance doesn’t mean we are happy and festive or pleased that things are as they are in some Polly Anna “This is how things are and it’s just swell” kind of way.

    It means we can see that “This is the way things are, and this is what can be done about it, and that’s that—and I don’t like it one bit,” and let that be because it is.

    We have to accept the FACT of the disagreeable reality, and adjust ourselves (and our life) to it—and accept the FACT of our emotional response to it.

    Acceptance of these FACTS doesn’t mean we are in favor of having them as a part of our life, but that we accept not wanting to have anything to do with them without allowing that to spin us out into denial, addiction and escape.

    We don’t like how things are, and we have to deal the fact of how things are, and with the fact that we don’t like it.

    And, we gather ourselves and go do what needs to be done about it. About all of it.
  • 01/20/2015 — HB Sunrise 01 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, December 17, 2015

    New realizations are the pathway to the Promised Land.

    The Promised Land being the place of our maturation, our coming forth, our being fully awake and who we are.

    It isn’t an actual place, like heaven, or Israel, but it is an actual time, like a perfectly ripe tomato. But then, it isn’t an actual time because we are never fully ripe. We are never finished. We are always on the way to true human being-hood. So we don’t have to worry about being “past our prime.” It’s always ahead of us. The Journey continues.

    The Journey continues via ever-new realizations.

    New realizations are the products of new experiences, or of old experiences revisited and mined again—yet again—for the gold, by way of reflection, examination, exploration, inquiry and rumination.

    We turn things over to see what we have missed.

    We open ourselves to new things to see what they have to show us.

    We continually make connections that transcend old conclusions.

    You can see how theology, and dogma, and doctrine are stoppers, blocks, to the flow of life.

    All the talk about the Promised Land stops all progress toward the Promised Land.

    Pilgrims become settlers.

    And that’s that.
  • 01/20/2015 — Winter Landscape 01 — Indian Land, SC, January 15, 2015

    All conclusions are tentative, awaiting further review, awaiting additional information, awaiting new evidence to the contrary.

    The contrary is the hope of the world—and of all that is in the world.

    We are brought to life by way of visitations—of Annunciations—by The Contrary.

    Without the contrary, we are stuck fast in the Same Old Same Old forever.

    And so the prayer, “O God, shatter our assumptions! Demolish our conclusions! Destroy our formulations! Decimate our sacred dogmas! Lay waste to our Temples of True Belief! Burst our old wine skins! And make all things new! Again!”
  • Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 01/20/2015 — Lake Haigler Fall 05 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 11, 2014

    We should all stand and observe a moment of silence in honor, and in memory, of Thomas Kuhn, who coined the phrase “paradigm shift,” in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolution.”

    Kuhn’s thesis is “thesis/antithesis/synthesis” applied to scientific theory and process, with implications for every living thing.

    He says, in a manner of speaking, that we start out with a theory, and the value of a valuable theory is that it cuts through extraneous considerations to hone in on the heart of the matter, which it reveres as The Gospel Truth.

    The Catholic Church had its theory, its Gospel Truth, until Galileo came along. Newtonian mechanics had its Gospel Truth until quantum mechanics came along. And so it goes.

    The “paradigm shift” occurs when one Gospel Truth gives way to the next Gospel Truth—when one theory is superseded by another theory.

    And what occasions the shift? The extraneous considerations every theory considers to be extraneous.

    The anomalies. The exceptions. The discontinuities. The discordances. The abnormalities. The incongruities. The irregularities. The contraries. The contradictions.

    When a theory bumps into something that calls the theory into question, the tendency is for the theory to expand to take the exception into account, to explain the exception in terms of the preferred way of seeing things.

    Some creationists, for example, explain the fossil record and continental drift, etc., as “God’s way of testing our faith.” No kidding. Some paradigms, unlike continents, are beyond shifting.

    But scientific paradigms have to shift or cease being scientific. Scientific theories have to examine themselves in light of the things that don’t fit the theories. They cannot enfold themselves in a viewpoint that proclaims, “Never mind what the facts are—we know what the TRUTH is!” Which is where science parts company with bad religion.
  • 01/20/2015 — Around Bass Lake 08 — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, near Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    I’m asked occasionally if I consider myself to be a Christian.

    I reply that I consider myself to be the Christ.

    That usually ends the conversation, but if they tell me I’m going to hell for talking like that,

    I say, “That’s what they said about Jesus.”

    Or, if they ask me what I mean,

    I say that the word “Christ” means “Anointed one,” and that Jesus was anointed by God to do the work that was his work to do—

    And that I am, like each one of us is, anointed by God to do the work that is my work to do.

    That makes me the Christ.

    It makes you the Christ as well.

    The catch is, we have to actually be doing the work that is our work to do.
  • 01/20/2015 — Dry Falls, 2014 03 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 21, 2014

    James Hollis said, “Ultimately, we are what wishes to enter the world through us.”

    Of course, we can say no.

    We can put a stop to that.

    But.

    Not without paying a price.

    It would make things so much better for everyone concerned,

    If we said, “Of course! My pleasure! How can I be of help?”

    And spent our life in concentrated focus on being helpful
  • 01/21/2015 — Pelican Silhouette 02 — The Marshwalk, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, January 17, 2015

    Being, Seeing, Knowing and Doing are all one thing.

    Your knowing flows spontaneously, automatically from your seeing, which flows automatically, spontaneously, from your being at-one with who you are and at-one with the situation—completely present with yourself and with the time and place of your living—and your doing flows automatically, spontaneously from having these three things in place, but the four are one.

    You can’t see what is here, now, if you are not here, now.

    Being here, now is the most difficult art to master, and from it flows all of the other arts.

    We probably should call them “graces” and not “arts,” because you can’t master grace, you can only receive it and participate in it, share it, and be swept up in the, well, grace of grace.

    We participate in the grace of Being, Seeing, Knowing, Doing. We don’t MAKE any of it happen. It happens through us.

    And so, we’re back to the Jim Hollis quote: “Ultimately, we are what wishes to enter the world through us.”

    The Grace of Being/Seeing/Knowing/Doing enters the world through us,

    And the world shudders at the wonder of it all.
  • 01/21/2015 — Caldwell House 06 — Caldwell Fork, Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Maggie Valley, NC, September 4, 2014

    It’s referred to as the Hero’s Journey, not because only heroes make it, but because we are all called to be heroes of our own life.

    We guard, defend, oversee, enable, encourage, nurture, sustain, bring forth, cultivate, and care for the life that is ours to live.

    Our life is under our protection. We owe it our loyalty and allegiance, and give ourselves to its service.

    If you haven’t done that, it’s time you did.

    Your life needs you even yet.

    Needs you to live it.

    As fully as it can be lived in the time left for living.

    Male or female, the task before you is the same one:

    To find your life and live it.

    The two requirements are that you have a gentle heart, a noble heart,

    And that you allow it to lead you along the way.

    Our heart is our life and we are its hero,

    Sallying forth on the adventure of a lifetime.

    Beginning now.
  • 01/22/2015 — Beach Erosion 06 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Live with intention.

    Mean something by every day.

    Mean something by the way you live your life.

    The meaning of life is not the meaning you find in life,

    But the meaning you ARE in life—

    The meaning you bring to life in life.

    The meaning of life is what you mean by your life,

    By the way you live your life.

    Live meaningfully.

    Live in ways that are meaningful to you.

    Live for something,

    In the service of something.

    Live to do something.

    Don’t just hang out,

    Waiting for something to happen.

    YOU are something!

    Happen!

    Every chance you get.
  • 01/22/2015 — Last Light — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC, November 18, 2013

    We have to know what is ours to do,

    And what is not ours to do.

    We have to know what our business is,

    And what our business is not.

    We have to work our side of the street,

    And leave the other sides of the street,

    And the other streets,

    To those whose work is to be carried out there.

    There are always those who want us to do their work for them.

    We have to know where we stop and they start.

    And we have to know that it is essential that we do our work,

    And that it won’t be done without us.

    We aren’t doing our work if we are doing someone else’s.
  • 01/22/2015 — Lake Haigler Woods 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 16, 2014

    There are four things that turn us aside from the path:

    Fear, despair, desire and laziness.

    These things originate within us.

    We are afraid of all that might happen.

    We are afraid we can’t do it.

    We are afraid of failing, of looking foolish, of being wrong about this being the path, of not knowing what we are doing…

    We sink into despondency because we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

    We see no progress.

    Nothing is happening.

    We haven’t lost weight, we don’t feel any better about ourselves, we aren’t where we thought we would be, we must be wrong about this being the path.

    We find ourselves in the grip of more attractive possibilities.

    Life would be so sweet with that guy, that gal.

    Or with a new house, or a trip to Europe…

    Interesting asides, exciting possibilities, dreams and visions…

    And it is so hard! The path requires WORK!

    We would prefer to talk about the path,

    To read another book about it, to attend more lectures…

     What is The Path, and what is Not The Path?

    It takes being quiet, sitting still, to see things as they are,

    To hear the small, soft, voice of heart and soul.

    How quiet can you be? How long can you sit?

    In order to know what your business is, and what it is not?
  • 01/23/2015 — Moonrise Sunrise 02 — Huntington Beach State Park, Murrell’s Inlet, SC, January 17, 2015

    We are awash in metaphors.

    We have to learn to live metaphorically.

    There are worlds within worlds,

    And we have to live with a foot in all of them.

    The next time we hear ourselves, or anyone,

    Talking about The Real World

    We have to snap awake

    And remember there are more Real Worlds than one.

    We have to be sure we are living in all of them.

    For instance, where in your life is your Jesus side

    Confronting your Peter side, and vice-verse?

    Where is your Cyclops side blocking the way of your Odysseus side?

    Where is your Dragon side keeping your Hero side from finding the gold?

    Where is your Darth Vader side overpowering your Luke Skywalker side?

    How is feeding yourself physically substituting for feeding yourself spiritually, emotionally?

    What is spiritual food and what is psycho-babble?

    There are worlds upon worlds to explore

    And to live in—

    To realize you ARE living in,

    Whether you know it or not.

    The trick is to know it,

    And to be alive in every world.
  • 01/23/2015 — Adams Mill Pond 07 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    We follow the thread of our life through the maze of our life, throughout our life.

    We have to find our life and live it in all contexts and conditions, situations and circumstances.

    Living with integrity means living at one with our life—incarnating the qualities, character, gifts, genius, daemon, and values that are required by, and essential to, the life we are built and called to live.

    Joseph Campbell said, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off it.”

    Carl Jung said, ““Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.”

    And, “The artist can only obey the apparently alien impulse within and follow where it leads, sensing that his work is greater than himself.”

    And, “We only gain merit and psychological development by accepting ourselves as we are, and by being serious enough to live the life we are entrusted with.”

    And, “In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted.”

    And, “Trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide.”  

    What more is there to say?

    All that remains for us now is to will, and to do.

    Following the thread of our life though the maze of our life, throughout our life.
  • 01/24/2015 — Andrew Jackson, Teenager 01 BW2 — Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC, January 24, 2015 — Lancaster County is the birthplace of Andrew Jackson, born March 15, 1767, and became the 7th US President.

    What do people see when they see me, or you?

    What do they think of when they think of me, of you?

    What image, or images, do they carry of me, of you?

    These are the real things, the lasting things, the things that matter.

    And “I” (whether we are talking about me or you) don’t have much to do with what they make of “me,” receive from “me,” take to be who “I” am.

    “I” don’t control the “me” “I” am perceived to be.

    The “face” “I” “put on,”

    the spin “I” give “myself” may fool people for a while,

    but, over time, the spin will be apparent

    and my need to put a spin on “me”

    will part of the image they put together of “me.”

    What they remember of “me” will become who “I” am,

    Regardless of who “I” spent all that time and energy pretending to be.
  • 01/25/2015 — Beach Erosion Panorama 08 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 9, 2014

    We have to be able to stand our ground, and we have to be able to stand aside.

    Knowing when to do what is the key to the door of a life well-lived.

    We have to be able to say NO! when NO! needs to be said, and we have to be able to take NO! for an answer when NO! needs to be said to us.

    There is no rule for determining when to do what, where and how.

    We are on our own when it comes to knowing what is called for in each here-and-now of our living.

    We cannot dance reading the manual or asking Mama what to do, or letting Daddy do it for us.

    Schizophrenics cannot say NO! to the voices they hear, but they say NO! readily to the norms and standards of society and culture. They are only knowing when to say NO! away from living a regular life.

    Regular people say NO! readily to the voices they hear, but they let who they are “Supposed To Be” govern their behavior and keep them from being the individual they are capable of being. They are only knowing when to say NO! away from living the life that is theirs alone to live.

    It’s a tricky business, being responsible for our own life, and living it in a way that honors the need of society and culture for structure and security and predictability.

    It’s too much for most of us, and we say the hell with it, and live in one extreme or another, because we don’t want to bother with knowing when to do what, where and how.

    Those who are on the path to true-human-being-hood know they have to work it out for themselves, when to do what, where and how.

    They listen to their voices within and take them under advisement, without being compelled to obey hypnotically, robotically.

    They understand the need for social and cultural mores, rules and regulations, negotiating and compromising their way to living with their integrity intact within ways of doing things that would rob them of their values and their individuality.

    It’s a masterwork, putting together the life that is ours to live. It asks hard things of us, and gives us life abundant, spilling out, pouring over, for our time and effort.

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One Minute Monologues 022

November 01, 2014 – December 9, 2014

  1. 11/01/2014 — We have to believe in the life we are living,

    And live it with intensity and with passion.

    Burn-out is the inevitable result of doing what you don’t believe in—

    Of living without your heart in your life.

    We can get by with that as long as it is paying the bills

    And, thereby, enabling us to do what we believe in

    With intensity and passion for the work of our hands and heart.

    This is called walking two paths at the same time.

    But, if we are working for a paycheck to pay bills

    To do things we don’t believe in,

    And don’t care about.

    it’s a problem.

    We have to find a life we can believe in

    And live it with intensity and passion.

    Everything else flows from there.
  2. 11/02/2014 — Confluence 07 — Greenbrier District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014 — In this small area, Bird Creek, Big Bird Creek, and the Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon River come together to form the Little Pigeon River. I may have the names all wrong, but. This is how water works in doing what it does. If we were as proficient and consistent in coming together to do what true human beings do, it would be a different world. For the better different.

    Do not get ahead of yourself.

    This should be one of the commandments.

    I don’t know why there are only ten,

    But I’m getting ahead of myself.

    It’s easy to do.

    Installment purchases, for example.

    We buy things we hope one day to have the money to pay for.

    We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

    We are at the limit on six credit cards, or is it a dozen?

    Buying toys and pretties and entertaining pastimes and enduring distractions

    To take our minds off the emptiness and pointlessness of our life—

    Trying to be somewhere else,

    If only for a little while.

    Getting ahead of ourselves.

    Away from ourselves.

    Living ahead, away.

    Thinking what we have to do now to be there,

    Sooner than later,

    Because now is no place to be,

    Living now to get away from now,

    Dead to the world,

    To ourselves,

    To the time and place,

    The here and now,

    Of our living.

    If we only had that,

    If we only lived there.

    We do not understand,

    Or care to hear about,

    Being present with and open to

    The time and  place of our living.

    We have looked around.

    There is nothing here for us.

    We have to be leaving now, here,

    For some hoped for there, then.

    But, it is ourselves we are trying to get away from.

    It is ourselves we are trying to get to.

    We cannot get there getting ahead of ourselves—

    Only by being with ourselves.

    Present with and open to ourselves.

    Here and now.
  3. 11/02/2014 — Ramsey Prong Bridge 01 — Greenbrier District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    Know what you know

    And integrate it into your life.
  4. 11/02/2014 — Around Bass Lake 04 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    We think “God’s will” is for the imposition of morality and right religion on the world—and that we are God’s agents in making that happen.

    “Onward Christian Solders,” you know, “Marching off to war.” Holy war. Making them do it right, or else.

    It is nauseating how wrong people can be who know they are right.
  5. 11/02/2014 — Clouds at Clingman’s Dome HDR 02 — Clingman’s Dome Parking Lot, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, October 29, 2014

    Some of us have been told that if we don’t please God, we are going to hell.

    And we have been given long lists of things to do to please God.

    Nothing on the list is about enjoying anything.

    The people who tell us about God and hell tell us that if we enjoy anything, we are going to hell.

    Well. They are working their side of the street.

    I’m working mine.

    I can’t imagine a god worth the title being displeased with anything that pleases our soul.

    Our soul is as close to God as we can get.

    When we are one with our soul, we are one with God.

    Who can argue that?

    Our soul is enraptured with the joys and pleasures of physical experience.

    A hot shower. A walk in the woods. Digging in the earth. Laughter. Good food and drink. Good conversation. The aroma of baking bread.

    Simple things done well.

    God is happy to walk along with us through the world, enjoying the wonder of being alive.

    Take God for a walk some time soon.
  6. 11/02/2014 — Bog River Falls HDR 01 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake NY, September 29, 2014

    The one thing you can do that has implications for good beyond anything else you can do

    Is to put yourself in accord with your life and live there no matter what.

    Joseph Campbell said, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off.”

    Carl Jung said, “We all know somewhere within when things are not right somehow.”

    And, we know when they are.

    Know what you know.

    Listen to your Body/Soul/Heart/Mind.

    Align yourself with the way of life for you in each situation as it arises.

    In so doing, you will live “at the still point of the turning world,”

    And the angels will cheer and weep tears of abounding joy.

    You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?
  7. 11/03/2014 — Cullasaja Cascades 02 Panorama — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 21, 2014

    In my view, idiots are people who don’t see, don’t hear, don’t know, don’t think, don’t understand and spend their life doing what someone else has told them to do—and telling everyone else what to do.

    They have no authority, responsibility, or accountability of their own, yet they speak with the voice of God, and even say they are saying what God told them to say, but it is never their fault that the world goes to hell around them, and they are oblivious to the harm they are doing.

    Idiots are like hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and floods in that they cannot be stopped or turned aside, but have to be dealt with and lived around, and through.

    Their impact for ill is enormous, and we are left with having to find ways of mitigating the blight of idiocy.

    We do that best, I think, by living in accord with our own life and responding to each situation as it arises out of our sense of what needs to be done there, with the gifts that are ours to offer.

    There is no global solution to the tidal wave of idiocy. “Reason cannot uproot what reason did not plant.” What works and what does not work becomes clear with time—but it may be a long time, and in the meantime, we have to make things as civil and livable as we can given the toxic environment that idiocy creates, encourages and allows—both literally and metaphorically.

    So, recognize that idiocy is the elephant on the path, and step aside, doing what needs to be done to offset and repair—insofar as that is possible—the upheaval and injustices in the wake of rampaging idiocy.
  8. 11/03/2014 — Table Rock Reflection — Table Rock State Park near Pickens, SC, October 24, 2014

    Every moment, each situation, calls for a particular response from us.

    “For everything there is a season under heaven.”

    What time is it now? What is it time for now? What is being asked of us now?

    In every moment, in each situation, there are cues to clue us into the part it is time for us to play—the part that we are uniquely suited to play in that moment, that situation.

    Too often, we sleep through our cues.

    We miss the opening.

    We don’t know what time it is,

    Or even that it might be time sometime

    For us to step forth and shine.

    That’s ridiculous.

    We should be rehearsing our lines,

    Polishing our potential parts,

    Expecting to be thrust into the spotlight

    At any moment,

    In each next situation.

    We can’t be thinking our time’s over,

    We missed our time,

    Our time never came.

    We have to be looking for the openings,

    Listening for the cues,

    Ready to step forth and shine,

    Offering what we alone have to give,

    To any moment,

    In every situation,

    Perhaps the next one.
  9. 11/03/2014 — Blue Ridge Fall 08 — Julian Price Memorial Park Picnic Area, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 14, 2014

    We do not grow up automatically, accidentally.

    We mature through our association with those more mature than we are.

    We see how they do it.

    They model for us a mature and responsibly appropriate way of being in the world.

    It is essential that parents be more mature than their children.

    When parents have an 8th grade developmental age,

    The children aren’t going to be the next Dalai Lama.

    And they are going to have children with an 8th grade developmental age.

    The Dalai Lama was separated from his natural parents

    And educated in the art of life by monks mature enough for the job.

    All of the spiritual masters and gurus are exceptionally mature individuals emotionally and psychologically.

    If you are going to grow up,

    You are going to do it in the company of those who are more mature than you are.

    Which is yet another reason to establish Communities of Innocence

    And encourage participation across all cultures, ages, races and other typical barriers to full inclusion.

    We need caring relationships with those less and those more mature than we are

    So that all of us have a chance at growing up, waking up, and becoming who we are.
  10. 11/04/2015 — After the Storm from Clingman’s Dome 02 — Clingman’s Dome Parking Lot, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, October 29, 2014

    Constant encouragement would be a good thing.

    Heart is the easiest thing to lose,

    And the hardest thing to find.

    “Loss of soul” was the primal person’s way of talking about depression, ennui, hopelessness, despair, being adrift without direction or purpose, lost and alone in the world.

    Our entire culture suffers from loss of soul.

    Soul’s last hope was Jimmie Carter.

    Soul’s Waterloo was George Bush.

    Soul has no chance in this culture,

    Run by the corporate drive for profit at any price,

    And the complete disdain for anything soulful,

    Where money and mindlessness carry the day.

    Vestige of soul hides out in small pockets of revolutionaries–

    The 7,000 knees that have not bent to Baal–

    The Jedi’s with the dream of The Republic

    (Where Human Rights are honored by all people

    And all know the priceless value of soul)–

    The ones who are left of Those Who See, Hear, Know And Understand,

    And keep the spark of life glowing

    In the cold winds blowing up from the Void.

     What to do?

    Live intentionally,

    With consideration for what we are doing:

    Keeping soul alive through service to soul,

    And keeping company with one another

    To remember who we are and what we are about,

    Through honest conversation and mutual encouragement

    In dry times covered by the dust of the world.
  11. 11/04/2014 — Baxter Creek Bridge 2014 04 — Big Creek Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville, NC, October 30, 2014

    The best we can do is often not the best we can do,

    And therein lies the problem.

    We don’t give it our best.

    We go through the motions.

    We do things we don’t believe in.

    We strike a pose,

    We act the part,

    We pretend our heart is in it.

    We don’t know where our heart is.

    What does heart have to do with it?

    Just put on a happy face

    And let the good times roll.

    We have to do our dead level best at aligning ourselves

    With That Which Knows within—

    In each situation as it arises,

    All our life long.

    We have to do our dead level best

    To know what we know—

    To sense what we sense,

    And read our unconscious leanings

    And follow our heart.

    We cannot kid ourselves here.

    Nothing matters like this matters.

    We have to do our best.
  12. 11/04/2014 — Wright’s Creek Falls 03 — Lake Jocassee, Salem, SC, October 23, 2014

    This is so simple we all can do it.

    All we have to do is put ourselves right with ourselves–

    Right with our life–

    Right with the situation as it arises–

    In each moment of our living.

    We only have to live right here, right now, as we need to–

    As this moment needs us to live it.

    What we don’t do is impose our will for the moment on the moment.

    To live willfully in hell bent devotion to our idea of how things ought to be

    Is to not be in accord with the moment or our life.

    To impose our will for the moment on the moment is to rise above the moment,

    To live beyond the moment,

    To become God of the Moment.

    “The son of man came not to be served but to serve…”

    The term “son of man” is a generic phrase that could be rendered “true human being.”

    True human beings are here to serve the needs of the moment with the gifts they have to offer.

    What’s the time and place of your living,

    Right here, right now,

    Asking of you?

    Needing from you?

    Bring it forth

    In this moment and in all of the moments following this one.

    When we put ourselves right with ourselves and the time and place of our living,

    We transform the world.

    Everything shifts.

    It’s amazing.

    There is no cause and effect at work here.

    We didn’t do it.

    We aren’t trying to manipulate the moment in any way,

    We aren’t slyly imposing our will for the moment on the moment.

    We’re only putting ourselves right with ourselves and with the moment.

    The shift does itself.

    You’ll have to see it to believe it.
  13. 11/05/2014 — Eye on the Prize 01 — James River Eagles, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    It comes down to doing right by ourselves,

    One another,

    And the situation as it arises—

    Consistently,

    Reliably,

    Dependably,

    Over the full course of our life.

    Doing right by ourselves

    Has nothing to do with

    Positioning ourselves to exploit

    Our gifts, other sentient beings, or our situation.

    It has everything to do with

    Aligning ourselves with

    The leanings, flow and direction

    Of that which we generally have no conscious awareness—

    That is to say, the Unconscious.

    We have to know what we don’t know

    (And what we do know but don’t know that we know—

    Because we aren’t paying attention).

    Mindlessness has to go.

    Mindfulness has to come into its own.

    Doing mindfully right by ourselves,

    One another,

    And the situation as it arises,

    Would put things right.

    Wouldn’t that be something?
  14. 11/06/2014 — Off to Dine — James River Eagles, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    You only need enough money to pay the right bills.

    The right bills enable you to live and do the work that is yours to do.

    The work is being awake in the land of the blind.

    It takes a different form with each of us.

    We each have our own work to do within the larger work of being awake in the land of the blind.

    When you are awake in the land of the blind,

    It is easy to go over into despair, hopelessness, depression.

    Our work counters the obvious uselessness of doing the work

    By being OUR work.

    OUR work casts all objections aside.

    We LIVE to do OUR work

    Even though there are no olives on the trees,

    And no grapes on the vines,

    No rain for the fields,

    No livestock in the barns.

    Even so, OUR work enlivens us

    And must be done.

    So, when the idiots carry the day,

    We say, “Hmm, the idiots carried the day,”

    And get back to work,

    Seeing in the land of those who do not see,

    And immune to the Cyclops’ favorite stoppers:

    “So what? Who cares? Why try? What good will it do? What’s the use? What difference will it make? What’s the point? It’s a waste of time!”

    No child in a stand box or on a swing, quit doing what she, what he, was doing because it was doing no good and making no sense.

    OUR work is our sand box, our swing.

    We only need enough money to pay the right bills—

    The bills that enable us to do OUR work.
  15. 11/-6/2014 — Got ‘Im 02 — James River Eagles, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    We all see what we see—

    And don’t see what we don’t see.

    The work is to see what we see AND what we don’t see.

    See?

    The idiots don’t see that they don’t see.

    They only see what they see.

    And have no interest in seeing—

    And no capability to see—

    What they don’t see.

    We cannot allow the idiots who don’t see

    To keep us from seeing what we don’t see.

    Always the work is the same:

    Making the unconscious conscious!

    Making the unknown known!

    Seeing what we do not see!

    It is never enough to see—

    We must be constantly engaged in the work of seeing what we do not see—

    Asking, seeking, knocking,

    Looking, listening, making inquiries,

    Wondering, imagining, creating,

    Playing, laughing, dancing,

    Singing, cartwheeling, loving life.

    We can’t let the idiots slow us down,

    Or distract us from the work that is OURS to do.
  16. 11/06/2014 — Around Bass Lake 05 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    We are the magic we seek in the world.

    We look for a magic wand to wave things into what they ought to be.

    Consciousness is the magic wand that the Unconscious invented

    To get things right.

    Consciousness has to work with the Unconscious—

    Reconciling conflict and opposition,

    Bringing order out of disorder,

    Harmony from chaos

    And making all things one.

    We cannot make the Unconscious human,

    As though it is some loving father,

    Some wise and compassionate mother,

    With our best interest foremost in her heart.

    Consciousness humanizes the Unconscious!

    Consciousness is the magic the Unconscious

    Needs to become kind, loving, compassionate

    And all the other values at the heart of being human.

    The Unconscious is Nature at its best and worst.

    We step into that turmoil and make peace,

    And serve the true good of all.

    That’s the gift of consciousness engaged with the Unconscious

    In the work of bringing forth awareness—

    Mindfulness—

    In the service of the true good of all.

    There is not some solution to this mess!

    We work it out everyday over time!

    Over long eons of time!

    Magic is not instantaneous!

    Magic is the slow evolution of consciousness

    Over the full course of human development!

    We grow up into who we are—

    Into who we are needed to be—

    As individuals and as a species

    Over epochs and ages.

    We slow things down by trying to hurry things along,

    And failing to do our part.
  17. 11/06/2014 — Behind the Visitor’s Center Panorama 01 — Linville Viaduct Visitor’s Center, Blue Ridge Parkway, near Linville Falls, NC, October 13, 2014

    The idiots believe in what they are doing.

    Misguided zeal is worse than no zeal at all.

    We all are idiots to some degree.

    We all believe we are right and someone else is wrong.

    We all have changed our mind about what we once thought was right.

    And will do so again.

    The trick is to not let the idiots divert us from the work that is ours to do:

    Seeing, hearing, understanding—and living as though we do.

    There is always more that we don’t see than we do see.

    Always more to be seen than has been seen.

    We can’t settle down with what we see

    Thinking we’ve done something.
  18. 11/06/2014 — On the Wing 05 — Canada Geese, James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    Carl Jung said, “You should be absolutely at one with yourself.”

    We cannot be kidding ourselves.

    We cannot work against ourselves.

    We cannot ignore ourselves,

    Or try to give ourselves a life we are not suited for.

    A cow has to be a cow.

    A lion is a lion.

    A turtle is a turtle.

    Only human beings are capable of “putting on airs,”

    Of pretending to be someone other than who they are.

    What are our dreams saying?

    Dreams compensate for our waking life

    If we are only a little bit off the path.

    Dreams offer dire warnings

    If we are living in a direction completely contrary

    To our inner drift of soul.

    We have to be completely honest in facing up

    To the deep truth of soul.

    James Hollis said, “We are what wishes to enter the world through us.”

    IF we cooperate.

    If we refuse to cooperate, we make quite a mess of things.
  19. 11/07/2014 — Eye on the Prize 02 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    Everything goes better with someone to blame.

    We will always need witches, it seems.

    And the Infidel.

    Someone to burn at some stake,

    Or launch some crusade against.

    Someone to blame for the way things are,

    Or the way we fear things will be,

    If we don’t kill them all

    And propitiate some god.

    It always goes better when the gods are propitiated.

    Human sacrifice continues

    Without the smoke and flames.

    Gay people cause hurricanes, you know.

    And poor people.

    Homeless people.

    Drug users—as though the witch hunters aren’t heavy

    With prescription medication and alcohol.

    Immigrants.

    People of color.

    The list is long of people whose fault it is.

    Whose sin is bringing the wrath of some stupid god

    To bear upon us all,

    As though gods have nothing better to do

    Than vent their wrath

    And long for propitiation.
  20. 11/08/2014 — In Formation — Canada Geese, James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    Hell is when politicians think they are teachers!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians think they are scientists!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians think they are theologians!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians think they are preachers!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians think they know what they are doing!!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians think they know everything!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians think they are gods!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians forget they are politicians!

    No!

    Hell is when politicians forget they are human beings!
  21. 11/08/2014 — Eagle in Flight 01 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    Live the mystery!

    Be at one with the mystery!

    Dance with the mystery!

    Live aligned with—in synch with—the mystery!

    Don’t have to know how it works!

    Don’t have to figure it out!

    Above all, don’t try to exploit it!

    Don’t turn the mystery into some path to your own personal advantage—

    Or the advantage of your family,

    Gender,

    Race,

    Religion,

    Company,

    Corporation,

    Nation,

    World,

    Solar system,

    Universe!

    Just live the mystery!

    Every moment,

    Of every day,

    For the rest of your life.
  22. 11/09/2014 — Adams Mill Pond Panorama 01 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    Wade right into whatever manifestation of the Cyclops is blocking your path

    And have it out.

    No more denying, dismissing, discounting, ignoring, pretending, refusing to face

    The truth

    And doing what needs to be done about it.

    This is called growing up.

    That’s the name of the path to the Land of Promise

    The Cyclops enables us to travel

    By standing in our way.
  23. 11/09/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 04 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    Go, or don’t go.

    Do, or do not.

    You will have to deal with the consequences

    No matter what you do, or don’t do.

    It isn’t about getting everything in place,

    And carefully keeping it safe

    And enjoying it forever,

    Just as it is.

    It is about dealing with whatever comes up

    The way it needs to be dealt with,

    And doing it again with the next thing that comes up.

    Things will come up, you know.

    We work our lives out

    One situation at a time.

    Don’t think you can avoid the work

    By going or not going,

    Doing or doing not.
  24. 11/10/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 08 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    Nourish your curiosity.

    Live to satisfy it.

    Spend as much time in your imagination

    As you spend in your logical, rational, mind.

    Flirt with the possibilities

    And let them bless you with impossible wonders.

    Allow your life to live you.

    Amaze yourself.
  25. 11/10/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 16 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    The Most Important Thing

    Is how you respond to what happens in your life.

    That being the case,

    You would think we would be more mindful

    Of what is happening

    And how we are responding to it.

    That would be the response

    That transforms our responses.

    Which would make it a miracle cure

    No one uses.
  26. 11/10/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 25 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We do not become who we are by accident.

    The Hero’s Journey is the work of a lifetime.

    We become who we are—who it is ours to be—over the full course of our life—

    By aligning ourselves with the values at the heart of being human,

    And forming our character around those values,

    Bringing ourselves forth by the way we respond

    To the minute particulars of daily life.

    We PRACTICE mindfulness,

    And compassion,

    And kindness,

    And faithfulness to the task,

    And all the other qualities that epitomize a true human being.

    It is WORK being who we are,

    Unrelenting, uncompromising, unceasing.

    We WILL ourselves into being human—

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way—

    All the way to our last breath.

    If we aren’t doing it that way,

    It’s time we started.
  27. 11/11/2014 — Eagle in Flight 02 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    The key is to not give a damn in the right way.

    To care at a distance.

    Caring is tricky.

    The trick is establishing optimal caring distance.

    You can be too close—as in the deep South—

    And you can be too far away—as in New Jersey.

    The Buddha and Jesus had it figured out:

    “Who put me in charge of you?

    You have to work out your own problems!

    You work your side of the street,

    And I work mine!”

    We have to know where we stop

    And someone else starts.

    This is harder for them to know

    Than for us to know.

    They don’t want to know it.

    They want to us to care for them.

    Caring for them means taking care of them to them.

    “I ain’t ‘cha Momma!”

    Say that to them.

    Even if you ARE their Momma.

    Nobody volunteers to grow up initially.

    Those who grow up on their own initiative

    Are those who see, hear, and understand.

    That’s really all there is

    To see, hear and understand.

    “We have to work out our own problems

    Every day for the rest of our life.”

    Sheldon Kopp said that.

    He was right.
  28. 11/11/2014 — Mud Creek Falls Detail — Dillard, GA, October 21, 2014

    Our life is the matrix out of which we are born. The question is whether we will come forth to be who we are, or someone else.

    We do not have to be who we are. Freedom of the will means we can give our will to whomever we choose. We can will the wrong things.

    We can will ourselves into being the opposite of who we are. We can live contrary to the nature, purpose and direction of our life all the way.

    There is a “just so-ness,” a “such as it is-ness,” a “thus-ness,” or “such-ness,” about each one of us—which we can embrace and fulfill—or deny, denounce, abandon, at will.

    But, even “despised and rejected,” our “such-ness,” our essential identity or integrity, remains ingrained within us as much as the oak is in the acorn.

    The acorn has no choice but to realize its “oak-ness,” but we can live in ways that are contrary to our “such-ness” all our life.

    Yet, all along the way, there is that which calls us back to who we are—which calls us to be who we are, finally, at last, even now, even yet, to the very end.

    We know when we are living in the flow, “at one with the Tao,” and when we are living at odds with our innate drift and direction. We know what is right for us, and what is wrong.

    We don’t care when we are wrong about the life we are living. We have our “eye on the prize,” and are going to do it our way even when our way has nothing to do with the way that is truly ours.

    What’s it going to take to wake us up? Living on. If we can wake up, life will do it for us, if we live long enough.

    Reality is the only thing that has a chance of waking us up. Keep running into walls! That’ll do it. If it can be done.
  29. 11/11/2014 — Fog on the Mountain 03 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Grandfather Mountain, NC, October 13, 2014

    The Tao is the such-ness at work in our life and in all of life, and in the universe as a whole. Life being life wakes us up to our life.

    IF we can be awakened, life being life will wake us up to our life—to our such-ness, which is seeking our alignment with its way of being in us, and through us, in the world of physical, visible, reality.

    Physical, visible, reality wakes us up to spiritual, invisible, reality.

    When we are living our life, exhibiting our such-ness within the life we are living, all is well even though it may be a mess, and running wildly out of control.

    Living our own life is not a trick for getting life to go our way. It is to live our way in the midst of life gone awry. It’s a trick for being just fine when the world is going to hell around us.

    “Isn’t that just the way it is, though?”

    We rise to the occasion, and do what needs to be done about the way things are, with the gifts and resources available to us, and let that be that.

    When we are living our life, we are grounded, focused, centered and at peace, though the world is awash in the waves of the wine dark sea.

    Putting ourselves in accord with our life, and living out of our such-ness in all of our coming and going, is our gift to the world, and is really all we ever have to offer, though being who we are will mean doing what we can do in the service of what needs to be done in each situation as it arises.

    Whether the world can receive the gift is not our problem. If the world misses its blessing, it’s too damn bad—but some will be blessed.

    Live to be a blessing by putting yourself in accord with your life, and letting those who are blessed be those who are blessed.

    We aren’t here to see that everyone, or anyone, is blessed. We are here to live in accord with our life and exhibit our such-ness throughout our life.

    Like oak trees blowing in the wind or surrounded by the fog.
  30. 11/11/2014 — Cataloochee Footbridge 01 — Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, September 4, 2014

    It comes down to seeing, hearing, understanding and applying.

    Get that down, and you have it made.

    As much as you can have it made

    In a world that doesn’t see, doesn’t hear, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t intend to.
  31. 11/11/2014 — Eagle in Flight 04 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    We don’t know how to live a meaningful life.

    We think money is all we need, but.

    What do we need money for?

    We buy escapes and entertainment–

    To take our mind off the emptiness of our life!

    Money doesn’t know anything about meaning.

    The assumption is that career paths and social advancement

    Are somehow inherently meaningful.

    Not!

    What do we DO with ourselves that means something to us?

    We ignore the natural guides:

    Dreams, intuition, instinct, imagination

    In favor of the latest thing,

    With no idea of what to do with ourselves that would mean something to us.
  32. 11/12/2014 — Adams Mill Pond Reflection — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    What’s more important—

    Putting men on the moon,

    Or putting homeless people into houses?

    We are into domination and control,

    And spare no expense in serving the national interest,

    Which is always what is good for the economy,

    And let all other values

    Find a place as well as they are able

    Behind an ever-increasing standard of living,

    And infinitely expanding economic development.

    Carl Jung said, “Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking.”

    Compassion is the first thing we notice about a true human being.

    Who can name five compassionate politicians

    Or corporate executives?

    We start turning things around

    By turning ourselves around,

    And serving with compassion what needs to happen

    In each situation,

    Instead of imposing our will,

    And forcing outcomes,

    Like we know what we are doing.
  33. 11/12/2014 — Lake Haigler Fall HDR 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 11, 2014

    Consciousness is good for a lot of things,

    But not for all things.

    The most important things are beyond the reach of consciousness,

    And the more consciousness knows of those things,

    The more there is to know.

    Answers are steps on the way to additional questions.

    All it takes is seeing, hearing and understanding,

    But, that means seeing what we have seen,

    As well as what we are seeing—

    Hearing what we have heard,

    As well as what we are hearing,

    Understanding what we have understood,

    As well as understanding what we do understand.

    Consciousness makes all things new,

    Upon reflection.

    It is the conscious reflection upon our experience

    That creates new realizations.

    We see things differently once we begin to look.

    There is no explanation,

    No doctrine,

    No dogma,

    No theology,

    No recipe

    That is beyond elaboration,

    Refinement,

    Revision,

    Replacement.

    What we see, hear and understand

    Are preludes to what we will see, hear and understand.

    Who we have been and who we are

    Are only prototypes of who we are becoming.

    Life is fluid, flowing, evolving.

    Death is static, rigid, always as it was forever.

    Live beyond where you are,

    Toward possibilities you cannot imagine,

    By seeing, hearing and understanding

    All that is to be seen, heard and understood.
  34. 11/13/2014 — Adams Millpond Panorama 09 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    When you know what you know—

    and know that what you know is only a grain of sand, a drop of water,

    on the beaches, in the seas,

    of all that is to be known—

    you know what everyone who has known has known.

    Then, it is only a matter

    of asking, seeking, knocking, seeing, hearing, understanding, and applying—

    in each situation as it arises

    all your life long.

    Our life will teach us what we need to know—

    what is to be known—

    IF we live with our eyes open.

    WE are the sutra,

    living the sutra,

    reading the sutra,

    hearing the sutra,

    knowing the sutra

    being the sutra,

    waking up to who we are.
  35. 11/13/2014 — 11/07/2014 — The day after a full moon, so it rose late enough for no residual light, and if it hadn’t been for the cloud cover, the moon would have been a white dot in a black sky. Taken from my driveway.

    I don’t get people being disappointed in people.

    Why should you be disappointed in you, or in me, or in anyone?

    We are all trying to figure it out and find our way.

    We all need the right kind of help.

    Mistakes and failures qualify for being the right kind of help—

    Painful, excruciating, aggravating and inconvenient though they be.

    We’re all hiding important stuff from ourselves,

    And our work is to find it—

    To know what we are refusing to know—

    And incorporate it into our life.

    Mistakes and failures are important clues

    To truth about ourselves we had rather not face.

    All of our dreams show us things about ourselves

    We would prefer avoid confronting.

    We like not-knowing what we need to know

    In order to change our life and align it with our soul’s deep purposes.

    We want to live like WE want to live—

    Not like heart and soul want us to live.

    It’s a problem.

    We spend way too much of our life dancing around the problem,

    Refusing to address it.

    But, there is no point in being disappointed in ourselves

    Even for being the way we are.

    Heart and soul know what they are up against,

    And will keep throwing consequences at us

    Until we decide to grow up and do it

    The way heart and soul want it done.
  36. 11/13/2014 — Lake Haigler Fall 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 11, 2014

    We have to learn to live metaphorically.

    Our life is the Odyssey.

    We are awash in conflicts that are like the heaving waves of the wine dark sea.

    Our dreams are metaphors.

    Dreaming of death is a metaphor of something being death-like about the life we are living—

    Calling us to wake up to the reality of a life-that-is-death,

    And take up the work of resurrecting our life while life is left.

    We have to start looking at our day-to-day experience

    As exemplifying the great themes of literature through the ages.

    That lifts us from the “dust of this world,”

    And places us in the roles of heroes of lore.

    We have no reason to feel as badly as we do

    About the life we are living—

    This is epic stuff!

    We have to be drawing ourselves up

    And sallying forth each day,

    To right wrongs and serve justice and goodness.

    The world hangs in the balance!
  37. 11/13/2014 — Baxter Creek 2014 01 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Big Creek Campground, Waterville, NC, October 30, 2014

    We are in search of the treasure of meaning and life.

    We are the treasure we seek,

    And we are the dragon guarding the treasure.

    We have to get through us to us.

    We project the resistance within

    Upon some poor old Cyclops without

    And blame him for our failure to be who we are

    “I coulda been a contender.

    I coulda been somebody.

    Instead of this bum, which is who I am—

    If it weren’t for that mean old Cyclops,

    Who kept me from being who I coulda been.”

    Who is keeping us from being who we are?

    How are we going to deal with THAT Cyclops

    Standing in our way?
  38. 11/14/2014 — Fall from Clingman’s Dome — Clingman’s Dome Parking Lot, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, October 29, 2014

    There are people who don’t do anything the Bible doesn’t say do,

    And don’t do anything the Bible says don’t do.

    They take their cues for living from 2,000 years ago.

    Here’s the only proof text you need:

    “You have heard it said, but I say unto you…”

    Jesus lived without any scriptural or traditional authority

    For saying and doing what he did.

    Time and again in the gospels it is said

    He lived out of his own authority

    In saying what he said and doing what he did.

    Anybody knows what is called for in a particular situation.

    Anybody knows what would be good for her or him there.

    “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,”

    And don’t worry about what the Bible says is good or bad.

    Decide for yourself what is called for

    Out of your own sense of what would be good for you

    In their place—

    Let your compassion guide you,

    And your disdain for anything that would keep you from doing

    What needs to be done when it needs to be done,

    Like healing on the Sabbath,

    Or its equivalent in today’s world.
  39. 11/14/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 40 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We live in a fast-paced, noisy, multi-tasking, outcome-oriented world.

    We got our start in a world where we could hear a lion walking softly through tall grass.

    Now, we are in the belly of the beast before we know what happened.

    We slow things down by being aware of them.

    We see what is happening by remembering to be present in the moment of our living.

    We ground ourselves in the service of heart and soul by hearing what is being said and seeing what is being done.

    We can live anywhere as though we were at peace with the universe by being “at the still point of the turning world” (Eliot).
  40. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 11/14/2014 — Downpoint Sign — Ocracoke Island, NC — David O’Neal is a master carver and has quite the collection of decoys. Be sure to pay his shop a visit on your next trip to the Island.

    I drove up to find the gutter guy sitting atop his ladder, studying, as we say in the deep south, the situation.

    “What’s up, Steve?” I asked, getting out of the car.

    “I’m adjusting myself to what has to be done,” he replied.

    A simple fascia board replacement had turned into soffit repair and extensive gutter work.

    Steve had to adjust himself to the additional workload on an already crammed job list, and I had to adjust myself to the additional cost of the operation.

    We both had to put ourselves in accord with our life.

    Putting ourselves in accord with our life is a matter of facing up to what has to be faced up to, and doing what needs to be done about it.

    We run from the truth of our life at every opportunity.

    Conflict and contradiction are things we do not handle well.

    Denial and escape are our favorite means of handling the things we do not want to face up to and deal with.

    Putting ourselves in accord with our life is acknowledging the discordance between how things are and how we want them to be, and adjusting ourselves to the truth of our situation and what has to be done about it—and doing it.

    Failure to take that simple step every time it needs to be taken is the only thing standing between us and the completion of the hero’s journey.
  41. 11/14/2014 — Field Road HDR 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Make conscious your conflicts.

    Bear consciously the pain, the agone.

    Do what needs to be done about each one,

    Taking everything into consideration.

    Integrating what can be integrated,

    Reconciling what can be reconciled,

    And living with what must be lived with.

    This is called carrying your own cross

    Along the way of life—

    And is the way of life

    For all people.
  42. 11/15/2014 — Adams Mill Pond HDR 01 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    To live with integrity

    Is to live at one

    With who we are

    And with who we also are—

    To live in full accord with our life as it is

    And our life as it is built to be.

    It is to be the oak in the acorn,

    Shaped by its environment

    Into the only oak like it in the worlds

    Visible and invisible,

    Throughout time

    And beyond.

    It is no small thing to live with integrity.

    That is why it is the work of a lifetime.

    It begins with being who we are,

    And who we also are,

    Right here,

    Right now.

    No theory.

    No doctrine.

    No system of belief.

    Just living—

    Just doing.

    This thing,

    And the next,

    And all the ones following,

    Like it needs to be done,

    Like only we can do it.
  43. 11/15/2014 — Lake Shamokin 01 — Near Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    We have to come to terms with ourselves

    And with the situation—

    What it is asking of us,

    What it needs from us,

    And what the implications are for us—

    In each situation as it arises

    All our life long.

    We grow up

    Situation by situation.

    We don’t come to some grand realization—

    We don’t hear some sparkling revelation—

    We don’t turn some corner

    And have everything fall into place forever.

    Every day is a new challenge

    With seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing and applying.

    Every day is the first day of the journey.

    We are rookies every day.

    All those masters you are always hearing about?

    They were rookies every single day,

    Remembering again what to do and how to do it.

    Going with the flow

    Is going against the grain.

    We intentionally, mindfully, willfully

    Submit to the will of That Which Knows—And Needs Us,

    And enter the flow

    In each situation as it arises.

    Every. Single. Day.
  44. 11/15/2014 — Eagle in Flight 03 — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    If we live long enough, we will face all of the hard questions.

    Illness, financial stability, the deaths of those we love, our own dying…

    We have between now and then to develop and deepen our personal capacity for facing up to, and dealing with, the worse life can do.

    Fear and desperation,

    Anguish and agony,

    Are waiting in the deep night along the path.

    We prepare for their visitation

    By grounding ourselves in the knowledge of our own heart and soul,

    By following sound health practices for body, mind and spirit,

    And by balancing our one-sided interests and emphasis with an equal investment in opposite pursuits—

    That is, if we are outwardly focused, we have to develop inward activities, and vice versa.

    If we are into escape, denial and addiction—into running from the truth of our life—we have to stop the flight into the Void, turn and face the Cyclops.

    We have to practice facing the truth and finding practical ways of working things out with the facts of our life—we need the skills for what’s coming!

    And, we have to find—or develop—communities of the right kind of people to serve as sources of balance, sanity and encouragement through the dark places in our life.

    This is not to be put-off or dismissed. We need a regimen that will bring forth in us what we need to remain centered and focused on living the life that is ours to live through the storms and terrors-of-the-night that lie ahead.
  45. 11/16/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 01 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 9, 2014

    If you practice running and hiding from your life,

    You will be good at running and hiding,

    And denial will be your constant companion.

    If you practice facing and dealing with your life—

    Squaring up to how things are

    And what needs to be done about them,

    And doing it,

    The way it needs to be done,

    With the spirit and attitude fitting to the occasion,

    You will be good at living your life.

    And grace and mercy will accompany you along the way.
  46. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 11/16/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 42 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We find our life—the one that is our life to live, that is struggling to be born in us, to come to life through us—not by thinking about it.

    We do not think it up, as though it is ours to create, or imagine, into being. It is already right there, fully complete, waiting for us to “throw in with it,” and do right by it.

    We find that life by facing the life we are living. By squaring ourselves up to the facts of that life—to the facts of our limits, our conflicts, our contradictions, failures, successes, fears, desires, etc—and doing what needs to be done about them, about the facts that define, restrict, form and shape the life we are living.

    In that confrontation and discipline we stumble upon, or over, or into, the life that is ours to live.

    This is the age old theme of death and resurrection being worked out in the particulars of our own life.

    Joseph Campbell said, “One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”

    The light (life) we are seeking lies in the darkness of the life we are living. We must step into it and do right by it, do what it is asking us to do, and there a door will open where we didn’t know a door existed.

    Just when we are at the point of giving up on our life, there it is, and we discover that we have lived our way right into it.
  47. 11/16/2014 — View From Clingman’s Dome 04 — Clingman’s Dome Parking Lot, Great Smoky Mountians National Park near Cherokee, NC, September 8, 2014

    We live to escape the life we are living.

    All of the self-help books are about how to get away from what we don’t want and get what we want.

    What we want got us what we don’t want.

    Now we don’t want it and want something else.

    What does that tell you about having wanting for a guide?

    Nothing good comes from Nazareth, you know.

    The stone the builders reject becomes the chief corner stone.

    The pearl of great price is found among the cheap knock-offs in the flea market display case.

    And we want nothing to do with the life we are living.

    The life we are living is the threshold to the life that is ours to live.

    We only have to live the life we are living the way it needs to be lived—

    The way it needs us to live it—

    In order to be delivered unto the life that is ours to live.

    The path to be trod is under our feet,

    Waiting for us to walk it with our eyes open

    To what it has to offer.
  48. 11/17/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 50 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    There are certain realities we have to honor and adjust to in living our life.

    Joseph Campbell called these realities “the inevitables of time and place.”

    The cost of living is one of those realities.

    We have to be able to pay the bills.

    Some people get jobs to pay the bills.

    Some people rob banks.

    Some people marry well.

    The bills require some response from us.

    Our life requires some response from us.

    We have to bend ourselves to serve our life’s will for us.

    It is essential that we not “kick against the goads,”

    That we take the inevitables into account,

    And live in ways which honor the requirements of the the realities

    Which limit and restrict our living.

    This is called growing up.

    We have to bear the burden of responsibility for our life in both worlds—

    The visible world of space and time, rent and income taxes,

    And the invisible world of values, purpose, meaning and mystery.

    We have to do what is asked of us by the time and place of our living.

    This is called putting ourselves in accord with our life,

    Taking care of business,

    Working our side of the street,

    Doing the work that is ours to do—

    Whether we like it our not,

    Want to or not,

    Are in the mood for it or not.

    It all hinges on our willingness to live

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way.
  49. 11/17/2014 — Fall Woodscape 03 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    We have to be grounded in the life that is ours to live.

    Our life has to be unto us as a lover might be,

    Or a god.

    We have to know that we are here to serve our life,

    To live it with loyalty, devotion, dedication, allegiance

    Above all else.

    Our only problem is that we are living without

    A connection to our life.

    There is nothing that we HAVE to do,

    There is no driving force behind what we do.

    We live without impetus or direction.

    We are just hanging out here,

    Waiting on the undertaker,

    Wondering what’s taking so long,

    And what we are going to do in the meantime.
  50. 11/18/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 11 — Near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    You have to love your life more than anything else but,

    You have to take everything else into account,

    And do right by it all.

    This is called walking two paths at the same time.

    I knew the camera was life for me when I was 20,

    And I put it on the shelf because we couldn’t afford film and diapers

    (Etc)

    Until the daughters were out of college.

    Then the camera took over.

    When we left the church in Batesville, MS to move to Greensboro, NC,

    The Mississippi congregation gave me and my wife a trip to Yellowstone National Park as a way of saying good-bye.

    Why go to Yellowstone without a camera?

    Without the gift, who knows how it might have worked out?

    But that’s how it worked out.

    Your life comes back around, is what I’m saying.

    You have to take care of business,

    But, your Real Business never goes away.

    You have to be quiet enough,

    And still enough,

    And open enough,

    To realize what your Real Business is,

    And take it up as soon as the way becomes clear.
  51. 11/18/2014 — Wild Center Pond 01 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    The best preparation for one’s own death is a life well-lived.

    The Native American phrase, “It’s a good day to die,” is true when all the days leading up to this one have been lived well.

    We haven’t held anything back,

    We haven’t been hesitant, timid, afraid to see things as they are,

    And do about them what needed to be done.

    Sometimes, of course, there was nothing we could do about some things,

    Nothing that could be done.

    Except let them be,

    And try to take cover as we were able.

    But even did, what we did in response to not being able to do anything about some things,

    Was the best we could do in those situations.

    We have done all we could think to do

    In living as well as we could imagine living.

    We have been “as ruthless as truth and nature” (Carl Jung)

    In doing right by ourselves, our loved ones, and our life.

    All that makes any day “a good day to die.”

    It’s the only thing that does.
  52. 11/19/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 29 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We have to live at one with ourselves.

    This is called living with integrity.

    Our two million year old self is seeped in the deep drift and flow of our nature.

    Our modern, up-to-date, fresh-off-the-tree self is in tune with the rhythm and beat of today’s world.

    We get them together,

    And live as though it were Then and Now.

    Because it is.

    “Some things never change,

    And some things do.”

    We live to serve what needs to happen

    In the time and place of our living,

    Taking all things into account.

    We live with a foot in both worlds,

    And make the call

    About what to do

    In each situation as it arises.

    Everything depends on it,

    And flows from it.

    Worlds without end.
  53. 11/19/2014 — Fall Orchard Panorama 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Carl Jung said, “Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul. Anyone who fails to go along with life remains suspended, stiff and rigid, in midair.”

    Our life naturally flows through developmental stages.

    We crawl, we walk, we skateboard. You know. Like that.

    Each stage of life has its requirements for development peculiar to that particular stage.

    Childhood has it’s requirements, adolescence has its requirements, young adulthood, middle age, retirement, and old age all have theirs.

    A walker is just as much a mark—and a rite of transition, of initiation—in its age as a driver’s license is in its age.

    As we move through the stages of life, we leave behind attachments and activities of one stage and embrace different attachments and activities of the next stage.

    In one stage, we attend our friends’ weddings. In another stage, we attend their funerals.

    We have to participate fully—willingly, willfully—in the progress of our life through the stages of its development.

    Each new stage has rites of initiation, which we might encounter as “hitting the wall.” Going to college and moving away from home can be exhilarating, and terrifying—exciting and depressing.

    We have to go along with our life. We have to do what needs to be done at each stage in our development. To refuse to move on is to become stiff and rigid—dead before we die.

    We all know people who are stuck in their past, talking of their glory days. Old people drive little fast cars—as though they can get in and out of them! We are kidding ourselves, and refusing the tasks waiting for us to take them up.

    The idea is to live all the way to the end of life—by moving into each stage of our life in its turn. “Going along” with our life, allowing it to take us into the experiences that will deepen us, soften us, expand us, produce us and present us to us, a whole, complete and fully human being.
  54. 11/19/2014 — Field Road HDR 6 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    The more preferences we have, the more conflicts we have.

    We reduce the number of conflicts by reducing the number of preferences.

    Think of your preferences as socks in your sock drawer.

    Thin them out.

    How many of them do you really need to get through your day?

    Which ones are holey, worn, and have out-lived their usefulness?

    Which ones rob you most of your peace when they aren’t realized?

    Which ones are helping you live your life,

    And which ones are robbing you of life?

    Narrow your preferences down to the ones that matter most.

    See how few you can get by with.

    You’ll spend a lot less time being conflicted and in a stew.
  55. 11/20/2014 — Adams Mill Pond Panorama 09 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    Trust yourself to the road you are on.

    If it becomes impassable, trust yourself to the path you take around the impasse.

    Know the difference between pushing and flowing —

    Between willing your way,

    And following the way that is your way to walk.

    Just because something is hard

    Is no indication that it is toxic.

    Stay away from the things that are death to your soul.

    Stay with the way that is life for you

    Even if it is difficult.

    The butterfly needs the struggle

    To escape the chrysalis.

    It takes strenuous effort

    To be more than a caterpillar.

    Our trials and ordeals pull us forth,

    Enabling us to become who we are.

    Is it a chrysalis or a spider web?

    Is it death or is it life?

    Do you keep it up or walk away?

    Is the struggle to stay or to go?

    What you say yes to, and no to, tells the tale.
  56. 11/20/2014 — Cataloochee Elk 06 — Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Maggie Valley, NC

    There is a “golden thread” connecting us with “our soul’s true joy” and some tangible aspect of the physical world.

    We do things that bring our soul to life—

    That are positively, undeniably, charged with life energy for us.

    I pick up my camera or sit down to write

    And all is right with the world.

    Not really, but, for me, I am at-one with the heart of existence.

    We put the world right by being aligned with what brings us to life—

    With what is ours to do.

    Of course, that’s ridiculous.

    The world is in worse shape than it has been in for years.

    And yet, and yet,

    The hope of the world in every age

    Resides in individuals who live centered in a life that brings them to life—

    At one with the life that is truly their life to live—

    In the midst of a world going straight to hell.

    We balance the craziness and the excess of a world gone awry

    By being in accord with the truth and value of our own life.

    If you can be in accord

    While the world around you is out of accord,

    You will moderate the chilling effect of life without

    Purpose, meaning or direction,

    And calm the frantic beast seeking reassurance

    That the center is holding

    And will hold,

    Without saying a word.
  57. 11/21/2014 — Confluence 04 — Greenbrier District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlingburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    When it’s a fight, take it as a sign that you are out of the flow of your life.

    Joseph Campbell said, “The adventure you get is the one you’re ready for.”

    It is probably not the one you have in mind.

    The one you have in mind takes you out of the flow of your life

    And places you in the swirling boil of willing what cannot be willed.

    We cannot will our adventures.

    They happen of their own accord,

    When we least expect it,

    Requiring journeys we had not planned,

    To regions we had never considered,

    Or swore we would never be found in even dead.

    It’s a fight to impose our will on a situation we create

    In the service of what we want.

    The adventure brings its own form of help

    To assist us in facing the trials and ordeals along the way.

    The magic happens, and we find what we need—

    But no more than we need—

    To meet the day.
  58. 11/21/2014 — Lake Haigler Fall HDR 04 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 11, 2014

    Carl Jung said, “It is the body—the feelings, the instinct—that connects us with the soul.”

    Joseph Campbell called the body “a vehicle of consciousness.”

    Body unites Mind and Soul.

    Campbell said, “They myths and rites were means of putting the mind in accord with the body, and the way life is lived in accord with the way that nature dictates.”

    We facilitate the mind-body-soul connection with mindful awareness of the connection, and compassion for both sides of the collaboration.

    When it knows, Body knows what Mind knows and what Soul knows—

    And we work out what is to be done—how life is to be lived—in light of “all things considered.”

    We have to convene regular meetings of the Council—Body, Mind and Soul—on a regular basis—as regular, say, as each morning to talk about the dreams of the night before,

    To hear what needs to be heard and adjust our life accordingly.
  59. 11/21/2014 — Overexposure B&W — Haywood County Barn near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    Everything is grist for the mill.

    We are milling ourselves here.

    We are milling a true human being.

    We are milling a full, complete and whole person.

    We are milling who we are.

    And everything that happens to us is exactly what is required

    To call us forth,

    To pull us out,

    To birth us and enable us

    To step into that time and place

    As the source of the values at the heart of humanity—

    As a Champion of the Good and Noble, the Just and Right—

    And shine there as only we can,

    Milled to perfection in that moment—

    A bright flash of blessing and grace.
  60. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 11/22/2014 — Cataloochee Elk 08 — Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    Dance with the contradictions.

    Live the contradictions.

    By that I mean, make the contradictions conscious, and live among them, between them, admiring them, humbled by them, at peace with them.

    It’s like this:

    Nothing is more ruthless than a woods pond.

    Nothing is more ruthless than a turtle.

    And, a turtle is a symbol for the entire pond ecosystem.

    Everything in the pond is a ruthless master in the art of eating.

    Everything in the pond eats each other.

    The pond is a symbol of life.

    Ruthlessness is required for survival.

    And,

    Tenderness is a class of people, not a quality.

    We tenderly hold the woods pond in our mercy—

    Hold our own ruthlessness so—

    And dance.

    Tenderly, ruthlessly, dancing on.

    Consciously dancing the dance,

    Participating in the ruthlessness of dancing tenderly, knowingly.

    Living the contradictions.
  61. 11/22/2014 — Lake Crandall Fall HDR 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Everybody is an artist.

    Everybody is after money.

    The value of anything is how much money it is worth.

    For the great majority of us, our art is worthless.

    No one would buy it.

    We have no use for anything that is not capable of making us wealthy.

    We renounce our art for the love of other, more lucrative, pursuits.

    Or other, more pleasurable, addictions.

    Nothing is more hopeless or pitiful than an artist who has abandoned her/his art.

    Our soul doesn’t care how much money our art is worth.

    To our soul, our art is priceless beyond compare.

    Our soul lives to do our art—to do its art through us.

    Artists are expressions of their soul’s inexpressible truth,

    Living to incarnate their soul’s deep joy in the work of their art.

    We think money is meaningful, and our life is empty because money is empty.

    Our art is where it’s at.

    We cannot forsake our art and find ourselves.

    And have a self worth finding.
  62. 11/22/2014 — Snapping Turtle — Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, May 23, 2013

    A turtle is just what it is.

    All of life is just what it is.

    Until consciousness comes along.

    With consciousness comes self-consciousness.

    Suddenly we don’t measure up as we are,

    Or, we are afraid we don’t, or won’t,

    So we live to be some other way,

    We live to be someone else.

    A turtle never thinks about being someone else.

    How to make this work is a turtle’s only problem.

    How to be itself in a way that works for it,

    Which means in a way that enables it to eat

    And go on living.

    We have higher aspirations,

    More abundant preferences.

    It is not enough for us to be us on and on until we die.

    Things have to be better for us than they have been and are—

    Increasingly better,

    Or life isn’t worth living.

    It never occurs to a turtle that life could be not worth living.

    Be the turtle you are.

    Be who you are, and be fine with that,

    Forever.
  63. 11/23/2014 — Boundary — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014 — There are four eagles in this photo, two pairs of mates—one pair at the end of their territory, the other pair at the beginning of theirs, making sure everyone knows where the boundary lies. Would that we all were so clear about where we stop and another starts.

    Being who you are

    Does not mean doing what you feel like doing when you feel like doing it for as long as you feel like doing it and then doing whatever you feel like doing for the rest of your life.

    Being who you are

    Means living in the service of Body, Mind, Heart and Soul.

    It means living aligned with the deep current of the life that is  your life to live—in the midst of the life you are living.

    It is to consciously, deliberately, intentionally be two people collaborating on living one life.

    There is the Two Million Year Old person within with a keen sense of direction and purpose, flow and timing—

    And there is the up-to-date, modern, child of the culture within who knows the rules and requirements for life in the world of here and now.

    They both have their own ideas of what needs to be done and how to do it.

    We have to listen to each,

    And work it out.

    If you think that is a snap,

    Climb on and tell them to open the chute.
  64. 11/23/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 31 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    Step into your life!

    All of the old stories—all of the hero’s journeys—from Abraham going forth from his father’s house, to Moses leading the children of Abraham’s child out of the land of Egypt, to Odysseus’ adventures in the Odyssey, to Luke Skywalker’s epic movies, to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, etc—are about YOU stepping into YOUR life.

    Your life brings you forth by presenting you with trials and ordeals that require you to discover things—depths and abilities—about yourself you never knew were you.

    The Also You lies latent—as a seed in the earth lies dormant waiting for the warmth of the sun and the rains of spring—waiting for some great cause to awaken it and invite it to action.

    The rites of passage—of transition—from one life stage to another are exactly our ticket to the transformation, maturation, wholeness and completion that are required for true human being-hood.

    We hold onto the past and want it to be forever as it has been. “No!” we say, “Send Aaron! He is much better at this than I am!” (Exodus 4:13) Leave us alone with this nice little life that we have grown accustomed to.

    All babies cry angrily when thrust from the womb. It is a tendency that stays with us throughout our life.

    But, our life is just what we need to grow us into who we are, and also are.

    Step into your life again and again all your life long.

    Face up to, and deal with, all that you find there. You are bringing yourself into being, one trial, one ordeal, at a time.
  65. 11/23/2014 — Field Road HDR 08 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 14, 2014

    When a hero’s story resonates with us, and we feel, “Of course! That’s how a hero would do it!” it isn’t because someone told us how heroes do things. We KNOW that’s how it ought to be done. You might be able to argue us out of our conviction, but we would then feel guilty for betraying our inmost sense of what is right and what is wrong.

    The deep values are there when we come from the womb. We know then when we are being mistreated and when we are being treated well. We know when our mother loves us and when she does not.

    We know what love is even though we don’t have words for what we know.

    Not only that, but we also resonate with certain scenes and photographs. Icons, we call them. Sunrise at Schwabacher Landing, and at the Maroon Bells, draw photographers from around the world. We know IT when we see it, and have to photograph it.

    The values, ideas, ways of doing things that we sense from the core as being Yes! or No! are, in Jung’s term, archetypical, having existed in us from the earliest times.

    Heroes have always done it the way heroes do it. Never has a hero been recognized as such for exhibiting villain behaviors.

    We know what fits and what does not fit.

    We know what fits a grandfather and what does not—what fits a grandmother and what does not.

    We know what fits the roles people have played through the ages.

    Stereotypes and archetypes differ to the extent that stereotypes are not “spot-on,” but skim the surface. The way “Americans are” may not fit even most Americans, but the way of a grandfather is the way of a grandfather, and the way of a hero is the way of a hero.

    All of this is to say that we know how it is to be done—how we are to do our life, how we are to do grandfathering and grand mothering, and all the other roles we perform. And when we don’t do it the way we know, deep within, it is to be done, there is a price to be paid.

    We should take more care than we do to keep the Archetypes happy.
  66. 11/23/2014 — Evening Ferry — Pamlico Sound, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    When something resonates with us,

    We say it “strikes a cord.”

    We vibrate in sync with it the way strings on a violin or harp might pick up the “vibes” of a neighboring string.

    Something within us recognizes the “IT-ness” of something outside of us.

    How do we know IT when we see it, hear it?

    How did the “idea,” the “sense,” of IT get there?

    It’s always been there, Sweetie.

    We are connected at the level of the heart with IT.

    And when we live in ways that are not cognizant of what we know—

    When we don’t know what we know—

    Things do not go so well with us.

    We are out of rhythm, out of sync, out of touch, out of tune

    With the vibrations of heart and soul,

    And nothing resonates with us.

    We are all head and no body.

    Time to get head back together with body.

    Sweetie.
  67. 11/24/2014 — Love Birds — Barred Owls, Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, April 2013 

    If we can sustain each other

    In doing what is ours alone to do—

    In living our own life

    And working our respective sides of the street—

    The circle will be complete,

    And we will be doing what needs to be done,

    In, and with, our life.

    No relationship could ask for,

    Or provide us with,

    More.
  68. 11/24/2014 — Mill Pond Trail 02 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014-

    Think of Archetypes as The Way To Do Things,

    Or, The Way Things Are To Be Done.

    The Ways Things Are To Be Done are universally approved and recognized as such.

    When the North Carolina Tarheels football team is not satisfied with beating the Duke Bluedevils on the football field 45-20, knocking Duke out of the championship game of the ACC, they also have to trash the visitor’s locker room, spray painting it beyond recovery.

    That’s not the way things are to be done.

    And everybody knows it.

    When bankers stop acting like bankers and start acting like thieves,

    When policemen stop acting like policemen and start acting like thugs,

    When politicians stop acting like politicians and start acting like tyrants and demigods…

    When the structures holding things together,

    And the standards keeping things in place,

    Are despised and rejected,

    And the Archetypes are shunned and disregarded,

    Then, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre,

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

    (From The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats

    When the Archetypes are ignored,

    Things don’t go so well.

    There are reasons things are to be done the way things are to be done.

    When they aren’t done that way,

    The plan is to take cover and ride it out

    As well as you can.
  69. 11/25/2014 — Hanging Out On Hanging Rock — Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, NC, October 2012

    When The Rule of Law is supplanted by those

    Who change the laws (as in voter registration and women’s rights),

    Or who change the way the law is interpreted and enforced (as in gun control and environmental regulations),

    To suit themselves in a God’s-Little-Acre kind of way,

    You have anarchy masquerading as democracy.

    When you live in a culture

    Where the Rule of the Day

    Is hypocrisy and lie

    You better have the right people

    Around you

    For stability and sanity,

    Because you live in an abusive, toxic, environment,

    And nobody can do that for long

    Without questioning their own orientation,

    Direction,

    And feel for what is right.
  70. 11/25/2014 — Kahtadin Range Panorama — Sandy Stream Pond, Baxter State Park near Millinockett, ME, September 26, 2010

    Our preferences define us and disclose who we are.

    And our values, which are preferences, in a way.

    In the same way that our preferences are values.

    Where do they come from, our values and preferences?

    They are there from the start.

    They come with us from wherever we were before we got here.

    They are points of contact with the invisible world,

    And guide our living in the visible world.

    It’s best that we pay attention to what we value and what we prefer,

    And let that lead us along the path to wherever it is that we are going.
  71. 11/25/2014 — Stonington Harbor Sunrise — Stonington, ME, September 2010

    Our soul is here to express itself through us,

    Which is to say that we are here to express ourselves.

    We express ourselves through our art, whatever form it might take,

    And through honest conversation about the things that matter to us.

    How many of us have someone we can talk to straight from the heart about the important things?

    How often do we engage in that kind of conversation?

    We are here to know ourselves—

    And we cannot do that apart from expressing ourselves.

    We discover who we are and what is important to us

    By hearing ourselves say who we are and what is important to us—

    And are often surprised to hear ourselves saying what we say,

    And saying it with the intensity and emotion that it comes wrapped in.

    We never know what we might say if we start talking.

    The greatest gift is to be heard at a level that enables us to hear ourselves.

    If you don’t know anyone you can talk to straight from the heart about the things that matter,

    You need to meet more people—

    And work to become the kind of person that other people can talk to.
  72. 11/26/2014 — Blue Ridge Fall 10 — Approaching Water Rock Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway near Maggie Valley, NC, November 2014

    Compassionate, mindful, awareness is the solution to all of your problems today—

    To all of your problems that can be solved—

    And, it is the solution to all of the ones that cannot be solved,

    That are beyond solution,

    In that it allows you to recognize them for what they are,

    And live your life around them,

    Waiting for something in the situation to shift,

    And for the problem to disappear in its own time.

    All problems disappear eventually,

    But, it takes compassionate, mindful, awareness

    To realize that and stop burning yourself out

    On things that have to go away on their own.

    If you are going to practice anything,

    Practice being compassionately, mindfully, aware

    Of your situation in life,

    Doing what can be done about it,

    And letting the rest have the time it needs to be gone.
  73. 11/26/2014 — Eagle in Flight Panorama — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    One of my good memories—to offset a number of bad ones—is when our oldest granddaughter (of 5) was about to enter the 9th grade, and, on ending a family visit to our house, made a request of me as they loaded up for home:

    “Pops, hold me like a baby, one last time!”

    Now, who can miss the import of that plea? Certainly not me!

    So I lifted her and held her across both arms, her arms around my neck, with me swinging her slowly, back and forth, as I might have when she was in infancy and early childhood.

    That kept up for a while, maybe two minutes. Long enough for me to begin to wonder how long I could keep it up, being in my early 60s, and how this moment should properly end,

    When her mother, who had been a witness to the event’s unfolding, said, “Okay. Time to get moving. Your life is waiting!”

    It was beautiful. Start to finish.

    And stands for me still yet as a reminder to all of us

    Who want to linger at the threshold of what is to be done,

    Wishing we could stay in the comforting arms of the way the past
    has been:

    “Okay. Time to get moving. Your life is waiting!”
  74. 11/27/2014 — Cataloochee Elk 05 — Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    I’m sure gay people had a hard time of it back in biblical times.

    Women had a hard time of it in biblical times.

    They treated women in biblical times the way they treat women in Islamic countries today.

    You wouldn’t have wanted to be a woman in biblical times.

    You wouldn’t have wanted to be a gay person in biblical times.

    To do it the way they did it in the Bible is to fail to do it as well as it needs to be done.

    They could have done better than they did it in biblical times.

    That’s what Jesus told them.

    “You can do better than this!”

    They killed him for it.

    People are still killing people—and shamefully treating people—for saying “You/we can do better than this!”

    They had slaves in the Bible.

    They thought it was just fine to have slaves in the Bible.

    They thought people who were born with physical deformities,

    Or who became cripple, or blind, after birth,

    Were afflicted by God,

    And treated them shamefully,

    Calling them Sinners (Obviously they were sinners because God was punishing them) and Unclean, and Untouchable, and not letting them enter the Temple, which women could also not do.

    That’s the way they did it in the Bible.

    We can do better than that.

    Stop letting the Bible be the blueprint for how it ought to be done.

    What the Bible says has to be reevaluated in light of what our own experience discloses to us about what is good, and true, just and beautiful.

    What YOU say is more important than what the Bible says.

    And those who say we have to do it the way the Bible says do it?

    Well, that’s just what THEY say.

    I say we can co better than that.

    What do YOU say?
  75. 11/28/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 11 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    The Bible is a cache of eternal truth in the form of symbols and metaphors that connect us with the heart of being and life.

    “You must be perfect as God is perfect.”

    “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”

    “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

    The virgin birth (every spiritual birth is a virgin birth),

    Death and resurrection (The story of our life)

    From bondage to freedom (The story of our life)

    Etc.

    And it doesn’t take thinking or believing to know that all of this is so.

    Is how it is.

    We know innately and eternally when something is right and when something is wrong.

    Joseph Campbell said, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off.”

    Carl Jung said, “Deep inside, something knows that something is wrong.”

    We know all we need to know. We only need to know what we know.

    We need to get out of the way.

    After my hernia surgery, I had to pee before being released for home. I stood behind the curtain, just me and the toilet, trying to pee. The nurse was on the other side of the curtain directing the action: “Just breathe deep, Mr. Dollar.” In other words, “Get out of the way Mr. Dollar. You know how to pee. Stop thinking about it.”

    That story should be a parable in the Bible.

    Things are exactly perfect exactly as they are. It only takes realizing it to know it is so. That is all enlightenment is. Waking up to the perfection of how things are, and always have been, and always will be. Here and now. Right here. Right now. “Just breathe deep, Mr. Dollar.”
  76. 11/28/2014 — Beach Still Life — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    When you go to bed tonight ask for a guiding dream.

    Is there any inner resistance to that suggestion?

    Any sense of “Why ask for guidance when I know what I’m doing”?

    Your Dreamer may be forced into Warning Mode, with Guidance being OOTQ.

    The dreams we get are the dreams we ask for one way or another.

    Warning dreams come in droves to those who know exactly what they want and how to get it—

    Or who have no hope of ever having a life worth living,

    And are past cooperating in putting forth good faith efforts in their own behalf.

    Only those willing to be guided get the Guidance Dreams.

    Let’s see what kind of dream you get tonight.
  77. 11/29/2014 — Frosty Leaves 01 B&W — Blue Ridge Parkway near Maggie Valley, NC, October 30, 2014

    Frustration is my predominant emotion.

    I have a will for my life—and for the way life is being lived around me—

    That isn’t being realized in my life—or the way life is being lived around me.

    There is a discordance between how I want things to be—between how I wish things were—and how things are.

    My work is not to make things like I want them to be,

    But to make my peace with how things are.

    By distancing myself from my will for my life, and all of life,

    And letting things take their own course—letting nature take its course—

    Assisting what needs assisting,

    And resisting what needs to be resisted,

    Weeding what needs to be weeded,

    And fertilizing and watering what needs to be fertilized and watered,

    And letting that be that—

    All of which is living in the service of my will for my life, and all of life—

    Assisting, resisting, weeding, fertilizing according to my view of what needs to be done in each situation—

    But without trying to impose my will on each situation.

    It’s the difference between living willfully,

    And willing participation in life as it is—

    Between living willfully,

    And willing what needs to be done in each situation.

    We don’t live without a will for our life, and all of life.

    We live with our will aligned with what is conducive to our life, and all of life.

    The difference makes all the difference.
  78. 11/29/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 44 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We have to deal with detours and dead ends.

    We have to get ourselves adjusted to what needs to be done,

    And do it.

    I recommend breathing deeply and taking your time.

    We cannot hurry recovery and adjustment.

    When something happens,

    We don’t just bounce back in Bozo the Clown Punching Bag fashion,

    Like nothing happened.

    When we lose the world we lived in,

    And/or the future we had every right to think was ours,

    We have to breathe deeply and take our time.

    We have to lie there and wait for things to come back into focus.

    Recovery and adjustment come in their own time.

    In the meantime,

    We practice compassion for ourselves and others

    (Particularly the ones who wonder why we aren’t back to normal yet),

    And mindful awareness of what we’re feeling and of what we have lost,

    And grieve what must be grieved,

    And mourn what is to be mourned,

    And bear the pain of our time and place,

    And wait for the shift to happen

    That lets us know adjustment and recovery are underway.
  79. 11/30/2014 — Dugger’s Creek Panorama — Linville Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC, October 14, 2014

    Each situation is a mirror, showing us who we are,

    And who we need to be.

    How we respond to our life is a reflection of our degree of depth,

    Compassion and awareness.

    We are always being asked to wake up, grow up, stand up, and square up

    To what is being asked of us in each situation as it arises.

    We never get to the place of being able to get by with what worked before.

    We are always having to make new connections,

    Come to new realizations,

    In matching our past experience with the particulars of our present experience.

    We cannot do it like it has always been done,

    Or like it is supposed to be done according to some playbook for the ages.

    We have to rise to each occasion as though for the first time,

    And decide again what to do here and now about what is being asked of us,

    In light of all things considered.

    We are always growing up,

    Never grown up.
  80. 11/30/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 53 B&W — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    We’re aligning ourselves with our life here.

    We do that by being open to the possibilities inherent in the life we are living,

    And by seeing, hearing and understanding what is to be seen, heard and understood,

    And by knowing what we know—but don’t know that we know.

    All it takes is paying attention,

    And looking closer at the things that catch our eye.

    The work that we are here to do

    Is more like play than work,

    So don’t rule out things that look like

    They may be too much fun to count.
  81. 12/01/2014 — Spread Eagle — James River, Richmond, VA, November 5, 2014

    The theme of “the rightful heir” is found throughout the literature of the world: A young prince or princess is kidnapped, or lost in the forest and found by a poor couple and raised as their own…

    In the Bible, this comes forth in the Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, the wait for the long awaited messiah, the hope for the Coming One.

    The Suffering Servant is “despised and rejected” by everyone, yet upon him/her is “the chastisement that makes us whole,” and “by his/her wounds we are healed.”

    How does that work, exactly? It works when The One Who Knows lives in this world, knowing that she/he belongs to the other world, redeeming this world by the quality of her/his life here, which is enabled and fueled by her/his living here as though she/he were there.

    This kind of life can be redemptive—or arrogant, vain, snobbish, pompous, condescending and crazy—depending upon the attitude and demeanor of The One Who Knows.

    If the Suffering Servant embraces her/his role as being here but belonging there, and living here as life here needs to be lived her/his life is redemptive and enlivening, in the sense of Joseph Campbell’s observation, “The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”

    Our vitality is based on our knowledge of our origin and our roots—and by our ability to live here with the heart and soul of one whose home is there. We live in two worlds at the same time, and transform this world by the quality of our life in it, enabled by our connection with that world.

    We are the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, the Coming One, the Christ, the King/Queen of Israel—and every other country there ever has been or will be.

    Our soul is royal stuff. We are of God. And we are shoveling out barns. So, the trick is to shovel out the barn with the light of God twinkling in our eye, and the keen sense of God for who and what needs our compassionate attention in the barn world of our here and now—and live here with the care we would give there if we were there.

    Get that down and you transform the world by the way you live in it.

    And you can deny your heritage if you choose to do so, but I know who you are. And here’s looking at you, Kid.
  82. 12/01/2014 — Adams Mill Pond Panorama 12 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    The most important thing is making peace with your life—

    Coming to terms with your life—

    Reconciling yourself with your life.

    Both of them: the one you are living and the one that is yours to live.

    You may not be thrilled with either.

    You may want a different kind of life on both fronts.

    You may despair because of the way life is,

    You may hate your life (either or both).

    You may despise the day you were born.

    That does not bode well.

    Your work before you can get to your work is

    Making your peace with your life,

    Coming to terms with your life,

    Reconciling yourself with your life.

    And, here is the really bad news.

    It’s not “once and done.”

    It’s an on-going process,

    Always being at peace with our life.

    Our life can turn on us in an instant.

    What was just fine a second ago,

    Becomes an unlivable horror just like that.

    We start the work all over again—the work to get to the work.

    We cannot live a life we hate.

    And, if you’ll just look around,

    You will see that this is the only life you can live.

    If you are going to live, you are going to live the life you have to live.

    Both of them.

    The work that waits, before the other work begins,

    Is making your peace with your life,

    Coming to terms with your life,

    Being reconciled with your life.

    It’s the most important thing.
  83. 12/01/2014 — Lake Crandall Fall HDR 01 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, November 13, 2014

    Carl Jung thought the human psyche (soul) evolved to its present state, just as the human body did, and vestiges of the earliest stages are still present in both.

    The patterns of behavior that set humans apart from the animals are a part of our inheritance. We don’t make up in each generation how things ought to be in that generation. They are passed on from previous generations in behaviors learned from parents and grandparents, and also in instinct and intuition—and, I would say, values—at the heart of the psyche.

    When we behave in ways that violate both learned and instinctive “ought-to-be’s,” trouble is brewing. The mass extinction of the American Bison and Homing Pigeon did more damage (so goes the theory) to our psyche than the loss of two more species did to the natural order. Our attitude was—and still is—at odds with our instincts.

    That’s a problem we can’t remedy with prescription medication and exercise. Or with drugs and alcohol.

    The psyche calls us back, back, as individuals, and as a culture, with symptoms and dreams, but we make our plans, and serve our agendas, ignoring the harmonies, and our sense of what resonates with us, and is right for our life.

    You see where this is headed.

    We can save ourselves a lot of misery and heartache by recognizing the objective reality of psyche/soul, listening to—and aligning—our heart/body/soul/mind, honoring instinct and intuition to the same degree that we honor reason and logic, and living our life in light of all things considered toward ends that serve the good of the planet and its people.
  84. 12/02/2014 — Eagle Cliff Falls 02 — Adirondack Park, Upstate NY, Finger Lakes Region, Havana Glen near Elmira, NY, October 2, 2014

    We are alone with how things are.

    What we do about it is up to us.

    This is the Good News—

    The Heart of the Gospel—

    Who Jesus was and the message he came to deliver.

    Take it or leave it.

    What you do about it is up to you.

    I’ll be happy to tell you what I do about it.

    I—sometimes against my will—become as clear as I can be

    About how things are,

    And then, I decide what to do about it.

    And it isn’t ever nearly enough,

    So, don’t think you are going to clean things up,

    Nice and tidy,

    Sit back and have it made.
  85. 12/3/2014 — Bridge to Deer Isle — Deer Isle, ME, September 26, 2012

    My heart is in fewer things these days, and saying, “My heart isn’t in it,” is a good enough for me reason to sit it out.

    I’m withholding myself from things that don’t have heart, and giving myself to things that do.

    It’s my way of getting old—honoring the things with heart with mindful, attentive, compassionate presence.

    Like a cup of coffee and a fire in the fireplace, with Georgia Kelly’s harp in the morning and my favorite Christmas music in the afternoon and evening.

    I’m letting the things that catch my eye catch my eye, and foregoing the things that don’t—forgetting the things I’m supposed to care about, and caring about the things I care about.

    Think of Libido and Eros as life energy that is not limited to the sexual sphere. My LIbido/Eros has dropped off as I have aged, and I’m conserving my effort for things that matter.

    And getting myself talked into things that don’t. I have to adjust myself to things that need doing whether my heart’s in it or not. Being social, for example—which is more time consuming than being cordial—or backing up my computer when I would prefer using my computer for other things.

    Carl Jung talked about his time with African and Native American tribes, noting that they spent considerable energy in dancing and rituals designed to get them into a state of doing what needed to be done—whether it was going to war with another tribe, or going on a hunt, or harvesting the crops. Working up their Libido. Viagra for life.

    I have to do that with yard work. My ritual consists of thinking it out for a couple of days, and waiting for the weather to be right—getting my mind adjusted to the idea of going without heart into a wasteland of weeds and rocks.

    I treat social engagements that I can’t get out of the same way. Living where life is not takes preparation and planning.

    And living attentive to where life is, and relishing being there, is one of the great gifts of the aging process. I’m clear about what matters, and give myself to it with joy and delight. Searching for photos. Writing these sentences. Seeing the light as it changes in intensity and color throughout the day. Dancing with new ideas, improving old recipes… The list is a string of simple pleasures that my soul seems to love, and I am glad to devote myself to my soul’s tender care as I step into my last decade or two.
  86. 12/03/2014 — Fall Lane — Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    I have my work to do, and you have yours.

    I mean work as in “art,” “gift,” “heart’s true love,”

    Not as in “how we earn our living.”

    Our work is what we earn our living to live to do.

    I have mine and you have yours.

    That should give us enough to talk about to never have a break in the conversation.

    Trouble is, too many of us have no idea what our work is,

    Or what to say about it.

    We have lived our life cutoff from that side of ourselves that knows exactly

    What our work is, and is dying to get into it.

    We have the rest of our life to get together with ourselves and our work.

    We start by believing the side of ourselves that knows exists,

    And that our work exists as well—

    And making a good faith promise to be open to both,

    And commit ourselves to getting to know both and to doing the work.

    I said “good faith.”

    That means you mean it.

    That is all there is to it.

    You make the promise and commitment, and carry through on your end,

    Listening to dreams, hunches, nudges, winks and watching what catches your eye,

    And you will be in the thick of your life’s work before you know it,

    And we will be able to talk for days without pausing to breathe.
  87. 12/03/2014 — Dugger’s Creek Bridge — Linville Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC, October 13, 2014

    We experience loss of soul when we give ourselves into the service of things that are not of our soul.

    The disconnect with our soul then becomes so great that we cut ourselves off from our soul and live soulless.

    The cure, of course, is to do the things our soul loves,

    The things that cause our heart to be glad.

    When we do the things we love, and that love us back,

    We quickly recover lost ground,

    And our soul and we are as one.

    When I say that the things we love must love us back,

    I mean that some people love beer, partying hearty, and cocaine,

    For example.

    The things that love us back are the things that,

    As we do them,

    Things fall into place that have no business falling into place.

    Strange things happen.

    People say Yes to us when by all rights they should say No.

    Doors open where there shouldn’t be doors.

    It’s magical.

    It’s serendipitous,

    And synchronicity sprouts up all around.

    We are in the flow—in love with the things that love us back.

    And our soul is as happy as it can be.
  88. 12/04/2014 — Adams Mill Pond 30 — Goodale State Park, Camden, SC, November 10, 2014

    You are the magician! The magic happens through you!

    You participate in the miracle of magic

    When you are at one with your life,

    Living it to the fullest of your abilities.

    Throw yourself into your life as though it were your wand.

    It is.

    Live it and watch the wonders unfold!

    And if you refuse to live it because it won’t make you wealthy,

    How many wealthy magicians do you know?

    Wealth and the idea of wealth, the hope of wealth,

    Are keeping you away from the magic.

    It’s the Dark Side’s way of buying your soul

    With only the thought of wealth.

    Throw in with your life!

    Let your magic loose in the world!
  89. Owl Sees Owl 02 — Barred Owl, Bog Garden, Greensboro, NC, 2013

    What’s good for the soul is bad for the economy.

    We have created an economy as a soul substitute, a surrogate soul.

    Who needs a soul when the apples on all the trees are so bright and shiny?

    Such a delight to behold! So delicious to the taste!

    And soul requires such constant attention!

    It’s like mind reading to divine its leanings and dowse its good!

    Who has the time?

    More attractive options abound,

    And they are ripe for the picking!

    Let the good times roll!

    Let the good times roll!
  90. 12/05/2014 — Cataloochee Elk 04 — Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    Here we are—now what?

    In making the assessment and asking the question,

    We are adjusting ourselves to the unfolding of our life,

    The way rock climbers and white-water kayakers adjust themselves to the changing conditions and circumstances of their life in the moment of their living.

    Here we are—now what?

    The question cuts through our likes and don’t likes, hates and loves—which we don’t have time for on the mountain or in the current—and focuses us on the situation at hand,

    And enables us to dance with our life.
  91. 12/06/2014 — Old Sheldon Church Ruins 01 HDR B&W — Yemassee, SC, December 5, 2014 — The church that won’t die. They were set up for a wedding in what was once the sanctuary—a regular occurrence.

    I am here to help people with their life. I do that by listening to them until they are clear about what they are saying. With clarity, they have everything they need to find what they need to live their life. No one can give someone else clarity. Anyone can help someone else realize what they do have—and what they might do with it, about it.

    We think meaning in life has to do with ideology, formulas, recipes, content—as though we can know, rationally and logically, “what it’s all about,” “get it together,” and live fulfilling, satisfying, happy lives.

    Go and learn what this means: “Shall not the judge of the universe do right?” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Love your enemies.” “In as much as you have done it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me.” “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” “I am the way, the truth and the life—and so are you.” “The Father and I are one—and so are you” (The “so are you’s were implied, if not stated). Etc.

    Knowing what any one of the statements means, means knowing you cannot explain it. Words fail to communicate the depth and breadth of truth. Enlightenment is not understanding anything that can be explained. “The Tao that can be told/said/explained/defined/articulated is not the eternal Tao.”

    Truth is not accessible to logic and reason. Clarity cannot be communicated—it can only be realized. Once we are clear about how things are and what needs to be done about them, in response to them, we become a blessing and a grace upon the world. We have achieved saint-hood, bodhisattva-hood, and can live free and clear (which is the only way to be free).
  92. 12/06/2014 — Sand Art 02 — North Beach, Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014 — A production of water and sand, created as the waters of high tide drained back to the sea.

    The National Park Service has one of the best mottos in the Book of Mottos:

    “Your Safety Is Your Responsibility.”

    The extensions and implications are endless.

    Your Peace of Mind Is Your Responsibility.

    Your Physical Health…

    Your Mental Health…

    Your Balance and Sanity…

    Your Being Grounded in What Matters Most…

    Your Well-being…

    Your Love of Live…

    Your Spirit, Enthusiasm, and Fire for the Journey…

    Your Life…

    You…
  93. 12/07/2014 — Low Tide Panorama — Johnson Creek, St. Helena Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    If corporations are people, are individuals, then people, individuals might be legitimately considered to be corporations.

    The corporate characteristics that make a corporation a person, open the way for personal characteristics to make a person a corporation.

    Eric Garner was killed, as I understand the facts, for tax evasion by NY Policeman Daniel Pantaleo, in a city where corporations enjoy tax shelters keeping them from having to pay taxes on local, regional and national levels.

    New York has to be held accountable for its failure to guard and protect Mr. Garner to the same degree that it guards and protects the entities and firms of Wall Street from unwarranted intrusion into their affairs.

    The nation-wide protests of Mr. Garner’s death need to be understood as meetings of the corporation—and individuals participating in those protests have to understand their place in those meetings as being to establish connections and relationships that will enable their voice to continue to be heard by those who already are listening to the Lobbyists and advocates for business.

    The people have to get Government’s attention, and sway political support to their cause for individual, civic, and corporate rights.

    The people have the power of the vote.

    When only 37% of registered voters vote in elections with local, regional, national and international implications, Government and politicians and corporations have a free ride to destinations they select by means they choose.

    The people have to register to vote, inform themselves of the stakes in each election, and vote at every opportunity.

    If you aren’t registered to vote, and if you are registered to vote but don’t vote, I’m talking to you.

    Pass the word. The corporation must speak if its voice is to be heard.
  94. 12/07/2014 — High Tide Panorama 01 — Johnson Creek, St. Helena Island, SC, December 7, 2014

    Our primary responsibility is to serve, guard, defend, protect and champion our heart.

    Our heart might demand that we sacrifice our responsibility for guarding our heart in service to our heart—

    And so follow the path of the prophets and martyrs of every religion in every age—

    But, our heart is our highest concern, our deepest value.

    We owe loyalty and devotion to our heart

    The way the knights of the middle ages pledged their troth to their lady and work her colors into battle and into life—

    The way Mary pledged her troth to the baby she carried, though Simeon’s prophecy promised “a sword will pierce through your own soul.”

    Our response is to be, as hers was to the angel, “May it be as you say,”

    As we take up the work of bringing our heart forth into our life,

    And going where it leads, no matter what.
  95. 12/08/2014 — Beach Erosion Panorama 13 B&W — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Play like a rookie.

    Live like one.

    That’s the opposite of playing like a robot,

    Stepping into each day repeating the successes

    And avoiding the failures

    Of all previous days—

    Living with an agenda in one hand,

    And The Book of How to Do It in the other.

    All business, no play.

    All head, no heart.

    Being smart,

    Following the program from start to finish.

    No novelty.

    No creativity.

    No imagination.

    Nothing spontaneous permitted.

    Only scheduled fun allowed.

    Able to defend, excuse, explain, justify

    Every act.

    Play like a rookie

    Live like one.

    Don’t have to know what you’re doing.
  96. Used in Short Talks On Contradiction, etc., 12/08/2014 — At the Dock 01 — Shrimp Boats on Battery Creek, Port Royal, SC, December 5, 2014

    Our contraries, contradictions, discord and disharmony all have to be recognized, addressed and reconciled.

    We are awash in ambivalence and opposition.

    We have to wade into it and make peace.

    We do that by being conscious of it and bearing consciously the pain, the discomfort, the unsettling reality of our more-than-one-minded-ness about nearly everything.

    On the one hand this and on the other hand that and on still other hands, that, and that”, and that over there.

    Col. Nathan R. Jessup (The Jack Nicholson character in “A Few Good Men”) nails us even yet: “You can’t handle the truth!”

    We can’t. And, we have to.

    We have to look until we see, listen until we hear, inquire and explore until we understand: Who we are, and who we also are, and who we needed to be in the time and place of our living.

    Something is going to be neglected, disallowed, sat aside.

    We have to stand aside in the service of causes and needs greater than we are.

    What else can “Thy will, not mine be done” mean?

    There will be unlived lives and roads not taken all our life long.

    We have to recognize that and come to terms with it—make our peace with it—reconcile ourselves to it.

    One life and many possibilities means we have to choose—means we have to decide—what we will do and what we will leave undone.

    And grow up about it.

    This is where our conscious ego earns its keep.
  97. 12/08/2014 — Looking South — Hunting Island State Park beach, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    Starving artists are starving because they think their art is going to support them, when they are here to support their art.

    All artists need a day job.

    Carl Jung said that we are all artists:

    “Give (the artist within) a chance to bring to light the pictures (he or she) carries within, to free the unwritten poems that are shut up inside, and even though the work produced will hardly ever amount to anything technically and artistically, it has helped to cleanse and release the tensions within the psyche.”

    We are here to clarify what is important and live in light of it. Our art, in whatever form it takes, brings clarity through expression and articulation.

    We have to do what it takes to know what matters and then we have to do what needs to be done about it.

    That’s all there is to it.
  98. 12/08/2014 — Horseshoe Lake HDR 02 — Adirondack Park, near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    When we live without taking our soul into account, there is trouble.

    There is hell to pay.

    In 10,000 ways.

    Not that we can avoid trouble, and live peaceful and quiet little lives.

    It’s trouble, working soul into our life,

    But it is life.

    Leaving soul out of our life is death.

    In 10,000 ways.

    Carl Jung said that we have to find out what we are hiding from ourselves, face it, square ourselves up to it, and integrate it into our life.

    This is the work of becoming a true human being—standing between two worlds and bringing them together in ourselves.

    This is the work of mediation, of incarnation, of reconciliation.

    It is the work of the Christ—whom we all must be if we are to become true human beings.
  99. 12/08/2014 — Bridge to Rough Ridge 07 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    We don’t want to grow up. We want Mamma to take care of us.

    The church of our experience said, “Come here, Baby, I’ll take care of you.”

    Or, it said, “Give yourself to Jesus. He will take care of you”—

    Ignoring the fact that Jesus said, “I don’t come bringing peace, but a sword. I’m going to cut your little heart right out and eat it in front of you! (Or words to that effect).”

    The new life in Christ eats our old life alive.

    What Jesus actually is said to have said is, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, they have to pick up their cross every day and follow me.”

    As with the Master, so with the disciples.

    There ain’t no Mamma going to save us from our life.

    We have to step into that thing every day and do what needs to be done with it,

    And get ready to do it again tomorrow.
  100. 12/09/2014 — Beach Erosion Panorama 11 — Hunting Island State Park, Hunting Island, SC, December 6, 2014

    A good conflict never goes away, but.

    There is no conflict so persistent and difficult that it can’t be outgrown.

    We look to resolve our conflicts.

    Conflict resolution is a big money making business

    For consultants and therapists

    Who don’t do anything but buy time

    In which the parties involved may, or may not, grow up.

    Conflicts are not subject to solution.

    A shift is the only thing that works.

    The name for the shift is “growing up.”

    When we grow up, we change in relation to our father or mother,

    Or brother or sister,

    And Thanksgiving Dinner isn’t the agony it once was.

    All our conflicts are seated at some table,

    Just waiting to get into it with us.

    Each one is only a slight shift away from becoming tolerable.

    Our conflicts grow us up,

    If we can grow up.

    Otherwise, we will be flaring up in their presence,

    And getting drunk anticipating their arrival

    and distancing ourselves from their memory,

    And paying some therapist to hold our hand

    Through our refusal to make the necessary shift.

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One Minute Monologues 021

09/19/2014 – 11/01/2014

  1. 09/19/2014 — Life begins here, now.

    Just as the path begins under our feet.

    It doesn’t wait until some far off time,

    Or some far away place.

    The path is the path to life

    We will never be more alive than we are here, now.

    We will be more aware of the life we are living,

    But, we are as alive as we can be, here, now.

    We can only be more aware of how alive we are,

    Of how alive everything is around us.

    The color of the sky,

    The movement of clouds, and ants,

    The taste of coffee,

    The sound of laughter and conversation…

    Native Americans 200 years ago were more alive than we are.

    Primal tribes were more alive than we are—

    With no iPhones or iPads or Sexting or Tweeting,

    No career plans and no maxed-out bank cards.

    Our life is dying to be lived.

    The path begins under our feet.

    Wake up.

    To life.

    Here.

    Now.
  2. 09/20/2014 — Saturated Sunset 02 — Pamlico Sound, approaching Ocracoke Island, NC from Swanquarter, NC, October 2008

    All we have is each other.

    To be lost and alone is to have no one who cares about you,

    Who cares for you,

    Who knows you,

    Listens to you—hearing with understanding what you have to say,

    Who looks in on you,

    Checks in with you,

    Brings you Little Nothings,

    Invites you to go get pizza

    Or a cup of coffee

    To catch up on how things are

    And enjoy the time together.

    We need to be fostering that kind of relationship—

    By being the kind of person we need in our life

    Among all those we know,

    And see who responds.

    If no one does,

    We need to meet some more people.
  3. 09/20/2014 — View from Clingman’s Dome (Parking Lot) 07 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, September 1, 2014

    How much do you enjoy about your life?

    How often do you do the things you like to do?

    Why don’t you live to enlarge the answers to both questions?
  4. 09/21/2014 — Looking East 06 — Water Rock Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway near Maggie Valley, NC, September 1, 2004

    Living appropriately

    In response to the all-ness of the situation

    As it unfolds before, and within, us

    Requires us to step away from expectations,

    Rules, codes, laws, traditions, dictates, conventions, customs, mores,

    Habits, routines, policies, rules, regulations and common practices,

    In order to do what needs to be done

    In each here-and-now of our living.

    Those who see, hear, understand and live accordingly,

    Live in the “no-man’s-land” of personal authority and responsibility—

    Out of accord with every Book of Order of their day,

    And in apparent league with Satan,

    Or the current equivalent

    Of the appalling, obscene, unheard of, abominable and abhorrent.

    Got it in you?

    If so, give them something to talk about!

    In each situation as it arises!
  5. 09/21/2014 — Woods Pond HDR 01 — Ribbonwalk Nature Preserve, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Parks & Recreation, Charlotte, NC, September 21, 2014

    We are responsible for our response to the moment of our living.

    We are responsible for facing up to the facts of the situation as it arises.

    We are responsible for coming to terms with the nature and conditions of our life.

    No one can do these things for us.

    Everything rides on our doing them on our own.

    Everything.

    Every.

    Thing.
  6. 09/21/2014 — Around Lake Haigler 04 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, September 5, 2014

    It’s all practice.

    We are practicing making peace with our life.

    I have failed to be what the situation needed me to be,

    And I have been exactly what the situation needed me to be.

    One does not cancel out the other.

    I am forever haunted by my failings.

    I am forever grateful for my nailing it.

    Failing or nailing could either sweep me up

    In despair or inflation.

    I have to make my peace with each

    And be available to the situation that is arising—

    Not lost in any situation that has come and gone.

    When a memory of failing comes over me,

    I have to make my peace with it.

    When a memory of nailing pays me a call,

    I have to make my peace with it.

    Same with fear, anxiety, desire, dread…

    We recognize all of the emotions that would distract us and un-track us—

    And make our peace with them.

    Same with external opposition and resistance,

    Disrespect, disappointment, lack of cooperation, etc.

    We acknowledge it and make our peace with it.

    We PRACTICE making our peace with it.

    We PRACTICE not allowing it to distract and untrack us.

    Each day offers additional rounds of practice.

    We even have to practice making our peace

    With wishing we could skip a day or to,

    Or graduate and be at peace without having to practice.

    We practice making our peace with practice.

    It’s all practice.
  7. 09/22/2014 — Compass Pond 02 — Along Golden Road near Millinocket, ME, September 25, 2012

    How will we live our life?

    That’s the foundational question.

    How will we live our life today?

    In every moment?

    In each situation as it arises?

    In light of what shall we live?

    Toward what shall we live?

    What will guide our boat on its path through the sea?

    What will guide our response to the time and place of our living?

    What shall we live for?

    What shall we live to do?

    In the service of what shall we live?

    Every day

    Every moment

    Every situation

    The question is the same one.

    How shall we live

    Here and now?
  8. 09/22/2014 — Heavy Seas 18 — Otter Point, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, ME, September 29, 2012

    We talk, read, study, take courses, attend seminars and workshops,

    And put off doing anything about changing the way we are living

    By talking, reading, studying, etc. some more

    To make sure we understand what needs to be done

    And how to do it.

    Meanwhile, our life—the life that needs us to live it—waits untended,

    Wilting for lack of attention.

    Every lecture, book, course, seminar, workshop, etc.

    Is about changing our life.

    If our life were working, we wouldn’t be talking, reading, studying, etc.

    For our life to start working

    We are going to have to stop living like we are living

    And start living like we need to be living.

    We are going to have to begin DOING things differently.

    We are going to have to CHANGE.

    And we know that.

    So, we talk, read, study, take courses…

    Glad that there is always another book to read,

    So that we can think longer about what we need to do

    Without having to do it.
  9. 09/23/2014 — Baxter Creek Bridge 02 — Big Creek Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, NC, November 2008 

    We aren’t trying to get somewhere

    We are trying to wake up to where we are.

    Trying to wake up is a different kind of trying

    Than trying to get somewhere else.

    Trying to wake up

    Is trying to be here, now—

    Fully aware of all that is here, now—
  10. Inside and outside—

    Without interfering with any of it,

    Without judgment

    As condemnation or criticism

    Or as commendation and admiration.

    Wanting something to go

    Or wanting something to stay

    Keeps you from simply seeing it as it is

    And interferes with your seeing what else there is

    In the moment

    Other than the thing despised/adored.

    Waking up is seeing what you look at

    And seeing all of the emotions it stirs in you

    Without identifying with any of them

    Without becoming any of them

    Just seeing, just knowing.

    Waking up is seeing, knowing, what is there.

    All that is there.

    In every moment.

    You haven’t gone anywhere,

    But you have transformed the moment—

    And yourself—

    Just by seeing/knowing what’s what.

    If you think that’s easy, give it a spin.

    It isn’t easy.

    That’s why it’s called “Practice.”

    We practice seeing/knowing

    Because nobody just sees and knows.

    Everybody interferes with the process

    By wanting, not-wanting.

    By liking, not-liking.

    To see/know,

    We have to have compassion for everything,

    Just as it is.

    Everything.

    Every.

    Single.

    Thing.

    You can’t do it without practice.

    Start practicing.

    Beginning now.
  11. 09/23/2014 — Bridge to Rough Ridge — Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, July 6, 2014

    Photography is the worship of light.

    Ancient peoples worshiped, not so much the sun, but sunlight.

    Sunlight gave them life.

    Gave them everything that was conducive to life.

    Was life.

    Photography takes up the worship of light that is life,

    And relishes the wonder,

    And shares the joy,

    Of life,

    And light.

    For all to see,

    And be moved.

    Amen!

    May it be ever so!
  12. 09/24/2014 — Oconoluftee River 04 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, September 1, 2014

    We cannot live any way at all.

    We cannot live dumb.

    We cannot live stupid.

    We cannot live with our eyes closed.

    We cannot live however we feel like living—

    Insensitive to the implications,

    And ramifications,

    And impact of our living.

    Jesus told a man who was doing the same exact thing

    Jesus had done,

    “If you know what you are doing, you are blessed,

    But if you don’t know what you are doing,

    You are cursed and a transgressor of the Law.”

    It isn’t enough to know what Jesus would do.

    You have to live in ways that are appropriate to the occasion

    Whether Jesus ever did it or not.

    Jacob Bronowski said, “If you want to know the truth,

    You have to live in certain ways.”

    He meant you have to live truthfully.

    You have to live with your eyes open to the truth–

    “The whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

    You can’t be blindly following the rear end of the cow

    In front of you—

    Or blindly obeying the mood of the moment of the cow

    Inside of you.

    You have to be alert to what is happening around you and within you,

    And do what needs to be done about it,

    In response to it,

    Out of your sense of—your feel for—the Allness of the situation

    In every situation—

    Regardless of what you want to do,

    Are in the mood for,

    Or feel like doing.
  13. 09/24/2014 — Lake Martin Sunset 09 B&W — St. Martin Parish near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, February 7, 2014

    There is what we say we believe in,

    And there is what we believe in.

    Carl Jung said, “Don’t tell me what you believe in—

    Live so that I see it!”

    Or words to that effect.

    What do you believe in?

    Could someone look at your life and know you believe in it?

    How does your life reflect and serve what you say you believe in?

    What does your life exhibit, express and disclose to be what you actually believe in?

    How does what you say you believe in square with what your life says you believe in?

    How do you manage the discrepancy?
  14. 09/24/2014 — Looking East 07 — Water Rock Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway near Maggie Valley, NC, September 2, 2014

    We have to believe in who we are,

    And what we are about—

    In doing the work that is ours to do—

    That only we can do

    The way we can do it.

    We have to believe that we are essential to our work,

    And that our work is essential to us.

    We have to know that our work is our life,

    And live to do it—

    And that we are the only hope of our work

    In all the world.

    We nurture our work,

    Our work nourishes us,

    And together we shine.

    Our work is not across the sea,

    That we should go in search of it,

    Or across some desert,

    Or high up on some mountain,

    That we should pay some handsome price,

    Physically and financially,

    To find it.

    It is as close as our heart,

    As near to us as our soul,

    Waiting for us to wake up

    And realize who we are,

    And know the deep joy of our heart,

    And bring it forth:

    The work that is ours yet to do,

    The life that is ours yet to live.

    The song that is ours yet to sing.
  15. 09/25/2014 — Atlantic Dawn — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, NC, October 2008

    We coordinate the interests of heart, soul, mind and body.

    If we take sides with any of them at the expense of the rest of them,

    We end up in very bad place.

    Heart can’t say to Mind, “If you would just listen to me,

    We all would be better off!”

    Mind can’t say to Body, “If your nose weren’t so big, we all would be better off!”

    Every element of our being has to be aligned with all the other elements of our being

    For our being to have elegance and grace,

    Experience meaning,

    Serve purpose,

    And be one with the way of life

    That flows through all.

    Our role is to oversee the relationships,

    And to serve the good of the parts and the whole—

    Which means we have no vested interest,

    And can only be a mindful observer—

    Calling attention to all that we see,

    And insisting that we work out conflicts of interest

    In light of the true good of all concerned.

    As it is then within,

    So it is without,

    And we live as a medium of peace and reconciliation

    In the world of space and time.

    Though we do nothing

    And are no one of special importance,

    We transform our surroundings,

    And save the world.
  16. 09/25/2014 — Smoky Sunset 02 — Approaching Morton’s Overlook, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, NC, September 1, 2014

    Our practice is being mindful—being compassionately aware—of the moment we are living.

    We are a part of two worlds in each moment:

    The external world and the internal world.

    We are where two worlds meet.

    The quality of that meeting is determined

    By the quality of our awareness of both worlds

    In the moment of their interaction.

    Our practice is improving the quality of our awareness—

    And allowing everything to flow from there—

    To fall into place around that.
  17. 09/26/2014 — Fall Reflections — Price Lake, Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 2008

    “Plugging away” is another term for the practice of seeing what is happening and doing what needs to be done about it, in response to it, in each situation as it arises, all our life long.

    We plug away.

    We pick ourselves up and get ready for the next play.

    We live in light of what is important, no matter what.

    The Cyclops and all of his chums are arrayed against us.

    We accept that as the way things are,

    And refuse to let them slow us down.

    We have work to do.

    Our life needs us to live it—

    Needs us to be who we are—

    Needs us to offer the gifts we have to give—

    Even if no one is interested in,

    Or cares about,

    What we have to give—

    Or even if they love us

    And want to treat us like royalty.

    Treating us like royalty is just another manifestation

    Of the Cyclops,

    Stopping us in our tracks,

    And keeping us from doing the work that is ours to do.

    Our work isn’t being a celebrity.

    Our work is being who we are in EVERY situation as it arises.

    Plugging away requires us to plug away

    Through the bad AND through the good,

    Doing our thing in season and out of season,

    Living our life as only we can,

    For the good of the parts,

    And the good of the whole.

    We aren’t trying to get somewhere.

    We are trying to be who we are,

    Where we are,

    When we are,

    How we are,

    No matter what.

    It’s all plugging away at the task of being a true human being.

    Today is another day for the work of being who we are!
  18. 09/26/2014 — Spanning the Potomac 01 — Harper’s Ferry, WV, September 26, 2014

    The trick is to recognize that we have a way

    Without having to have it—

    But having it often enough to be a person of character,

    With a definite shape and style.

    Having a way sets us apart as individuals in our own right.

    We are not cookie-cutter people,

    Interchangeable with all the other cookie-cutter people.

    We have individual preferences, inclinations, yens and needs

    That have to be honored and respected by the rest of us.

    But.

    We don’t throw tantrums

    Or pull strings

    Or tilt tables

    To get our way at the expense of anyone else.

    We have our own way,

    And everyone else does as well.

    We all recognize and respect that,

    And tread carefully, with compassion,

    Lest we break bruised reeds

    And extinguish dimly burning wicks—

    In disregarding those with ways as important to them

    As ours are to us.
  19. 09/27/2014 — Lake Abanakee Reflection Panorama 02 — Adirondack Park, Near Indian Lake, NY, September 27, 2014

    We work through our emotional responses to the moment—

    Often overriding our emotional responses to the moment—

    In order to offer what the moment needs.

    We do that talking to the policeman who pulled us over,

    To our boss who asks us to work late,

    And to the committee who has asked us to rewrite portions of our dissertation.

    Happens all the time.

    We react one way, and act another way.

    Smart cookies.

    Then, on other occasions, in more equal relationships,

    Or, in those where we wield the power,

    We feel like we are being hypocritical to hold back our emotions,

    And not be true to how we feel.

    Slinging hot hash to those who have it coming.

    Point is, we exercise emotional control when we need to

    For the sake of the situation,

    But, when we think we have nothing to lose,

    Or, don’t care what we lose,

    Anything goes.

    I’m here to talk you into understanding the situation needs you help

    To keep EVERY situation from deteriorating into being worse than it has to be

    For anyone in the situation.

    Save the situation!

    Trust me when I say it matters.
  20. 09/27/2014 — Hudson River Fall 01 — Adirondack Park, Near Indian Lake, NY, September 27, 2014

    Personal Growth is simply growing up.

    Growing up is simply coming to terms with the way things are—

    And doing what can be done about them

    In ways appropriate to the occasion.

    Growing up is the solution to all of our problems today—

    Every day.

    There never was a spiritual guru, master, teacher, adviser

    Who wasn’t well on her way to growing up.

    No one is ever all grow up.

    Everyone is always in each moment somewhere on a moving scale

    Between immaturity and maturity.

    Everyone is always less mature in his family of origin

    Than anywhere else in her life.

    Everyone is always less mature when she is tired, hungry and dehydrated,

    Than at any other time in his life.

    Our level of maturity in any moment

    Depends upon a number of factors at work in the moment,

    But. A general rule applies:

    If you want to grow up

    All you have to do is get out of your way.

    Getting out of your way is the solution to all of our problems today.

    Every day.
  21. 09/28/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 HDR Panorama 01 — An unnamed pond in Adirondack Park on the way to Long Lake and Tupper Lake from Johnstown NY, September 28, 2014

    When you take up the practice of mindfulness—compassionate attentiveness—your work is becoming aware of everything, within and without, in each moment.

    When you are aware of everything, you become aware of what is being asked of you—of how the situation is asking you to respond to it.

    Instead of forcing your agenda on the situation, the situation is asking you to take its agenda—what is happening and what needs to be done about it from a siutational standpoint—into account and allow your life to take shape around that.

    The situation as it arises shapes your life.

    You don’t mold situations to suit yourself. You adjust yourself to be what the situation needs you to be.

    And, what of your own purposes, goals, objectives, aims and desires? Be aware of all of them. Be aware of everything.

    And work it out.
  22. 09/29/2014 — Tupper Lake Sunset HDR 01 — Tupper Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    Tevya, in Fiddler on the Roof, is my ideal of human perfection.

    Not the Buddha, not the Christ, because they had no clue about how to be perfect, married, with kids, and all the interfering obligations, responsibilities, and complications of The Full Catastrophe (Which is how another of my favorite characters, Zorba The Greek, spoke of his life).

    Tevya fed his chickens, milked his cow, and tended the affairs of home, business, and villiage—exactly as it needed to be done—exactly as it needed him to do it—every day.

    And when persecution of the Jews forced him out of the routines of his life in Russia, he migrated—as an immigrant—to the US, and took up the equivalent of feeding his chickens, milking his cow, and tending his new affairs, amid the new routines of his new life—doing it all just like Tevya would do it.

    There you are. The model for your life, in the times and places of your living.

    Feed your chickens, milk your cow and tend your affairs as they need to be tended, as only you can tend them, every day for the rest of your life.
  23. 09/29/2014 — Horseshoe Lake HDR 05 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    You know all of those problems that weigh you down,

    And cause you grief, pain and agony?

    I recommend being still and quiet

    And becoming intently aware of everything.

    Everything about the problems,

    And everything about everything else as well.

    Awareness, mindfulness, compassionate attentiveness

    Is the  solution to all of our problems today.

    Or any day.

    Is the solution to all of the problems there are.

    Or the foundation of the solution.

    And, if you find yourself thinking,

    “What good is being aware of everything about my problems

    Going to do?

    How is that going to solve anything?”

    Simply be intently aware of your impatience and anxiety—

    Your fear and exasperation.

    And be intently aware of what you do to ease your pain

    And calm yourself down—

    At how addicted you are to running from your problems,

    Escaping your pain,

    And calming yourself down.

    Be intently aware of it all.

    And wait for things to begin to move.
  24. 09/30/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 HDR 01 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    You know what you like and what you don’t like,

    What is good for you and what is bad for you,

    What is You and what is Not You,

    What is life for you and what is death itself,

    Where you belong and where you have no business being.

    So, what’s the problem?
  25. 10/01/2014 — Moose Pond HDR Panorama — Horseshoe Lake, Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    Plugging away becomes a dreary, hopeless, pointless, impossible task over time—

    If we are not plugged into heart, soul, mind and body,

    And doing the things that matter most to us

    Along with the things that have to be done to pay the bills

    And grease the wheels

    That make life possible.

    But, we must be making LIFE possible!

    We must be plugged into the things that are life,

    And bring us to life,

    And infuse us with life!

    We must be plugging away in the service of the right things.

    We can’t just plug away.

    We have to believe in what we are doing,

    In the life we are living,

    In the work that is ours to do.

    If somebody else gives us some work to do,

    And tells us to plug away,

    It’s like they give us a shovel,

    And tell us to dig our own grave.

    We have to plug away in the service

    Of the life that is our life to live,

    Doing what LIFE requires.

    We have to take care of the business

    That is our business to take care of,

    And tend it like a baby

    That is our baby,

    Through all the spit-ups

    And dirty diapers

    And colicky nights.

    That’s plugging away on the service of LIFE!
  26. 10/01/2014 — Ithaca Falls HDR 01 — Finger Lakes Region, Ithaca, NY, October 1, 2014

    If you despair because the life you are living is nothing like the life you wish you were living, and you have no hope of ever being anything other than stuck forever where you are, doing the things you hate doing everyday, all day long, for the rest of your sorry life,

    I’d ask you to tell me about the life you are not living—

    Your unlived life—

    The life that is truly your life to live,

    The life that needs you to live it,

    The life that only you can live,

    The life that you are uniquely cut out to live

    With the skills, interests, gifts and abilities that you have,

    And love to use,

    Whenever you are able to use them

    In this life that doesn’t value them,

    And has little place for their expression,

    And none for their development.

    What would you do that you can’t do

    In serving the gifts that are yours to serve?

    What needs to happen for you to begin doing it?
  27. 10/02/2014 — Taughannock Falls 01 — Finger Lakes Region, Ithaca, NY, October 1, 2014

    Anybody can quit

    Sink into despair

    Or addiction

    Go through the motions of being alive

    Dying long before they are actually dead.

    That’s no way to live

    Quitting

    The only way to live

    Is living

    With courage

    And bold exuberance

    In the service of life

    At the raw wonder of being alive

    Determined to see what we can do

    With the time left for living

    And to find out what

    We can get by with

    Even yet
  28. 10/02/2014 — Watkins Glen HDR 01 — Finger Lakes Region, Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, October 2, 2014

    The American Dream seems to revolve around wealth, privilege and carefree living.

    I’ll put forward Enron, the Banking/Housing Scandals, and Wall Street’s ability to stack the financial decks in their favor as supporting evidence for my contention.

    Living responsibly and compassionately in service to the common good is asked to leave the room.

    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was a popular movie for another time, a different country. Our times give us The Wolf of Wall Street.

    What to do?

    Live in protest.

    Support the Quiet Revolution.

    Don’t buy into the cultural gospel, preached by Madison Avenue (which has been replaced by Silicon Valley and internet entrepreneurs).

    Don’t have to have the latest gadget.

    Live centered in your life—who you are, what you are about.

    Let your core direct your living: How you spend your money and how you spend your time.

    Take your life back.

    Who owns you? Really. Who controls how you spend your money and how you spend your time?

    Reclaim yourself, your life, from those who own you.

    Unplug your TV sets.

    Plug into yourself.

    Develop your own interests.

    Live your own life.

    Find your own way.
  29. 10/03/2014 — Watkins Glen 04 — Finger Lakes Region, Watkins Glen State Park, Watkins Glen, NY, October 2, 2014

    We don’t have a problem that growing up won’t transform.

    All of our problems are invitations to grow up,

    Stand up,

    Square up to the way things are,

    Come to terms with our life as it is,

    And do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises—

    Regardless of what we want to do instead—

    With the gifts that are ours to give,

    And compassionate attentiveness

    For everything to be considered.

    We take it all into account

    And do what needs to be done about it

    All our life long,

    And let that be that.
  30. 10/03/2014 — Eagle Cliff Falls 01 — Finger Lakes Region, Havana Glen near Elmira, NY, October 2, 2014

    Imagine the life you need to live that you don’t need  a Big Break to live it.

    Terry Malloy speaks for us all: “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

    We need a break

    We got no hope on our own.

    It all depends on something beyond us bestowing the life of our dreams upon us.

    It has nothing, in our mind, to do with us taking what we have to work with and turning it into the life that we need to live exactly where we are with exactly the gifts that are ours right here, right now.

    Nobody could do anything with this old life.

    So, we will have to be excused for bumming around,

    Waiting for a miracle,

    Burning daylight.
  31. 10/04/2014 — Fillmore Glen 01 — Fillmore Glen State Park near Elmira, NY, October 3, 2014

    We are all approaching the end of some line.

    Transitions and adjustments, Kid, transitions and adjustments.

    My knees are telling me I’m approaching the end of the line of long hikes and steep steps.

    If we live long enough, we lose it all—hair, teeth, eyesight…

    It’s a short list, as lists go, but an important one…

    Family, friends, memory…

    How we approach approaching the end of our lines

    Makes all the difference.

    We represent the line of all those who have gone before us,

    And live not only for ourselves, but for them as well.

    We live to ask our questions, and theirs.

    Our life is an answer to their unasked questions,

    And redemption for the lives they left unlived.

    We live for them, and for ourselves.

    What of your unasked questions?

    Your unlived life, or lives?

    Face up to them!

    Grieve what must be grieved!

    Mourn what is to be mourned!

    Celebrate what is to be celebrated!

    Know what is to be known!

    And live to make the most of the time left to be lived!

    How would you do that?

    That’s one of the questions you have left to answer!
  32. 10/05/2014 — The House on the Lake 01 — Lake Abanakee, Adirondack Park, Adirondack Park, Near Indian Lake, NY, September 27, 2014

    Our heart has to be in what we do.

    Our practice is bringing our heart to bear on the moment of our living.

    If our heart isn’t in what we are doing,

    We have to go get our heart and bring it fully into this here, this now, with us.

    If our heart won’t come, we have to quit what we are doing,

    And go live with heart, wherever it is.

    We cannot live without heart for what we are doing.

    We have to play with heart, work with heart, practice with heart, live with heart.

    We have to live like we mean it.

    If we cannot live like we mean it,

    We have to fake it like we mean it—

    So that no one—not even ourselves—can tell if we mean it

    Or if we are pretending to mean it.

    If we are acting like we mean it,

    We have to live so that no one—not even ourselves—can tell the actor from the role the actor is playing.

    We have to BE what we are doing—

    To be one with what we are doing—

    To do it all the way.

    With heart.

    If we can’t do what we are doing like that,

    We have to do something else.

    So, our practice is to infuse what we are doing with heart,

    And if what we are doing it too far removed from our heart for that to happen,

    We have to find something we can do with all our heart,

    And do that.
  33. 10/06/2014 — Tupper Lake Shoreline 01 — Adirondack Park, Tupper Lake, NC, September 28, 2014

    When I get to the end of the main line, I will wish that I could do it all over again, guided by the intuitive awareness of how things are that I have developed this time—knowing what I know about how to know what is important and how it needs to be served.

    We are all born knowing that, but it is discounted, dismissed and rejected by the culture that welcomed us from the womb—because the culture itself has lost its soul, and doesn’t know how to recognize soul when it sees it, and replaces every soulful thing with the culture’s idea of how things ought to be: Buying, spending, amassing, and consuming its way to peace and glory.

    And we spend our life finding our way back to what came with us from the womb: Guidance, direction, peace and glory, innate and everlasting.

    I’d like to go back and do it over again in the company of my own soul all the way from start to finish, safe from those who would save me with some truth learned by rote.
  34. 10/06/2014 — Autumn Maple 01 — Adirondack Park, Lake Placid, NY, September 28, 2014

    We have to serve the god we say is God.

    When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do YOU say that I am?”

    Peter identified Jesus out of his own, lived, experience with Jesus

    As God in flesh and bone:

    “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

    And who do you say God is, Peter?

    Peter’s answer has to come out of his own, lived, experience with God.

    It cannot come from a book, even a Good Book,

    Certainly not a Book of Doctrine—

    Or from a sermon, or a whole lifetime of sermons.

    We don’t know God by hearsay.

    God is who we experience God to be.

    Not who we have been taught, or told, God is.

    What is your experience of God?

    Where do you go to experience God directly?

    How often do you go there?

    What do you know of God that you didn’t derive from some source other than your own experience?

    Who do you say God is?
  35. 10/06/2014 — Lows Lake at Bog River Lower Dam HDR 01 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    A healthy psyche and well-adjusted ego would equal a true human being, a Bodhisattva, a Buddha, a Christ, a mature-in-the-best-sense-of-the-word whole, authentic, genuine and real person.

    Who we are all striving to become.

    Right?

    Why take up a practice and not practice with this in mind?

    What? We are just trying to be happy? Why short-change ourselves?

    Swing for the fences!

    A healthy psyche and well-adjusted ego would sleep in our bed each night, put on our shoes and step into our world each morning, knowing exactly what her, what his, chances are of effecting change and transforming life as it is lived around her, him—

    And she, he, would not pause in resuming the work remaining from yesterday,

    Laying bricks, shoeing horses, driving buses, serving tables, teaching students, feeding chickens, milking cows…

    Enjoying the work of her, of his, hands,

    Relishing sunrises and sunsets, rainbows, cloud formations and the colors of fall,

    Eating and drinking with gratitude and relishing the moments of life with thanksgiving,

    And allowing things to be what they are

    Without loss of hope, or heart, or courage,

    But with resolution and dedication to the work of being human

    In this world just as it is.
  36. 10/07/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 HDR 05 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    We keep trying to get something,

    To get somewhere,

    When it’s about being who we are,

    Where we are,

    When we are,

    How we are—

    Living alive to the moment we are living,

    Seeing what is happening,

    And doing what needs to be done about it

    With the gifts that are ours to give—

    In each situation as it arises,

    All our life long.
  37. 10/08/2014 — Tupper Lake Reflection HDR 02 — Adirondack Park, Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    Jacob Bronowski said, “If you want to know the truth, you have to live in certain ways.”

    He meant that you have to live truthfully.

    Living a truthful life is the heart of life.

    It is the essence—the foundation—of a true human being.

    You cannot hope to become a true human being

    Without living truthfully.

    Living truthfully is living mindfully—

    Living with compassionate awareness,

    Compassionate attentiveness,

    To every single thing,

    Within and without.

    When you live truthfully,

    You see what you look at,

    And you look at everything.

    And it all flows from there.
  38. 10/08/2014 — Lake Ontario, Black & White — Lakeside State Park, Waterport, NY, October 1, 2014

    What don’t you like about your life?

    What can you do about it?

    What’s stopping you?
  39. 10/08/2014 — Bog Stream Reflections HDR — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    I have an Inukshuk, or stone figure resembling a human being, that I made from stones gathered in Canada,

    And a Buddhist singing bowl, or bell of mindfulness, blessed by Buddhist monks on two separate occasions,

    And a digging implement used by an early Native American tribe, rescued from a site before its inundation by the Tenn-Tom Waterway.

    All are symbols that connect me to the invisible, numinous, world of mystery beyond imagining—the source of us all.

    All are pregnant with divine presence, and invite reflection and rumination—and openness to worlds beyond this world of normal, apparent reality.

    Symbols are physical objects that speak to you on a level beyond words, connecting you with more than words can say.

    They are imbued with divine presence, with numinous reality, and are alive with meaning that must be sensed and felt and experienced—but not understood or explained.

    What are your symbols?

    Where do you go to experience symbols that connect you with the numen, with the divine?

    To be carried away by That Which Cannot Be Said?

    If nothing comes to mind, you have your mission—if you choose to accept it.
  40. 10/09/2014 — Lows Lake Panorama HDR — Adirondack Park, Bog River Lower Dam near Long Lake, NY (and Tupper Lake, NY), September 29, 2014

    The culture represents our idea of life:

    A increasingly higher standard of living,

    And an economy that is based on increasingly higher sales of the things that make a high standard of living worth having.

    If you can’t see the stupidity of that tail-chasing-dog, nothing I say is likely to connect with you

    And you should go stand in the next Hot Apple Product line.

    I say that typing on a Macbook Pro.

    We make use of what the culture offers in living our life, but.

    We live to serve our life, not the culture.

    The culture exists to serve the lives of its members—

    Not to enslave them to serve the ends of the culture’s economy.

    The right order of things is the essence of the Tao.

    In order to order things rightly,

    We have to recover our awareness of—

    And reverence for—

    Our Life,

    And live to live it at all costs, no matter what.

    What assists our living? What inhibits it? Prevents it?

    We have to be able to answer these questions and those like them,

    And live in ways that honor the answers.

    Returning to the way of life that is life for us

    Is the ultimate revolution,

    And it is very quiet—

    Which is the nature of the way that is the way of life for all people.
  41. 10/09/2014 — Autumn Fern 01 — Along the road to Bog Stream, between Long Lake and Tupper Lake, NY, Adirondack Park, September 29, 2014

    Those who know, know the same things.

    Good religion is at one with itself in all of its manifestations.

    Theology is death, Doctrine is divisive, but Knowing knows

    Without being able to convert those who Don’t Know,

    So, what’s Knowing good for?

    Knowing doesn’t know.

    It just knows that Knowing is Good,

    And lives to know what it Knows and to serve it with its life.
  42. 10/09/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 02 — Adirondack Park near Long Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    Let’s say you’re an accountant, or an engineer, and you deal with abstract realities, numbers and measurements all day every day.

    You have to plant potatoes and grow tomatoes on the weekends.

    You have to dig in the earth.

    You have to sit in the sun and watch the play of light on leaves or water.

    You have to listen to birds sing,

    And watch the moon rise,

    And connect in tangible, actual, ways to the physical reality of the time and place of your living.

    The more disconnected from nature we are—

    And the more we live in highrise apartments with no place to call our own—

    The more isolated we are from the natural world and our own heart and soul.

    Our psyche comes out of millions of years of walking unshod over the stones and through the marshes of this earth.

    The natural world is our place of origin, our home.

    We cannot live and work divorced from the smells and sounds,

    Textures, ebbs and flows

    Of that world

    Without marking its loss with symptoms and signs of our privation.

    Work the physical world into your life.

    Make it the central component of your universe.

    Be alive to the reality of your ancestral home.
  43. 10/10/2014 — Autumn Maple 05 — Catskills, Cooperstown, NY, September 27, 2014

    It’s about doing it.

    Not reading about it, talking about it, attending lectures and seminars and workshops about it, and understanding it, and grasping it, and lecturing about it.

    It’s about doing it.

    The work is to be DONE.

    Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear what I’m saying and DO IT!”

    We have to get out of bed every day and step into our life,

    And deal with what we find there

    In the spirit,

    And with the attitude,

    Of those who can quickly size things up,

    See what is happening and what needs to be done about it

    And come to terms with it

    And DO IT—

    Never mind what we want to do,

    Or would rather be doing instead—

    In each situation as it arises

    All day long.

    And do the same thing the next day.

    And all the days after that.

    How are you doing so far today?
  44. 10/10/2014 — Bog River Falls HDR 02 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    Our future is restricted by our past, to the extent that we do not face, square up to, and come to terms with our past and its impact on our life throughout our life, from then to now.

    We cannot live free to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises as long as we are triggered to respond in certain ways to present events by past traumas.

    We have to work with our past in order to have a future.

    This consists of being compassionately aware (mindful) of what happened to us and how that impacted us and continues to haunt us.

    Three books I have found to be helpful in coming to terms with my own ghosts, wounds, scars and memories are:

    Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives, by James Hollis

    Inner Work, by Robert A. Johnson

    Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon-Kabat Zinn

    We can’t go into the fight without being armed for battle.
  45. 10/10/2014 — Hudson River Fall 07 — Adirondack Park near Indian Lake, NY, September 27, 2013

    Here are three things about falling in love to keep in mind when you fall in love, or someone falls in love with you.

    #1. It doesn’t mean what you (or they) think it means.

    #2. Rumi said, “One glimpse of a true human being and we’re in love.” We all should be living in such a fashion that the entire world falls in love with us. And we should not take it seriously when it does.

    #3. When you fall in love with someone, all the qualities you admire in them—and everything you think they will bring to life in relationship with you—lie latent in yourself, and wait for you to bring them forth. You are falling in love with aspects of yourself you can’t see in yourself and refuse to believe you are capable of. You are falling in love with you. Your task is clear: You must become who you think they are.

    That takes the thump-thump-thump out of the old ticker, doesn’t it?

    So stop walking around in a dreamy, smitten, fog, and take up the work of bringing you forth in your life in specific, concrete, tangible ways, using your love interest as a model for your own life.

    Once this catches on, popular music and romance novels and movies are going into a tailspin.
  46. 10/11/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 06 HDR — Adirondack Park, Tupper Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    It’s just you and the situation as it arises before you all your life long.

    Your life consists of one situation after another—

    And how well you respond to each one.

    The path before you winds through one situation at a time.

    The Hero’s Journey consists of one situation at a time.

    Stop thinking it’s about your goals, and plans, and dreams,

    And realizing your advantage,

    And pursuing your ends,

    And amassing, achieving, acquiring, attaining.

    It’s about you being you in each situation as it arises

    For the good of the situation.

    It’s about you living out your life

    In each situation as it arises

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way.

    Of course, your interests have to be taken into account

    Along with the interests of the situation.

    When you need attention—get it!

    You have to take care of business,

    And your business is part of the business you take care of.

    You balance your legitimate needs

    With the legitimate needs of the situation.

    You are not here to be the lackey of the world.

    Part of serving the needs of the situation is to call slackers to task,

    And make sure everyone is doing their part.

    It’s a team effort,

    Saving the world,

    One situation at a time.
  47. 10/11/2014 — The Wild Center Pond HDR 05 — Adirondack Park, Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    There are no throw-away situations.

    There are no people who cannot benefit from kind, caring, compassionate attentiveness.

    There are no people we can dismiss without seeing,

    Discount without a thought,

    Discard, ignore and treat as invisible

    And unworthy of being noticed.

    Be present in each situation for the good of that situation—

    For no reason beyond being present for good in that situation.
  48. 10/11/2014 — Spanning the Potomac 03 — Harper’s Ferry, WV, September 26, 2014

    You have to love the game.

    You have to do it for the love of the game.

    You have to let your love for the game consume you,

    Burn you alive,

    So that you don’t care about anything but the game.

    Winning and losing will have their turns,

    But the game has to have your heart and soul.

    When you do it for the love of the game,

    Without concern for winning or losing,

    You play without fear—

    Because winning can’t beat this,

    And losing can’t diminish it.

    The game is everything.

    And “perfect love casts out fear,”

    Because loving the game

    And being one with the game

    Is IT

    And nothing can take that away from  you,

    So there is nothing to lose

    And nothing to fear.

    Find what you can love so much that you can do it

    For the love of it,

    And do it with all your heart and soul.

    Live for it.

    Live off your love for it.

    Live for the game.

    Let it burn you alive.
  49. 10/12/2014 — Bog Stream Reflections HDR 02 — Adirondack Park near Long Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    We’re talking about a change of life.

    We’re talking about you changing the way you are living.

    You can’t do it any other way.

    You have to align your life with the way of life for you

    In the time and place,

    Context and circumstances,

    Of your living.

    You cannot live like you are living

    And be at one with who you are.

    And you know it.

    And don’t want to think about it.

    Don’t want anything to do with it.

    You want to live like you are living

    And have everything fall into place

    And feel good about all of it.

    Who are you kidding.

    There is a price to be paid for a life worth living.

    Mind and body,

    Heart and soul,

    Don’t come together for the deep good of all

    Without you changing the way you are living

    And serving the deep good of all

    In every situation that arises

    In a “Thy will, not mine, be done” kind of way.

    And who is the “Thy”?

    Mind and body, heart and soul.

    The ones who know who you are

    And are waiting on your cooperation to bring forth who you are

    In everything you say and do

    In the time left for living.
  50. 10/12/2014 — Around Bass Lake 02 — Blue Ridge Parkway, Moses H. Cone Memorial Park near Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    We do not command heart.

    We cannot force ourselves to love what we do not love,

    Or not love what we do love.

    We have no say in the matter.

    Savvy?

    So.

    That leaves us with opening ourselves to what has heart for us—

    To what our heart loves—

    And love it ourselves,

    Like good caretakers of heart,

    Which is what we are.

    If we are going to take care of our heart,

    We have to start listening to heart,

    Honoring heart,

    Following heart,

    Tending heart,

    And letting heart guide and direct our living.

    We have to get our head out of the Lead Dog position,

    And let heart have the reins.

    Head can figure out how to live with heart

    And pay the bills

    (That starts with incurring only the right bills).
  51. 10/13/2014 — Buttermilk Falls 03 — Finger Lakes Region, Ithaca, NY, October 1, 2014. There are two Buttermilk Falls in NY State. The other is in Adirondack Park near Long Lake.

    It seems that we have such a small part to play, why play it?

    Joseph Campbell said, “The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”

    In playing our part—

    In living with heart,

    Loving the game,

    And living as though we do,

    Every play,

    No matter what the score is

    Or how insignificant the players or the game seem to be—

    We influence those who can be influenced for the good of all.

    Making a difference and having no impact

    Are not our calls to make

    Loving the game and playing our heart out every play—

    Doing what matters to us because it matters to us—

    Whether it matters to anyone else or not—

    Makes all the difference

    To us and our life.

    Waiting to be sure we are making a difference

    Before doing anything

    Is capitulating to the Cyclops

    Standing before us saying,

    “Nothing you do matters.”

    Spit in his eye, and say:

    “Then I don’t guess you’ll mind getting out of my way,”

    And plow right through him,

    Living the life that matters to you,

    And letting nothing stop you

    Or even slow you down.
  52. 10/13/2014 — Bridge to Rough Ridge Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014 

    You make the call.

    Everyone of them.

    How much here.

    How much there.

    How much for them.

    How much for you.

    Where to go.

    How long to stay.

    What to do.

    What to leave undone.

    What to embrace.

    What to eschew.

    Whom to take into account.

    Whom to ignore, partially or completely.

    Who and what is healing, restorative.

    Who and what is toxic and destructive.

    Like that, around the table, across the board.

    You say so.

    What you say goes.

    You the one.
  53. 10/13/2014 — Cowsheds Falls HDR 02 — Fillmore Glen State Park near Ithaca, NY, October 2, 2014

    Stop thinking your way along,

    With good reasons

    And careful planning

    That justifies, defends, excuses, and explains

    Every decision you ever made—

    Many of which stink to this very day—

    And those long lists of pros and cons

    That lay everything out

    With all the advantages and disadvantages

    In neat little rows to be tallied,

    With the Answer unmistakable in its flashing neon light garb

    Dancing and doing back-flips as it leads you along the way.

    Be still and quiet and feel what you’re feeling.

    Throw in with heart and soul for a change.

    You don’t have much time to waste on being right.

    Throw it all into being alive—

    And don’t be surprised if being right comes along

    As a part of the package.
  54. 10/14/2014 — Behind the Visitor’s Center Panorama 01 — Lynn Cove Visitor’s Center, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC, October 13, 2014

    We are capable of good and evil.

    Thus, the importance of knowing what we are doing,

    And refusing to kid ourselves about any of it.

    Compassionate awareness of everything—

    Within and without—

    Is the path to reconciliation, harmony, integration, grace, mercy and peace.

    There is no ideology that is above ruthlessness and devastation.

    We cannot think that the way we think/believe is beyond violating

    The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

    Of other human beings—

    Of other citizens of our own country.

    Ideology is a way of thinking that has nothing to do with seeing,

    Hearing, understanding, knowing, doing, being.

    Live from your heart,

    Granting everyone the benefit of the doubt,

    And see where it goes.

    Cultivate compassion and grace,

    And practice extending loving-kindness to all people.

    Don’t talk.

    Do.
  55. 10/14/2014 — Price Lake Fog Panorama — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    It starts with being aware of being aware,

    And leads to being aware of what you are aware of after that,

    And after that…

    Within and without

    From the periphery to the core and back to the periphery,

    And back to the core…

    Being aware of everything.

    And seeing what that asks of you,

    And what you do about it.

    That’s all there is to it.

    It’s as simple as it is difficult as that.

    Take up the practice.

    It will delight and amaze you.

    Which will be something else to be aware of.
  56. 10/15/2014 — Blue Ridge Fall 01 — Blue Ridge Parkway, Julian Price Park, near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    Authentic living

    Is mindful living.

    It is living with compassionate awareness for all things

    In each situation as it arises,

    Seeing what is happening,

    And doing what is yours to do about it

    With the gifts that are uniquely yours,

    Which will carry you into the next situation as it arises

    Where you will do the same thing,

    And follow unfolding situations through the long years

    Of the time left for living.
  57. 10/15/2014 — Boone Fork Fall 01 — Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    It’s about doing what you love to do.

    NOT about making money doing it.

    NOT about becoming a celebrity doing it.

    NOT about achieving eternal status among the gods and goddesses doing it.

    We are not here to position ourselves to receive accolades

    And favors unending

    By the way we exploit what we love to do.

    EXPLOITATION is the unpardonable sin.

    Turning your gift into a source of fame and fortune,

    Wealth and privilege

    Is tarnishing your gift.

    Is turning what you love into some cash cow,

    Some golden goose,

    As though it’s value lies in the benefits and advantages

    That accrue and are accorded to you

    As the Great Gifted One.

    Knocks you off the beam.

    Leads you away from the path.

    Where you wander forever, lost in the mist

    Of faded glory.

    You are the bearer of the gift,

    The steward—the caretaker—of what you love.

    What you get out of doing what you love is loving what you do.

    What you get out of living is being alive to the wonder of it all,

    In each moment—

    Each situation as it arises—

    In the service of what you love.

    Live to do what you love as it is to be done,

    And let that be that.

    Do not be distracted,

    Do not lose your focus,

    Do not forsake the center and ground of your heart, soul, and being

    In the pursuit of wealth and glory,

    As though they are better than doing what you love.

    Nothing is better than doing what you love.
  58. 10/15/2014 — Beach Pebbles — Lake Ontario, Lakeside State Park, Waterport, NY, September 30, 2014

    If you aren’t consumed by what you love,

    You are being disloyal,

    Deceitful,

    Faithless,

    And untrue.

    You are philandering.

    Cheating.

    Playing around.

    You are committing adultery.

    Heresy.

    Blasphemy.

    Sacrilege.

    Desecration.

    And think “What of it?”

    As you spit on your life,

    Laughing.

    You have to let what you love

    Burn you alive.
  59. 10/15/2014 — Autumn Fern 02 — Adirondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    You have to love the work—

    The work that is yours to do.

    You have to love doing the work.

    You can’t think of it as something to perfect,

    To get down,

    So that you can do it without being there,

    Never making mistakes,

    Turning out results without effort,

    Reaping the glory

    Of being a Master at what you do.

    The trick is to always be a novice.

    To always be a rookie.

    To always be working the work,

    And never grandstanding,

    Or showboating,

    Or masquerading,

    Or exploiting the work

    For your own ends.

    The work is your practice.

    You practice to get better at the work you do.

    The better you get,

    The more the work expands, deepens, enlarges

    To expand, deepen, enlarge you.

    The work is never done.

    You are never done.

    You belong to the work.

    The work brings you forth.

    You don’t achieve perfection.

    The path is endless development.

    We are always a rookie.

    There is always more to know, do, be, become.

    The work is our life.

    May it be so.
  60. 10/16/2014 — Beaver Dam 01 — Boone Fork, Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    The spiritual realities we call “heart,” “soul,” and “mind,” need physical expression—need “body.”

    “Body” is more than body. “Body” is the physical form of “heart,” “soul,” and “mind.”

    “Body” is more or less body.

    Body’s task is to become “body.”

    People have always recognized the spiritual vitality, alive-ness, of certain places in the physical world.

    There have always been what Parker Palmer calls, “Thin places,” where the physical world goes over easily into the spiritual world,

    Where visible and invisible meet and merge.

    When we come upon such a space in our life, we need to mark it in our memory, and return there often.

    It becomes a holy place for us, a contact point with the numinous, with the divine.

    Mecca, the Taj Mahal, Chartres Cathedral, Muir Woods, the cave paintings at Lascaux, and the Wailing Wall are traditional places of pilgrimage for individuals or for people of particular religious traditions for centuries,

    But we each are capable of finding our own holy places,

    And making our own pilgrimage

    As often as we are able,

    In connecting the invisible world with the physical world,

    In taking the things that move us to the places they like to be—

    And, in this way, taking seriously our role of being the pathway between worlds,

    Joining our spirit with the spirit of the place in all of the “thin places” of our experience.

    In honoring both spirits, we make each real,

    And become, ourselves, physical incarnations of spiritual reality.
  61. 10/16/2013 — Dugger’s Creek Falls Panorama — Blue Ridge Parkway at Linville Falls, NC, October 13, 2014

    We have to make it work.

    We have to take who we are in one hand,

    And the time and place of our living in the other,

    And fit them together.

    The prophets who are ahead of their time

    Have to live in their time—

    Have to come to terms with the dichotomy

    Between who they are and how they see and the world in which they live—

    Have to consider that world with compassion and grace

    In a “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”

    Kind of way.

    They can’t help seeing the way they see.

    The prophets can’t help seeing the way they see.

    Those who see have to see those who don’t see, can’t see,

    With eyes of compassion and grace—

    And do their thing,

    The thing that is theirs to do

    The thing that depends on them to do it

    The thing that must be done

    If any are ever to see more than they currently see.

    It’s hard to wake up

    Without reflecting on your experience—

     Examining your common inferences and assumptions

    And cherished ways of thinking—

    And forming new realizations

    Based on the heretical and blasphemous

    Reliance on your own authority.

    And not all have that courage.

    Those who do must challenge the old ways of seeing

    With compassion and grace for those who do not,

    And lay the foundation for the next “brave new world.”
  62. 10/13/2014 — Sassafras Leaves 01 — Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    Expectations and agendas rank with inferences and assumptions as four of the primary sources of all that is wrong with the world.

    When you throw in arrogance and stupidity, you have it all right there in one small bundle.

    All we need now is some spell, charm or incantation to disappear it forever.

    Barring that, it will take the conscientious practice of mindfulness by every single person to rid the world of these blights of humanity.

    Starting with each one of us.

    Now.
  63. 10/17/2014 — Around Bass Lake 07 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    Jesus didn’t sit around wondering how Moses, or Elijah, or one of the prophets would do it.

    He didn’t ponder, “What would John the Baptist do?”

    Jesus simply walked around, stepping into each situation as it arose, doing it the way he felt it ought to be done then and there.

    He didn’t have a manual of operations,

    Or a Book of Order,

    Telling him how to do it,

    And telling him if he wanted to do it differently,

    He had to get permission,

    By following the prescribed procedures

    And having everyone vote on his request,

    And waiting for a 2/3’s majority vote

    Before, say, healing on the Sabbath.

    What’s the equivalent of healing on the Sabbath in your life?

    Go do it!

    See how many times you can do what needs to be done

    Before it catches up to you.

    Then see how many times you can rise from the dead.
  64. 10/17/2014 — Bridge to Rough Ridge 03 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Linville Falls, NC, October 13, 2014

    We have to get together with the Ancient One Within—

    The million-year-old woman, or man, who started walking,

    Out of Africa to here and now.

    The Ancient One Within brings wisdom gleaned through the ages

    To bear on every new age,

    And has a take on things—

    Assesses things, reads things, sees things, senses things—

    That is relevant even today,

    And would ground us in,

    And focus us on,

    That which is central to us over time,

    And of essential value in determining

    How we live and what we do.

    What is good for us, and what is not?

    What is right for us, and what is wrong?

    The Ancient One Within is the resident expert

    On such matters.

    An ongoing and recurring consultation

    Would align worlds,

    Restore harmony,

    And make for peace.
  65. 10/18/2014 — Around Bass Lake 09 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    The right to self-determination and expression shall not be infringed.

    If I were in charge, we all would work to make that the starting point for all.

    The right to imagine, form and live our own life is the essential, integral, minimum human right.

    Which, of course, we spit on, transgress, violate and ignore in 10,000 ways every day.

    We want nothing to do with it.

    Too much responsibility.

    Arranged marriages and the caste system in India—the home of enlightenment—reflect how little we think of living our own life.

    And that is not imited to India.

    I have lived my life in the deep south where the ideal is to be no more than mamma and daddy are—

    Living in mamma’s and daddy’s backyard (if not house),

    And doing it, thinking it, being it, like it has all ways been done, thought and been for as long as anyone can remember.

    I’ve seen the same thing exhibited in all the places I’ve visited and read about through the years.

    We are looking to escape our life with addictions, diversions and distractions,

    And want to avoid our own life as much as possible all our life long.

    Addressing all of the social ills begins with the individual’s passion for her or his own life

    You cannot help someone out of poverty, or drug addiction, or homellessness/hopelessness, etc.

    Who isn’t gripped by the compelling necessity of living her, or his, own life.

    Impoverishment is a spiritual ill before it is a social ill.

    We have no life. We want no life.

    We want comforts, entertainments, amusements and pastimes until we die.

    We do not want to grow up and be who we are,

    And stand on our own two feet and live the life that is our life to live.

    And you can’t make us.
  66. 10/18/2014 — Around Bass Lake 10 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 13, 2014

    I live among people who’ve got it.

    Whose life exemplifies they’ve got it.

    The way they are with their spouses and their children,

    The way they live their life,

    The way they are when they are alone and no one is watching,

    What they do and how they do it,

    Day in and day out

    In all life situations and circumstances

    Declares to anyone, everyone, who is interested enough to look

    That they’ve got it.

    Their only trouble lies in remembering they’ve got it,

    And being okay with that,

    At peace with that,

    When they are tempted to buy into the cultural pronouncement:

    YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH AS YOU ARE!

    YOU NEED MORE OF THE LATEST THING TO BE HAPPY!

    And feel down and depressed because their life isn’t paying off

    They way the culture says it must pay off

    To be worth living.

    We have to live in the culture

    And against the culture

    At the same time.

    The culture helps us maintain our vital signs,

    But it is not the source of vitality and life abundant.

    We bring those things out of our own heart and soul,

    Much to the culture’s dismay,

    Because people who are grounded in themselves and their life,

    And living as a blessing upon all who come their way,

    Are not good for the economy.

    Physicians are pushers

    Helping people feel better about lives not worth living,

    And helping the economy be robust and healthy.

    The culture has to keep us looking for what we need

    Somewhere other than where it is.

    What is good for us is bad for the culture.

    Whose side are we on?
  67. 10/18/2014 — Buttermilk Falls HDR 05 — Adirondack Park near Long Lake, NY, September 30, 2014

    People don’t know what to do with themselves.

    They are bored.

    They have to be entertained.

    That’s crazy.

    And, that is the heart of the matter.

    We live—but you can’t really call it living—cut off from our heart,

    Without direction or purpose,

    Adrift on the sea of life

    Unlived, unseen, unknown,

    All about us.

    When all we have to do is wake up

    And dive in.
  68. 10/18/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 HDR 03 — Adriondack Park near Tupper Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    Even when we are “just sitting,” we are not just sitting.

    We are responding to sitting.

    We can’t experience our life without responding to our experience.

    The experience and the response are so close together in most of us that we cannot separate one from the other.

    The trick is to become so aware of our response that we know exactly where experience goes over into response.

    We get to that point by watching for it.

    By watching our response to the events of our life throughout the day.

    Sit, watching your response to sitting.

    The phone will ring, a plane will fly over, a dog will bark, an itch will attack you, your mind will wander…

    Watch your response to it all.

    Watch your response to your experience and be aware of exactly when your response moves you to action.

    You answer the phone, you shake your head at the plane, grimace at the dog, scratch the itch, get lost in the wandering of your mind…

    Experience, response, action…

    Follow the movement throughout your day.

    Just watching.

    Just watching yourself watching.

    Seeing what is happening and what is happening in response to what is happening.

    Looking at everything.

    Seeing what you look at.

    Living with awareness.

    Becoming mindful.

    Practice every day.
  69. 10/19/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 HDR 04 — Adirondack Park near Long Lake, NY, September 28, 2014

    Our state of mind determines—or strongly influences—everything.

    Except the cat.

    Cats are beyond it all.

    Thanks to THEIR state of mind.

    We need to be more cat-like.

    They have a state of mind that takes all of it into account

    Without becoming over perturbed by any of it.

    They have a way without having to have it.

    “Okay, FINE!” they say,

    Going on about their business.

    As though nothing just happened.

    It’s hard to catch a cat bearing a grudge,

    Or bemoaning its plight.

    Or stressing out about its future.

    Cats have there business and are about it,

    No matter what.

    Our state of mind, on the other hand, is determined—or influenced by—the 10,000 things.

    I Want! I Don’t Want!

    I Like! I Don’t Like!

    This, This Way! That, That Way!

    We are environmentally directed.

    Even having everything just so is no guarantee that our state of mind will be: “Peace At Last!”

    We can imagine losing it all in the next five minutes, and THEN WHAT???

    Our imagination works against a healthy state of mind.

    We are un-cat-like to the core.

    What to do?

    Wake up, of course.

    Pay attention.

    Be aware of when,

    Like the cat,

    We stroll up to the sleeping dog of our peaceful state of mind,

    Give him a swipe across the nose,

    And disappear.

    And tell ourselves to go mind our own business

    And leave our healthy at last state of mind alone.

    Deviling ourselves has to stop.
  70. 10/19/2014 — South Fork Mountainside 01 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Brevard, NC, October 19, 2014

    We are out of synch with heart, soul, body and mind.

    We are not living aligned with our life—the life that is our life to live.

    We are living some other life instead.

    We are not at one with the Tao.

    And it shows.

    Addictions, symptoms, OTC and prescription medications …

    The list is long.

    The old sign proclaimed “Get Right With God!”

    If you get right with you,

    You’ll be fine with God.
  71. 10/20/2014 — Mirror Lake HDR 01 — Highlands, NC, October 20, 2014

    Once upon a time one of my sisters gave the guy she was dating at the time a copy of the Tao te Ching, and asked him to read it so they could talk about it. A while later he gave the book back to her, saying, “If you can show me one shred of truth in this book, I’ll eat it cover to cover.” She never dated him again.

    We cannot help the way we see things.

    The way we see is the way we see.

    It is one of the most fundamental things about us.

    We will see the way we see until we change our mind or die.

    If we change our mind,

    We will then see the way we see until we change our mind or die.

    We change the way we see all the time, but.

    You can’t change the way I see,

    And I can’t change the way you see, but.

    When we are ready to change the way we see,

    Anything can do it.

    Bingo! Enlightenment!

    But.

    You can’t dial up enlightenment.

    Awakening comes.

    And maybe it doesn’t come.

    If it comes, it comes in its own time,

    And it will not be hurried.

    But.

    We can’t see without changing the way we see.

    And.

    We cannot command ourselves to change the way we see,

    But.

    We change the way we see all the time.

    Well.

    Some of us do.
  72. 10/21/2014 — Estatoe Falls HDR 02 — Rosman, NC, October 20, 2014

    He said, “Hell, Jim, this isn’t the way I SEE things! This is the way things ARE!”

    I said, “That’s one way to see things.”

    There is the way things ARE.

    It’s raining. It’s cloudy. It’s 52 degrees Fahrenheit…

    But the fact that it is rainy, cloudy, and chilly, does not mean that my neighbor put a Bad Weather Curse on me and I am therefore justified in burning her at the stake because she is unmistakably a witch.

    We too often confuse the way we see things with the way things are.

    We have to remember: There is the way I see things, and there is the way things are. And there is no necessary connection between the two.

    When we take the way we see things for the way things are, there is hell to pay—by everyone concerned, including ourselves, across the board, around the table.

    Learning to differentiate between the way we see things and the way things are is one of the tasks of maturity, wisdom, grace, compassion, peace, enlightenment, awareness and understanding.

    It is the art of life that enables life to be lived, across the board, around the table.

    How are you coming with it? 
  73. 10/24/2014 — Dry Falls 2014 Black & White 01 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 22, 2014

    Carl Jung said, “We are who we always have been, and who we will be.”

    This is our lodestone, our guiding light, our North Star.

    When we are lost, confused, unclear about it all and don’t know what to do next or where to turn,

    We only have to sit quietly, breathe slowly and deeply,

    And remember who we are and where we come from,

    And become who we are—serving that and expressing it—

    Throughout the time left for living.

    The details will fall into place around that central focus.
  74. 10/24/2014 — Cullasaja Cascades 2014 03 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 22, 2014

    We make our own luck

    By living in the service of the gifts we have to give—

    Which includes our perspective, insight, and sense of direction—

    And holding nothing back

    (Out of concern for what it might mean

    For our chances and prospects)

    In light of what needs

    The things we have to offer,

    In each situation as it arises

    All our life long.

    This is called

    Not letting the concern for our advantage

    Over-ride the opportunity to be who we are

    In the time and place of our living.
  75. 10/25/2014 — Around Bass Lake 11 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    If we aren’t dancing with our life, we are fighting with our life—

    Or sulking, bitter, or hopeless,

    Waiting for it to just be over.

    We have to dance all the way to the last breath.

    And the music keeps changing.

    Every stage of life has a different rhythm,

    A different beat.

    We get ourselves squared up

    With the problems associated with infancy,

    And here comes Kindergarten.

    What? Who said anything about staying in line?

    It’s like that all the way.

    Achieving a modicum of peace with one stage

    Has no carryover to the next stage,

    And no one there is impressed that we can tie our shoes.

    So, we dance with the new limitations

    And requirements,

    And a completely different set of partners

    Called The Way Things Are.

    How well we dance

    Through each stage

    Is the Teller that tells the tale.
  76. 10/25/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 09 — Near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    We live to escape the demands and requirements, restrictions and limitations, obligations, responsibilities and duties of each stage of life.

    Old men marry young women to remain forever (in their fantasies) in the halcyon days of their youth.

    Young women marry old, wealthy, men to avoid the hard realities of the work-a-day world, and enjoy a lifestyle they would never, otherwise, attain.

    Ours is a culture of escape, denial, diversion and distraction because everyone is escaping something,

    And no one wants to deal with the myriad manifestations

    Of the Cyclops and Trolls blocking their way

    Through the stage of life they must travel.

    Yet, we must face up to, and come to terms with—

    We must dance with—

    The tasks of life presented by each phase of life.

    The path of maturation, enlightenment, understanding, realization, wisdom, compassion and grace

    Winds through the Garden of Gethsemane

    And across the face of Golgotha

    For each one of us

    At each stage of our development.

    If you understand that,

    And make your peace with it,

    And take up the work that is yours to do

    In each period of your life,

    You have what it takes

    To return to Eden.
  77. 10/25/2014 — Blue Ridge Fall 06 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 14, 2014

    There are developmental tasks that must be completed in each stage of our life.

    We live amid people who are stuck in their teens and early twenties well into their fifties and sixties and beyond.

    They didn’t have what it takes to make their peace with their life and move on.

    We have to do what is required in each stage in order to move on to the next stage,

    Or remain stuck forever in a world our body soon outgrows,

    While mentally and emotionally we remain 17.

    In each stage we have to do what is asked of us.

    We have to stand up and face what must be faced.

    We have to come to terms with our life as it is,

    And consciously bear the pain of the discrepancy

    Between how things are and how we want them to be,

    And do what we can do about it,

    And let the rest of it just be.

    We all have to make our peace with The Unlived Life

    In each stage of our life.

    It’s a damn shame we didn’t have enough money to go to college,

    Or that the war came along and interfered with our prospects,

    Or the car wreck, or the cancer, or the fill-on-the-blank

    That turned us from what could have been to what was, and is.

    We grieve what must be grieved,

    Mourn what is to be mourned,

    And live what is to be lived—

    With compassion and grace for it all,

    And courage and hope for what can still be even yet,

    With the gifts and perspective that we have to work with,

    And the time that remains for what needs to be done.
  78. 10/25/2014 — Mud Creek Falls 02 — Dillard, GA, October 21, 2014

    No matter what just happened on the last play,

    We have to pick ourselves up and get ready for the next play—

    And put all our effort—body, mind, heart and soul—into it

    As though it is the last play and everything rides on the outcome.

    How do we do that if we are in the middle of a 17 game losing streak

    And down 42 to 14 with six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter?

    How do we give our best effort in a losing cause?

    When it is like, in that old metaphorical excuse for doing nothing,

    “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”?

    We have to love the game, no matter what the score is,

    Or what our prospects are.

    The game has to own us body, mind, heart and soul.

    The game is our life.

    Our life is the game.

    Everything hinges on the life we are living

    Being the life that is ours to live.

    And if it is not, then we play it as though it were.

    We live it so that no one can tell whether it is or is not

    The life that is ours to live.

    So, no matter what just happened in the last play,

    We have to get up and get ready for the next play—

    And put all our effort—body, mind, heart and soul—into it

    As though it is the last play and everything rides on the outcome.
  79. 10/25/2014 — Hanging Rock 2008 02 — Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, NC, October, 2008

    We are on our own.

    It is all up to us.

    And we cannot do it alone.

    This is one of the fundamental paradoxes of our life.

    Carl Jung said that no one can become a true human being

    Cut off from all others in a cave in a Tibetan mountain.

    And, he said that if we surrender our individuality

    And become one with the masses,

    We have no hope of ever being a true human being.

    We all need enough of the right kind of community—

    Of the right kind of company—

    Of the right kind of help.

    We need validation, affirmation, confirmation,

    And we need a sounding board,

    A devil’s advocate,

    And a reminder to return to the source

    Of breath and silence.

    It’s a mystery of the path

    That brings us the companions we need

    When we need them most.

    At our lowest ebb,

    Help appears from places we would never expect.

    Be most alert at the point of giving up.
  80. 10/26/2014 — Dry Falls 2014 04 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 21, 2014

    The right kind of help is the hardest thing to find and the easiest thing to overlook.

    In Joseph Heller’s book “Catch 22,” Yossarian was a bomber pilot in WW2 who wanted more than anything to get out of the war alive. His friend Orr was also a pilot who was shot down—and rescued—on a very high percentage of missions. Orr was always trying to get Yossarian to fly co-pilot with him. “Are you crazy?” Yossarian would ask. “You crash all the time! I want to avoid crashing at all costs!” And he did. He never got out of the war before it ended.

    Orr, on the other hand, was practicing crash landings in the Mediterranean, looking for the right currents to carry him and his life raft to Sweden—which he did, languishing in peace and freedom until war’s end. Yossarian passed up the right kind of help because it appeared to be the opposite of what he had in mind.

    What we have in mind can keep us from seeing the path that opens before us.

    We all are Yossarian and we all are Orr.

    We all play Yossarian to someone else’s Orr.

    And we all play Orr to someone else’s Yossarian.

    And we all have to wake up, recognize when we are in our Yossarian mode, and take the help some Orr is offering.  
  81. 10/26/2014 — Around Lake Haigler HDR 07 — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, SC, September 5, 2014

    Let’s start with the premise that we don’t know what we are doing—

    That we have not the faintest glimmer of an idea

    Of what we should do with what remains of our life.

    That all we have are opinions, inferences, notions, conjectures, intentions, interests, desires, wishes, wants, sentiments, presumptions, assumptions and the way it is being done around us for guides—

    Any of which we will leap to embrace

    In order to avoid the discomfort, anxiety and anguish

    Of knowing that we don’t know what to do with our life.

    We have to bear the pain.

    And listen within.

    We have to find the way back to heart/soul/body/mind.

    We have to get out of our heads

    And embrace the insolubility of our problem,

    And wait in the silence for some strange notion,

    Some aberrant inclination,

    Some rogue intuition,

    On a mission from Nazareth

    To lead us to the Land of Promise,

    Hoping that we will know a good thing when we see one,

    And follow along.
  82. 10/26/2014 — Cullasaja River Panorama 02 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 21, 2014

    Distractions abound.

    The old Taoists referred to them as “the dust of the world.”

    The cure, of course, is to live grounded in what is important,

    Aligned with Heart/Soul/Mind/Body.

    At one with the Tao,

    Compassionately mindful of all things—

    Which we are kept from doing

    By our attachment to the dust of the world.
  83. 10/27/2014 — Long Shoals 02 — Little Eastatoee Creek, Pickens, SC, October 24, 2014

    We force what we cannot have—

    What we have no business having.

    We make happen

    What does not need to happen.

    Therein lies the problem.

    Knowing what needs to happen,

    Knowing what can happen,

    And living within those restraints

    Is the path to peace,

    But we see it as surrender,

    And want nothing to do with it.

    So, here we are.
  84. 10/27/2014 — Along NY Hwy 30 Panorama 02 — Near Tupper Lake, NY, September 29, 2014

    All those who have seen,

    Have seen in the midst of those who have not seen.

    Thus, the prophet can proclaim,

    “O land, land, land! HEAR the word of the Lord!”

    And Jesus can vent,

    “How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear you?”

    And Lao Tzu can leave the Province

    To live out his days in the solitude of the forest.

    Idiocy thrives on not-seeing, not-hearing, not-knowing.

    Try to wake them up and they have you

    Committed, shunned, excommunicated or killed.

    It’s a conundrum worthy of the Buddha.

    His was the worst fate.

    They paid him homage,

    And ignored every word.
  85. 10/27/2014 — Dry Falls Black & White 05 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 22, 2014

    Living with integrity has nothing to do with living aligned with someone else’s idea of how our life ought to be lived.

    It has everything to do with living aligned with the drift of our own Heart/Soul/Body/Mind—doing what we know to be 100% right for us from the ground up, and the inside out.

    Integrity is living in synch with what is integral to us at the core.

    It is being who we are in ways that are appropriate to the occasion,

    Even though some people in authority might deem them to be highly inappropriate,

    Outrageous, scandalous, blasphemous, wicked and evil.

    Like healing on the Sabbath, or it’s equivalent in our own culture.

    In this sense, integrity is the highest value—

    Though, at the point of highest value, it’s impossible to separate the high values.

    Compassion, kindness, authenticity, justice and peace

    Are certainly in the mix.

    They all live at the heart—

    And are evident in the life—

    Of true human beings everywhere.
  86. 10/27/2014 — Around Bass Lake 01 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, NC, October 12, 2014

    Where do ideas come from?

    Or values?

    No group of people ever had an idea.

    Think Tanks expand, enlarge, elaborate the ideas of individuals.

    Only individuals have ideas.

    Only individuals have values.

    Corporations talk about their “core values”

    And their “mission.”

    As if.

    Individuals within the corporations come up with the values and the mission.

    And groups pay lip service to them.

    Individuals are the hope of the world.

    And individuals know they don’t know where their ideas and values come from.

    It’s a mystery.

    Only individuals can be awash in—and awed by—mystery.

    If you can sense the mystery at work within you,

    You are not far from catching a glimpse of the numen—

    The numinous

    The divine—

    And there lies the gold,

    Which only individuals can recognize, honor, and receive

    As blessing and grace,

    And the ground of life and being.
  87. 10/27/2014 — Looking Glass Falls 02 Black & White — Nantahala National Forest near Brevard, NC, October 19, 2014

    When you pick up something I’m laying down here,

    Don’t think it’s interesting,

    Or makes sense,

    Or resonates with how you have always thought and felt.

    And let it gather dust in some back corner of  your mind.

    Turn it over.

    Expand it, deepen it, enlarge it, shine it up, put your own spin on it

    And pass it along.

    Keep it going.

    Don’t hide the light under a basket.

    Put it on a lamp stand.

    Shine it in everyone’s eyes.

    See who sees it, and smiles.

    Tell them to pass it on.
  88. 10/28/2014 — Lake Oolenoy HDR 02 — Table Rock State Park, Pickens, SC, October 24, 2014

    You have the power to transform your world

    But

    You have to be you to do it.

    You have to live YOUR life in the midst of the life you are living.

    You have to dance your dance.

    Sing your song.

    Work your side of the street.

    In the face of enormous opposition

    And pressure—both subtle and brutally direct—

    To leave the way

    Turn aside from the path

    And speak no more of the truth you know to be true.

    You have to believe in you and the life that is yours to live,

    And dare to follow your own intuition and interests

    And your sense of the good

    Wherever they lead

    Determined to see if there is anything to what I’m saying,

    Or if it’s all just a box of smoke.
  89. 10/28/2014 — Cataloochee Elk 02 — Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    A Zen proverb says, “The ability of the archer to hit the bull’s eye varies in inverse proportion to the size of the prize.”

    The more we have at stake in the desired outcome, the less capable we are of achieving it.

    So here’s the solution, whether you are a football team seeking a big win, or a job applicant on your way to an interview:

    As the size of the prize grows, you have to grow with it.

    You can’t be a little girl, a little boy, afraid of losing, hoping to win.

    You have to be a grown woman, a grown man, focused on bringing forth the best you have to offer in doing the work that is to be done.

    How do you do your best? Live from your center! From your core! From your heart! From your soul!

    When your mind strays to the prize, to all that winning it would mean, bring your mind back to the center, to the core, heart and soul of who you are.

    Live from there.

    Be the best you you are capable of being

    By living aligned with your center, core, heart, soul in everything you do.

    All of your outcomes will fall into place around that.
  90. Water Rock Knob Sunset HDR 01 — Blue Ridge Parkway near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    Carl Jung said, “We are what we do.”

    We talk a good line.

    We know the right things to say.

    We position ourselves to look like we can be trusted

    To live in good faith with one another—

    To be who we say we are.

    Words are not deeds.

    Who do we show ourselves to be

    In the course of living our life?

    The best predictor of what someone will do

    Is what they have done.

    Words conceal.

    Actions reveal.

    We shape who we are

    By acting in ways that are commensurate

    With who we mean to be.

    We live our way to true human being-hood.

    We do not talk our way there.
  91. Fall Woodscape 01 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    We have been entrusted with a life that only we can live.

    The Hero’s Journey is the work

    Of placing ourselves in the service of that life,

    Aligning ourselves with it,

    And bringing it forth in the life we are living.

    This is the stuff of myth and legend.

    The Odyssey and Star Wars,

    The Bhagavad Gita, the four gospels,

    The Tao te Ching, and the stories about the Land of Promise

    Are guides for getting together with our life,

    And living it as it needs to be lived.

    The adventure waits.
  92. Road Through Fall — Greenbrier District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    We stand in our own way,

    Blocking our own path,

    With our ideas, plans, schemes, standards and agendas.

    We live to exploit our life.

    We are Judas

    And our life is the Christ.

    We’ll sell the whole wad

    For thirty pieces of silver.

    What’s it going to take to wake us up?
  93. 10/30/2014 — Cataloochee Valley Fall HDR 01 — Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Maggie Valley, NC, October 28, 2014

    The quality of a gift depends entirely upon the perception of the recipient.

    All gifts mean exactly what we say they mean.

    You can’t give someone anything they are not ready to receive.

    Everything means exactly what we say it means.

    What something means is what it means to us.

    Until we are ready to see things as they are,

    We make up the meanings that shape our life.

    What we say about things

    Forms the world we live in.
  94. 10/31/2014 — Ramsey Creek Fall 01 — Greenbrier District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    Your symptoms are here to wake you up.

    They are your path to enlightenment, realization, awakening, awareness.

    Stop being an adversary—or seeing them as adversaries—and embrace them.

    Honor them.

    Listen to them.

    They come packed with metaphorical truth.

    As does everything else in your life.

    We will keep getting symptoms

    Until we begin to “get” them.

    Get it?

    This isn’t saying “getting” your symptoms

    Is the way to get rid of them—or to quit getting them.

    It’s to say that they are the threshold to the life that is your to live,

    And that when you start living that life,

    Your symptoms will be transformed.

    And, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t try to get rid of your symptoms.

    Walk two paths at the same time.

    Treat your symptoms, look for the causes and change the way you are living,

    AND embrace, honor, listen to your symptoms.

    They are the way to life

    For those with eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart that understands.

    If you waste, or trash, a good symptom,

    It will go get three or four of its buddies

    To help it open your eyes, ears, and heart.
  95. 10/31/2014  — Haywood County Barn 02 — Near Maggie Valley, NC, October 30, 2014

    “Use the Force, Luke.”

    Here’s the way to do it:

    1) Understand that using the Force is not the way to having your way, getting your way, arranging what your want, having life like you like it. Using the Force is actually aligning yourself with the Force and letting nature take its course. For better AND for worse.

    Everything is always for better AND for worse. What’s good for one is bad for another. What’s good here and now for you is going to be bad then and there for you. It’s a trade-off. We give up this to get that. We hand everything over to the Force and relax into the way-ness of how things are, understanding this is just how things are here and now, and they are on the way to being different in a “We can’t step into the same river twice,” kind of way.

    2) Within each of us there is a Seer (the Force) that Just Sees. Everything. As it is. Without emotional attachment or reactivity. When emotions are present, the Seer just sees the emotions without being attached to them or overwhelmed by them. The Seer sees without anything interfering with its vision, its knowing.

    3) The trick is to get out of our own way and allow the Seer to show us what He/She/It sees. It happens all the time. Athletes are always seeing and responding to things they aren’t consciously directing, and they are always said to being “acting unconsciously.” They are using the Force.

    4) You can practice using the Force by wondering what you will do in a situation, by being interested in what you will do, and by allowing yourself (the Force) to show you what you will do by doing it. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m going to wait and see.”

    Our life is over-planned, over-thought, over-analyzed, under-lived. We have to bring ourselves back to the level of instinct and intuition (the Force) and trust ourselves to That Which Knows.

    5) Practice, practice, practice.
  96. 10/31/2014  — Baxter Creek Bridge 2014 01 — Big Creek Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Waterville, NC, October 30, 2014

    Here’s my take on the Virgin Birth.

    We are all pregnant with the future—

    Our own and that of all that is.

    We are all pregnant with our life—

    The life that only we can live—

    The life that is ours to live—

    If we will.

    We are the Virgin Mary, called to deliver,

    And we are The Christ, struggling to be born.

    How we live in each moment

    Makes that the moment of delivery,

    With us bringing the invisible world forth

    Within the physical world of space and time.

    Or not.
  97. 10/31/2014 — Smoky Cascade 02 — Big Creek Area, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Waterville, NC, October 29, 2014

    We have to recover the symbol.

    We have to revive metaphor.

    Facts are lies in that they misrepresent truth

    By claiming to be “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

    Never was a fact that couldn’t be improved by seeing through it

    To what is also true.

    Your migraine is a fact.

    What does it mean?

    Your fear is a fact.

    What is it saying?

    Your dreams have no factual, literal reality.

    Your wife is NOT having a fling with your best friend.

    What is it telling you about the TRUTH of your jealousy,

    And how you are creating the environment conducive

    To the very thing you fear by being afraid of it,

    And accusative,

    And suspicious,

    And angry?

    Your dreams are a snapshot of YOUR relationship

    With YOUR soul/heart/mind/body.

    Are you listening?

    Are you looking for the symbolic

    Tucked away in all that is actual, tangible, factual, concrete and real?

    Symbol and metaphor are realer than real.

    Seek them out.

    They are everywhere.

    Waving their hands,

    Hoping you won’t miss them.
  98. 11/01/2014 — Little Pigeon River Cascades 01 — Greenbrier District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, TN, October 29, 2014

    Look for ways your life is like the Odyssey. Or Star Wars. Or the world of Harry Potter, or The Lord of the Rings.

    Look for the Cyclops barring your way,

    For the Dark Side coming to meet you.

    Practice living metaphorically,

    Seeing symbolically.

    Become the hero striving with demons and monsters.

    The life that is yours to live needs you to live it

    As surely as the Republic need Luke, Hans and Leia.

    All the things standing between you

    And the full expression of your life within the life you are living

    Take on the role of Death Eaters and the Dark Powers of Middle-Earth.

    You are living an epic adventure!

    Everything rides on you bringing you forth to meet your life,

    And live your life,

    Within the limits and restrictions that are yours to surmount

    In restoring Right and putting Wrong in its place.

    You are the Hero on the Hero’s Journey!

    Be who you are!
  99. 11/01/2014 — Bridal Veil Falls 2014 01 — Nantahala National Forest near Highlands, NC, October 20, 2014

    You will know what to do.

    IF you approach the question

    Open to all of the possibilities,

    Without expectation or agenda,

    Or an idea of how to exploit the situation

    And turn it to your advantage

    And everlasting benefit.

    Step listening and looking—

    Hearing and seeing—

    Into each situation as it arises.

    Allow instinct and intuition access to you.

    You will know what you know

    Instead of dismissing, discounting, ignoring it.

    And be amazed.
  100. 11/01/2014 — Around Bass Lake 03 — Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC, October 18, 2014

    “The master sees things as they are, without trying to control them,”

    Reads the Tao te Ching.

    “She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle.”

    “The Master does his work and then stops.

    He understands that the universe is forever out of control,

    And that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao.”

    See what needs to happen in each situation as it arises—

    And offer what you have to give in its service.

    And let that be that.

            We practice being who we are

For the good of each situation as it arises–

Meeting it,

And everyone in it,

With compassion and grace–

And letting nature take its course.

This is called

Preparing the present moment

For what lies ahead.

            We complicate things by trying to work them to our advantage–

By living to parlay everything into something

That will serve our immediate benefit,

And our long term self-interest.

When we live to exploit our life,

We impose our values on our life—

But, what do we know of value?

“Buy! Spend! Amass! Consume! Achieve! Accomplish! Conquer! Succeed!”—

These are the driving forces in the pursuit

Of something worth doing with our life.

But, what is worth doing?

What is worthy of us?

We know what we want,

But we don’t know what we ought to want.

And, we have no idea of when to lay our wants aside—

In a “Thy will, not mine, be done,” kind of way.

Who is the “Thy” in that phrase?

We have no idea.

“God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,”

Is what we have been told,

But those who told us knew no more than we know

About the grounding values of their life.

Look at the way they lived—pillaging, plundering, destroying…

What is the value of what they called valuable?

What did they know about living in light of what’s important?

It is up to us to go where they refused to venture,

And find the “Thy” of true and lasting value.

And serve it with what remains of the time left for living.

Here’s a hint: Listen for what calls your name.

            What to do with what remains of our life

Is ours to work out

In the time left for living.

Doing is a function of—

An expression of—

Being.

What we do is who we are

In that moment.

Who do we want to show ourselves to be?

Who do we want to become?

We have to do our way toward that end.

Living so as to express who we are

And who we are to yet be—

Who we are to become.

All worthy action flows from,

And leads to,

Reflection.

We live in light of who we see ourselves to be

When we stop doing

And reflect,

And listen,

And look,

And know

What is important,

What matters most,

What the values are that seek expression

In, and through, who we are

And who we have yet to be.

We live to serve the values

That seek expression in,

And through,

Our life.

What are you going to do with the rest of your life?

Who will you be in the time left for living?

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