To weather these times, we ride on what we know will fly - music, or touch, or high fantasy - we find what takes us high to keep our heads above the rising mire
Whether these times encompass the swift end of all we knew, or herald the bright dawn of what we know must come, we'll need the touchstones of everything we love to bear us through them, to bring us home.
I. We talk about the failure of words, but maybe it's not exactly that - a thing of timing, more, or cadence, and how the images, though not strange, rest in a different context, whose description would take a lot of words and tax our listeners
We may have finer sensors than we know, with which we measure the time we have to speak - space of attention in which our words must fit, or else the bubble will disperse, letting our words fall and our connection with it.
II. And then again, there is an art to listening, without intent to offer any words, unless they perfectly tuck in to the place of need that has been shared, which they will do if we have rightly heard the space prepared.
Outside, in the bright sun and cold wind, the maple limbs stretch red against the sky. The aspens reach eager and graceful in their sea green tint. Small flocks of birds come through, and I'm glad these trees give them comfort on their journey, and maybe encourage them to stay awhile.
We welcome what sweeps through us and makes us new, we welcome sun, we welcome rain, we welcome stars that show up briefly at five a.m., and clouds the hills snag, while they're blowing through
We call it life for being so much more than we can fathom, we call it love for how it makes us glad we're here.
High horse of my positions, brittle presuppositions, self justified opinions don't need to fall in shards about my feet
Look at this tender dissolution, silent, swift dispersal of all of those illusions - the sure fulfillment of the law of presence which holds me ever safe here in my truth.
In moments I fathom having never touched down into bone, into skull, into what can be alone - having never come to think that I could be destroyed or even lost - sitting present in the sweet company of consciousness itself, which by its nature is comprised of knowing, and knows the feather movements and the grand turnings - rivers of awareness, oceans of connection - this being what is me, this being what is us - galaxies of bright communication, universe of intermingled song.
This will not be lost (phrases snatched like images from dreams, nothing predetermined nor tallied, after the fact)
This doesn't need to be a riddle - it can be the sweet way you find yourself after a full day - weathered, suffused with heat, dry after the day's cold wind, feeling the strong contrast of the indoors, thin but solid shell against the roving night
You find yourself within, at peace, clean, ready for sleep, willing to let fears and worries go, learning to trust what holds you safe.
I can be patient. I can reweave the web of no way to be afraid as often as I need to. Reweaving does not connote failure - it is appropriate to do it every day, to take the bright new thoughts and prove what they can add - how they become the surface that I walk on, the new fearlessness each moment offers, rewoven into power for the day.
We all are yearning towards ourselves, our undiluted truth, though we may settle, in the flash of time, for something that reminds us of it (a homonym, perhaps, or some non-fitting, but still tempting, rhyme)
We put on what we do, we try to realize ourselves. When we fail, our truth, though covered up, still gleams (like coals in ash, which still have power to ignite another fire)
None of what we posture can make us any better, none of how we fail can make us any worse - our truth - each one unique, all of a kind, will find us in the unity of Mind.
The view parts like silk, fraying into long ribbons, the scene behind the screen coming into view
It's not, as we had thought, a large world, ourselves as tiny crawlers on the surface, maybe able to unleash a cataclysm but certainly unable to avert one
Instead, these pictures (the weather, the economy, the politics) will burn away like film, like mesh, to show the wider landscape of the mind, where we have much more power than we thought, but only in the service of what we really are.
At day's end my step is light, my head is clear (if rather empty) I haven't stowed things I couldn't say, I haven't worried, I haven't tried to solve someone else's problems, or taken in ill-fitting attributions
I've been open to the knowing which accompanies all being, I have taken on good tasks and brought them to completion, there has been joy, there has been laughter, there has been kindness - I am content, for that has been enough.
Morning rises through layers of unveiling - dark lifts, fog forms, softening the moon
Fog melts, and dainty clouds appear in slowly clarifying blue, sun tops the evergreens, and slides slowly southward, tiny dewdrops sparkle on tufts of tender turf
Auspicious opportunities parade before the hours - we will ride some of them, others will wait
We are in this day, in which presence is progress, and process has nothing to do with it.
Silence is allowed - it is the bed that all sound falls to - stream bed, dream bed, forest seep, leaf sleep
Silence lets things spread and sink, sift and thin, ever in
It sounds like time, and everything that can be lost and found, it sounds like possibility, it is the backdrop for the first emergence of what will grow, the last breath of what has gone to rest
This kind of silence gives birth to music, and remains its fast companion, its dearest friend.
A long sleep with deep dreams delivered me, rested, into the day - threads of companionship, trailing along into the dark morning, accompanied my tasks, their happiness settling things into a balance, where a breath can set things in motion, where they still move according to their multiple connections, and still remain, more so than when in stillness, exactly what they are.
I guess it's better that there's no one here to aid and abet my righteous sense of hurt, no one to be an echo chamber, magnifying what I say, making these perspectives seem to come from everywhere, no one to give me comfort in standing in a false place
So I have no choice but to let that picture fall away, no choice but to let my feet reach deep into truth and anchor there.
These patterns - shards from a broken dome, sharp edges of shattered expectations, point to places ripe for change
This problem was never as contiguous as I thought, and my habitual reaction is not the only way to be
I reconsider - no need to be soft and cut and sobbing, no need to bleed, waiting to be saved, that which can shatter has never been the truth, that which is helpless has never actually been me.
I know there's so much more to consciousness than what I use each day ... If I could meet you on some one of these other planes, if we could converse, perhaps by taste, perhaps by sending some essence through each other's systems (which would be like talking, just in another mode) what you could let me know would still be part of the great knowing we all have access to anyway, but something unique about your spark would give me the same elation as if you were more conventionally here.
It was a time of sun and wind and frog song, and winter water on the land, and color all the brighter for the mostly muted season
Ravens overhead were unconcerned who heard their family raucousness - they, too, sent heart-lift, joy of life and flight, span of blue sky, float of clouds, rain-washed freshness of the day, tokens of the hope that guides our way.
Oh, Love, show me the way, not just the broad, idealistic way, not just the platitudes
Show me the myriad, immediate, tiny water ways, the present way to seep, to move with love in every aspect of my thought - my first impression, my next conclusion, my pre-perception outlook ...
How I take in and include all the children of Your world, all of the moments, all the patterns that I name, their dance and music
Show me the way where service is the path of joy and joy the path of service - however slow or fast I go, let me move with love.
The water that came as rain has seeped down from the hills to settle in the grass, ankle deep along the channels where it seeks its way towards even lower ground
Which made me think: Truth is like a high water table, right here, coming up through the grass of our life's particularities, not possible to overlook, or to fear it doesn't cover whatever needs it, as it brings the depth of sky to every situation - effortless abundance.
Nobody's taken a package home, no one has grabbed it to call their own, nobody owns it and nobody lacks - No good but One
And there's no measure for the infinite, and there's no soul in which it doesn't fit - the good we pull up in ourselves flows without end - this is true for all of us and everything that lives.
Satisfaction - good work, good time spent, good place, rain coming after outside tasks were done, rain-framed coziness bestowing time to read, gratitude felt all around the edges of my attention, less for all this beauty and comfort than for the underpinnings which hold us safe and guide us steadily in the direction of our hope.
Not to assert my will, nor yet to leave it behind, but rather to let my will out like much long hair, let it blend with the will of the wind
Let those two be subsumed in the will that doesn't push, nor need to, that holds all desires in deftly woven harmony, that opens out all impulse and unites us in one grand expression, granting us the freedom of our dance.
You dip your pen deep into the knowing of things, you write what's true, and because of that, those who read feel the pull, through your words, to something much vaster - they remember they have known this and they still know it - it is the Spirit by which they are impelled, it is the Principle by which they move.
