False Start

(Continuing)

Who the hell was he to determine that his essay was an important one, as if no one should ever want to slip by without getting in on the blessing he knew it would provide his readership?

It's just that he had seen it time and time again and even fallen into much of the same unhelpful patterns himself in his earlier life. He'd seen it cause much pain and unholy distortion. The first word, what you started with, the main thing that every other "part" of the most basic of the basics in the life of faith (as far as he and so many millions before him had been taught) was a three letter word that stunk like, hurt like, smeared like and stained like good old capital S-I-N.

First things first, they had all seemed to say, even as a young man growing up in catechism class, "You may not forget about this one. This is where we have to start. The good old-fashioned honest truth. You are a sinner living in a sin stained and sin broken world. Taken as yourself, just you being you in whatever place you happened to find yourself, you needed to be assured and agree that all of it was tainted through and through."

That meant the cruel world around you and that meant you too.

Now that he wasn't any longer enlisted as a professor at the Uniquely Named Christian Academy, he could finally write more freely.

He was working down a list of major points he knew he wanted to make. But of course, owing to his nature, he'd generally start out at the tip of some circuitous point and then let the writing move him toward the clarification of what that point was actually supposed to be. He remembered how Annie Dillard had referred to writing as an epistemological tool, a tool in the hand of a sculptor who by tapping along word by word in a straight and honest line eventually gave shape and form to a new and inviting finished product. We find out the truth by talking things through to their conclusions. It was a good start and took for granted the basic goodness of nature and the world which gave every inquiry of this nature a more positive and hopeful trajectory.

Why was this essay about "Original Blessing and Original Sin" so vital to him, so important to everyone? The page of the spiral-bound notebook contained this list:

Vital self trust – loving self connection, cultivating a fearful distrust of God and others and self

Pain in the wounding of the branding – sinner. We all are. You know who comes to mind?

Zoe needed her dinner so he put things away and made his way to the kitchen where there were just a few dishes to do. He put on Miles Davis and he and the sweet Burmese swayed back and forth to the sounds of the saxophone and what sang between each of the pieces in the jazz trio. Might be naptime Zoe.

He drained the sink empty and dried his hands and made his way over to the living room.  She was already snoozing, in her kingdom of God.

Referencing Here What Was Before and Coming After

 (Continuing)

Soon the restaurant downstairs reopened and it was packed with people. So many in fact that it became a bit of a chore for him to get downstairs in a timely fashion and get back to his station. It was the best seat in the house and optimal for looking out at the street and enjoying the grand parade of humanity.

Living in the city was different to say the least. After living five years off the grid, chopping wood each day to keep the stove hot through the winter months, it was strange to have a real address and to take an elevator up to his apartment. Most often of course he would use the stairs and keep track of it as a percentage of his weekly exercise to have done so. He ate better than ever with so many offerings around the city, but he still did dearly miss the taste of trout, fried potatoes and salmon, and venison Sloppy Joe.

He had tried to take Zoe for a walk and it was a complete disaster. He absolutely refused to push or tug the poor little animal in any direction whatsoever, which led to much sitting and waiting for one of them to decide which direction they were going. It occurred to him after nearly 20 minutes of frustration and cajoling, with nothing but meow and meow responses (as she was more prone to avoiding English when out in public) that the cat was more interested in hanging out than in getting anywhere in particular. Let's lie down, let's be here… Okay over there? Fine, now that we're here, let's relax… What's with all of your pesky pressing us away from the soft grass we are glowing in right here and now.

While at the northern cabin he'd filled many pages of the spiral-bound notebook with crude narratives and brief sketches of stories he'd longed to assemble as a way of living, word-worlds he could inhabit.

Before meeting a few friends on his precious plot near no man's land just west of Kalkaska he picked up the materials for the teepee. It was all they had to live in while they got the house framed in and the stove delivered via helicopter. All the while, those many days as they worked to turn that cabin into a palace, he carried the thought in his head that once it was built he would never leave. The sense of permanence was profound as they finished up hanging doors and staining the railings of the wraparound porch which met a drop off on three sides with an amazing view of the forest just beyond as it ran down the hill toward the river bed. He'd sit in a rocking chair early mornings there quite often watching the deer take their morning drink in silence, the glow of dawn alighting them like spirits in the wood.

Looking back now on those few sketches in the spiral notebook both warmed his heart and brought a sting of acid as he remembered now his obligation to finish the essay he promised the theological journal by April 1. He was nowhere getting started. Too many distractions. That coupled with the sense that he could talk himself blue in the face, even to some of the most influential people in the church, and they would never listen to what he and so many had been trying to say. His wasn't the only warning about the dangers of such a vile construct, this sickening first principle so many claimed as orthodoxy.

Of course, Zoe knew nothing about anything of something called by many "the sinful nature." You're not missing out on a thing, he thought to himself. I wish I and everyone else could forget about it as well my little feline and faithful friend.

Just then as he was finishing his last sip of coffee an odd figure walked by the coffee shop. It was a tall woman, with long blonde hair wearing a sandwich board and a blue bodysuit beneath with red boots. At first the messages were obscured but as she stopped and turned once round completely, nearly directly in front of him, the messages became clear:

NO USE TRYING TO POOP TOMORROW'S TURD

LOVE IS A PAPER DREAM

ART IS THE ANSWER

CAT TALKING

 (Continuing)

So tell me about yourself.

That's the first thing you want to say to me?

You are a talking cat and those are the first words you want to use?

Well what were you hoping for, hail to the chief? Let me quickly start with thank you for saving me from that horrible prison and bringing me to this lavish house of love and mystery.

Well, you're welcome. So…

So tell me whatever you want about whatever…

And would you also please scratch me behind my left ear.

Just then the sun burst so brightly into the front living room he had to turn away squinting. He wore his reading glasses which he was fearful would cause such a magnification of the brilliant beams showering through the window that his retinas would be scorched in a painful barbecued instant. Look away man!

Zoe gets up from the far corner of the room and walks closer to him. She stops in the middle of the throw rug and sprawls out on her back.

He thumbs through his record collection and plays The Band.

It's all him of course. Thoughts move and change as he grabs a snack and loses connection with Zoe who never appreciates distraction.

He remembers a night during seminary singing in a circle with friends from Nigeria and Uganda. Together he remembers their singing "I will give God, my lifetime… I will give God, my lifetime."

So I could tell you a little bit of what heaven feels like. It's the song of sweet communion and brotherhood, hand-in-hand committed to simply being available to Life. Presence to presence.

A glory connection not unlike that… experienced with a little chocolate Burmese purring at your toes.

You breathe it in, you breathe it out

do not grasp, do not resist

Zoe, now where did I put my spiral notebook? The sunset should be absolutely beautiful tonight.

Whatever he was thinking still came into being, over and over. Something told him he should simply keep going, it hadn't let him down thus far. No not by any means. Zoe agreed and the two returned to their happy silence once again.

No turning back, Maybe.

(Continuing…)

"I woke with an itch under my chin and asked my wife to scratch it. I could've laid in bed all day long with the sun beaming through the window.

It would've been a prime time for shadow puppets along the closets, mornings were becoming brighter. Instead, things moved along. That was what the flow of life was all about it seemed.

Things kept moving, around us, beneath and beside, it all moved without ever ceasing. Sounds emerged from cell phones and laptops, the furnace needed to breathe and the tank of the toilet had to fill and the fan within the computer had to turn and on and on it moved, we moved endlessly."

There was a turning earth beneath him every day. The character he'd written about. The man's cat would wake him after the intensity of his jungle dreams.

Being with life and nothing else. It had its appeal. What a cat. What an image for life itself.

The writer and the character somehow joined forces to speak out a world that felt right and beautiful and interesting. He would give himself whatever necessary to support his own flow within the flow.

He read his books and drank his coffee. He gave intentional focus within his meditation to grieve more fully the loss of some old writing today in fact.

You had to let go sometimes. The old project sat in the folder. Six chapters worth and so much of it trying to keep pace and pour out like a documentary so as to "stay current" with his life day by day. To edit it now in any meaningful way would become more than arduous and feel less then creative. Imagine a starving man trimming the fat of his feast for so long that the meat got cold, became completely inedible.

The writer in his work already knew this. Holding onto old work could be operating as another form of fear from within. Best to keep writing and from time to time dip back leisurely into the old material for any useful nuggets. If the old writing really is as good as I think it is… the nuggets will surface. The point now is to stay in flow with what is here now.

Such as: Memories of five goals worth holding onto. Good thoughts. Read, write, pray, play and engage. Staying with these could even keep Zoe happy and she was Burmese and, most importantly, feline, so why would she even care about English fiction or Spirituality?

It is now nearly in the 40s and the breezes are blowing warm from the west against the side of the teepee. The skins flap widely every now and then as a gust stirs round throwing open the flaps which otherwise would give the appearance of complete closure. Midwinter's winds want in it seems.

Zoe

(Continuing)

 "Once we know that the entire physical world, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply."

Father Richard Rohr

Everywhere was closed. Not even a coffee shop open. The rain beat down hard and so he thought to tuck under an awning for a moments shelter.

Back at his new apartment there were plenty of boxes still to be unpacked. He had set up his television and furniture for the living room so at least that was a comfortable space for the time being. Luckily for him he had always tried to avoid having extras, so he kept only what he ever needed when it came to basics, pots and pans, one set of sheets and a plaid blanket, again one of each necessity only for dishes and things. Simple and efficient.

The Wi-Fi in the new apartment (he'd signed a six month lease) was pretty sketchy and so he had counted on stopping in at the bakery downstairs pretty frequently to start and end his day. He loved waking up to the aroma of fresh bread being baked every morning. He would never have to think about breakfast. Just get ready and head downstairs and swing through the bakery for a black coffee and a muffin, this was going to be a nice convenience.

On his first few visits there he'd given himself a few minutes and picked out a nice bench seat by the window and after checking email decided to stay. He would sip his steaming French roast, smoke a few cigarettes and people watch between glimpses of the morning paper. He would also jot down a line or two if anything came to him naturally. A small spiral-bound notebook was what he kept in his coat pocket. Much of what came to be started there with a few chicken scratches of phrases, brief sketches of characters he wanted to develop, haiku, a few jokes and plays on words, the occasional deep thought, and always the questions.

In his first few days at his new morning station he had already taken in more of the world than he'd experienced in a long time, especially in terms of its cast of characters. He saw a man biking past wearing leopard printed sweatpants, and that was all. Others were bundled up more appropriately in their winter garb. He saw the occasional fur coat, a few kids with blue and green hair, small groups of tourists, and an elderly Asian woman with a terrified scowl on her face and a few with cardboard signs that read SPARE CHANGE or FIVE DOLLARS WINDOW WASH. One man sat beside a garbage can near the corner so he could check quickly if he saw anything he liked being tossed in. Snatch it up quick. Five second rule.

Do you write for the church or do you write for yourself? someone had asked him. The felt sense of the words upon his face pressed abruptly like that of a hand smooshing the face into a circular bundle of wrinkles then springing the hand back quickly away. What?!… Please keep such silliness away from me, if you please, he thought. I learned a long time ago to stay away from conversations like these… You see it returns one to a divided world and asserts its lesser construct as it projects it out into the ether more like a net than a mere question. Certain kinds of questions carry with them entire worlds that one must accept if they are to respond in any congenial manner. It's just awkward. People ask questions that make sense in their worlds. False worlds, false choices.

He sat drinking his coffee remembering that day when that simple question had met him so adversely. The person, no doubt, was only trying to find out if he was writing spiritual meditations, nonfiction essays or who knows what…? It felt like oppression to him back then, because back then he lived in that world, where everything was an oppression or something that would lead to one if you weren't careful. But he never judged himself too harshly, or anyone else for that matter. Not after what he had been through and what he knew so many people had to deal with day-to-day. He had learned a true love of human beings. He was proud of the fact that it was genuine now most days when, let's face it, just like anyone else there were so many times where he would have just as happily put himself into a car and driven away to no place USA.

Agent in place. That's what he was now. Instead, that would be the result. That's how it ended up. But we can talk about that after while.

Now with all the restaurants closing, even the bakery downstairs, he, like everyone else, was going to have to keep adapting. Everything would reopen again soon and he figured it wasn't too bad out on the patio where he now took his morning coffee, able there to capture some decent Wi-Fi.

He brought a cat home with him one day from the humane's society. It was a Burmese in all shades of brown. Brown into deeper brown, he thought of milk chocolate and dark chocolate. The creatures fur was like velvet and its eyes sparkled golden with stirring deep fire at their centers. When he saw her, he was utterly enchanted. He named her Zoe.

At first it felt strange to share space with the small creature. Every now and again, after she was done investigating one of the rooms, she would return to him; walking up to him, sitting herself down quietly and staring directly at him as though learning something in the process. She had intentions she was meeting in her gaze, he knew it. Later on as he thumbed through his notebook, with its sketches of Indian teepees and a man sitting out on a snowy lake icefishing, the velvet Burmese pressed up against his shoulder and neck. He jotted another note in the spiral to get cat food. For now she would have to be satisfied with leftover salmon from the fresh glacial rivers of northern Alaska. Without any restaurants now open he had treated himself at the mom-and-pop grocery down the street. Great leftovers, he thought. One lucky cat.

That night he went to sleep with the creature purring quietly against his legs and feet. He dreamt of a jungle in Africa and of a daylong journey through the stifling heat where he whacked away vigorously with a razor-sharp machete to fight his way forward. He chopped away feeling a tremendous exhaustion and thirst along with a sense that only a few more feet would bring him to a space to stop and rest, to find a falls and fresh source of water.

The dream turned quickly to an open space beyond the stifling tangles of weeds and dense forest growth to where the star filled sky's opened up holding out the sparkling constellations now surrounding him. There a large fire was burning. Through the flames which were so bright they caused his eyes to twitch he saw her looking back at him. Straight through the flames as if penetrating his soul were two smoldering eyes. They were Zoe's.

Continuing Exercise

(Continuing)

"I am a voice on wheels." Dylan Thomas

I waited for the coldest night and then decided to put a tepee in the front yard, to build a fire inside, to sit around the circle sharing with my friends and getting lost in song together with no sense of the dangerous winds blowing all around us, winds that could freeze you solid in minutes, wind without concern for anyone or anything because it was wind.

What carries the flurries through the dark skies surrounding such a place also carries you. True isn't it? What is more alive than wind?

We sing about it together in the tepee and we dream of the coming day out on the ice where we will carve out holes in the deep frozen surface and give ourselves time to tease out perch and bluegill whose thoughts are unknown to fishermen, whose air is water, whose wind filters through the gills, who fly on currents flowing deep beneath the surface.

A sweet breakfast of sausage and pancakes and coffee, clunking plates and forks and glasses, with their tinkling of ice; three juices, that of cranberry and carrot and mango, small packets of raw sugar, the napkins; all waited at the breakfast table at home. It was a table like that of a restaurants with even the wood carved puzzle game where one took golf tees and hopped one over the other in the hopes of finishing off the golf tees. The aroma of frying sausages filled the air with laughter about how no one living there is a waitress, no comments about the menu are made other than to hold them (all the possibilities of breakfast) as dearly to your mind, as close to your hearts imagination as possible – poached eggs on toast, corned beef hash, waffles, oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon – all while you gazed down into the frozen hole in the ice waiting for what could be your supper or tomorrow's or next days, living beings fished out to give you life, to fill your freezer.

Now you stop to ponder the relationship between appetite and language.

It had been three hours since he woke. The chair squeaked on the ice beneath him. Scrambled eggs were in his mind, he could taste the salt, the whole milk butter he'd spread on the toast. He heard the crunch of his own teeth sunk down into the brown toast, his boot crushed and shifted into the snow.

That is exactly when the jolt at the end of the pole nearly threw him off his chair.

Sometimes life gets in the way of our meandering reveries. Pull up good man! Pull up now – strong and hard! Otherwise there goes your fish. That fish. That one right there you have just thrown onto the snow who's ready for you to count its stripes. Perch. This one has four on either side.

You let out a holler without much echo returning as the snow insulates the entire landscape around you. It's white on white and filling the skies you have hardly become aware of and your first fish of the morning is already frozen beside you on the surface.

"Well that bodes well…"

You holler back to your neighbor, "could be a good morning…"

The tepee seems a thousand miles away and 100 years ago.

Soon you again are merely a voice simply speaking in a dark room waiting for the fire to take and warm the space. Outside the sky turns deep blue within minutes. The day was done and over like a good long thought.

You had thought to take in the sunset. The sparks took just then and the wood crackled and the smell of pine wood smoke wafted through the house.

So he stayed and simply kept writing down nearly everything that passed through your vision. It shifts, the one who speaks, it's always shifting, and there are many visions to be spoken out into the ether before the fire dies down again. I will find a word and share it in a book and with you in the immediate.

Now, where was I?

EXERCISE: START HERE

 (BEGINNING)

What he thought last. That's what it was.

Whatever he thought, it was.

A dark Jeep whirred past at a clip as they were trying to turn, it was too fast.

He thought. It was a nice ride around Gilligan Lake again this evening with the skies opening briefly to pour out the golden light at the end of another week that had passed by as a day, as a thought.

Skiing, he thought, would be fun, so he thought ahead of all of the provisions necessary for a nice treak.

Then he decided otherwise given how much time it was going to take him to find his skiis in his basement where he would have to tiptoe quietly as not to wake his nephew who was sleeping on the couch. There would be no filling his thermos with coffee and preparing a sandwich and putting them into his backpack and layering up sweatshirts and coveralls to be ready for highs in the teens so he sat on the couch and kept drinking his coffee already poured.

His morning meditation was seamless. He did not know anything else that he needed upon finishing, allowing the tone of the chime on his phone to resonate and finally taper off as a feather at its tip.

Being would require nothing of him. Feeling the touch of inhaling gently through his nose, the in and out sensation, receiving life and offering back, all in a beautiful circle that forms, a sense of being held at a level just beyond thought.

From this place I am often invited to simply fall into whatever river I should flow through.

Splashing into the cold water, running through water, jolting myself forward, the icy waters pouring through my gills… Trees reflected back to themselves at the surface, the pale orange of late evening through the woods at the surface with all the stones well down beneath running at their odd cursive's, punctuated by dead branches for months before these fresh and silver skinned came to dart inward on away up toward the beavers dam.

How he got from simply being to swimming was the great mystery of course.

But at some level. Things have already been explained.

What it was, he thought. That is to say, every thought had the potential to become real in the world but it was entirely up to him. All he had to do was stop and become empty so that the thoughts could fall through him to become what they would become.

When he started to realize this connection he was startled at first.

Goodness, he thought. What could this become. How can I possibly take responsibility for the things I'm thinking. I mean they just come into my head and what if it accidentally gets out of my head and I bring it into reality somehow. I mean most people are pretty happy to have a very strict and careful differentiation between the things they think and the things they do, right?

Somebody pulls out in front of us and we quickly imagine strangling the shoot out of them. Only to find out later as you pass them again in town, they go to your church and then you're smiling of course and thank goodness you were only thinking of strangling them.


I once had a thought of running away to Mexico with a friend of mine and we'd need to rob a bank or hold up a few grocery stores to make it happen maybe, but after that, beyond the border I thought of nothing but tequila on the beach and fajitas and squirting lines of lime juice onto canvases that became paintings of the continents that were going to be newly formed through the endeavors of my brushstrokes. See all the beautiful people dancing. See how they dance? Listen to your heart where the music is… And maybe I will write for you again soon.

Pray Without Ceasing

Going about our days in unending oneness with our God, with some degree of routine which directs our attention to the Divine Presence, can feel at times like a quiet bliss.

We breathe with God, as a friend of mine has suggested, "We let God breathe us" and what a freedom it can feel like. We feel the inflow and outflow of relatively balanced "energy" as one must feel while cross-country skiing, the fluidity of motion… Left gives to the right, gives to the left… God bestows and I receive, I "bestow " and God receives.

On we go … Happily shushing out our prayerful day. Right?

Of course not. Moments like these are special, aren't they? Again, like skiing in the forest, a few other things had to happen first like making the space in our schedules to put ourselves out of our houses and vehicles, to put on spiritual skis. Getting out and away from complex entanglements, the daily unsolved and unsolvable. We long to meet God's unflinching presence and we know in our guts that it usually is going to take something happening first, something I must first choose and then activate.

Although it might be nice, I'm not talking about getting 10 minutes alone to be away from the days noise to have "prayer time." Let's face it, that's not always going to be feasible and God doesn't need to hear anymore of your silly apologies, especially right up front at the beginning of your prayer, like you would apologize incessantly to a friend you'd been trying to meet with for a few days. Good friends always say – never a problem, I might expect such from God.

No, I want the shushing of the snow prayer in my heart space to become the very grounding of my being in every moment irrespective of the timing or circumstances.

Is this too high a calling? Too difficult to attain or too abstract to illustrate?  Let's see what we come up with.

Now it is evening the same day. I receive this image from a friend, unbidden. Not requested. Gifted with it. May I receive it fully, pray without ceasing, shush and shush and so on…