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… 

Gazing Prayer Practice

There is nothing more delicious than looking out at the world on purpose, with love. Appreciating vision, putting it before my minds eye, the capacity to see. Then turning it on, opening myself through my eyes I notice that I can notice what I see. That aspect, thus or such happening, this other feature. I then simply breathe and see. I gaze as an open witness to the beauty of the world and also to its ugliness. I gaze and feel and breathe and love.

TO LIFE…! (for Diane "Dino" D.)

 I ate Life today for breakfast. 

My wife's been hiding it away in a separate cupboard where we wouldn't normally put cereal. Did she really think I would steal it from her?

Of course I would. I just finished a bowl shaking my head that I'd ever been silly enough to forget how delicious it is. In fact, I may grab a second bowl later on.

Life is delicious, yes! And also… Yes, there is always an also… Always some sort of other next thing.

This one hurt. It made me stop.

Just before my 12:30 PM breakfast of cereal I was on the phone with a dear old friend whose mother had died just days earlier due to complications with something called frontal lobe dementia. She went quickly but not without much disorientation and painful behaviors outside of her control as the dementia distorted personality, gradually withering all semblance of meaningful relationship. The part of her mind that was in charge of choosing and thinking carefully destroyed itself, leaving my friends to sort out whether she was truly herself or not moment by moment. Their grief and ours is mixed with a sense of gratitude for the end of a dark episode and a resurrected return to who she is in all her fullness beyond the grave.

My friend and I were teenagers together and her mom was one of my first unofficial counselors. She loved by listening and by demonstrating a deep and genuine concern for how I was doing. I told my friend how much I needed her mom in my life at that time and that without her I am not quite sure what would have happened to me.  There were the stresses of being a teenager. Crushes, promises broken and made, competitions we never planned on, a lot of deep bonding around hopes and dreams among good friends and a little misbehaving; she was somehow ready to hear it all and never bat an eye. She fanned the flames of genuineness and courage in my young soul. 

Today my sense of loss sits right beside a rather boyant energy that simply wants to savor the joy of her life, and to let that joy accomplish whatever it will.

So many years ahead of each of us, Diane knew how rough and glorious life could be. She and her husband Ken adopted a whole bunch of us "creep-agers" and whoever spent any time with Kristy ended up spending time hanging out at their site in the park where many of us stayed for the summers. I always marveled at how much joy she took in introducing her parents, not that ours were in any way unspectacular, but she loved it. She knew the treasure they were and wanted all of us to come home to that kind of living and loving too, the kind she knew and wanted to share with us.

And isn't that how it is for all of us when we partake of something so rich and nourishing? It's not enough just to grab another bowl of it for ourselves. We long to hand it out and dish it up for anyone who comes along. We would invite the world, wouldn't we…?… each family member one by one, to come and sit down and hang out… to be seen and witnessed, to be heard for a while… Just as they are. Maybe we could all do a little better sharing Life, and particularly that sort which heals and supports and empowers those around us. Few of us possess the powerful reach of government officials, major networks or social media stars, but most of us do have the power to choose and reflect, to steer the mind in our hearts direction. May we set our true selves upon the life-giving and worthy course of loving as listeners, equals and friends.

Date of Birth

what will stay?

born fresh, a 

kite flies randy

all day long

in pure blue,

the deep woods

teem with life

while open waters

crave and flow,

new waves crash

and pull away.

Coffee with Kafka

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

~Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

I try to picture Franz, a mustache? A good Czech. Maybe I'll read that one.

The taste of the new Hawaiian Kona coffee is much more mild with milk then is the other double espresso. And not nearly as strong.

Great bands of clouds all day. Muggy. Stormy. But without rain in our front yard thus far. Just now I hear the high winds gusting.

I was telling the new person who is here now to care for me how I am reading a book about the art of wasting a day… [Paula Hofl ] It's a book about leisure, intentional savoring and enjoyment… Intentional care of the interior life… Some days I think to myself if I get any further into the inside of my interior I'm simply going to ooze out my ears and disappear.

Still I wonder. If there's no one watching the world happening than what is happening? The things we're doing? What about the rest of it? I long for a life beyond my lists.

I say "Franz! I've been looking at the world on purpose all of my life!" Very early on it started. You're going to have to wait – heard that about 500 times a day as a child and before you knew it I figured out how to do it and to enjoy it. It took until age 12 to find a neighbor kid as weird as I was and who could invite you into the fourth dimension of his third universe to captain a ship he created to modify another retrofitted version he had dreamt up six years earlier.

What if when people said, be patient for a minute, we said – Thank God! Back to life even for a moment simply as a being instead of an arrow pointed at something for the sake of something other than the pleasantness of being present to the present and what it brings when we finally cease our stirring.

I don't have less to do I have more to be thankful for because I try to notice because I love beauty and in its presence, especially outside in the great wild earthly lively, I feel completely alive – here's why and here's why and there's why and another example, and this one and that one… And such is the finest rhythm of any day that anyone could ever live – look… Slow down a minute and look… And listen and see there … it's at your feet.

BEING IN THE YARD

Chimes taught me

How to

Never sing the same

Song twice.