HUMAN PRESENCE IS AN ARTISTIC ENDEAVOR

To think of the Creator from any other perspective than artist, misses the essence of it all. When that knowing is lost, it becomes too easy to also forget that there is an artfulness to being human...made in the likeness of the Creator, the first artist. When the human falls out of the circle of belonging and forgets....the human can be found caught up in all kinds of destructive behavior and can find a myriad of ways to justify it in his/her own mind.

ETERNAL ECHO

The beauty of the wastefulness of Creation isn't waste. It's abundance...a visible sign of invisible grace. An ever present echo of the substance that sustains our lives....physically and spiritually. When we humans forget that and fall out of touch with it, our longing gets distorted. We then forget our place in it all and the result is we damage ourselves and others and Creation.

"You humans, so little in your own eyes. You truly are blind to your own place in Creation. Having chosen the ravaged path of independence, you don't even comprehend that you are dragging the entire Creation along with you." She shock her head and the wind sighed through the tree nearby. "So very sad, but it won't be this way forever." The Shack

"One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature -- inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last." ~~~ John Muir

SO NATURAL YET WHOLLY OTHER

"Wisdom is the art of living in rhythm with your soul, your life, and the divine."
~~~ Anam Cara

CHANGEABLE WIND

The wind was so strong this evening, all I could do to steady myself was lay down on my stomach as close to the ground as I could get. A stand of tall grasses that were next to me were doing the same thing under the force of the wind. Bending so as to not break.

While lying there to get out of some of the wind a poem came to mind. I've actually heard John O'Donohue read it before so it was in his voice I heard it. And that experience also got me to thinking about how the presence of those we love, who have already departed us are always around us, not only in memory but also in many other ways, and when we least expect it they can show up to encourage us and comfort us and inspire us even in their absence. John has even spoken of that:

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

That's from a blessing my three daughters read at the funeral of one we all love and miss very much. And I know those words have stuck with my daughters to this day and they often tell me of things that have happened, particularly seeing rainbows, that have made them feel like Mel was close to them. Mel was good at giving my daughters some wise challenging advice at times. Especially in regards to boys. I like to think those words of his to them pop into their minds often.

And now the poem:

THE PLEADING

All night long, and all through the white day,
The beat of the wind's bulk against the house,
Pausing only for a breath, and then, again,
The rise and wail of its keening, as if I
Could come out into it, and answer
Its unbearable grief with some sweet name,
From which it could make an antiphon
To calm down its demented legion
Of breezes, or failing that, could I find
And release a granite rock, to open
A duct in the mountain, for it to enter
And search the underworld for itself.

CONTROLLED AT THE SUPERFICIAL LEVEL

When one's perception of the surface stuff begins to change
And it begins to be seen for what it is,
The beauty back behind it all begins to come into focus.

This shift will serve you well from then on
When it comes to living in this space
Surrounded by the surface stuff.

SEEMLESS

It's about a peace worthy of and consistent with, our own immensity, the beauty we are surrounded by, and the one who dreamed us up. And it goes way beyond a promise about where we will spend the time that extends out beyond this life after we die. The most immediate part of it is.....How will we spend the time that we have here?

Late last night the word came in that the results of the test confirmed that I was not facing, at least at this time, a dance with cancer. I was alone so there is no one to confirm to you that there was no sigh of relief but instead just the hint of a smile and then a closing of my eyes to once again enter the world of sleep. This possibility of cancer arrived back towards the end of summer after I had undergone a standard physical. I am glad to be able to say that from that moment on there has not been a moment of worry. I came to understand several years ago that worry is a wastage of this amazing life we have been entrusted with. And it's not true that worry doesn't have the power to change anything. Worry has the power to change a lot. It changes our experience in the here and now, and not in a good way.

But I have also come to know that telling others to not worry is a wastage also. Not worrying is not an act of will. It's the fruit of trust. It's the ability to accept what is and to respond in a way that's worthy and consistent with the simple profound beauty it is of having been given this immense privilege of living this one short and unrepeatable human life.

All I can say is that a number of years ago fear began to be displaced from my life as a traveling companion. Does that mean I now live with zero encounters with fear? No it doesn't. I have this suspicion that as long as we live in these fragile human earth suits, fear might just pop up now and again. But I have also, first hand come to know, that if we have the courage to face our fears, even (especially) the worst of them, and if we can recapture the imagination to believe that it is possible to live a life that is defined by peace (real tangible unshakable peace) and not fear, it can radically change this human experience.

I've also come to know that the spirit works in ways that even goes beyond mysterious. (And I'm not talking about the healing of the body in this instance...I'm talking about the changing of how we experience pain, and difficulty, and change, and challenge, and ignorance, and darkness and ugliness and negativity and the like) I think it could be said that we who have been raised in Christian circles have even had the idea of God's mysterious ways malformed in us to where it has left us living in a way that keeps us working against the Spirit and actually rejecting the Spirit. I hear people say "the Spirit works in mysterious ways" all the time by rote, and then they go on living like they really don't believe it. The Spirit is committed to us and intent on setting us free....free even of the fear of death that is jerking people around in ways they aren't even aware of. And mysterious doesn't mean abracadabra kind of stuff. It usually means a slow steady unrelenting gentle working that is often going on without us even noticing it. But if our imaginations remain stumbling around in the shallows, unable to imagine that a life lived free of fear is even possible (even when we don't get delivered from the tough stuff)....we might just miss it.

I would love to live like a river flows
Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
~~~ John O Donohue

TENSION

"While beauty gladdens our hearts, it makes us lonely too for what cannot be. True beauty is woven through the heart of life and is ever engaged with forces of ignorance, darkness, ugliness and negativity; yet domination and power are not beauty's way. Beauty works from within these conflicts of forces and her brightening may or may not appear. Where beauty seems absent, she is often hidden and still at work in the slow industry of transformation. So much of beauty is not immediately apparent and indeed it could take a long time before it becomes visible. Often it takes a lot of struggle and committed attention and generosity, even sacrifice, in order to create beauty. The work of beauty is slow and patient; it is transformation through which the darkness of suffering eventually glimmers with the learned refinement of true radiance."
BEAUTY...The Invisible Embrace

WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW WE BELONG

How much time do you spend caught up in the natural healthy rhythm of the world creatures live in? You do realize that you are a creature don't you? Is your life efforts spent attending to that world? Or is your time spent more knuckled into the offerings of the out of sync rhythm that is often creating damage to the creature world we were given the task/privilege of watching over with great care?

"Outside there is great distance. When you walk out into the landscape the fields stretch away towards the horizon. At dawn, the light unveils the vast spread of nature. Gnarled stones hold nests of fossils from a time so distant we cannot even imagine it. At night, the stars reflect light from the infinite distance of the cosmos. When you experience this distance stretching away from the shore of your body, it can make you feel minuscule. Pascal said, "The eternal silence of those infinite spaces frightens me." There is a magnificent freedom in Nature; no frontier could ever frame her infinity. There is a natural wildness in the earth. You sense this particularly in wild places that have never been tamed by human domestication. There are places where the ocean praises the steady shore in a continual hymn of wave. There are fresh, cold streams pouring through mountain corners in a rhythm that never anticipates the gaze of human eye. Animals never interfere with the wildness of the earth. They attune themselves to the longing of the earth and move within it as if it were a home rhythm. Animals have no distance from the earth. They have no plan or program in relation to it. They live naturally in its landscapes, always present completely to where they are. There is an apt way in which the animal who always lives in the "now" of time can fit so perfectly into the "where" of landscape. The time and mind of the animal rest wherever it is. The poet Wendell Berry says, "I come into the peace of wild things... / ...For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." ~~~ Eternal Echoes