Faithfully Dangerous...

HUMAN PRESENCE IS AN ARTISTIC ENDEAVOR

2012-01-30T19:44:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-27T20:35:00.005-06:00

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

2012-01-24T16:52:00.003-06:00

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

CHANGEABLE WIND

2012-01-01T21:41:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-01T09:55:00.005-06:00

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

2011-12-31T12:40:00.004-06:00

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

2011-12-30T19:02:00.003-06:00

"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

2011-12-27T18:11:00.001-06:00

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

ARE WE PAYING ATTENTION?

2011-12-15T10:52:00.003-06:00

Spring is here.

No, not really. It was just that I awakened to a temperature of 56 degrees this morning and along with the dampness in the air...it really feels like spring. But the garden tells a much different story. Today feels really good though with it's ever so present echo of spring.

We are constantly surrounded by important echoes that are here to assist us. Some can be heard through things that we see, others through things we feel....and others through things we've just learned so deeply that forgetting them becomes impossible even when we can't see or feel what is always present for us to hold onto. Or that is always holding onto us.

And it is too often that people miss the echo. Maybe it's because they are looking for or expecting the wrong thing.

Lunar Eclipse

2011-12-10T12:41:00.001-06:00

WHAT'S MORE CRAZY?

2011-12-05T08:55:00.004-06:00

Today when you dare talk like this you will often be looked at like you are nuts. "What are you talking about? Finding shelter in the order of the cosmos" :-/

You're probably even more likely to run into resistance and correction to such a notion if you mention such an idea in religious circles because to the religious mind of modern times it just has a sound of New Agyness to it.

But why does it sound more far fetched than crazy ideas like looking for shelter in: money, economic ideologies, power, government, control, militarism, insurance policies, consumerism etc etc etc?

What's been more consistent and stood the test of time?

If you choose to spend any time considering that seriously.....then ask yourself what sounds more silly?

THE CRY OF OUR TIMES: TO AWAKEN BEAUTY

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty. When the Celtic Imagination searched for the structures of shelter and meaning, it raised its eyes to the mountains and heavens and put its trust in the faithful patterns of the sun, stars, moon and seasons. Long before them the Greeks to had raised their eye beyond the horizon and recognized the heavenly patterns of the cosmos. There they glimpsed a vision of order which was to become the heart of their understanding of beauty. All the frailty and uncertainty was seen to be ultimately sheltered by the eternal beauty which presides over all the journeys between awakening and surrender, the visible and invisible, the light and the darkness. ~~~ BEAUTY...The Invisible Embrace

FLEETING MOMENTS

2011-11-20T08:27:00.003-06:00

How might your life be different if it were lived fully caught up inside the fleeting moments of wonder that you are surrounded by everyday? Have you ever asked yourself....why is it so much more common for humans to instead choose to fill there time with mental and physical activities that leave them more demanding, competitive, cranky, greedy, needy, exhausted, angry, depressed, anxious....etc etc etc?

It's a choice we all make in every passing fleeting moment. And the choice makes a huge difference in regards to what we experience and what those around us experience while they are with us.

NATURE'S ELEGANCE

2011-11-18T15:06:00.005-06:00

IT'S ALL SUPPOSE TO BE INTERTWINED

2011-11-17T10:20:00.004-06:00

As much as I now enjoy the maturity of this garden and the rest it now offers me, that native longing to continue to create never rests. We are natural born creators/artists...all of us. Many when they see this garden, the last thing that comes to mind is rest. All they see is hard intensive work. That though is due to the eyes they are stuck seeing things through. It's one of those bad fruits of the fragmented lives (way of being) we all inherited. Our lives have become so chopped up. We have our "work lives" and then we have our "non work lives". And most seem to despise the work part and often really don't enjoy the non work part either because most seem to despise how quickly it passes which only means they have to return to the work part. This dualistic approach to life leaves many things that belong together cut off from one another. And it goes well beyond how most people view life "the work part and the part that's not work" example. And if we remain there...we are left suffering unnecessarily.

Even though I no longer suffer internally or externally, like I used to, under the dualistic approach to a life of living here and working over there, I actually have a desire to bring my life back together in an even more tangible physical way by combining them in one locale. There's something about the idea that just feels healthier...more in rhythm. Often when I express this to people many look at me as if I am nuts. They desire to keep the two seperate. I assume that is due to the reality that they see work as more of an intrusion on their life than as an integral part of their whole being. Maybe it's just me? The more I rid myself of the mistaken notions of conventional wisdom, I find myself seeing more clearly the oppressiveness and the soul diminishing nature of what the out of sync thinking has created. Like I said, we all are natural born creators. We all are creating whether we are aware of it or not. Unfortuately, much of what's being created is the oppressive soul diminishing kind of stuff.

A few years ago when I stepped back from it all during a distrubing season that got my attention...I didn't like what I began to see in regards to what I had created while participating in that dualistic life. Even this garden took on a whole new feeling. The change began to transform the whole experience of life. It feels much less fragmented and scattered today. Gently intertwined and brought back home together is way better than the entanglements of the scrattered outwardly and driven nature of dualism.

This morning I was feeling the familiar creative stirring that I often feel inside me. And as I walked through the garden my memory took me back to earlier days lived in this space. And I certainly do enjoy what this garden and my life have matured into.....but I am always thinking about doing it again. Well, at least the creating a new garden part. There is just something so healing and restorative about participating with and creating beauty. Every human needs to experience it. Creating beauty/adding beauty to this world is what an integrated life is all about. Begin to take back your life from all the places it has been scattered out to and then just watch as your life begins to turn into a beautiful garden bursting into life.

BEAUTIFUL MONK'S HOOD

2011-11-04T14:14:00.006-05:00

In medieval times soldiers would take this plant, roots and all, and crush it to extract the liquid from the plant and would then dip the tips of their arrows in it. Monk's Hood is highly toxic and once that arrow would pierce the skin of an enemy soldier, death would be almost certain...and agonizing.

And when humans are acting more human....this plant truly is one of the medicinal wonders of the botanical world.

THE UNSEEN SECRET LIFE

2011-11-02T07:46:00.003-05:00

With every challenging twist and turn in the space of your life up to this point, there has been a secret life traveling along with you. This secret life's intention is transfiguration, beautification and freedom.

If you will attend to it, it will awaken you. It sets in motion a transition from a life of increasing frustration, attempts to control and making a mess of things...to a life defined by an unwinding of your troubled inner world that created the twists in the first place.

A cool part of this experience is that somehow the artist that orchestrates all of this, in collaboration with us and our soul, leaves in place the outline of all of our experiences in our visual appearance....as a beautiful reminder that somehow all along, even during all the rough spots, this work was in process.

SMILE, BREATHE, AND GO SLOWLY

2011-10-29T18:35:00.002-05:00

For those who just blow through the garden (or through life)...you will miss the artistry like this that is all around you. And it's not just present in gardens. It could be any number of countless things wherever you might find yourself.

RETRIEVING OUR WILD ELEGANCE

2011-10-29T08:45:00.007-05:00

Life is meant to be such an adventure. But most humans get so knuckled into their domesticated lives in the machine world and completely forget that they are creatures in a larger creature world. They then fall out of touch with the thrill of just being here and being a part of it in the role they are meant to live in. We are then left believing and then living like, humans and the things we create, are the only things of real value...the only things that really matter, and the only value any other thing has is simply connected to how it is useful for the self centered trip we have become stuck on. The term is called: anthropocentric. This misdirection then forms the mistaken notion in the mind that everything besides the human is without soul. This alternate story humanity then lives in creates a destructive "cosmological elitism" and it causes us to miss the profound reality of Creation that we are a part of. Once our reference point get skewed we are then fully exiled into an existence that is completely out of rhythm. No wonder our thinking then becomes completely skewed in regard to the one who created it all, and what that one is up to in regard to it all, and its unfolding.

I NEVER TIRE OF IT

2011-10-28T17:25:00.015-05:00

Late afternoon sun back lighting extraordinary foliage is magical. It can even transform less than extraordinary foliage. I could spend the rest of my days doing this and it would never lose the WOW factor.

IT'S TO PLAY A LARGER ROLE

2011-10-26T19:22:00.002-05:00

It's not just an evening sky with some sitting sun painted clouds passing through it. It's meant to play a much larger role in our lives. Most just haven't recognized it yet.

"Rilke said, in turbulent times you should endeavor to stay close to one simple thing in nature. And I think everyone, no matter where they live, should have some place in nature that they go to.

One of the beauties of landscape like is the sense of stillness and silence within it. When you come into a space like that you are actually entering into the prayer of landscape. All prayer and contemplation is about trying to come into presence. And I believe that landscape never leaves it.

When you are truly present in landscape you know afterwards that something has shifted within you or some burden has fallen."~~~John O'Donohue

DON'T DESPISE THE GIFT

2011-10-22T15:02:00.003-05:00

It's a shame to play favoritism with the different seasons. When you do....you might just miss the beauty of the ones that you rail against, and in turn miss what they desire to bring to you.

THE COURAGE TO CROSS

2011-10-08T12:38:00.007-05:00

Many remain fearful of the shadowed nature of new spaces. Even once we begin to recognize the voice of freedom inviting us to come, it can be unnerving to the sense of integration we have begun to appreciate about the present space we have settled into. But life at its most healthy is a pilgrimage. Even when the last space created much beauty in our lives, growth beckons us on and requires us to let go and to cross over new thresholds.

"At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not simply a boundary; it's a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive; confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross." ~~~ John O'Donohue

Human life is made up of seasons just like nature. The human kind seem to be just a little less predicable. And nature seems to make these transitions a little more gracefully than do we humans. That's probably just due to the simple reality that nature exists in silence. We humans aren't that silent. But if you pay close attention to nature, you will notice that the move from one season to the next is not made without the presence of some tension. The crossing over is never easy. But it still remains the very thing that opens up the possibility of new growth. When the time to cross has come...let us hope to find the courage, and to know intimately the trust required, to cross

A NEW WAY OF HEARING AND SEEING

2011-09-24T16:36:00.003-05:00

As Rilke wisely observed, we are not and cannot be at home in our interpreted world. The creatio-ex-nihilo metaphor invites us to leave behind these worn and weary ways of seeing, and to enter into the second innocence of a fresh encounter with creation. The veils of familiarity fall away. Our tired eyes are healed and washed in the well of all origin. Creation returns to the dignity and glory of its pure otherness. ~~~ The Four Elements

MENTAL PRISONS

2011-09-23T20:29:00.002-05:00

A mental prison can be as bad as a physical prison. When you are trapped in a mental prison, the crippling idea or feeling robs you of all joy and freedom. You can see or feel little else. Your mind becomes a small room without light. You turn the wild mystery of your own mind into a shabby, negative little room; the windows are blocked, and there is no door. The mental prison is devastatingly lonely. It is a sorrowful place, because ultimately it is you who locks yourself up within a demented idea or feeling. ~~~ Eternal Echoes

And from John's book BEAUTY The Invisible Embrace

We turn the mystery and strangeness of this world into our private territory. We make a home out of the world. Life becomes predictable and we function within our frames: route to work, colleagues, friends, patterns of thinking and feeling, the faces of the family, etc. Without sensing it, we become lost inside the automatic traffic of functioning. It is only when something goes wrong that we are hauled back to the edge. Quite abruptly the familiar map has melted and territories that were sure ground an hour ago don't exist anymore.

And later on in BEAUTY...this.....

The mystery and magic of being an individual is to live life in response to the deep call within, the call to become who we were dreamed to be. In primal terms, it is the call to discover and realize the divine blueprint in the soul. This is where true freedom awaits us. Freedom is not simply the absence of necessity; it is the poise of soul at one with a life which honors and engages its creative possibility. There is no other presence in creation that has such potential for freedom as the human self. Yet like seagulls in the unsheltered cold and ferocity of the ocean, we often nest out on the cold ledges of famished extremity and neglect to remember the meadows where the flowers await. Naturally, there will be times when truth of heart demands that we live on the ledges. To remain there, however, resembles an addiction to misery.

TO DETOX AND REBOOT

2011-09-22T08:00:00.003-05:00

If we as individuals aren't awakened to the destructive way of thinking (Royal Consciousness) that hooks us and perpetuates the unjust society it has created, which is the direct result of people growing up in homes without love and grace and freedom and a sense of real belonging, nothing will ever change. And if we adults can't create that kind of environment in our homes because our thinking is still trapped in the destructive consciousness of the unjust society, our children will be left with a mountain of destructive thinking to overcome and will struggle as they move into their life as adults creating their own path of damage that will continue to harm them and others.

These are difficult thing to untangle. But it's work we must engage in if change is to happen in us as individuals. And if people want to think that it shouldn't be difficult work but should be more of an abracadabra kind of thing, they more than likely will never begin the journey towards freedom and health and will just continue to perpetuate their own destructive behavior and then try to ignore the reality that they aren't an island. Their damage is effecting others.

We live in troubled times as every generation has. And we need to come to understand that there are consequences to the choices we make and our choices are born out of the way we think.

I often wonder while making photo posts, if people are left trying to figure out the connection between the words and the photo :-) Maybe it's just me? But it makes perfect sense to me. If we want our thinking to be awakened and renewed we need to change our environment. If we continue to spend our time in the environments controlled by the status quo (it's important to figure out what that is) and feeding on the curriculum constantly offered there (another thing important to identify), we shouldn't be surprised if we stay stuck year after year in the same unhealthy place.

Nature is wild and free and doesn't march to the beat of the drum of the destructive Royal Consciousness. It just makes sense to begin to move into that space more and more so as to allow the mind to detox and to reboot back to health.

IT WAS A MOMENT

2011-09-20T06:41:00.004-05:00

I wasn't suppose to be in here.

I mentioned in a previous comment while at the Botanical Garden that I had just experienced a first. I was actually standing in it before I even realized I had gone down a pathway that is closed to the public. I was aware that I had never gone down this path but was thinking that a new pathway had been created since my last visit. I hadn't even noticed the gate (it was open) as I walked along the path paying more attention to the beautifully sculpted pines. It wasn't until I came into the area in the photo above that I realized I was standing in the garden of the Sacred Tea House Island that was built for the Emperor of Japan and is closed to the public. Is it okay for me to say that it was a special moment for me? :-) And not because of this places connection to an Emperor. I've just wanted to see this garden space for many years.

Another interesting part of this trip to the garden today was that once I arrived in the parking lot there I turned my camera on to check the settings and in red lettering the words NO MEMORY CARD appeared. So I left the camera in my truck. I was okay with that reality but am glad I had something to capture this photo with. I had my iPhone.

The girls are going to freak out when they find out. And will probably say something like...."Why do things like this happen to you all the time?" :-)

The photo below gives you an indication of how much my daughters want to get over to that island. They are acting like they are storming the front gate....I quietly entered through the back gate ;-)

THE ALPENGLOW OF GRACE

2011-09-19T08:09:00.001-05:00

Grace and freedom are messy and can often feel dark to minds formerly shaped by law. But when you get to see glimpses of her beauty, there is really no human experience that compares. This morning it brings to mind those glorious moments, if you have ever experienced it, when a mountain top is illuminated by the rising or sitting sun while darkness still envelops the surrounding area. There will be more moments of darkness to walk through. But grace has found her place here in our lives and whatever may come....I know everything is perfectly in process.

NEEDING TO CROSS OVER

2011-09-18T18:48:00.003-05:00

There is so much struggle going on around me in lives of people I know. I really can't remember a time when more people seem to be on the edge. And they seem like serious edges. I find my mind and heart these days so often caught up in a longing for these people. It's a longing to see them cross the thresholds that lay between the familiar way of being that seems to be coming to an end and a completely new way of being that awaits on the other side of the threshold. Crossing over is not an easy task. It's down right scary and difficult. A change in directions is necessary. And often times the crossing requires personal change of a radical nature.

While on a long walk in the rain today with Bailey, this reality of these thresholds and the people I mentioned above occupied my thoughts. John O'Donohue speaks more clearly and eloquently about these things than anyone I've read, so many of his thoughts were running through me also while walking. When we arrived back home I googled his name along with the word Threshold to see what I might find. I found these words below and they happen to be from someone other than John. They were contained within a tribute to John written for him after his untimely death. They express so poignantly the difficulty that life so often can present and the hope that rests in us finding ourselves at a threshold and finding what we need in that moment to cross over, as John says, worthily.

When the light around you lessens,
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as stone inside.

When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,

When one voice commands
Your whole heart
And it is raven dark,

Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world,

Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light

Know that you are not alone
And that this darkness has purpose
Gradually it will school your eyes
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden with this night-corner

Invoke the learning of every suffering
You have suffered

Close your eyes
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear

A new confidence will come alive
To urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination
Will learn to engage difficulty
At its most rewarding threshold.

~~~ George Mackay Brown

THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY

2011-09-10T21:56:00.002-05:00

You could make a trip to the moon but it wouldn't surpass the excitement and significance of the journey within. Coming home to yourself is far more important to your life than any trip you might desire to take to some far off exotic place.

THE COLORS OF THE DAY

2011-09-09T17:12:00.001-05:00

Sunset is like a gentle collecting, harvesting of the colors that made up the day that was well lived by the natural world. That very rhythm that is in nature is within us. The closer we move towards it, and away from the frenetic pace of the world humans have created, the more we will find ourselves living well within the days we are privileged to take part in.

WHAT A SPACE

2011-09-05T07:50:00.002-05:00

It brings to mind the Japanese Maple grove I want to plant and the yearly festival I would have there and invite you all to.

You can read about the festival here.

WASTAGE OF THE POTENTIAL

2011-09-03T07:03:00.002-05:00

It's such a wastage of the enormous human potential to live beautiful lives. And while in that land we forget who we are and just spend our time wandering around from one excitement to the next, or we live overwhelmed, or a combination of both. And all along, what we are missing travels along with us, but we must learn to still ourselves and listen in order to hear it.

IT'S JUST THE COLOR HAS BEEN OBSCURED

2011-09-01T08:00:00.007-05:00

If your language has become impoverished and course, and is wrapped in a cold blanket of negativity, it's more than likely an indication that your eyes have lost touch with beauty and love and mystery. And then it's just a matter of time before your soul takes the hit. Now the color of life in the visible realm and invisible realm seems to have drifted away. The good news is that it hasn't. It's still there just awaiting your return.

A BLESSING FOR THE DAY

2011-08-30T06:56:00.002-05:00

May this new day find you
Caught up with her
Adding your own splashes
Of unique unexpected beauty

AWAKENING WONDER

2011-08-25T08:28:00.000-05:00

Through a chink too wide...

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins

Advent ~ Patrick Kavanagh

TO WANT TO CHANGE

2011-08-21T08:06:00.002-05:00

Why is it that we will for years go on living in small and shabby, bleak and barren, anxious and haunted spaces, when right before us, beauty and peace and rest and freedom await our arrival and invite us to come in? But beauty and peace and rest and freedom will not barge in on us.

This is the very longing we all have within us and yet we choose to remain in tormented places. Evidence of the torment is always present and is always set to boil over, even during those times when we are holding it together and things seem to be going well and we seem to be having fun on the surface. What does it take for a newness in our experience to become a reality? What does it take for us to even come to a place of admitting we need to change? How much of it is up to us? How much of it is out of our control and has to come from somewhere else? I do not know. But I do know this....the part that is up to us is up to us. We have to want a change bad enough for a change to happen. And yet it is good to know that when we want it bad enough and we make the decision to change directions in a tangible way, beauty and peace and rest and freedom come along side us and makes what seemed impossible, possible.

RHYTHM OF THE SOUL

2011-08-15T07:40:00.002-05:00

During the time of quiet stillness that begins each new day, well before anything else begins to move in this neighborhood, the voice of the natural rhythm of my soul, the longing that arrived here with me when I came to this place, is a tangible presence in all my senses. Well before the first thoughts and demands of the realm of necessity begin to compete for my attention...it is there in clarity. And even though as the day moves along and the activities and clamor seek to drown that voice out....the experience of the early morning hours reassure me that the only way that can happen is if I allow it.

THE WISEST BALM

2011-08-13T21:59:00.013-05:00

The wisest balm is that which is freely given. It's that way because the Creator is no respector of person....the love is excessive and free...and it must remain free so it's accessible equally to all...it's for whomever will pull themselves away and come to drink.

REST AND PEACE

2011-08-12T20:49:00.002-05:00

Once you find the garden
in the midst of the desert

and taste it.......
Nothing else will ever satisfy you.

BELONGING

2011-08-08T11:02:00.001-05:00

This was very good stuff to read. And very fitting stuff with the season that was right around the corner once I had finished reading it for the first time.

BELONGING: THE WISDOM OF RHYTHM

"To be human is to belong. Belonging is a circle that embraces everything; if we reject it, we damage our nature. The word "belonging" holds the two fundamental aspects of life: Being and Longing, the longing of our Being and the being of our Longing. Belonging is deep; only in a superficial sense does it refer to our external attachments to people, places, and things. It is the living and passionate presence of the soul. Belonging is the heart of warmth of intimacy. When we deny it, we grow cold and empty. Our life's journey is the task of refining our belonging so that it may become more true, loving, and free. We do not have to force belonging. The longing within us always draws us towards belonging and again new forms of belonging when we have outgrown the old ones. Postmodern culture tends to define identity in terms of ownership: possessions, status, and qualities. Yet the crucial essence of who you are is not owned by you. The most intimate belonging is Self-Belonging. Yet your self is not something you could ever own; it is rather the total gift that every moment of your life endeavors to receive with honor. True belonging is gracious receptivity. This is the appropriate art of belonging in friendship: friends do not belong to each other, but rather with each other. This 'with' reaches to the very depth of their twinned souls." ~~~ Eternal Echoes

THE FEAST OF DELIGHTS

2011-08-04T21:03:00.002-05:00

This night I couldn't help but think of the immensity of what we have and how we push it aside and reduce it in favor of the confining pre-rigged gig this world system hands us. Humans were afraid of the wild immensity and the security offered them there and instead chose to build the city and do it their way. It's insanity. It always has been.

"The thing that saddens me about humans, is how in the midst of abundance they force themselves to live like paupers, with all the misery of not being able to inherit or receive the feast of delights that have been offered." John O'Donohue...Love Is The Only Antidote To Fear

Paupers when it comes to the things of value...the things that matter.

TUG OF WAR

2011-07-29T23:26:00.004-05:00

Tonight while out under the end of the day sky, alone, there was a bit of a tug of war in play. It's been a day that could be described as the full spectrum of human experience. Mel was doing better this morning then his body went septic and had a turn for the worse, then the kidney dialysis began to work and he began to do better again later in the day. This is going to be a rough go for him and Theresa and Tyson. I spent several different moments on the phone with our daughters who were having their melt-downs while they were in Springfield caring for Mel and Theresa's son and trying to pack the things he needed so they could bring him back here to stay with us. And Julie called a few times for encouragement as she is still there at the hospital in Indiana in the heat of the fluid stressful situation and having to begin to face a long drive alone tomorrow to come back home for work tomorrow night on very little sleep. While sitting out there, all of things things were fresh in my mind.

It was a good idea to head to the hilltop this evening.

I often wonder how many people can relate to the feelings I have while out in the landscape under the cosmos? It really is all at the same time, both freaky and magnificent. The outside natural world has been completely fused with the inner presence of belonging, the kingdom of heaven/the eternal, inside me. As the sun made her decent towards the horizon, her light sent beams reaching through the clouds both into the heavens and down to earth and created a feeling of there being nowhere any of us can go that somehow places us outside the embrace...the nearness of the Divine Presence. I guess in a sense that somewhat answers my question above. Most people seem to struggle when it comes to knowing they are being constantly embraced and that God is near them at all times. As for myself, I sense it everywhere, especially when I am out where the natural world is visible. It's something that should be a constant reminder of the Creator's care for us and the wasteful extravagance of it all. WE ARE LOVED.

So those two competing realities were what created the tug of war this evening. We can't escape either one of them no matter how hard we might try. We don't get out of this world without having to tangle with both.

With that being true, here's my encouragement. I know most of you are already struggling with the chaos in varying forms that is this world of uncertainty. I know that. I see it all the time. I'm less certain though at this time of how serious the wrestling is with the Divine. No one can do this for us other than ourselves. Unfortunately many put that wrestling off towards the end of their lives or until some devastating storm comes bearing down of them and strips them of their illusions of control. Why do we avoid it for so long? I avoided it for all those years in religion. Others avoid it in other ways. When all the while, it's this wrestling with the Divine that can calm the storm created by this world of uncertainty. We are already caught up in that struggle unwisely thinking we can gain control over it when we can't. It just makes good sense to at least explore the invisible realm and to look deep inside ourselves towards our inner life to see what kind of calm is waiting to be awakened there. The trustworthiness of the elements and the cosmos can help us with that.

While out this evening parts of this video clip kept coming to mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtEL7u1BnTQ

REVERENCE

2011-07-28T09:20:00.003-05:00

"As individuals, we are in need of retrieving the necessary things we have lost. There is a reason we feel burdened, and frustrated, and conflicted, and in conflict with others (and ourselves) regularly. Have we even lost our ability to imagine what life might be like among a people who live with a reverence of the one who dreamed this all up and sent us here and that we could really live with a reverence for all things created out of that dream?

The way we spend our days makes a difference. The things we think on that then give birth to what we do makes a difference. To awaken to what we have become and to have the courage to be honest with ourselves and the others around us about it makes a difference. It's the beginning of beautiful changes being set in motion.

"Keep close to Nature's heart...and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." John Muir

"In order to become attentive to beauty we need to rediscover the art of reverence. Our world seems to have lost all sense of reverence. We seldom even use the word anymore. The notion of reverence is full of riches that we now need desperately. Put simply, it is appropriate that a human being should dwell on this earth with reverence.

Ultimately reverence is respect before mystery but it is more than an attitude of mind. Reverence is also physical. A dignified attention of body showing that sacred is already here.

Our time is hungry in spirit. In some unnoticed way we have managed to inflict surgery on ourselves. We have separated soul from experience and become utterly taken up with the outside world and allowed the interior life to shrink. Like a stream that disappears under ground there remains on the surface only the slightest trickle. When we devote no time to the inner life we lose the habit of soul. We become accustomed to keeping things at surface level. The deeper questions about who we are and what we are here for visit us less and less. If we allow time for soul we will come to sense its dark and luminous depth. And if we fail to acquaint ourselves with soul we will remain strangers in our own lives." BEAUTY...The Invisible Embrace

"The more mature person is not the one who has all the questions settled. The more mature person is the person who enters ever more deeply, ever more farther and farther and farther into the mystery and into the wonder.

If life is not lived at this level, it is lived at a superficial level. And whoever has the power to control your superficial level will rule over you." The Human Experience

UNABLE TO REALLY LIVE

2011-07-25T09:23:00.005-05:00

When we live unaware of the circle of belonging, we will spend our days seeking to quell our longing through activities and acquiring things and looking for connections with people that can never quiet the insecurities that are driving us. It's a life comparable to a bird whose wings have been clipped and can no longer fly.

THE NEGLECTED INNER LIFE OF MODERN CULTURE

2011-07-24T14:22:00.009-05:00

We've caused great damage to ourselves and others, and to the world, as we have severely neglected the inner life. Modern culture has left most people addicted to the external and haunted by a kind of belonging that can never care for the heart nor the soul. It's a way of being that actually causes a crust to form to where after awhile people fall completely out of rhythm with who they are and oblivious of the immensity that dwells inside them and inside the others around them and inside all created things. Living in abusive exploitative ways of others becomes the norm and people end up thinking it's normal. When this happens, humans are then just left wandering around, unable to sense the very wonder and beauty that is necessary for this life to make any sense and to carry any real meaning. When marooned in such a barren wasteland it becomes impossible to maintain any sense of graciousness and gentleness. It leaves people full of such devastating frustration that leads to a self absorption/self-preservation and produces a pain that can't help but go shooting out in all directions.

What will it take for transforming beauty to come back into focus? Do many even have any inkling as to what real beauty is anymore? Has it been so marginalized now in our fast paced modern culture to where most minds find the nature of real beauty too boring? Has the quick titillating surface hit, and the corresponding response it seeks, that is produced by a perversion of beauty that dominates our culture and becomes so ingrained in the psyche, left people stuck in the equivalent of a drug induced stupor? It certainly seems this is the situation many have settled for. Beautiful people lost in the false belonging that is constantly sold to them as the real deal.

Until we as individuals make the personal choice to step out of the misdirection, nothing will change. We'll just go on and on feeling frustrated and empty and eventually hopeless and blaming everything external for our problems, when it was ourselves that made the choice to focus on the external, thinking that arranging it all in a way that we thought would make us happy, would make us happy. This script has always failed. It has never made people happy nor produced peace in one's life.

One thing I have come to believe is that beauty has never left us. We left beauty by running off from where life is found and settled for something that promises to us something it can never deliver. And in that space we lost touch with our native ability to recognize beauty. Each of us ourselves are the only ones that can change this situation for our self. Until we return to a way of being that nourishes our inner life we will remain confused about beauty and blind and will live like we are paupers, when in reality, we are surrounded by astonishing abundance. It is the eye graced by an awakened inner life that can pick up the Beautiful everywhere and then sustain it in a way to where beauty and peace and joy and rest become constant traveling companions.

Your life longs to be freed
From the controls of the world
And it's conditioning.

And only you have the power, the key,
That can open the door
To let your caged life go free.

WHAT AN EXPERIENCE

2011-07-18T11:55:00.013-05:00

Nobody puts on a more meaningful show wrapped in a musical and visual spectacle then U2. Especially when they take it into stadiums.

SET THE IMAGINATION FREE

2011-07-16T08:00:00.011-05:00

The Beauty of Nature can help.

click on the photos to enlarge

‎
‎"And if you can enter into the dream that brought you here and awaken its beauty in you, then the beauty will gradually awaken all around you." ~~~John O'Donohue

It seems we need beauty as much as we need love. Love is beauty...beauty is at the heart of love. They are intertwined . It's the environment we long for because it's the environment we are meant for.

We are all artist creating as we move from moment to moment. Some of those creations reflect the dream that brought us here and cause the beauty to awaken around us....and some of them don't.

DO WE LIVE LIKE WE CARE?

2011-07-15T12:42:00.002-05:00

"Religion, as it has been openly practiced in this part of the world, has encouraged people to believe that the world is of no importance, and that their only obligation in it is to submit to certain churchly formulas in order to get to Heaven. And so the people who might have been expected to care most selflessly for the world have had their minds turned elsewhere — to a pursuit of “salvation” that was really only another form of gluttony and self-love, the desire to perpetuate their lives beyond the life of the world. The Heaven-bent have abused the earth thoughtlessly, by inattention, and their negligence has permitted and encouraged others to abuse it deliberately. Once the Creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the religious institutions. This split in public values produced or was accompanied by, as it was bound to be, an equally artificial and ugly division in people’s lives, so that a man, while pursuing Heaven with the sublime appetite he thought of as his soul, could turn his heart against his neighbors and his hands against the world."

Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace

THE GIFT

2011-06-30T08:08:00.003-05:00

I don't know how this transformation stuff happens....other than moments of revelation/epiphany/awakening. I don't know how much of what we read or hear others say plays into that. I know in my own life the most transforming moment came during a phone conversation with a friend. He didn't even say anything all that profound or deep. It was just a moment when the curtain was pulled back and a gift arrived that enabled me to see more clearly my own personal falsity and it set in motion the changing of everything.

But I certainly do appreciate good writing that can describe these moments in ways that confirm what has happened. And I appreciate good conversation with people who are present and care. If we find ourselves stuck in dead barren places, can reading such things and having such conversations help move us along towards the day when the blockage is released that releases us? I don't know? Today looking back over my life there are things that have just in the past few years become reality that I now remember being shared with me over 20 years ago. Things that back then made sense in my head at the time but the reality of their tangible presence in my life would wait years before becoming real to me. Did the hearing of it way back then play a part? Again I don't know. I've come to believe the not knowing is just an important part of it all. Mystery is good. Moments of revelation/epiphany/awakening are gift, and those moments rarely ever happen in the kind of places we have been led to believe they happen, and they have a way of just leaving you grateful for their arrival and very aware of the reality that it all had nothing to do with your doing.

"The beauty of the gift is the secret way it awakens us to growth. Without alerting our anxiety or forcing confrontation, the gift has placed us on the path of change almost before we realize it. And much of the change in our lives happen through struggle and pain. We are confronted with an unattractive direction that we have to take. For weeks or months we have to travel through limbo; the comfort and security of our familiar belonging lies far behind us. Where we will belong next has not yet become clear. The days become a struggle of endurance. Yet when the light and the ease return, we recognize the change that has been achieved. The gift bequeaths change in a completely different way. Quickly it undoes the knots of false netting that had us entangled and before we have time to realize what has happened, we find ourselves released into a new fluency. Like a parent to the soul, the gift carries us carefully over torn ground until our feet stand free in a serene place where we can recognize that we have been blessed." ~~~ John O'Donohue

WALKING WITH OUR KIDS AND OTHERS

2011-06-26T08:49:00.003-05:00

Helping others along the way while at the same time not intruding on their freedom is a challenging activity for us humans. But it can be done. And it takes a lot of patience and mindful presence from the one who is walking alongside another with the hope of them finding the freedom that resides inside them and longs to be awakened to and lived from. It's the thing all humans really long for. We just spend a lot of days confused about what it is and where it is found. This observation from Jacques Ellul has become one of those guides to help me in this task of engaging with others: "In order to live, we need truth to be expressed by the most fragile agent, so that the listener remains free."

There is not anyone I engage with that freedom is not what I am thinking about. My freedom and theirs. And there is no engagement in my life with others at this time that is more important to me then my relationships with these three beautiful young ladies I have the privilege of calling daughters. But they are my daughters, not my property to own and control. I must always remember to respect and honor them and the freedom their creator gives to them, as he does me also, every moment of everyday. Which brings me to another observation from Mr. Ellul that has traveled with me everyday now since I first read it: "The biblical God lets us make our own history, and goes with us on the more or less unheard-of adventures we concoct."

Aren't we all to some degree caught up in concocting more or less unheard-of adventures? Aren't we all in need of a most fragile (yet wise and free and alive) traveling companion? And we don't need any more functionaries of the law.

TOO SMALL FOR YOUR IMMENSITY

2011-06-16T07:44:00.003-05:00

With all due respect, humans weren't created for tight enclosed spaces and the kind of work and activities that cages the mind and numbs the natural primal senses. They weren't created for conflict and one upmanship and a self absorbed existence all brought about by grabbing for things they never were in need of which led to a way of being that is too small for the immensity they were sent here with. And one thing remains the way it's always been....it's up to each human being to choose how they are going to live out their time in a garden where all they are in need of is freely offered. The kind of things of which there is no shortage.

I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE THIS SPACE

2011-06-14T08:43:00.007-05:00

It's the kind of day that pulls me in and makes me want to abide in silence in the midst of it all. Rolling gentle thunder, a passing rain showers, or any of the other things of nature and the larger cosmos, if you can enter into it, have a way of making you feel small, and puts things into perspective, and at the same time leaves you feeling so alive. And grateful to be alive.

But I still live in the realm of necessity and necessity calls. And that's more than okay also. There is a way of being, of learning to abide that makes the realm of necessity feel much more like gift also, something to also give thanks for. It's an indication that you are still alive and if you have the health to do it...you are so blessed.

So, I will be leaving this space behind shortly but will return later on today. This place has a way of recharging me and washing off the residue of the world of necessity, that for the most part, is so out of sync with the natural rhythm we were meant for. A natural rhythm we can once again be set free to live within. A rhythm that will travel with us as we enter into the space where most of life happens...the out of sync flowing tide that will press in on us and knock us out of stride if we allow it to by allowing it to seduce us with what it is offering.

PERCEPTION, PERSPECTIVE AND GUT CHECKS

2011-06-08T18:45:00.003-05:00

It's got to be one of the most difficult tasks, or at least it feels that way to me at this stage as I try to walk alongside my three daughters as they grow into being adults....to help them or anyone for that matter to understand that the way they perceive things determines what they see which in turn determines how they will be. Life is a path fraught with much danger and we add more to it than is necessary as we hold onto the kind of desires birthed out of false emotions that are birthed out of false perception and always leads us into false belonging.

I guess it's natural to want to save others from painful mistakes and the difficulties they produce. And it's easy to stand over here looking in on someone else's life and think we see it clearer which must mean we know what's going down. But I've learned enough by this point in my life to know my sight isn't always as clear from moment to moment as I want to think it is and that the disturbance created by the difficulties we create for ourselves often create the moments of greatest change and liberation/awakening in our lives. And even with that said, the desire to "save" and "protect" looms large at times.

One of the most important things we all need to see become a part of our lives is the ability to slow down enough so we can step back from our life so as to get a truer perspective of what's actually going on. And at this time in the journey with my daughters my gut tells me that that practice being a reality in my life is probably the best way I have of helping them along the path of their life...their unique path of life...and one that is still shrouded by the confusion that is so much a part of the segment of the journey they are presently in. And to remember that it is their journey and it's not for me to define it for them. I'm just along for the ride and can only offer to them the things that have become real to me...the things that are helping me see more clearly...the things that are readjusting my perceptions.

BECAUSE I ENJOY IT AND IT'S NECESSARY

2011-06-06T14:23:00.002-05:00

I love being around people. I really do. But I also like slipping away, I need to. Mostly to the outdoors whether it be my garden or some other natural place where the rhythm is slow and in no hurry and no demands are being made of me and where the weight of the pressure and frustration that too often is created by human interaction can fall away. Learning to share this planet with other humans along with the unavoidable challenges that travel along with that activity does seem to be where most of our hurts and frustrations come from. Being alone in more quite wild places isn't about trying to escape, at least not for me...it's about trying to slip into and remain in a healthy natural fluent rhythm, a clearer perspective/mindset, a different current, one that can heal and might just create more harmonious relationships instead of adding to this world more of the kind defined by competiveness, divisiveness, strife and brokenness

A DAY OF REFLECTING

2011-06-04T16:40:00.003-05:00

FREEDOM

2011-05-31T18:05:00.002-05:00

I love the idea of a culture where people have the freedom to choose. But being able to go shop at Home Depot instead of Lowes has nothing to do with freedom nor does any other such exercise of choice one might make. What I'm not so fond of in regards to such a culture is how the idea of freedom has been completely reduced to such a manipulated and controlled activity.

VERY COSTLY

2011-05-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

The masks carried with them
a very high cost

Stepping out from behind these masks
carried a high price also

The reward...priceless

NATURALLY OCCURRING

2011-05-29T16:48:00.003-05:00

While sitting today in the Zen Garden near the water feature, something came into better focus for me in regards to what I enjoy most about this garden. I often find myself in disbelief of the beauty that has emerge here over the past 14 years since I began developing this space. The over all feel of a walk through it all, taking it all in as a whole visual experience is quite stunning. And yes, my artistic touch of combining plants and color and texture is a part of that. But while sitting out here today and noticing that these little mushrooms had once again chosen to grace the place, taking their place amongst the moss growing on this rock near the pond, it became crystal clear that what I enjoy the most out here is the beauty that occurs naturally. A quick look through the garden photo albums makes that obvious.

I do have some wider perspective photos of the garden. But most of what catches my eye, that I always feel drawn to capture, are the close ups of individual parts of the beautiful plants growing here. Whether it's a flower or a leaf or moss growing on a rock or a mysterious looking grouping of mushrooms or the veining that runs through a leaf or flower or maybe even the ever changing shadows created as the sun moves across the space, it is these things that draw me in closer. And it is these things that I have had nothing to do with creating. These are the gracious ever present signs of the abiding presence of a wasteful (at least from a human perspective) natured Creator who has given us more than can ever be completely discovered no matter how long and hard we might try. And while sitting there thinking on these things it was impossible to not also be a bit sad. I get the sense that most humans sleep themselves through all of this life completely missing most of it.

My prayer is that you/we don't miss it. One must slow down and place themselves in a mindfully present space to notice.

STOP USING FIRE LIKE THAT

2011-05-23T22:17:00.003-05:00

I just finished reading such a beautiful (in my case, tears of joy producing) piece from John O'Donohue on fire. John contrasts the devastating outcome of religion taking fire and using it as a means to terrorize and control people, in the form of burning people at the stake and then in the form of the fear of eternal burning/punishment....with the nature of fire and how it is used in scripture to guide and warm and ultimately to transfigure and make new.

Then he describes the damage caused by the functionaries of religion (the opposite of leaders with vision) and their attempts to protect God, and in the process created answers...dead answers that never allow people to be captured by the greatest question of the universe. It leaves people with nothing but banal answers, something God refuses to be defined by and institutions made by human hands that can never contain the presence and the wildness and danger of the Trinity.

And then John ends the chapter FIRE with this.....

"The true perspective on God is to be gleaned from the poet-carpenter Jesus. The idea of divinity with which he worked was powerful, passionate and liberating. If we could but retrieve the idea of God that Jesus had we would revolutionize dead religion. His thirty years of solitary work in the territory of spirit gave him a sense of God that had a clarity and intimacy powerful enough to cut through the atrophied legalism of contemporary religion."

WATER...The Tears Of The Earth

2011-05-15T10:13:00.013-05:00

That title just happens to be the title of the chapter I began my day with from John O'Donohue's book THE FOUR ELEMENTS Reflections On Nature. It was a very poignant space to be caught up in for the morning stroll through the garden. With subtitles like TO FREE THE SILTED SOURCE...THE LANGUAGE OF TEARS...THE WELL, FREE FLOW BETWEEN THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN...WATER AND TIME...THE OCEAN AS IMMENSE DIVINITY...THE RIVER, FLUENT PRESENCE THROUGH LANDSCAPE...RAINS FROM THE HEAVENS...and WATER AS MIRROR, it was a very prayerful time, one full of gratitude for the extravagant artist and gift giver and the beauty of all we have been given.

FOUND

2011-05-10T20:28:00.001-05:00

FOUND

The flow of your voice loosens
The sand that clings to my skin

In a last rasp of whisper
The red salt stops its torment

Soft and warm you encircle me
Into the cave of my ear
Your lips infuse a mantra
Over and over to coax the well awake~~~John O'Donohue

A SURPRISE BACKYARD MAKEOVER

2011-05-01T12:49:00.026-05:00

Michael and Laura's backyard has been a mess since last summer due to damage caused by a storm that damaged several trees.( And for those who don't know, Michael is my brother and Laura my sister in law and they live right across the street from us.) Since all the financial changes they went through last year when Michael's salon had to close down due to the landlord selling the property and Michael having to go to only working one day a week due to severe eczema on his hands they have not been able to do any work to it. Once they headed to Cleveland Clinic at the beginning of April in order for Laura to go through their month long pain management program for migraine sufferers, the idea to surprise Laura with a complete backyard landscape make over came to mind. I wanted so badly for her to come home to the surprise of a beautiful quiet peaceful space to relax in. But I couldn't finance it on my own either. Three weeks ago while cutting Laura's mom's hair I mentioned to her what I would do for Laura if I had the money. Her mom got a big smile on her face and said "How about we collaborate on it? I will write you a check and you can do it." :-)

With the money she gave me along with my contribution of several hundred dollars worth of trees from my garden that I had available for sale I set out to make that quiet space for Laura. Last fall their daughter Faith had told them that she wished they could redo the backyard like Uncle Kent's backyard. So with that in mind, once I returned home from seeing Laura's mom, I sat in the back yard and began to dream it up. A couple days later I went to work on it.

Well, I got it finished yesterday with some much appreciated help with the gravel on Friday from a friend and my nephew Tim and then yesterday from my niece Faith with some final clean up. Michael and Laura arrived home last night and have been blown away by it all. I don't think I have ever been involved in a project that was more fun and rewarding.

The first photo is a rough sketch of what I set out to accomplish. If you pay attention you will be able to tell I changed a few things as I went along. I had considered putting a small patio in the very back also. I ditched that idea. The next 3 are photos of what the back yard looked like when they left. The photos following that are of the finished project.

EYES TO SEE

2011-04-19T07:37:00.001-05:00

It's interesting how on an overcast rainy day, the kind of day I am assuming most would consider dreary, the surrounding beauty is even more astonishing.

It's also interesting that the act of trying to fix what just is, to make it perfect in our own eyes, just seems to take away from the beauty and leaves us with a bigger mess or something faked...not to mention...just makes those who try grumpy people.

IT JUST IS WHAT IT IS

2011-04-14T07:45:00.011-05:00

The natural rhythm, if allowed to, will set your mind at ease and draw you back home from the out of sync anxious frenetic places you have unknowingly given yourself to. You already have more than you are aware of. Everything you need. There is no great distance that needs to traversed...you're already there. What's at issue here is a matter of perception. And walking through that more than likely will feel like a difficult climb up a mountain...well, at least at the beginning.

TO FIND LIFE

2011-04-12T19:13:00.006-05:00

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.~~~Thich Nhat Hanh

TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

2011-04-08T16:17:00.006-05:00

"Here dies another day

During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?"~~~
GK Chesterton

I was doing some reading today back through my blog archives searching for something. I didn't find what I went there looking for but instead found something even better. The poem above and what follows below is from one of Linford Detweiler lovely letters. Linford is from the band Over The Rhine. This is the kind of stuff we are in need of allowing to simmer a bit. Lingering awhile with that which is good, is good

"I’d really be okay with this being my epitaph. (Linford is referring here to the Chesterton poem above)

When I was younger I would often write myself short job descriptions. I was thinking out loud about what might be worth hanging a life on, a life I was willing to sign my name to:

-Create spaces where good things can happen.

-Give the world something beautiful, some gift of gratitude,
no matter how insignificant or small.

-Write love letters to the whole world.

-Build fires outdoors, and lift a glass and tell stories,
and listen, and laugh, laugh, laugh. (Karin says I’m still working
on this one. She thinks I still need to laugh more, especially at
her jokes, puns and witty asides.)

-Flip a breaker and plunge the farm into darkness so that the stars can be properly seen.

-Do not squander afflictions.

-Own the longing, the non-negotiable need to “praise the mutilated world.”

-Find the music.

I still crave the extravagant gesture, the woman spilling a year’s wages on the feet of Jesus, the rarest perfume, washing his feet and drying them with her hair, a gesture so sensual it left the other men in the room paralyzed with criticism, analysis, theoretical moral concern - for what - the poor? Or was it just misdirected outrage in light of the glaring poverty of their own imaginations?"

TO GAZE IS A DIFFERENT THING

2011-04-06T19:19:00.011-05:00

Real beauty is a much different thing than is the idea of beauty in modern times. Real beauty is quiet and seeks no attentions but instead dwells in a way that one must be paying attention in order to see and to hear. Silence and subtlety may have fallen out of favor in this postmodern time we now live, but beauty is still as beauty has always been....and is not moved by that which masquerades around these days under the new banner of beauty .

IN REALITY...IT'S THE SHORTEST OF JOURNEYS

2011-04-03T18:25:00.002-05:00

From the section "One of the Greatest Sins is the Unlived Life" from the book Anam Cara

"The shape of each soul is different. There is a secret destiny for each person. When you endeavor to repeat what others have done or force yourself into a preset mold, you betray your individuality. We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. When we rediscover our childlike nature, we enter into a world of gentle possibility. Consequently, we will find ourselves more frequently at that place, at the place of ease, delight, and celebration. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. Our clay shape gradually learns to walk beautifully on this magnificent earth"

COME TO THE QUIET

2011-04-01T17:08:00.001-05:00

平和

INSPIRATION

2011-03-30T18:32:00.002-05:00

Don't ever let anyone convince you that you're not creative. Set your imagination free. You never know what might emerge.

It was just a couple weeks I posted on here that I had had an inspired moment in the garden. I went out to do some clean up and while out there, in my imagination, I began to see some changes to make to the garden. That led me to move one tree and from the vacant space created by that move another idea emerged. With every change made I would then spend some time sitting on the swing waiting to see if anything else would form in my minds eye. This carried on for at least 4 hours and then it came to an end.

A week later while out there the idea to move a pine from another part of the garden came to mind. This pine a few years ago had actually fallen flat on the ground and the roots were still securely planted in the soil. Before I got to it to stand it back up the new growth on it had begun to adjust to it's new orientation and I could tell that it looked like it might take on a really cool windswept look if I left it alone. So I did. It's a Japanese Black Pine. Japanese Gardens all over the world are built around this architecturally rugged beautiful tree. Today it just feels like this tree has been laying for the past few years on the ground in a hidden spot in the garden away from the gaze of human eyes preparing itself for this new location. It's going to be fun watching it develop in this little Zen inspired garden.

Then this past weekend I began to imagine a rustic carved stone Japanese Lantern finishing out the balance of this space. I didn't stick with that imagining for very long. Stone Japanese Lanterns are extremely pricey. So my mind set sail trying to come up with another possibility. But nothing felt right. My mind kept returning to a lantern. Through all my years of designing garden spaces I have spent a lot of time rummaging through stacks of all kinds of stone. I don't know when it actually happened, but before long I was actually telling myself that I could find the right stone to make a lantern myself. It took me about 30 minutes today in a local nursery close to my home to settle on 4 pieces. All that's left to do now is to drill a hole through that center block to make it look like a lantern and to spread a layer of gravel in the area and the Zen Garden will be complete. It's going to be a great place to sit in silence and rest.

STRONG

2011-03-28T09:43:00.006-05:00

There are roots that hold you firm like a strong oak

Yet the planting is in a fluency, never moored.

A strength that neither strong wind nor rushing river can move

Yet remains unencumbered and flows with ease...

As if windblown

IT WAS 80 DEGREES HERE A FEW DAYS AGO

2011-03-25T13:12:00.012-05:00

Now Snow. And at work this morning I was greeted by the complaints flowing from people about it all.

Just as in the struggle of the transition of the seasons, life is full of struggle. Our own personal struggles/challenges and those of others we are connected to. Grace helps smooth the rough edges so as to help us cross the thresholds we are in need of crossing. And it's always helpful to remember......

"Even if at this time you are enduring through a time of bleakness...bleakness is never as bleak as it seems on the surface.

At the heart of the stripped down, a rested cold stillness of winter, there is huge movement secretly at work." ~~~John O'Donohue

IT TAKES PRESENCE

2011-03-14T20:23:00.003-05:00

"Be inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free."~~~John O'Donohue

SCHOOLED IN THE WRONG STUFF

2011-03-09T19:01:00.001-06:00

Mine this for a time and then again and again and let it work on you and set you free..........

"While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things---multiplying and acquiring stuff we neither need nor truly want---we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging." John O'Donohue

GARDENING AND SUBVERSIVE GENTLENESS

2011-03-07T10:35:00.005-06:00

"He's always out on the edges sowing and plowing and sowing the eternal garden with such subversive gentleness......You know, it is the meek that shall inherit the earth."~~~John O'Donohue

Even during the cold of winter when the conditions are inhospitable for the human activity of tilling the soil and tending to a garden, my mind is never far from it. But as winter begins to wane and spring begins to give us hints of her nearness, I really begin to feel the presence of her approaching beauty all over me along with my collaborative part in it all longing to get going. Later today I will begin the process of pulling some trees from their winter resting spot in order to remove them from their pots to root prune them. I will then place them back into the pots with fresh rich potting soil. When growing these trees this way it's a necessary process so they can thrive and remain healthy.

There's something about gardening and hanging around beauty that just feels so connected to gentleness to me. The whole idea of a future day when formerly fear crazed waring people are no longer afraid because they have awakened to the power of love and begin to beat their swords into plowshares is a lovely idea that at least in my estimation is way over due. I feel so drawn to people whose hearts have been captured by the subversive and confounding truth that it is the meek who shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the peacemakers. My heart has certainly been captured by it and for some reason, gardening just feels like a part of that. I so long for a day when God's people are no longer afraid and instead live in a way that helps untangle people of the fear that has a grip on them and has left them acting out in dehumanizing destructive ways.

So, I'm thrilled to once again have a new spring season upon me. I just love participating in it all. And I am more convinced than ever that as humans awaken to beauty they will awaken to a new way of being in the world, and that it's the hands of the subversive gentle one directing it all.

"When we discover our childlike nature, we enter into a world of gentle possibility. Consequently, we will find ourselves more frequently at that place, at that place of ease, delight, and celebration. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. Our clay shape gradually learns to walk beautifully on this magnificent earth." ~ John O'Donohue

MY MEMORY WILL NOT FAIL ME NOW

2011-03-05T07:25:00.015-06:00

It doesn't look like this yet around our home. But my 48 years of experiencing winter losing her grip on the landscape with the arrival of spring tells me the transformation will happen very very soon. These days, hearing the repeated human activity of complaining about winters presence really does leave me wondering if many people ever spend any time thinking back on their experiences or if most people are just so caught up in the negative cycle of always believing there is a force that is just determined to always pester them and hold out on them?

My memory serves me way better these days then it ever did during my first 42 years of life. And I've learned that trying to control things is a waste of time, as well as is complaining, as well is trying to force and rush things. Turns out the first half of my life I was under the grip of a consciousness that had been malformed by false fields of perception. It had left me missing the obvious by keeping me tangled up in things that only served in keeping me blinded to the trustworthiness of that which is trustable.....in the seen world and more importantly...the unseen world.

IT'S FOR YOU TO ATTEND TO

2011-03-02T12:47:00.002-06:00

No inner world is the same. And no human should be allowed to shape that unique inner world that is yours. That's the delicate work that belongs to you and the Spirit of the one who brought you here.

UNCLUTTERED NATURAL RHYTHM

2011-02-21T09:03:00.002-06:00

The cleaned up landscape, the overcast sky, the light rain shower along with the spring like temperatures gives this morning the feeling of everything being at least close to right. I will dwell in that lovely space/presence even though I know things aren't yet all right. The beauty of that space though leaves me in a much better state of mind, soul and body that feels more in sync with being helpful to myself...those who live close around me...and my larger world in which I must live.

TREES AND BEING AT PEACE

2011-02-15T18:23:00.002-06:00

Wendell Berry

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

WINTER SPRING SUMMER & FALL

2011-02-13T19:16:00.015-06:00

ALONENESS

2011-02-13T07:16:00.005-06:00

There is a life that can only be birthed in aloneness.
It's the birth place of true belonging.
True belonging transforms everything.
Being alive will never be quite the same.
In strangeness and wonder.

It releases a wind that shakes you free
From all the false belonging you have clung to.
And that has clung to you.
That's a belonging that came upon you without notice.
Birthed out of the fear of being alone.

Fear has not served you well.

It's just distorted a beautiful reality.
You're not alone and never have been.

ICE COLOR AND LIGHT

2011-02-08T21:03:00.000-06:00

LET THE BEAUTY EMBRACE YOU AND CHANGE YOU

2011-02-03T09:49:00.001-06:00

"EVERY LIFE IS BRAIDED WITH LUMINOUS MOMENTS" John O'Donohue

SOMETHING BETTER: UPDATE

2011-01-22T12:31:00.004-06:00

I'm borrowing this from Wayne's website. It gives me great joy in daily thinking of this ongoing work of building a new orphange in Kenya so the children can have a place to stay out of the slums.

They are working on the foundation for the new building.

We just received a check for $7,000 to help with the orphanage construction and with matching gift we are now about $30,000 from our goal, which means we only need an additional $15,000. At a recent prayer gathering in Kenya, the people there gave 36,000 Kenyan schillings in an offering to help as well. These are people who have very little and pressing needs all around them, so this is a significant gift. I am so grateful that they are taking ownership of this process and looking for ways to keep it funded beyond the initial purchase, renovation, and building phase. They continue to express immense gratitude for all those who are helping and providing a detailed accounting of where the funds are going. We also have others nearby who can verify the use of these funds. For more information on our project here, you can read this earlier blog.

If you would like to be part of this to support these brothers and sisters and see the Gospel grow in this part of Africa, please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

I am personally grateful to God and overwhelmed at the generosity this project has triggered. Thank you so much.

IT'S ZEN THERE-NESS

2011-01-20T09:09:00.003-06:00

Why is it that we humans waste so much time floundering around chasing elusive (unnecessary) things when we are surrounded by the most beautiful tangible peaceful things already. And do many of us ever even notice that those beautiful things spend no time doing such a thing as waste time? I think it's because we are confused about what is beautiful and confused about what we need.

This scene outside my front door, at least to my eye, is beautiful. But even with such astounding surface beauty around me, I'm not so addicted to that to where I miss an even more important message/whisper being offered to me through it all. And I'm finding that the more I enter into it by slowing the pace externally as well as internally more and more...it continues to give more and more to me of the things I need.

THE FLAW

2011-01-17T22:11:00.002-06:00

I just got off the phone with a dear friend. It was good to talk with someone who understands. It's a rare find. It really is.

We are all broken and so we share that in common. I'm coming to understand a bit better though why people choose to live in the illusion. It's a place where people can at least try to hang onto the mistaken notion that there is something out there to be found...the perfect combination of things...that will finally cause the pain and struggle to go away. To enter into the reality of what is, means we must put aside such a search. Most can't fathom embracing such a thing, so they don't. And as a result miss out on the beauty of the flaw. And instead spend the time hanging onto the very things that make them miserable and miss out on what they have...a circle of belonging to enter into that is nothing but confounding. Full of pain? Yes. But also full of joy and peace and rest and contentment.

Part of the pain is the compassion that comes flooding in once we give up the game of trying to be something we are not so we can face up to who we are, and in turn, find ourselves being encouraged by the presence of the Beautiful, who desires to set us free, to take our hands off the throats of those around us we have been blaming for our troubles or at least looking to control and manipulate in an attempt to get the world to revolve around us. A wonderful thing happens when we respond to the advice to let go of throats and our own personal expectations. We begin to be able to see the beauty hidden inside the flaw of others also. There is no way of our eyes being opened to this new way of seeing and us entering into this new way of being and it not carrying with it a measure of pain. There's no way of seeing others struggle and not feel the pain of it. But at least it's real and it's where the Beautiful dwells and invites us to join in there.

This from John O'Donohue fits well here.....

"It is a wonderful day in a life when one is finally able to stand before the long deep mirror of one's own reflection and view oneself with appreciation, acceptance and forgiveness. On that day one breaks through the falsity of images and expectation which have blinded one to one's spirit. One can only learn to see who one is when one learns to view oneself with the most intimate and forgiving compassion. Such a glimpse of one's essence can utterly rejuvenate a life and enable one to find the hidden wisdom in the beauty of the flaw."

SPRING IS COMING

2011-01-17T09:15:00.001-06:00

This morning as I drove Ellie into work something stirred my mind in such a way to where I could feel its presence on my skin and hear its music in my head. The coming birthing of spring. It's one of the things I appreciate about the memory of beauty and the wonder of possibility beauty inspires in us. Nature's tender side and her vulnerability does that to me, and even while within different seasons the remembrance of the other seasons travel with me and speak to me.

Without beauty it's understandable why humans have such a difficult time maintaining the presence of gentleness. This also leaves me confounded that so many who have immense beauty right in front of them instead seem to want to hang onto a world created out of a paradigm of aggressiveness that tramples beauty underfoot. Humans seem to be very skilled in twisting things around in such a way that allows them to justify and defend that which can't be justified or defended. We all are poorer for it.

So as Blaise Pascal encourages us to do....let us always keep something beautiful in our mind. And let us allow a dangerous wonder defined by gentleness capture our hearts and minds. And in the spirit of prophetic seeing, let us allow our imaginations to come alive in a way that would lead us to sacrifice for something better then what is now the reality of this aggressive world we live in. And if we can...we might just find ourselves caught up in the dream of the one who set this whole thing in motion. I would rather live my days caught up in that and risk being called naive as to live a life caught up in the the mess created out of the hijacking of that dream.

It's been a very cold and relentless winter season. But without a doubt...I know spring is coming and will not be denied.

A CELTIC BLESSING FOR BEAUTY

2011-01-09T10:20:00.003-06:00

May you be blessed with the sense of beauty
and may beauty come and visit your life.

May you be given the grace of recognition
so that you may learn to see in a new way
all that is beautiful about you.

In the light of that beauty
may you gain a new respect for the eternal
that is alive in your, feeling, thought and action.

May you look again at the icon of your own face
and may you see there the tender and poignant presence
of an intimacy that is beautiful

When you turn your gaze inwards
may it be a kind and healing gaze

May you be gifted to be gentle so that the shy beauty
that hides in so many of the chambers of your heart
may come out and gather and focus to make a bouquet of blessings
around your head and around your life.

May you look reverently at those that are close to you
and if you have forgotten in their familiarity
the beauty that is about them
may you learn to see it again
and may you celebrate with those you love
the beauty that brought you together

May you also enrich your soul
with the beauty of great art and music

May you take your clay home, your body,
out into the generous world of nature and allow
the longing of your senses to unfurl
across the magnificent beauty
which the Divine Imagination offers to your imagination.

May you seek the truth but may you always remember
to walk hand in hand with beauty

Because beauty is truth
And truth is beauty.~~~JOHN O'DONOHUE

YOU HOLD THE KEY

2011-01-06T10:12:00.003-06:00

Your life longs to be freed
From the controls of the world
And it's conditioning.

And only you have the power, the key,
That can open the door
To let your caged life go free.

MORE GRACEFUL THAN MOST YET KNOW

2011-01-05T17:35:00.008-06:00

It's such a privilege to be alive. And a human life passes so quickly.

I watched the opening of the day this morning as the sun in her trustable way, gently, and with such grace, pushed the darkness away. And in an equally trustable way, I just watched her once again as she always does, at the end of the day, gracefully give way to the... darkness. Or so it seems. Tonight as I took a moment to step out of the day's other activities so as to quiet myself, this sense of ease and order of the cosmos just opened up a deeper and more peaceful mindful presence and appreciation of the privilege of being alive and of it's brevity. Our time in beautiful earth school is limited. And it's good for us humans to remember that.

BE/LONGING

2011-01-02T13:52:00.014-06:00

It's what stirs at our deepest core.
It's what makes us most vulnerable.
And what ties us to ultimate meaning.

No one escapes it.
Many manipulate it.

This most ancient desire becomes prey
In a world created out of a twisting
...of this longing.

And the soul in its search for meaning
Instead, learns to hide...unknowingly
Behind the masks of false belonging
Believing them to be true.

At first convinced it has found freedom
The false self plays and explores
With new excitement
In realms of conformity or rebellion.
And at terrible cost the hunger is veiled
..by new levels of falsity

The paths we all traverse, are all
Paths of the long surrender

Defined by our choices
Driven by our desire to belong.
That most ancient desire...longing
Crying out from within, for us to learn
To just be who we are
...we already belong.

A BLESSING

2010-12-23T10:28:00.004-06:00

It's my prayer for all of you, all of us during this season...and beyond. I hope you find rest and peace and contentment and a mindful quiet presence that will not fail in revealing to you that you belong and are already caught up in that circle where you belong.

FOR BELONGING

May you listen to your longing to be free.

May the frames of your belonging be generous
enough for your dreams.

May you arise each day with a voice of blessing
whispering in your heart.

May you find a harmony between your soul and
your life.

May the sanctuary of your soul never become
haunted.

May you know the eternal longing that lives at the
heart of time.

May there be kindness in your gaze when you look
within.

May you never place walls between the light and
yourself.

May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world
to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in
belonging.~~~John O'Donohue

TEAR DOWN THE WALLS

2010-12-21T23:28:00.001-06:00

With no consideration, no pity, no shame
They've built walls all around me, thick and high
And now I sit here feeling hopeless
I can't think of anything else

This fate gnaws my mind
Because I had so much to do outside

When they were building the walls
How could I have not noticed
But I never heard the builders, not a sound
Imperceptibly they've closed me off from the outside world.~~~C.P. Cavafy

"That's a devastatingly strong poem because it acknowledges and mirrors and recognizes something that has happened to all of us. Like there's no doubt about it through our complicity with other people's expectations or images of us, we've often allowed them to house us in completely. And Cavafy says so poignantly and each of us can say it about ourselves, when they were building the walls, how could I have not noticed? Of course it's a great moment of liberation when you are able to say that to yourself...about your political views, your values, your religious beliefs, your views of yourself. When you're able to say that, then you already have one foot on the springtime of new freedom and possibility." John O'Donohue

TRANSFORMATION

2010-12-17T22:38:00.005-06:00

When storm and struggle are pressing in
Lean into it instead of turning away
Let it change in you what is in need of change
We all carry around within us illusions
We are in need of letting go
Allow the work to transform you
Out of the soul's winter
Into the beauty of spring

SET IT FREE

2010-12-14T12:56:00.005-06:00

I was going through some photos this afternoon and came upon a folder of 246 photos of May 25 earlier this year, as the daylight gave way to night. I remember taking well over 300 photos of the western sky that evening as the cloud formation changed the horizon from moment to moment until the sky went blue/black. I have some very cool shots from this year of the morning and evening sky but this sunset on this day takes the top spot for me. There was no way for me to predict from the way it began to emerge what it would in the end become. And if I could have somehow been the one drawing out the ending for the sky that day as I sat on that hillside I would have never dreamed this up.

And so is life if we are able to free it from our expectation and whiteknuckling it trying to paint the ending for ourselves.

THE SILENCE OF STONE

2010-12-13T15:57:00.001-06:00

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.~~~John O'Donohue

REAL LIFE

2010-12-11T15:49:00.003-06:00

Real life situations, real life struggles birthed out of the exercise of choice (yours and others) real life pain, real life trouble, real life scapegoating instead of owning up, etc etc etc...all created out of real life longing and real life emptiness that is the product of having been told to look for real life where it does not exist.

It's just interesting, this human activity of always thinking real life is out there somewhere or up ahead when in reality we already have all we need. We are already rich. It's all the time spent out there looking for something we already have that leaves us paupers.

When your thought world has been shrunken and tamed by the prevailing systems of the outer world and now can only play there within that soul diminishing world...you are left trying to squeeze life from something that has no life to give.

THE NATURAL ORDER IS NOT QUITE ORDERLY

2010-12-06T12:07:00.002-06:00

For all the talk, busyness and noise that people insist hanging onto and are encouraged to hang onto, the real change we are in need of happens in a place more defined by silence, stillness, and solitude. We spend so much time in the external and neglect the internal. All of our mess continues to cycle on because we neglect what we are in need of. Beauty, and the order that exists in the Beautiful. It's an order that will not look like order at all to people caught up in the external world. Real change seems to only emerge out of in-between-out-of-balance-moments that have a way of sending us into seasons/places of aloneness where few understand what we are going through. I like to think of it as sacred silence where the voice of the Beautiful can be heard. It's a difficult place for most people to go because most find themselves surrounded by people who are afraid and are hanging on for dear life to the external life they have been handed and given charge to defend...and that's a life that is sadly journeyed through completely asleep to what the true order of things in all their wild beauty are really like.

SO WORTH THE EXTRA WORK

2010-11-29T14:44:00.045-06:00

I spent some time tucking the containerized Japanese Maples away for the approaching winter this morning. I have about 20 more to go. Some would see the work too much to go through every fall. I couldn't disagree more in light of what they will bring to this garden again next spring. Here's a sample of that

THE NATURAL RHYTHMS OF GRACE

2010-11-22T20:09:00.002-06:00

The song is Screendoor Music by Linford Detweiler of Over The Rhine. The photos are mine, taken in my garden this year beginning back in the spring.