2 Hours Outdoors

So much of our existence has become fragmented.  And, our sense of stress has increased accordingly.

According to Outside magazine, Americans went on 1 billion fewer hikes, bike rides and walks in 2018, compared with 2008.  And, Axios Finish Line reported that while the share of people spending time in nature ticked up during the pandemic as folks had more free time, we're still spending more time indoors than we did a decade ago.  More startling is the statistic that some 100 million Americans, including 27 million kids, don't have access to decent green spaces.

One Nature.com study — with 20,000 participants — by researchers from the University of Exeter found that people who spent two hours a week in parks, at beaches or in woodlands scored higher than others on metrics related to physical and psychological well-being.

For years now, I have noticed a similar pattern — something about spending time in nature shifts an internal dynamic about reality for me.  While I'm guessing it could be debated what that shift is, I'm pretty confident that our internal systems signal the impact of a more natural orientation to our existence (than the hybrid-ized one we have ended up with).  And, you don't have to look very long to discover that people throughout time (ancient or more recent) have reached similar conclusions.  Even sacred narratives seem to point this out.

Our sense of self is better understood in the context of the range of broader relationships with the world we all live in (acknowledged or not).  We exist within something larger and that is important to know about, if not more fully understand.  While many features of American life are often somewhere between interesting and good, many others are not.  Stress caused by the isolation often felt from a false sense of autonomy is pretty evident.  According to widely available reports like those referenced above, it would do us all well to make some re-prioritizations...like routinely spending even a small amount of time outside, where a full range sensory impacts can be experienced in a way that connects us to the larger goods of reality.

In the wilderness, I sense the wholeness hidden “in all things.” It is in the taste of wild berries, the scent of sunbaked pine, the sight of the Northern Lights, the sound of water lapping the shore, signs of a bedrock integrity that is eternal and beyond all doubt.

-- Parker Palmer

LT: Right Now

Whatever you have just done is not nearly as important as what you are doing right now.

-- Mike Krzyzewski

How We Choose To View Things

Ever noticed...that how we choose to view things is often serving something within us?

Politics

May the Church see politics through the lens of Jesus and not Jesus through the lens of politics.

-- Rich Villodas

3 Observations & A Question….

Don’t impoverish yourself with worry.

There is so much beauty around...that you had nothing to do with.

People with resources can really influence, if not shape, the experiences of many others...of course, in bad or good ways.

One can reach certain conclusions under the cover of darkness — the question may be, how do they then stand in the light?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

It Can Give You A Lot

AXIOS:  Finish Line

Tonight's photo — which comes to us from our colleagues at Axios Portland — was taken by an 18-year-old in Oregon who's recovering from drug addiction and is two months sober.

The teen, who is part of Collective Roots, a family recovery group, says there's joy in "appreciating the world."

"Like embracing the realization that the world doesn't owe you anything, but it can give you a lot — and it does."

In light today’s earlier post, isn't there always a great tension in knowing about the co-existence of profound beauty (joy, sunsets, mountains, etc.) and unspeakable terror (Maine, Gaza, Ukraine, etc.)?  Sometimes even that seems like too much...but, it is necessary (see Barbara Holmes reflection here).

Burning Bushes

'Poem for the week' -- "Burning Bushes":

It’s fall here, so all the bushes are burning:

engulfed in red and cool to the touch.

Proud and sentimental and safe. 

But the world is burning with unholy fire,

and I watch crimson flood the canvas through the screen.

These are no happy little accidents.

This is the history channel in real-time,

unsanitized by temporal distance.

Freshly orphaned babies, limp in the arms of bewildered strangers.

A soccer ball, tearfully unreturned to a now-dead friend.

The beeping pulse of life-support gone dark.

Screaming and blaming and weeping and terrifying silence. 

It’s a wildfire, unquenched by tears and prayer.

There is no flamed pillar of divine presence—

only waste and ash, apocalyptic devastation.

I hold a vigil in my yard,

stroking blood-red leaves as though lighting a candle,

projecting my burning pleas into the darkness.

There is only static.

Please don’t remain static.  

-- Emily Cash, Driftwood Prayers

Create The Fact

Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

-- William James

Disillusionment, Moral Integrity, and the Beauty of the Ordinary

My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and disillusionment are easily manipulated. Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society — the moral integrity of society — replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today the targets of that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays, and an ill-defined counterculture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?

-- Robert Reich, 1994

Heading towards 30 years later now, have things gotten any better?

Well if this headline is any indication...not much (perhaps worse, due to today's actors):

Trump pledges to turn away those who don’t like ‘our religion’

We know what this means, don't we (if we can't tell by now, we may never recognize things for what they are)?  Such dynamics are built on a cultivated appetite for the threatening and sensational.  If it isn't sensational (or threatening), we are now just too bored to care very much.  Make me care...we say (inadvertently).  Except there is a logical limit to that kind of demand, and it appears we are now fully up against it.  Worry is its own kind of fuel and we are sucking in its fumes with our mouths wide open.

I was out walking last evening and a bit overwhelmed by a little different — the range and extent of the beauty of the Fall season now in full bloom all around us.  A thought wandered across my path:

Don't impoverish yourself with worry.

...and this corollary piped up:

...there is too much beauty around us, that we had nothing to do with.

I suspect there is something profound embedded in these hints that we can get from looking away from the populist raging that so dominates our attention.

What we notice is often a function of what we are looking at.  We are the ones who will have to decide what we're going to keep focusing on (obviously, those selling us things that change our appetites don't really care about what's truly good for us).  They just want us to keep buying and ratcheting up the things we end up thinking we need protection from because of their hysterics.  

The real sensations from my walk reminded me that it is often the ordinary that deserves our attention (see Sarah Bessey's reflections on this here ) and that a more realistic rhythm with the naturalness of life is a beautiful wisdom.

...one that, quite possibly, could off-set some of the vagaries of our times' poisons, if each of us is willing to adjust our appetites.

LT: By Compassion

God leads by compassion, never by condemnation. God offers us the grace to weep over our sins more than to perfectly overcome them, to humbly recognize our littleness rather than to become big.

-- Richard Rohr

Quality of Life

I'm wondering...what, in the end, are the better (good) standards of quality-of-life?

Clearly, as a culture, we haven’t nailed it…as much as we like to think we have.

Sin, Crime, and Justice

In the Old Testament, justice and sin were both relational realities, and justice was not about upholding individual rights, but protecting the well-being of communities.…

Crime is never merely an individual breaking the law; it is always a communal transgression that fractures shalom.

God’s justice moves toward restoration, reintegration, and redemption. God’s justice is inherently connected to healing the harmed, restoring what has been lost, and reconciling those who are estranged from God and community. God’s heart and justice are inherently restorative.

-- Dominique DuBois Gilliard

Clearly sin has more relational componentry than many of our religious traditions have ended up with today, which makes it hard to disconnect from the idea of evil.  More on sin…and evil here.

Work Really Hard

 

3 Observations & A Question….

Some people sure seem to have a lot of opinions about how other people should be living their lives….

No one really likes to be managed — they want to be heard.

Life is largely a matter of availability; what we have done and how we are living it — to make ourselves available to it and to those who live with us in it.

At what point does it dawn on you how much you have spent of your life trying to manage your future?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

On the Lighter Side: It's People I Can't Stand

 On The Lighter Side: 

The Daily Cartoonist

Something Else

Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.

-- Fred Rogers

A Beautiful Thing

…happened 60 years ago today:

See some of what she has done since...here.

Oh, and:

Chaos

At some point, you could no longer avoid the conclusion that chaos is not only the result, but the strategy.

...how immediately resonant is this observation?

It seems nearly the whole political world has bought into it.

...unless the media version of the world is not the whole world.

Which it isn't.

But, still, we are so preoccupied by chaos...because at some level it does work (just not constructively), especially in terms of requiring our attention.

But, it’s a damn shame for those who peddle (or worse) in it — as it is for those of  us who just keep clicking away at their conspiracies like…voyeurs. 

Do I sound a little angry?  I’m not sure who to be more mad at — our leaders for not working at anything other than maintaining their power or us for not demanding any better.

We can do better – we have to do better… maybe even for the sake of our very own survival.

Work Worth Doing

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. 

-- Theodore Roosevelt

Interests

I’ve noticed…though I have a deep respect for both, I’ve typically had more psychological interests than mechanical ones.

If nothing else, this gives me some clues about what I have to work a little harder at (and what I don't).

Evidence

We're not an advertisement for Jesus; we're supposed to be evidence.

-- Bob Goff

3 Observations & A Question….

When we’re doing something bad (or harmful), we have to stop doing it — we can’t just try to do something good, too, to offset it…but, then, keep right on doing the bad thing.

Sometimes life requires little more than just a great amount of patience.

You really have to pay attention to your life (especially since no one else really will...or can) — to look out for things that affect the quality of your self.

How many terms have we invented for the primary purpose of casting disparagement (in other words, the significance of their meaning is more evocative than it is substantive)?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Israel: Why?

I had queued another 'On the Lighter Side' for today.  But, I just can't do it, in light of the horrific world events this week (maybe I can try it again tomorrow...) — it would seem, somehow, disrespectful of the impacts of what appears to be the nature of our prevailing human condition.  

Regarding why Israel was unprepared for the Hamas attacks:

“Israel has been governed by a populist strongman … who is a public-relations genius but an incompetent prime minister. He has repeatedly preferred his personal interests over the national interest and has built his career on dividing the nation against itself. He has appointed people to key positions based on loyalty more than qualifications, took credit for every success while never taking responsibility for failures, and seemed to give little importance to either telling or hearing the truth.

The coalition [he] established has been by far the worst. It is an alliance of messianic zealots and shameless opportunists, who ignored [the nation’s] many problems — including the deteriorating security situation — and focused instead on grabbing unlimited power for themselves. In pursuit of this goal, they adopted extremely divisive policies, spread outrageous conspiracy theories about state institutions that oppose their policies, and labeled the country’s serving elites as “deep state” traitors.”

-- Yuval Noah Narari, Israeli historian

This assessment sounds eerily similar to populism some place not as far away....

Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply. 

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

...at least consider this perspective from Diana Butler Bass, which echos some of this one by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Without at least some of Niebuhr's perception, we are left with the consequences of interminable iterations of revenge, instead of the healing opportunities that could come from grieving. 

Unbecoming

Instagram: mariashriver

The path of awakening is not about becoming who you are.  Rather it is about unbecoming who you are not.

-- Albert Schweitzer

Misinformation

Headlines such as this need (of all things) attention:

X is flooded with Israel–Hamas war misinformation

Obviously, misinformation is not a new thing (no, Donald Trump didn't invent it...he's just the latest peddler to come along — although, this perspective makes it less benign).  Conspiracies have been en vogue...from the beginning.

We can assail the vagaries of misinformation all we want (and, we should), but I suspect it will have little effect, given how most of us seem to manage our attention (or don't) and how the technology involved facilitates not only the perpetuation of un-truths, but the expansion of them.

We have a truth problem.  

I want to put it that way, because the problem doesn't seem to be the truth itself, but rather our estimation and appropriation of it.  Sometimes I'm not so sure we're only half interested in it anyway.  We're more preoccupied with our own self-interests.  As long as it doesn't directly impact us, we don't seem to care too much about the larger good.  This may be, among other things, the curse of relative affluence — it leads us to believe we don't have to.

But, we can't just say (after the fact), well how did we get here?  We are getting there right now.

I'll give you that it's pretty hard to keep up with.  Deluge is a word often used to describe information these days.  Which kind of means that we have to become selective.  But, I'm sure how that actually relieves us, because we still have to determine what our selections will be.  This is quite apparent in the surrounding echo-chambers that have, therefore, developed.

All to say, this is an uphill battle at the very least.  To what can we turn to help ourselves help each other?

For one thing, we need to become more cognizant of what our values actually are AND the way they are (or are not) working themselves out in the daily choices we make about how we live.  We can't just continue to defer to our trance-like state of existence and then blame those in charge.  We are the ones consuming everything they are producing, so they keep producing it (one of the real down-sides of a market-economy).  We actually need to do some of the work here...perhaps a lot of it.  The system is just making too much money (off us) to regulate itself.  And, by the way, simply asking for a bigger piece of the pie isn't a real solution either....

Are we ending up with what we really want here?  Is this a healthy situation, for all involved?

If we can't just continue to feed-the-beast, how much of what is involved here is our use of information?

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

-- Nadine Gordime

Trust Them

 The way to make people trustworthy is to trust them.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Done It Before

Ever noticed...that when we really need something, we turn to those who have already done it?

What Am I Looking For?

Regarding the Christian Bible (though I would be surprised to learn that similar dynamics don’t occur regarding sacred texts from other religious traditions, too):

If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.

This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?" I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.

-- Rachel Held Evans

Words That Subtract Grace

4 Observations (from Others)

I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.

-- John Steinbeck

There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story.

-- Mary Lou 

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

-- André Gide

Never confuse kindness with weakness. 

-- Bindi Irwin

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Origin of Planets

‘Poem for the week’ — “Origin of Planets”:

In this version, the valley
lime green after rain
rolls its tides before us.

A coyote bush shivers with seed.

We hold out our palms as if catching snow—
our villages of circular tracts
overcast with stars.

We have been moving together in sequence
or thousands of years, paralyzed
only by the question of time.

But now it is autumn under bishop pines—
the young blown down by wind feed
their lichens to the understory.

We follow the deer-path
past the ferns, to the flooded
upper reaches of the estuary.

The channel snakes through horsetails
and hemlock as the forest deepens, rises
behind us and the blue heron,
frozen in the shallows.

The shadow of her long neck ripples.

Somewhere in the rustling tulle reeds
spider is casting her threads to the light

and we spot a crimson-hooded fly agaric,
her toadstool’s gills white
as teeth as the sun
                bleeds into the Pacific.

We will walk the trail
until it turns to sand
and wait at the spit’s edge, listening
to the breakers, the seagulls
as they chatter their twilight preparations.

What we won’t understand
about the sound of the sea is no different
than the origin of planets

or the wind’s crystalline structures
irreversibly changing.

The albatross drags her parachute
over the earth’s gaping mouth.

We turn back only for the instant
the four dimensions fold
into a sandcastle—before its towers
are collapsed by waves.

The face that turns
toward the end of its world
dissolves into space—

despite us, the continuum
remains.

-- Jennifer Elise Foerster

From the Author:

“This poem emerged from one particular version of a day when I had the gift of walking with a friend on the Point Reyes National Seashore. I say ‘version’ because the path this poem follows is inevitably different from the path we walked, and distinct, too, from the many paths in my memory of that day. What all my versions share is that we walked toward the beach, toward twilight, at which point I wondered what it really meant to ‘turn back.’ At which point I watched the waves, the wind, the endless endings and beginnings, the turnings of gulls and seashells, planets peering through dusk. I love that wonderment doesn’t require understanding. How brief we are, and infinite in our versions of being here on earth.”

Ultimate Luxury

The ultimate luxury in life remains nature.

-- Robert Rabensteiner

Sights (& Sounds) of Switzerland

A photo essay this week on ‘Sights (& Sounds) of Switzerland’…here.

My ‘Top 10’ (well 11...can't figure which 1 to drop)…here, not including this epic helicopter ride.

LT: The Selfless

The selfish fear change. The selfless lead it.

-- Simon Sinek

Would Do For Us

I'm wondering...if half of what we do for other people is what we wish they would do for us.

The search for a church that isn't a church

If you've been following this series, by now you've seen me write about the reason this whole project came about. I don't know what I believe. Don't misunderstand - I am a grown woman who has lived a lot of life at this point and I have learned some things and I have uncovered some deep truths about the world and myself for that matter. But when it comes to questions of faith - I don't have it figured out. The religion my parents brought me up with doesn't fit anymore but I still long for a spiritual community. According to the academic types who study social trends, there's a name for someone like me - a none. As in, when it comes to a religious identity - well, I have none.

According to a study by PRRI from 2022, almost 30 percent of Americans consider themselves to be "unaffiliated" from any religious institution. Compare that 1991 when only 6 percent of respondents said they were religiously unaffiliated.

So there's clearly something going on. America is getting less churchy. But is it getting any less spiritual? I don't think so. I think it just means our faith communities and institutions aren't giving people what they need anymore...continue here.

-- Rachel Martin

3 Observations & A Question….

Without justice, it’s not really peace…it’s control.

There IS more than one perspective…we really have to ask why we have a hard time accepting that.

 

You will be fine, unless you mess it up and, then in the end, you will still be fine.

 

Do we hold on to things that bring us joy assuming that the only likelihood is the prospect of losing them AND that there won't be any new sources of joy?

 

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Electric Power: China

The Morning

Don’t you dare rake your leaves this fall

For decades, I stalked the invertebrate enemy.

I bought a propane-powered contraption that promised to lure and kill mosquitoes by mimicking human breathing. I caught about three.

I fogged my deck before guests visited, removed all traces of standing water and dropped mosquito dunks into a bucket of water to serve as a trap. And still, the bloodsuckers attacked.

I lined my walkway with citronella tiki torches — until one of the lamps lit my shrubs on fire.

I hired a company to spray a garlic-based repellent in the bushes, and I scattered garlic granules in the lawn. It didn’t bother the mosquitoes a bit, and my yard smelled like a pizzeria. (It did keep the vampires away.)

In desperation, I resorted once or twice to having the spraying company use chemical insecticides that actually do kill mosquitoes — and probably humans, too. But even that was a short-lived fix.

So when my wife and I bought a place in the Virginia piedmont last year, I was prepared for the worst. If I had that much trouble with mosquitoes on my postage-stamp lot in the city, surely I would be donating a quart of blood every evening to their country cousins.

But they didn’t bite! Here, in the mountains, I walk the fields and putter about in the woods without wearing my usual Eau de DEET, and yet the mosquitoes do not feast. I sit on the porch at dusk, baring my arms to all comers — and not so much as a nibble.

It isn’t my imagination. Entomologists tell me this is part of a worldwide phenomenon.  Continue here....

-- Dana Milbank

Only Persists

What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.

-- Carl Jung

Truth & Context

As with most things, when I read something like last week's post about being gifted, I am primarily relating to it from my context.  Any observation like that may immediately resonate or it may not at all.  So, when it does, I'm nearly always connecting to what it is postulating because of something familiar about it to me.

But, I've noticed that sometimes when identifying who made the observation, something else is gets involved.  For example, if it is somebody I am familiar with, I may read the observation with an additional lens.  If I know the person (and I like the person or what they tend to say), I tend to take the observation with more merits of truth.  If I don't know the person or think the person is coming from a disposition I don't trust, I take the observation differently.  Sometimes, I can read an observation without knowing who made it and then it takes on a whole new shape when I discover who made it.

The truth is the truth, but our relationship with it is influenced by the context in which it is received.  And, it is often impacted by how that truth is announced or who announced it.

In this case, I didn't know who Marie Curie was.  I noticed the observation.  It struck me in some way.  But, I also did a little back-and-forth about its merits.  This, in retrospect, was primarily because of how what was being observed struck me (at face value, in my context).

But, then I looked up Marie Curie (quite a life story, by the way) and her observation took on a whole new shape, flavor, richness, and depth.

The truth was there and I was relating to it, but only from my own context.  When the context for it was expanded, my imagination for it did, too.

Sometimes I will read something and then edit my assessment of it because of who wrote it (or made the observation).  This is, perhaps, unavoidable.  And, the two go together because truth and context almost always do.  But, it made me realize that I can let the context (or the person making the observation) overshadow the observation itself.  This may not be the worst offense in the history of mankind, but it is important to recognize because we do this kind of thing all the time.

Especially in these times, where political context is often overshadowing nearly all semblance of truth:

“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!”

-- Donald Trump, last weekend

We've heard this so many times now — the content hardly even registers...because of the person saying it.  On it's merits alone, it is not only disheartening, but quite scary because the only reason such mania persists is that there is still a ready audience for it...paying for it to continue.

Influenced as it is by our collective one, we all see things primarily through the lens of our own experience.  Because of this, we have to recognize how much of what believe is true is based on our experience of it.  That experience is both real and isolated (including those referenced above — they, too, have a story that influences their relationship with truth).  It is only when we can imagine the possibility that our experience of truth is not, in fact, the whole experience of it that we have opportunity to comprehend its more expansive nature, not to mention other people's relationship with it.

Without such perspective, we are numbingly vulnerable to the ideals (violence) reflected by Donald Trump above — the elimination of anything (and anyone?) that doesn't line up (if not, agree) with their experience.

I am grateful for what my context has afforded me, including the knowledge that while our humanity is shared in common, the details of my own experience are not universal.  My experience is real, but it is not the only one.  I have (the good) opportunity to wonder (even imagine) what part of the greater body of truth is understood by people from other contexts and experiences.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.

-- Mark Twain

LT: All The Ideas

The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it's to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they're valued.

-- Sir Ken Robinson

Initial Impression

I’ve noticed…that sometimes I read something and get an initial impression that once I’ve taken the time to re-read it was quite different than what was actually there.

Awe, Introspection, Awe

Contemplative life flows in a circular pattern: awe provokes introspection, which invokes awe. 

Maybe you’re making dinner and you step outside to snip chives from the kitchen garden just as the harvest moon is rising over the eastern slopes. She is full and golden, like one of those pregnant women who radiates from within. Suddenly you cannot bear the beauty. Scissors suspended in your hand, tears pooling at the corners of your eyes, you nearly quit breathing. Your gaze softens, and the edges of your individual identity fade. You are absorbed into the heart of the moon. It feels natural, and there is no other place you’d rather be. But the onions are burning, and so you turn away and cut your herbs and go back inside. You resume stirring the sauce and setting the table.  

This is not the first time you have disappeared into something beautiful. You have experienced the unfettering of the subject-object distinction while holding your daughter’s hand as she labored to give birth to your grandson; when curled up in bed with your dying friend …; while yielding to your lover’s lips. You have lost yourself in heartbreak, then lost the desire to ever regain yourself, then lost your fear of death. You long ago relinquished your need for cosmic order and personal control. You welcome unknowingness.  

Which is why seemingly ordinary moments like moonrises and lovemaking undo you. The veil has been pulled back. Everything feels inexhaustibly holy. This is not what they taught you in the church of your childhood. Your soul has been formed in the forge of life’s losses, galvanized in the crucible of community, fertilized by the rain of relationship, blessed by your intimacy with Mother Earth. You have glimpsed the face of the Divine where you least expected it.  

And this is why you cultivate contemplative practice. The more you intentionally turn inward, the more available the sacred becomes. When you sit in silence and turn your gaze toward the Holy Mystery you once called God, the Mystery follows you back out into the world. When you walk with a purposeful focus on breath and birdsong, your breathing and the twitter of the chickadee reveal themselves as a miracle…. 

So you sit down to meditate not only because it helps you to find rest in the arms of the formless Beloved but also because it increases your chances of being stunned by beauty when you get back up. Encounters with the sacred that radiate from the core of the ordinary embolden you to cultivate stillness and simple awareness. In the midst of a world that is begging you to distract yourself, this is no easy practice. Yet you keep showing up. You are indomitable. You are thirsty for wonder.

-- Mirabai Starr

3 Observations & A Question….

You've got to know yourself well enough to know what you don't want.

What unbinds the heart as much as anything is understanding of the things that bind it in the first place.

A lot of the time, what we’re really dealing with is a by-product of something else.

When does "what will make me feel better?" transition to "what will make me feel good?" — when the consequences of the difference are most apparent?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Where Is Everyone Going? + Congregant & Clergy Views

AXIOS

Orbed Grace

'Poem for the week' -- "Orbed Grace (with image)":

I cannot rightly say much about grace,

except that it is as real to me as the orbed white dahlia blossoms that punctuate my verdant backyard like stars. 

Its reality is similarly bright, surprising, and full of delight.

When the blossoms fade,

and your promises elude my grasp,

walk me out under the sky lights

that I might recall the rightness of that elusion

and gratefully witness the sheer wonder of it.

For it is in response to the burning orbed-brightness of grace

that my own blossoming occurs.

Thank you for petaled teachers

and revelation in all its gracious forms.

To know you, even in the smallest ways, is to love you … and I do love you.

Amen. 

-- Emily Cash, Driftwood Prayers

Gifted For Something

We must believe that we are gifted for something.

-- Marie Curie

Who We Are

How much can we know about who we really are without first having had deep encounter with knowing who we’re not?

We are not truly able to like (appreciate) ourselves without the benefit of a thorough embracing of what we don’t like about ourselves. 

And, that often comes through a gauntlet of recognizing how much of the expectations that we have of ourselves are conditioned by the expectations others have of us. This kind of tyranny can only be resolved with a deeper acceptance of our own expectations of ourselves (independent of the expectations of others).  I must become beholden to the true beauty of who I truly am, particularly in contrast to whatever I am as defined by others.

As long as I am driven by achieving a kind of personal exceptionalism that is predicated on the approval of others, I can never really dispose of the artifice that dims the shining of what is beautiful about me. One’s real beauty doesn’t need (and can’t actually have) the kind of light that is merely a reflection of the expectations of others. It can only shine from a kind of interiority that is not beholden to the temporary brightness that is attributed from others. In other words, it might be bright, but it doesn’t really shine.

This kind of beauty is independent in both source and energy from the kind that comes from seeking the result instead of the cause, the byproduct instead of the purpose, the manifestation instead of the essence.

In the end, what I am is a function of who I want to be (desire). But, if who I want to be is simply a resemblance of something that is defined by others, I can never really live from my true essence. Who I want to be as defined by who I am must have a kind of congruence that may or may not include approval or acceptance of others.  External approval is not the same thing as internal acceptance. It is fleeting — just as quickly discarding you as it using you for its own advantages. And, such dynamics are not centering or freeing; they are endlessly distracting and binding.

Who we are is most certainly influenced by the context that we've both come from and are currently in.  But, the journey is the identification and liberty of our unique contribution to that context.  Otherwise, we become a casualty of the system that feeds on the false energy of our trying to be something we're not.

Grows With Use

A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used.

-- May Sarton

Opportunists

Ever noticed...how you can spot opportunists a mile away?

...particularly political ones.

Letter of Recommendation...from the Poor

Every church should be able to get a letter of recommendation from the poor in their community.

-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

A Quiet Little Unstimulating Evening

A Quiet Little Unstimulating Evening tonight in Ann Arbor....

3 Observations & A Question….

A case could be made that the very thing that you’re asking for, you are already getting.

There is what you think you know about other people, and then there is being in relationship with them.

Relationships, generally, are messy at one point in another — and, yet, they are vital to the quality of our existence.

There is so much around us all the time to be inspired by...what are you spending your time looking at?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

On the Lighter Side: One Minute

 On the Lighter Side: