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….
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.
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
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.
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
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?
'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
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.
Ever noticed...how you can spot opportunists a mile away?
...particularly political ones.
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….
"I had a sense of something, but I really had no idea! This really help me understand myself."
How many times have you heard someone say something like this?
The reality is, all of us only know parts of ourselves, both before and after moments of enlightenment.
In its purest form, this is just simple observation. There really isn’t even a need for any particular moralization about it either — as it is just simply true.
Most healthy human beings seem inclined to learning more about themselves. This also seems simply observable. Awareness overall, especially self-awareness, is generally both a good and helpful thing.
It is when we become preoccupied with the prospect of self-knowledge that things seem to get off track rather quickly. Full self-knowledge is not only unattainable, it is also unnecessary, not to mention unhelpful because it is usually driven by other, unhealthy forces. It can end up in a kind of narcissism, which is destructive both to oneself and to others because it doesn’t stop. It can't stop — as its appetite is relentless and insatiable. And, it invariably projects itself on to others. A preoccupation with self-knowledge is too often just disguised desire for perfection:
The poor in spirit are blessed and are not crushed by criticism because they are not trying to protect an idealized version of themselves.
-- Rich Villodas
We don't want people to try to be somebody they aren't when they come to work. That's just exhausting. We want them to be able to learn how to aim who they are naturally in order to succeed at work.
-- Bob Jordan, CEO Southwest
(@GaryHershorn) September 11, 2023
See more images here....
I'm wondering...about how much of what we fill up our senses with influences the quality of the whole rest of our life?
If we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear [God’s] call and follow Him in His mysterious cosmic dance….
For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.
Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.
-- Thomas Merton
Previous Nice News....
Knowing about something or even how something works is not the same thing as actually experiencing it.
It is more than a bit conspicuous how those in the political sphere who appeal to law-and-order are the very ones being indicted (and convicted) for abusing it — it looks a lot more like law-and-order applies to other people (not them)...to the ones they want to maintain power over.
Nothing in the Earth is ours — so, that would seem to call into question whether anything that we put on the Earth is either….
Aren't most quality and long-term friendships, in the end, sustained by deep levels of acceptance?
In any given day, we have SO many thoughts.
So why do certain thoughts grab a spot and settle in...so deeply? Some even cause rumination — cycling over and over them in our minds.
How do thoughts embed themselves in the library of our brains anyway?
And, when this happens, what is it that does the embedding part?
Two things seem noticeable about which ones stick. For one, personal experience is often glue-like for something to attach to our consciousness. It is what we associate with certain kinds of thoughts that contributes to its stickiness.
The experience-set we are working with is set in motion early in childhood. It is how we learn and understand things. Those things can be positive or negative, but either way they form the base from which our subsequent thought-patterns emanate. When I was a child, I developed all kinds of perspectives on what I thought things looked like (including what they were supposed to look like). Among other things, I formed impressions about family, marriage, friendship, church, society, money, success, the world, our existence, and God. I developed thoughts (even expectations) about them, without even realizing it, that carried over into my adult life.
Often, as adults, our earlier experience-set is either affirmed or put into conflict by additional experiences. Our thoughts, once again, evolve and continue to take shape from our surroundings and circumstances (especially our painful ones). Whether by continuance or adjustment (sometimes significantly), our experience forms the fabric against which our thought-patterns lay. It deeply sinks the thought-poles of ideas that makes sense to us.
There is another dynamic, too, that has an adhesive quality to it — the mood or energy that is often connected to a pattern of thoughts. It doesn’t take very much of this “mood" about certain thoughts or ideas for that energy to actually become even more significant than the thoughts themselves. Fear, for example, is like this and is often used to tap into an idea; it rides below the surface and energizes the thoughts we have on the surface. Thoughts, in this context, can often become like lightning-rods for our fears.
We have to know that this kind of thing is going on because it is often the energy behind certain thoughts that is what is most important about them. More often than we realize, there are significantly influencing forces prevailing on the thoughts that circulate around us. And, these forces are part of what embed them deep within us. Social-media has done nothing if not confirm this dynamic. In fact, it appeals to it...because it works. It is often selling the energy even more than it is the ideas. If this or that idea falls out of popular favor, we'll just change to the new thing. This is easily done because it runs on the same energy.
Though not completely new in concept, this kind of energy often harnesses our thoughts towards what is wrong with things (using fear again) — we often become near experts at finding flaws with things. And, so, our challenge (and opportunity) is to consider, not only how our thoughts form and are sustained, but also how we can change the dynamic of the thoughts we so actively maintain. It is much harder, for example, to work at discovering what we can do rather than simply pointing out what we can't (or shouldn't) do. Doing this requires that we understand and then reposition how what embeds itself, in our thinking, needs to change.
This could not only affect how we think, but what we think...which might position us to actually do something constructive for the world.
The best leaders are also the best followers. They follow a purpose, cause, or belief bigger than themselves.
-- Simon Sinek
I've noticed...when I sense someone’s disappointment in something that I am involved with, I often want to eat something.
“You from here?” No, he’s from Boston, he came out here to help his son who owns the cab company, and he loves Arizona, the climate relieves his arthritis. “So what did you do back in Boston?”
In Europe, this question might raise hackles, like asking, “What’s your annual income?” but he doesn’t mind. He’s a retired Baptist minister. And now the door opens wide...continue here.
-- Garrison Keillor
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due.
-- Etty Hillesum
Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments.
-- Joseph Addison
Love does not allow people to flee or shield themselves from the pain or the troubles of this life. Genuine lovers move deeply into the life-and-death dramas of this world, like a plant that sinks roots deep into fertile soil, and there give themselves wholly to the flourishing of life. To withhold oneself from love is to withhold oneself from participating in a complete life.…
-- Norman Wirzba
Prior 4 Observations (from Others).
'Poem for the week' -- "Advice for a Gray Afternoon":
Do not assume the worst, a trap
Loneliness sets for old age,
Or make impossible demands
On your equally lonesome peers.
Set your children free,
Not always at your beck and call.
Because your needs keep growing
And are endless, don’t imagine
There are answers to everything
Your heart cries Yes to.
Give yourself permission to question
Certainties you once bet your life on.
Establish and maintain a good forgettery,
Welcome that angel with others.
Make trust the keeper of your house.
Sit in the sun that banishes doldrums,
Useless apologies, guilt.
Open your eyes, uncurl your fingers,
Take in what you need.
Give sleep the upper hand,
Fall often into the arms of that god.
-- Jeanne Lohmann
When I go on walks, I almost always take my phone with me now.
Not because I have so many people to talk to, but so that I can talk to myself.
Unless I've fooled myself somehow (not actually that hard to do), my phone's availability is not as much for media-tetheredness as it is about capturing some of the many thoughts that flow more freely through my mind when I'm out walking (not to mention the sights involved — like the red flash of a cardinal darting across the path in front of me). The words those thoughts generate sift and sort as they inch me towards the sensations I’m feeling physically (pain, pleasure, etc.) and the emotions I have been carrying around psychologically.
And then, there is the whole spiritual dimension that seems conspicuously more accessible in the context of the often harmonious dynamics of nature (and, according to Richard Louv, apparently I'm not the only one impacted in such ways). Although nature certainly includes disruption of that harmony, the more consistent experience, at least as I have observed it, seems to be the interplay between everything that appears to be living and breathing together in many contexts like the woods or the ocean or even the skies. I have developed an affection of spirituality, after an extended relationship with it through the lens of religion. Religion seems to often leave you either with a drum-beat to perpetuate itself, or the urge to get as far away from it as possible. Spirituality, on the other hand, seems far less interested in co-opting and moralizing and controlling (even systematizing) things. It just is. It serves both itself and the co-inhabitants of its environment, and perhaps even something greater than mere affective activation (why, for example, would it include so much beauty if it’s all just a personal function?).
Sidebar: All of us, after all, are only partially on to truth. If that feels disputable, what actually is the alternative? That we understand all truths? That certain people understand all truth? If we acknowledge that the body of truth is ultimately not fully known by anyone, wouldn’t that leave us with a slightly different disposition towards our relationship with what we think is true? The reality is, among other things, this makes us far more vulnerable than we prefer to be. Because which part of what is true am I actually after all acquainted with? And, what if someone else’s partial relationship with the body of what is true has awareness of parts of it that are different from what I am familiar with about it?
So, spirituality has become something, for me, that transcends some of the more limited contexts of my experiences with truth. There is belief (what you think is true), and there is faith (what you are really trusting in). And, there is religion (among other things, what tries to aggregate and socialize). Then, there is spirituality against which they all seem to lay or, at least, tap into.
Walking then (as confirmed here) — the physical act in a context like nature — awakens my awareness to some of these realities (both within myself and externally...all that is going on around me). And, words are one way I can engage with all these dynamics.
I have noticed that my attempts at verbal-framing are pretty ephemeral. Thoughts fly in often unannounced and then promptly proceed to evaporate (kind of like that cardinal). If I don't jot something down as it happens, too often I can only remember that I thought about something that seemed significant, but not what it actually was. And, so, my phone (or, should I say from a functional perspective, my recording device...which also happens to be a phone) is a handy and helpful way for me to capture conversation with myself about this engagement I have with life and the world.
Wait, hold up...I'm making a note, as I merge my technology with the sublime.
Ever noticed...that the most spiritually healthy people are also among the most humble?
God is the presence that spares us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. God depends on us to protect ourselves and each other, to be nurturing, loving, protective people. When suffering is there, God depends on us to reach out and touch the suffering with love that it might dissolve in love.
But here’s the thing: To be present to suffering and to touch the suffering with love, that it might dissolve in love, means to be grounded in the peace that is not dependent on the outcome of the effort because, regardless of how it turns out, God is unexplainably taking us to God, breath by breath, moment by moment.
-- James Finley
This requires some meditation, but it is so energized by the mystery of its invitation.
Its appeal to the adjustments we need regarding outcomes is quite compelling, especially when established on the foundation of peace.
Consider, after all, the inadequacies (if not violence) of its alternatives, many of which are not at all hard to spot around us right now.
As a society, we seem to be less and less capable of recognizing that good and bad are invariably mixed together — which obviously leads to significant problems collectively (whichever way you’re pre-disposed to noticing) and a distorted of ourselves individually.
One of the conspicuous and unfortunate characteristics of modernity is our failure to recognize the impacts of manipulating so many of the ecosystems of the earth — especially the ways its profit-seeking consumption throws so many things out of natural balance.
If it’s not good for everyone (in other words, only some), then it’s not really good for anyone.
Doesn't real power come from the actual experience of something, as opposed to just the knowledge of something that can be experienced?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
People are very open-minded about new things — as long as they're exactly like the old ones.
-- Charles Kettering
Another lingering reflection, on a recent Ever Noticed...:
Ever noticed…that most children in healthy environments are often sponges for everything that is going on around them?
So, what happens along the way that inhibits our ability, especially as adults, to continue to absorb reality? Why do we so often cut it off? The answer is probably not too difficult to identify. But, perhaps it is the ever-emergent posture of defensiveness or self protection that can actually be reconsidered.
While often a bit more dense or complicated, it is too often pain that seems to engage mechanisms in our life which prevent us from continuing to be as receptive as we were when we were young children. The reality, unfortunately, is that there is a lot pain in life. But, deeper understanding (if not experience) no longer retains pain in the position as something that needs to primarily be avoided, as much as it something to be embraced, engaged with — to actually, in one way or another, cooperate with. Such a disposition seems to put us on a much more healthy footing and allows the possibility of not only healing, but also growth. We can learn, albeit not easily (or often quickly), that pain often presents an opportunity to not only heal ourselves, but also the world.
But, the original thought here relates to the sponge-like nature of children. One oft-associated characteristic of childhood is play. We almost automatically assume that they do it, should, and need to. It is pretty commonly accepted that there is even something developmental about it.
In other words, even as they play, they are absorbing things...all kinds of things, related to objects, dynamics, relationships. They are taking in all kinds of information and learning from it. Fun is a thing in and of itself, but it also enhances engagement and learning. Play is one way to incorporate fun into the process.
...and this observation likely leads back into the question above — what happens to this phenomenon as we become adults? Does is morph? Or, does it largely just stop? Play is often difficult for some adults. Sometimes it is a physical thing. But, more often, I suspect, it is about something else.
Either way, being sponge-like is a disposition we might be better off to retain. After all, what in effect does it look like when we don't? When we no longer allow new information to permeate us? When we are no longer able to relate to our environment (or to those in it — you know, when we only like to play with our friends, not yours, etc.)?
...maybe it looks a lot like what we see all around us so much today — preponderance of fear and all we end up doing with that.
I'm wondering...when did enjoyment become our highest standard?
Somewhere along the way, of course. But, at some point, if we don't do things simply because they aren't enjoyable, we've ended up somewhere quite problematic.
What ever happened to good...as a standard?
