Copyright 2021 Don Ray 

WHAT'S LEFT AFTER CONFORMING

There is a curious purity in being purely one’s self and getting lost in the Purpose.

Being one’s self may be extremely easy if you are popular, and may prove deucedly difficult if the world does not approve.

Submitting to the flow of the unfolding Purpose takes away a certain burden of obligation for planning each detail of your life, but it can also leave you feeling a bit lost, and perennially surprised.

But not being yourself, though perhaps convenient for career or social purposes, exacts its own toll.  And directing your life without regard for greater Purpose means you must continually duck the question “why?”

Ignoring universal Purpose and instead being whatever gets by in the world, you will arguably be more popular and accomplish more in worldly terms.  Certainly if everyone acted in purity of their nature and aimed only to serve that which is greater, the world would be a far different place.  Whether it would be a better place is left to your consideration.

So we muddle on, conforming to the world on some days, conforming to our nature on others, just surviving on some days, serving Source and Purpose on others.

Perhaps the only advice is to be true to something, and be conscious about that choice. And serve something, and be honest with yourself about that Choice.

That is all in all not a bad way to look at your life.  

To what are you true?

What do you serve?

And finally, if brutally honest with whatever remains of yourself after subtracting all the conforming,  do you like the answers?

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to share this.

Childish Questions

 

CHILDISH QUESTIONS

 

Copyright 2021 Don Ray

 

The curiosity and incredulity and bafflement and criticism with which children view our human world is exquisitely justified.  They see it for what it is, and are not averse to expressing their dismay.  Of course Yeshu (Jesus) said “of such as these is the Kingdom”.  But by middle adulthood necessities of social survival have blinded us to the madness, for it is too painful to be a part of it if you too acutely recognize it is madness.

 

The “why?” you ask at age nine of your parents you dare not ask at age twenty nine of your boss or spouse or friends.

 

Our need for financial and social survival ensures our complicity in propagating the madness to which we willingly and necessarily blind ourselves.

 

Let our descendants five hundred years hence laugh at our styles, clothing, trends, fads, and follies.  They cannot understand how desperate we were to belong and to get along, and they will certainly be engaging in their own versions of the madness we call “society”.

 

Perhaps one reason we remain so desperately busy is that a moment of stillness and quiet might pose the risk of remembering, remembering childhood when we still questioned, 

 

Copyright 2021 Don Ray

Laughs of Grass

LAUGHS OF GRASS

Copyright 2021 Don Ray

Golden grasses,

the bed for last night's deer,

as beautiful as when fresh and green.
 

Grass and air now crisp, 

they laugh as we walk through,

while in summer softness they sighed.

Alternative Path Home

​Excerpt from ALTERNATIVE PATH HOME
Our path to that goal will regularly change per the vicissitudes of circumstance and revelations welcomed and avoided.  Belief will change, faith will change, loyalties and friends and memberships will change, and if they don’t the goal sought is of questionable worth.  But somewhere under the career, titles, credos, dogmas, and rituals of daily life, all subject to adaptation and accommodation, the soul’s goal better remain fixed, lest the soul be lost without rudder or sail.
Read the rest of  ALTERNATIVE PATH HOME

Indefensible Hope

 INDEFENSIBLE HOPE

​Copyright 2021 Don Ray 

Take heart.  Take no faith in this world, but take heart in its moments of beauty.  It is after all God’s Creation, and its residents God’s children.
 
Take heart, though there be no worldly reason to hope.  All worldly reasons to hope will pass, leaving those who rely on them with no hope at all.

Read all of INDEFENSIBLE HOPE

New published book: "For the Orphaned Children of God"

 

For the Orphaned Children of God

Paperback and Kindle e-version with links to explanatory references

Free e-version for all other e-readers, without links to explanatory references

What is this?....words for when heart, faith, mind, religion, and society are not quite in sync, or maybe even in abject conflict. Who are the "orphaned children of God?" Anyone who with time, growth, and learning has found themselves at odds with once trusted institutions - religious, political, family, or otherwise.....souls who feel like an orphan of a prodigal God.

So, the Religion - Relationship - Political affiliation – Church – Family - Belief system - Spiritual practice – career – investments – orthodoxy - charismatic leader - fraternal organization – society – nation – civilization - and all those other foundations of life didn’t quite fulfill your hopes and dreams after all. They rejected you, or you saw through them, or you drifted apart, or it all blew up in your face, leaving you feeling orphaned by the foundation you most relied on. Take heart. It just means you’re learning and growing.
For the individual (or society) starting over, this compendium of essays about daily life, society, beliefs, faith, meaning, and purpose…..in other words “life” (with a little pseudo-poetry occasionally sprinkled in) reminds of what really matters. Yes, something does still matter, even when it seems all that mattered is lost.
This volume will seem like a hodge-podge mix of disparate topics, but the topics that daily life throws at us are also not politely organized. Our penchant for dissection of life into convenient categories underlies much of our inability to successfully grapple with any of them. In weaving enough random events, contradictory beliefs, and conflicting priorities together, perhaps this compendium will allow you to step back and recognize a pattern in the life that results from it all.
When it’s all done, you may not know much more about individual topics, but perhaps in your response to these unorthodox perspectives you will know a little more yourself.
The reader of this book will be an exquisitely rare individual, not satisfied with blindly accepting institutional edicts, a soul open and eager for alternative perspectives.
You will be different….which is why you have the potential to make a difference.