It Is Good, It Is Very Good

 

IT IS GOOD, IT IS VERY GOOD

So much to do!  

So much to contemplate.

So many lives to impact.

So much love needed.

So many people needing the touch of God.

God’s will be done, and we have to do it.

So much to learn.

So much damaged by ignorance.

Actions of love,

actions of life misdirected,

competence and effort,

incompetence and effort,

comfort level and skill level,

how to reach, how to touch,

each doing a job,

each of us doing our job,

wondering, guessing,

the art of life,

the ambiguous, desperate art of life.

A hand reached out,

a hand clenched,

both trying,

overcoming fear,

testing, testing,

testing the soul,

the children showing the way,

our desperation driving the effort,

and through it all

growth,

growth while waiting,

waiting to understand,

doing something anyway,

running forward toward flickering Light,

beauty in the effort,

the blind, loving effort,

charging out of our defensive bunkers to act in the name of caring,

taking the chance,

accepting the risk,

in order to help as best we can,

playing to strengths,

dealing with weakness,

the human drama, the human creation.

Will God ever again be able to look and say, “it is good, it is very good.”

God’s will waiting to be done……

…….by us.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Know

 

KNOW

Beware the lessons of the leaders.

They will make you believe,

and once you believe,

they own you.

Beware what you want to believe,

for it is too easy.

Eschew belief. 

 In its place discover ineffable certainty. 

The worldly projection of that certainty will change with living.

Its forms and practice will evolve.

Its name will routinely don new clothing.

But underneath the trappings and vestments with which your mind must  adorn it,

it remains immutable.

Yes, there is Truth,

disguised in various worldly forms.

There is something to know, 

to know much more deeply than the glare of "belief".

Beliefs have to be dearly held because they can so easily blow away in the next gust of wind.  

But some things, something, can be known, known because it is part of you, because you are an expression of it.  You know it as you know yourself, you dear soul you.  You need not put it into words, for our words are of this world, useful only for communicating worldly concepts.

 Belief deals with details.  Knowing deals with essence.  Know, with each new day, know ever more deeply, perhaps discovering that something you so wanted to believe is indeed true.

Reaching Through the Ages

 

REACHING THROUGH THE AGES

Reaching through the ages, 

from one to another,

that exquisitely rare connection between souls.

Oh, the joy of connection,

even if through centuries and continents.

A human expression,

finally heard,

dear God,

finally understood,

finally absorbed,

finally bringing some positive influence,

finally healing.

In a different time,

a far different time,

yet still related time,

when clarity of Purpose

is finally revealed.

Picture the moment,

the culmination of cascading miracles,

subtle and unrecognized,

right from the beginning,

the desperately hopeless beginning.

Let them wonder,

wonder at exact meaning,

reaching back,

back through time

to this very moment.

Wouldn't that be astounding?

These very words being seen by someone.

Can you believe?  Have you that much faith?

Yes, times change.  Yes, understanding changes.

Imagine, look, this is quite specific,

this moment and all those moments,

reaching, reaching, 

across the ages,

souls connecting,

understanding, 

enlightenment,

reassurance,

encouragement,

healing, precious healing,

from this moment to that.

Incomprehensible.

Preposterous.

Denied by every testimony and all evidence.

But look at it.  Feel it.

In this moment.

In this hopeless moment

that contains the potential for greatest faith,

a faith crystalized there,

there in the wreckage.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Embrace of Comfort

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

EMBRACE OF COMFORT

Comfort, comfort….from whom?....or from what?

Who and what awaits us,

that who and what that so resolutely hides itself from us now.

 

Comfort, comfort,

don't look for sense in it,

yet it is not deniable.

The very thought and awareness

testifies to its presence.

Comfort.

Comfort.

All is not lost,

and will never be lost.

 

Most dare not look for that Source of comfort

for the prospect of its nonexistence is too terrifying.

It is too abstract,

too irrelevant to this materialistic world,

and too unneeded in this age of screens, entertainment, and distraction.

Comfort is something in a bottle or a download.

But a day comes, inexorably approaching,

when yes, comfort, 

irrational, inexplicable

comfort,

will unavoidably and desperately be needed.

Soon enough, soon enough,

making no sense,

from Source indistinct and incomprehensible,

comfort, comfort

will be needed,

    and will softly embrace.

 

Opportunity in the Darkness

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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OPPORTUNITY IN THE DARKNESS

 

We, these nominally freewill individual elements of consciousness, find ourselves in this world of entropy, inevitable death, need, hunger, suffering, and evil.  We exist in more or less solitary confinement, our experience of life singular and isolated, with no way to share the essence of what it deeply feels like to be you and me.  

This might initially seem discouraging, and then depressing, and then abjectly hopeless.  ……but only because we miss the point.  Perceived from a different perspective, a distinct Light becomes evident in the undeniable darkness.

We are placed in a form of existence with boundless opportunity to do good and practice Love.  Yet our individual corporeal existence is all about us, all about our birth, all about our survival, all about our destiny.

We are given ample, indeed boundless, opportunity to do good, to help, to alleviate suffering, to rescue, to heal, to comfort.  Anywhere we turn there is need, which is to say, opportunity.

We do not have to save the world.  We cannot save the world.  But we can save someone or something, and in the process accept the gift of our own salvation.

There need be little torment about exactly what to do.  In this world of suffering the opportunities are boundless.  Raise your children, do a good job, or rescue animals, or shelter the homeless, or serve on church committees, or be politically informed and active.  But for God's sake, for your sake, do something.  There is no single right path.  There is no way for you to save the world.  But there are endless ways to save something and someone.  

That is the nature and Purpose of this world of entropy, to provide opportunity, to provide the Choice.  At its core foundational structure, below the infinite mathematical sequences that can only tease at a pseudo-determinism, resides entropy, the statistically not quite impossible, and hence inevitable, evolution of conscious life, and the inexorable death of that life.  The resulting overall perceived image is a grisly panoply of carnivorous cruelty.  Yet at the pixilated level of the individual elements of isolated consciousness, there we see the Purpose, the beautiful Purpose, the redeeming Purpose, in the opportunity to  choose Love and beauty in whichever direction we turn.  

It is a Universe and Creation of suffering.  It is a Universe and Creator suffering…...all for us, for each of us…..we children being born into what seems darkness because our eyes are still closed, we children of a Light awaiting our Choice to let it shine through us.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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Conflicted Choice

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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CONFLICTED CHOICE

Conflicts, between nations and people, inevitable.

Collapse of systems, inevitable.

Conflict internally, inevitable.

Conflict, what to do, the assessment of what is right.  Leaving one’s  children to earn money to feed those children.  Choosing among overlapping demands of friends, family, obligations, God, church, team, patriotism, pets, colleagues.

Conflict and choice…..there is the core nature of this worldly life.  Each moment at work, playing with children, helping a friend, supporting the team, is a moment not given to all the others.

Law and order, compassion, enforcement, acceptance…...each of them right, each justifiable.  Each choice of what to do bringing to light everything not done.

We defer the choice to holy texts, to imams and preachers, to team colors, to authority, blessed authority, anyone, anyone to save us from the torment of choice.

There will be suffering, and we don't want to make it worse, but the lovingly purchased pet food entailed suffering and death of natural resources or confined domesticated livestock.

Conflict and choices, enough choice by one group of people leading to conflict with that other group who made a different choice.

It is all good.  It will all induce suffering.

Some agonize over the choices.  Others don't.

"Just make them" time and mortality demand.  Decide who will suffer, who you will neglect, while trying to love and help the others.  

Every opportunity is from God?.....but the "ruler of this world", satan or coyote or crow, confuses the issue.

Note and observe, record without judgement, then adjust as feels right.  That is a way to avoid taking control.  It is a way to make informed decisions.  

This is a finite world.  It is so in order to promote values and awareness.  It is the big Choice that matters.  

It is a world of mortality.  Only in the limitations of mortality do values and priorities arise.

God does indeed place before us opportunities, but we cannot take advantage of all of them.  The real opportunity is the Choice…..and there is no right answer for that Choice.  Manifold opportunities to rescue mean manifold necessities to neglect.  It is simply so in this world.  It is important,  critically important, to recognize that.

Give up control, but don't think that means escaping terrible choices.  The desire to escape moral choices leads to horrors of ISIS, Taliban, and Baptists.  Make informed decisions.  Be aware of what you are doing.  Accept, and this is critical, what you cannot do as determined by each choice of what to do.  

Yes, each life opportunity, each opportunity to serve and help and heal and rescue is from God, personally delivered to you, demanding your response.  And you cannot do it all.  It is a huge act of faith and spiritual growth to recognize and accept that.  

Mortality demands faith to accept what cannot be.  Eternity assures all good will be.  

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

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Riding Darkness

 

RIDING DARKNESS

Now dark, quickly dark.

Gentle motion reveals the presence of darkly invisible waves just out that window.  

We ride the dark surface, just as our lives ride the boundary between life and death, sensing motion, trying to maintain our balance, something out of our control rippling by our soul, sensed not seen, treading an unseen surface separating life from an utterly unknowable depth into which we will inevitably sink.  The darkness, the unknowable depth, the unseen ripples we sense and dark tsunamis we dread, the darkness, the blankness, the unknowable depths, that is our canvas, the great blank canvas of life without answers on which we decide what matters.

Meaningless Time

 Meaningless Time

Time.  Corporeal existence.  Somehow it is through those that interaction Reality arises.  Through those Deep Love arises.  And horrors arise.  And beauty arises.  

Time.  Matter.  For now what we have to work with.

Yet nothing arising from them has meaning other than in the eternal.  Here and Now is the moment of Creation, we a painful part of that Creation.

The time and vanishing physical forms are illusions.  Yet through them we are empowered by God to create the eternal, eternal bonds and Love.

"Do not be discouraged", whispers Spirit.  Our capacity for control and power seems terribly limited.  Our wishes and will, even when uttered in the name of Jesus, seem pointless and hopeless.  Yet time deceives, making us think that the will of God is not unfolding.  Our entrapment in the Now blocks our view of unfolding Purpose and fulfillment of our hopes.  Our incarceration in the corporeal keeps us apart.  Yet in the usual Paradox, it is that corporeal and temporal nature that facilitate  creation of the real and enduring.

Faith, faith worn and tattered by the interminable delay of prophecy, faith is our source of warmth in the biting cold of the temporal world.  Faith is a capacity to sense and know beyond the body of Now.  

The moment will pass, has already passed.  The physical forms are disappearing before our eyes.  All that passing makes room for fulfillment of our prayers.  All that is real and meaningful takes time.  That is the oft repeated lesson, the lesson of the widow and of the bridesmaids.  Time and the physical, in their fleeting passage, erect the eternal.  Hold fast to the vision of faith, to awareness of Truth.  So much better, a seemingly delayed answer that endures through eternity than an instant gratification that just as promptly disappears along with the rest of the world.  Be glad the answers to your prayers are not immediately evident in the world, for that would mean they would just as quickly disappear along with the world.  

Let it unfold.  Do not be deceived by time.  The needs are known.  The prayers are heard.  Their fulfillment will not be through anything as unreliable as worldly outcomes.  Hold fast to faith as you watch time render the corporeal to dust, thereby making room for answers eternal.

Children of the Cast Off God

 

Children of the Cast Off God

Wondrous things are happening, people, even these people, doing wondrous things.

They are terribly disappointing, these people, yet the potential of God resides within them.

Do not look for perfection.  Do not look for control.  But define for them a need and direction, and give them some freedom, opportunity, and encouragement, and sometimes miraculous things will unfold.  

A frightening, even terrifying lot, magnanimous generosity and irrational cruelty keeping close company in their hearts.  Expect little.  Hope for much.  Give up all hope of understanding them or explaining their behavior.  Love them, but don't get too close.

Fear them.  Do not condemn them.  Forget any pretensions of teaching them.

Somewhere in their self-perpetuated chaos resides the Kingdom of Heaven.  Don't frustrate yourself trying to make sense of that.  

Curse them, bless them, flee from them, embrace them.  The Universe orbits about them, all Creation exists for them, and they will steadfastly lay claim to their central position while not bothering with gratitude for it.

Wondrous things are happening, and the children of the cast-off-God are doing wondrous things.  Marvel at it all and smile along with their neglected God.  

Calling

 CALLING

You would think there would be some profound and wise instruction for how to follow your life's calling, whether you believe that calling comes from God, destiny, universe, or whatever.  There is a calling, or callings.  You can follow it.  But how it will be revealed is acutely individual.  

Of course you have to want a calling before you can discern it.  You have to surrender to something before you can be called by it.  It is a rare and curious thing in an age of materialism for anyone to surrender to a calling.  It is also a rare and curious thing in an age of basic survival to surrender to a calling.  Yet all are called, but few accept it.   You will be alone.  Following a calling is terrifying, fraught with doubt, a glorious madness, indefensible and inexplicable.  Yet once accepting calling, you can never again deny it, at least not for long.  You would have it no other way, the world's tawdry profits rendered banal and tedious by a glimpse, even a fleeting glimpse, of Purpose and meaning and the invitation to be a part of it.  

Candles

 Candles

What fragments will survive, what remnant of touch.

Blessed, blessed,

immersion in Source and holiness,

those first safe moments of the day.

None can share, 

not yet,

blessed, blessed ritual,

not hollow ritual of things and mumbled words and smoke that promptly disappears,

but ritual of soul for the moment embraced.

The world, the world, 

terrible and terrifying,

potential unrealized.

But in the still of pre-dawn

the madness abates,

and blessed, blessed Communion

is enabled.

A touch,

reminding touch,

safe touch,

and the soul remembers

what was and

what will be.

Time finally slows.

The torrent of needs and hungers and demands is set aside.

Finally, finally,

miracle returns,

or better said,

eyes are opened to perceive the miracles always present.

None will wonder at such words.

They will prompt only momentary curiosity.

But surely there is more.

Surely those hints are of meaning.

Celebrate them,

though the soul longs to celebrate so much more.

While waiting for sunrise even a flickering candle is comfort in the cold and dark.

Yes, it is cold and dark.

Yes, those are beautiful candles, those imperfect children struggling to immerge from the spiritual womb of this carnal existence.  

Do not look to them for sunrise.  But in the midst of the isolation in the cold dark, do not miss the beauty of their tiny candle flames, though they cast even darker shadows.

Grim the moment, but bright the promise.

The sun will rise,

all will rise.

Do not pretend it is not dark and cold.

But do not miss the beauty of the candles,

do not miss the essential, though for now meager, light and warmth they cast.

See the Wholeness in all its darkness,

this birth of individual children of One loving Source

One Constant

 

ONE CONSTANT 

Last night I watched the spectacular and heavily favored Mikella Shiffrin ski out and disqualify for the second race in a row.  In shock she sat at the edge of the run for twenty-five minutes.

For the vast majority of us, plans and expectations are a momentary solace, an illusion of predictability, a delusion of our own empowerment.  Of course we hear of the Bezos's and Musks who plan, predict,  and control each detail of their obscenely successful lives.  That makes us feel either inadequate about our intelligence and discipline or bitter about our personal persecution by fate.  But the successful planners of their own lives did not raise their grandkids or have the stroke or get trapped in the car wreck or watch incoming artillery fire set their children ablaze.

Consequently rules of sports, Masonic rituals, and religion belief are our desperate attempt to erect some momentary facade of predictability.  Of course fundamentalisms flourish in times of rampant change.  We are frantic for something, anything, to grab onto to stay afloat in the white-water chaos of perfectly normal life.  Political flags or convenient scripture will do as long as it resists personal or societal  changes out of our control.

Death of course is the penultimate insult to our plans.  We are ultimately revealed as powerless.  The future beyond that event is utterly unknowable.  So we avoid thinking about it.  But if we accepted that the maelstrom of unpredictability that is our daily lives was merely a preview of and practice for that ultimate waiting unpredictability so utterly out of our control, to what might we turn for consolation?  When no worldly plan or expectation is reliable, what still abides as real?  Whether experienced or only wished for, what was it that felt real and substantive once every plan and expectation was crushed to dust and burned to ashes? 

Look back, look forward, see the world that so resolutely refused to be predicted or controlled, and sense the one constant that was all you really wanted all along.  All the plans were illusory, deceptions by self and the world.  Only the one hunger, only one essence, one joy, remained constant, then and in this moment.  Accept the chaos and unpredictability and uncertainty.  Accept the one constant hunger.  Discover that through it all, Love was the lesson, Love was the constant, Love was the plan fulfilled through the dissolution, even the penultimate insult,  of our insistent plans.

Alate Assist

ALATE ASSIST

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

 There from the north  arises a matrimonial flight of ants!  Who would have imagined?!  The stones are covered with busy little ants.  Colony entrances glisten with silver wings.  

What a wonderful surprise!  Thank You!  Thank You!  Thank You!

They launch several at a time, nicely visible against the gray sky.   

There is a gentle flow to this launch, a quiet elegance, not quite the frenetic spectacle of the launches of the larger ants of the other colony I used to watch this time of year.

What delightful surprises the loving Source provides.

One little winged guy has a terrible time.  He walks and flops and spins in circles.  But now away toward the sky!  Finally the hard effort pays off!  

I did not think the little flopping alate could manage it.  

Another walks and walks.  Wings buzz to no avail.  Too damaged?  Too defective?  I pray for him, and pray for all life and all living things trying to fulfill their essence…. but the prognosis looks grim for this little guy.  Look at the effort!  So long s/he has struggled.  S/he will have no energy left even if it can fly.  Such a majestic struggle, the struggle of the ages.  I am as helpless as the alate (winged ant with the role of mating to spread the colony’s DNA outside the colony), unable to assist.  On it walks…..eventually managing a pathetic flight of a few centimeters (inches). 

Finally I cannot help myself.  Clearly the situation is hopeless.  Clearly this flyer has not the strength, or has some defect.  It has tried too long without success for any hope to remain.  It's desperate walk is taking it under the thyme plant where even if it could get airborne it would promptly become entangled in overhanging leaves.

I let it crawl onto my finger.   I lift it up out of the wood’s shadow that keeps the stone cool and I hold the struggling alate in the morning sun.  Wings vibrate in a silver blurr.  It wobbles off the edge of my hand and flutters down toward the waiting stone……..and then rises!  It rises!  Given just that brief moment to learn to fly before being again grounded, it rises!  

Calm and serenity will have to wait for another moment, for this is a moment of jaw dropped wonder and joy!

Let life rise, let us all rise, and let us be for each other the aid and uplifting to allow bodies and spirits to soar.

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.