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.

God Has Left the Building

 

GOD HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Holiness?

Do we not believe it exists?

Do we believe "holiness" to be a vestigial mental concept of no relevance to our carnal lives?

Is "holiness" relegated to an altar or reliquary or ritual?

Does that mean God has deserted us?  If we sense no "holiness" through the course of a day, what's that say about God, or the world, or us?

God has left the building?

The world supposedly of God's Creation is now corrupt and bereft of any residual holiness?

Or we just don't see that holiness, don't sense it, or maybe we're blinded to it by our goal-oriented busyness.

"Holiness"....seriously?....relegated to something constructed by human hands?....or constrained to some ritual or liturgy?.....or relegated to the past?  

Imagine what life would be like if we were more adept at discerning holiness.  Imagine what the world would be like if more people were willing to accept the possibility of holiness.

"Holiness".....in the routine, in the grasp of a baby, in the blossom of a flower, in an exercise of patience.

"Holiness", not an alien and inscrutable weirdness stuck in pages of scripture, not divorced from our morning chores, but an integral component of each, the foundation underlying all.  Doesn't that seem more reasonable for a world created by a God worthy of any worship?

Look for it, be open to it, just in case, just in case it is there after all, awaiting a respite from our denials.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.