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.

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.

Breeze of Color

 BREEZE OF COLOR

I sit on the stones content, blessedly content, to watch the beautiful fall colors waving in the warm breeze heralding approaching weather.

Observe….savor Nature….as I did as a small child in dad's navy hammock under the cottonwood tree.  

I might seem a far different person now than when a student.  But not so at all.  I have simply shed the worldly dreams and hopes of younger days, revealing the person that was always there.

Spectacular fall colors this year, cherished as I cherished them as a child.

Then it was necessary to have aspirations, to get grades, to have career objectives.  It was all necessary, all my response to the world in which I was placed.  The infatuation with cars and TV shows was necessary, until seeing through them.  But I was always there, underneath the thick blankets of plans and schedules and hopes, always ready to pause to savor the colors in the breeze.

Occasionally, in order to be me, I momentarily eschew discipline and goals and allow exploration of what I really want …...and I am back outside, immersed in the colors, absorbing the sun, as I did when I had nothing to do.  

I was Home then, and Home now, the same Home.

Here, basking in light filtered through reds and coppers and greens and yellows and golds, here, without having to defend or justify my inactions, here, the healing here, I am who I was then, then far away and long ago, when I seemed so different, when I still wore the world's demands.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

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.

Beware God's Will

 

BEWARE GOD’S WILL

All these people, sincerely believing they are doing God’s will.  All these people, inflicting suffering for God...and yes, there are two interpretations of that last sentence.

Invoke God’s will and watch the conflict begin.

Invoke God’s will and listen to the rising anger.

Invoke God’s will,  I defy you to do it passively, unless making excuses for some cataclysm, tragedy, suffering, or God-forsaken wretch.

Invoke God’s will, and condemn.

Invoke God’s will, and turn away.

Invoke Gods will, and pull the trigger.

Or admit you have no idea how to extricate God’s will from your opinions, wants, wishes, and jealously fortified beliefs.  Admit, confess even if only secretly to yourself, then go forth and do something caring and compassionate. Then you won’t have to wonder if you are doing God’s will.  Then, the recipient of your efforts will be glad to welcome your version of God’s will.  If such a radical course of action means neglecting God’s theological, political, social, or moral will, fear not, there are ample numbers of people abjectly certain they are implementing God’s theological, political, social, and moral will.

You too will be certain, certain in that moment of caring, in your touch of compassion, in a flickering moment of fulfillment of a loving God’s will on earth, as in Heaven.  

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.

 

Conflicted Choice

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

Feel free to print and share.

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

Feel free to print and share.

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.

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.  

Darned Love

 

Darned Love

Look at that emphasis in the Bible on Love, two thousand years ago!  Palestina was a rough place and time!  Love?!  Where did that come from?!  You would not think people would even know what that was!  Love!

Every discussion of the Bible should promptly return to that core message, because that is the radical message, the unique message.  Everything else is filler and marketing to make the unpalatable Love less obvious.  Throw in the usual us vs. them, some blood and battles, a bunch of rules and regulations, some guarantees of a judgment day when we (the good guys of course) will finally win and get our tickets to eternal paradise, and you've got the ingredients for yet one more religion suitable for wielding condemnation, retribution, and persecution.  But then there is that darned Love.  Unique, and usually uniquely ignored, in words two thousand years old abides this curious and irritating admonition to change our innermost being, our external actions, and the world.  

Theologians will dissect verses and elaborate on eschatologies, while one single differentiating point, one overtly seditious word and its corollaries, distinguish the core message of this messenger from the jostling crowd of scriptures, teachings, and texts vying for our readily malleable belief.

Love.  Sacrificial, selfless Love.  One sermon.  One command.  One theology.  Leaving you one Choice.  

Christmas Cards

Christmas Cards 

Writing Christmas cards,

trite, shallow, pointless

Christmas cards,

growing more depressed with each.

'Tis the season,

the music,

Ol' Claus,

colored lights,

all contrived,

fake and facade,

no reality here,

wretchedly unrealistic…..

Yet images of Hope,

a wish,

relationships that will be, though not now.

The seemingly empty traditions

clarify and express our hopes,

granting vision of what could be.

The almost empty cards and carols

are desperately needed,

pulling us to something better.

…pulling us to be something better.

Son of Man

 

SON OF MAN

 

 "Son of Man".  What a perfect self-appellation Yeshu (Jesus) chose!....especially coupled with references to us as "this generation".  Yes, fully human, unambiguously human, yet a descendent, more advanced, of a different spiritual generation.  It is a title accurate and informative, meaningful because it was not bestowed, but matter of factly claimed.  

Son of Man…..knowing so much more than this generation could ever understand, homeless for lack of understanding by our generation, crucified by our rejection of the unheard lessons that might indict us.  

Son of Man, reduced to struggling for parables to try to communicate a little of what we would not want to understand.  

Son of Man, all ego stripped in that curious title, but at each mention dropping a hint as to His nature…..and ours.

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

A Secretive God

 

The obvious problem in trying to follow God's will for our lives is God's recalcitrance about unambiguously communicating that will.  Oh, we will promptly think we know what it is.  We will plan our lives accordingly.  Then when life unceremoniously tosses our holy plans into the dumpster we will stubbornly hold onto those plans because after all they are not our plans but God's plans.  

Our will and God's will quickly become convoluted because God is so danged secretive about whatever plan there is.  Our "willing" morphs into "willful" without our noticing.  

So for the umpteenth time it's back to the drawing board to resketch the priorities God seems to have given us, maybe, unless it's just our wishful thinking.

One is left to keep guessing, and adapt, and incorporate, and compromise.  Somewhere under all the practical considerations still resides that desire to do God's will, were it only clearly expressed.  Somewhere in the passing years, advancing age, and compounding shocks we of course may not "do" God's will, but we may live it.  Out of our control, unforeseen by our eyes, unanticipated in our plans, we somehow live God's will.  In that we can find some solace, some salve for our tattered faith.  

Commit your life to God's path, and promptly get abjectly lost, gloriously lost, in the dense fog of unfolding healing and redemption.

It All Makes Sense

 It All Makes Sense

Copyright 2025 Don Ray (But feel free to copy and quote.  Just give credit.)

Somehow it all kind of make sense, which is profoundly surprising.

All this conflict, the conflicts between people, and even the conflicts within our own minds.

It all seems quite unavoidably necessary if we are to be truly free and individual. 

Were we all the same, even a little more the same, even prone to a slighter degree of similarity, we would not truly be individual. 

The absolutely unfathomable, jaw-dropping, perplexing behaviors of those people a millennia ago, or around the world, or next door, or in the next cubicle, are an inescapable part of our nature as individuals.

The cacophony of voices vying for attention in our heads, the temptations and distractions and loss of attention and lack of discipline, that also necessary if we are to be free, freedom meaning choices, not mere choices of responses to circumstances, but choices regarding the very essence of who and what we want to be.

It is all necessary, and almost kind of begins to make sense.

And one can even imagine that it is all OK.

We must just have patience, patience and faith.

After all, we have all eternity to grow into what we want to be, and to live in that existence modeled around and consistent with what we want to be.

In its role as the incubator for these free and individual beings this world has through recent millennia fulfilled a surprisingly consistent function.  I can see a striking consistency in the Choice faced by ancient Greeks and modern scientists, plains Indians and marketing psychologists…..always the same Choice,….whether to care or not……whether to listen to the whispers of higher callings to Unity or the shrill threats demanding collapse into the self.

And through those millennia occasionally appeared teachings and prophecies and revelations, each of them of course deformed and warped by our insistent demands, but still fulfilling the essential need of providing some glimmer of hope, some relevant incarnation to gently assist us in our attempts to spiritually survive in the peculiar and perverse society of the moment.

Surprisingly it all makes sense, not that it has to.

All the conflicts are the inescapable, perhaps inevitable, consequence of birth into freedom and individuality. 

The conflicts must not endure, for once free and individual we are empowered to choose Unity.

This world must be what it is.

Those who choose to seek Unity must actualize their Choice by trying to heal and love, by accepting and tolerating, all within the clashing madness of the world around and the roiling conflicts of the mind within.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray (But feel free to copy and quote.  Just give credit.)

In Need of Meadow

IN NEED OF MEADOW

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share

On north ridge, lying in a meadow, first time here.

Had been up on this ridge one other time, long enough ago I had forgotten it.  

A falcon cries in the distance.  I let warmth of morning sun wash over me and wash away the tension of unrelenting human interaction.

There could be critters up here.  This is a place between trails, a place of sanctuary, a place untouched and safe.  Grass turns to white gold as the sun rises.

We are instantly late in the season, red berries having appeared overnight, grass seeded out and dry overnight.

I seek repentance from this life of following and going with the world’s flow, but I know not which way to turn.

Here I can smell the dry grass.  So long since noticing that smell!  Why does even the potential for presence of people send Nature and Spirit into hiding?

Sounds!

A deer?

A bird?

Senses awaken to natural responses, no ambiguity or secrets in the threats posed in Nature,

no deception or subterfu

No hidden agendas in Nature,

or so I pretend.

An open meadow brings some clarity of vision,

some visual perspective across distance not blocked by obscuring and tangled growth.

We need meadows in our lives,

we need a chance to get some momentary distance,

some perspective.

We need a moment to not have to anticipate what is behind that tree or bush,

to not have to calculate what underlies that comment and motive.

Tangled and obscuring are the forests of our societies,

interactions the grabbing branches,

conversations the ensnaring vines.

Seek a meadow,

seek perspective,

find a spot of sunlight unshadowed by demands and expectations.

Bask for a moment in clarity of light and sky,

even if social woods remain dark and confusing upon reentering

At least you will know there is Light,

and that the dark and confusing tangle of forest does occasionally yield to bright glade and clear vision.

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

Trust Your Robot

TRUST YOUR ROBOT

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

On the question of whether robots and machines that listen and sympathize will prove adequate to comfort the human soul.  The following builds on previously published concepts of the ontological nature of consciousness, Unity, and Reality.  For readers lacking the earlier explanations, the first three paragraphs may be a bit perplexing.  Not to worry.  By paragraph four we’re independent of previous material and back to practical considerations.

In the absence of Choice there is no real consciousness.

In the absence of consciousness there is no Deep Unity.  In the absence of Deep Unity there is no Deep Reality Interaction and hence no eternal Love.

Nothing substantial is projected into eternity by interface with a machine that has no Choice in its interaction.  The machine’s words and responses may be the exact ones desired, but that exact perfection and accommodation will be as empty and meaningless as any lying sycophantic person seeking to ingratiate.  

I recently read of a robot that is selling well, a robot that seems to listen.  That such a device would become popular testifies to our desperation to communicate and be heard and be accepted.

The robot poses no threat of rejection or criticism or correction.  Lordy, wouldn’t that be wonderful?  I wonder if that is why writing appeals to me?  I have long known my writing would be at risk of totally changing if I expected that anyone would read it in my lifetime.  Do I treat the keyboard the way people treat their comforting empathy robot?  No doubt my writing is driven to some degree by the need to express and communicate.  

How desperately we all want to be heard!  How desperately we want to make ourselves, our thoughts and ideas and feelings and experiences, a part of something bigger, a part of someone else’s thoughts and experiences.  

So we talk to people who are not really listening and we pay people to listen to us and now we can buy robots programmed to trick us into believing they are listening.

All the while we just need to listen to each other.

To what degree can we or should we go to get people to listen?  Isn’t what we have to say the most important thing in the universe?  It certainly is the most important thing our youniverse.  

So people buy listening robots and I type.  The response from the machine is far more affirming and encouraging than most human responses, or lack thereof.

Desperate to be heard, we prattle on to the exclusion of ever listening, rendering mutually mute our efforts at communication.  Left with bored friends, coworkers, family, and spouses, we can soon add bored robots to the list.  Loathe to listen, we know our stories must be better than theirs.  So the talk goes on, and robot sales go up, and tweets and blogs and Facebook pages profligately propagate.

Never has so much been said and so little heard.  

We talk and type and text to everyone and everything within reach….

……..except God.

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