The Reassuring Universe

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Boring Angels

Relationships with angels lack reciprocity. You cannot help the angel. You cannot even tell the angel anything it does not already know. Therefore, there is limited Unity in such a relationship because it is so lopsidedly one way

By the same token Adam had God and all the angels and all Creation with which to commune. Yet Adam felt lonely. Conversations ain’t conversations if one party already knows everything and is in no way altered by the interaction.

Adam needed another human, and it had to be a decidedly different human. A second Adam, a twin with the same outlooks and thoughts, twins mutually unchanged by their interactions, would not have sufficed for Unity.

We crave, Creation craves, the universe functions, to support Unity, and Unity entails mutual support and growth and creation.

Pray to and with God, give thanks for angels, but it is with kindred spirits, it is in the mutually shared struggles and celebrations of kindred spirits, that we experience Unity and the fulfillment of Purpose.

Flightless Souls on Walkabout

Flightless Souls On Walkabout

On a bench at the pond, post sunrise, the three Marx brothers ducks at my fe

The Marx brothers prune themselves in the morning low angle light, a fresh cool breeze slipping across the pond,

Little quaking sounds and little waterfall sounds and little bird songs accompanying this heavenly scene.

I remain in my usual wrestling match with God, marveling at the Paradox of the inherent beauty of life and Nature versus the inherent suffering and tragedy of Life and Nature.

The Marx brothers tuck their heads into wings and go back to sleep, right in front of me, just across the trail, the shadow of my toes touching a tail, the shadow of my head extending far beyond them.

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Occasionally I see the Marx brothers going on long walkabouts, heading up the hill and into the woods, dangerous terrain far from the security of the pond, brushy terrain in which their flightless forms could be easily trapped and destroyed by a dog or a fox. How I worry about them! If I see them in time I try to herd them back toward the pond, as I scold them for such foolish and unnecessary behavior. But their behavior is necessary. The urge to wander, to get about, to explore that other place and it's potential, that is as ingrained in their being as it is in the nature of wild ducks who can fly.

The wild ducks never sit in a pond week after week, month after month. Through the course of even a day they fly from place to place, this creek, that meadow, into the next valley.

The Marx brothers have to try to do the same, regardless of their flightless wings.

So they waddle up trails into dry woods and I fret about them until they reappear at the pond.

We, just as flightless, our conscious souls trapped in a temporal blindness and localized into a carnal body, also feel driven to wander, to explore possibilities, to take risks, even risking our souls. We explore beliefs and faiths and ways of being and ways of living, though that may mean leaving the security of the familiar and traditional.

I fret about the Marx brothers but can do little more than fret. God frets about us but can do little more than fret.

Our souls cannot yet fly, our eyes cannot yet see beyond the frame of time flickering before our consciousness. But explore we must, we the fallen

Waddling Marx brothers, struggling humans, we seek fulfillment in our destiny, impatient with our present lot, wings not flying, minds not comprehending.

It is what it is, this perennial dissatisfaction. It must be so if we are to ever someday fly. But in the meantime, let our burning dissatisfaction and temporal blindness and carnal imprisonment and flightless wings not blind us to the beauty that we can experience and the life we already have.

Let us go on our clumsy and dangerous spiritual walkabouts, for such is our inescapable nature. Let us not forget though the momentary spiritual home that awaits our return, that place for our soul that nurtures and heals and protects us though we cannot, yet, fly.

Monday, June 28, 2021

Mere Mountains to Be Moved

Mere Mountains to Be Moved

The world,

chaos and madness,

tearing and conflicting,

confusing and confounding.

How much can you stand?

How much can you bear?

Each gathering of people

compounding the loneliness.

Each material gift

cementing the isolation.

Predictable and consistent,

the shallow prattle;

lives so close,

yet still untouched.

None know,

no, not one.

no basis for communication,

no common ground.

Relentless the misunderstanding.

pointless, the words.

relentless, the calling,

pointless, the denial.

Abiding, the principle,

and purpose,

and prayer.

The path was never clear

because it never existed.

Yet against all odds,

clueless and naive,

you got somewhere,

and quite a somewhere it was.

It was in fact perfect,

those somewheres raggedly stitched

together by the miracles.

You just didn’t realize

how hopeless your situation was.

Now you do.

That’s the only difference.

Now you blindingly see

the abject hopelessness

of the cause.

You’ve been given the

multitude of failures

to purify your faith.

Each reminder of hopelessness

and helplessness

Is a gift,

a gift of opportunity,

steel and beams and concrete

to erect a structure of faith,

not a mere mountain

to be moved,

but a mountain

to be built.

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Summary Principles

THREE PRINCIPLES

Were we to boil everything down to three principles:

* Unity, meaning the strengthening of all individuals as individuals, and strengthening of the bonds among individuals, is the overarching calling, direction, objective, and joy for which we (unknowingly) strive in this life and are destined in eternal Life.

* Genuine spiritual practice and authentic worship ultimately is actualized in how you treat all living forms and beings placed before you.

* The Creative force of Love, called Christos by some, underlies all existence. You are not alone.

Feel free to print and share.

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Seeing through our dreams and scars

SEEING THROUGH OUR DREAMS AND SCARS

What would I see?

I'm not asking to see anymore.

I will see what I'm supposed to see.

I see blessings.

I ask not for visions but for open eyes to see what is right in front of me.

Peace in not knowing. Peace in the condition.

Peace with the changes of time.

The perspectives of age are not necessarily right, but instead reflect what we became. The perspectives of youth are distorted by what we wish to become. Scars and imagination distort our views from either end of life. Fortunately, in between life keeps us sufficiently occupied to not be too deceived by the distortions of our dreams and scars.

Most of all we are blind to what we are. That also is just as well.

Eventually we figure out there is very little to see that is not of our own making. If this leads to the further deception that there is nothing beyond that of our own making our souls are rendered destitute and hopeless.

With luck and faith, we will discern that in the absence of specific sights and visions there is still much to perceive. We want to see, for seeing is delightfully specific and incontrovertible. But what matters, what is real, is not constrained to this temporal - corporeal existence discernable by photons impinging upon retinas.

In this life there is very little to see beyond our worldly contrivances, but there is an infinity to sense, discern, and know. Life consists of learning these more subtle discernments that are liberated from corporeal perceptions. Soul consists of what we do with those discernments.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Terlingua

The graveyard. Crude crosses lie on the graves, often not even erected above the grave. Many graves look like stone piles, barely dug into the ground. Graves are randomly crowded together, in no order or pattern. There is not a hint of green or anything living. Most of the rough crosses are falling apart. There are few names or dates on graves. Several graves are covered in beer bottles. Fences around a few graves are falling down. There is no pretense of life here. There is nothing pretty and no attempt at pretty. It is the most reasonable and realistic cemetery ever.

Terlingua town: A post apocalypse scene of houses built in the midst of crumbling rock wall ruins that could be Puebloan. In the center an amazing store with candy suckers with a real scorpion at the center (how long dare you keep it in your mouth), display cases with dusty fossils, including a mosasaur skull, and 1960’s and 70’s Austin music posters for sale for $900.

Decorative tiles grace the old theatre cum bar entrance. Shafts of cinnabar mercury mines grace the barren ground.

The little rustic Roman Catholic church brings a critical touch of grace to this place of undisguised harshness of life.

Terlingua can’t afford the luxury of pretense. Dig deep for the mercury for use in explosives detonators, but don’t bother digging too deep a grave. Scorpions in candy is about as eloquent a summary of life as you’ll find, rivalling the Day of the Dead postcard with the innocently hot corpse-chick pulling the strings on marionette romantic partners.

This place has to work on the mind of anyone living here, but more honestly if less gently than modern digital city life.

Terlingua is absurd because it is an honest statement of life. Drive through, browse a moment, then uncomfortably climb back in your RV and pretend your modern life makes more sense than unlabeled graves, scattered pieces of crosses, and the scorpion patiently waiting at the center of your candy.

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Combat and Compassion

COMBAT AND COMPASSION

People are generally as programmed in their behavior as any cat or dog. Acknowledging that fact makes forgiveness a little easier. Perhaps the role of spiritual practice and well-practiced religion is to liberate people from their programming. The fear and anger and lust and stupidity abide, but we are empowered to at least slightly temper them, to take some nominal responsibility for our actions, or better said, to submit our course of action to a higher influence, something more noble than genetic programming and parental abuse.

In exploring that potential, we see the Christos in all, in the paradoxical opportunities for a Creation based on claw and combat to give rise to decency, compassion, and Love.