I still write, even though I'm not posting to this blog. I still travel, play music, hike some, though not as much. This, however, is what has filled my time lately.
Monday, March 12, 2018
Monday, May 22, 2017
2017 Western Trip
|
updated her status.
|
2 days 3 states 560 miles and all we did was reenter TN
|
Crossing the Old
Man
Meanwhile at the banjo museum my
thoughts turned to quilting designs
A few pics from
today's exploration of Washita battlefield National Historic site ...1866
cavalry led by G Custer massacred Cheyenne at dawn. Western OK
Beautiful,
peaceful, hallowed land. Full of cattle now. Used to be buffalo
Sod house from the"Sooners" in the
1892 land rush. Sooners were cheaters who snuck on to the land ahead of the
date to stake their claim Sod house from the
"Sooners" in the 1892 land rush. Sooners were cheaters who snuck on
to the land ahead of the date to stake their claim Dianne Gruber See the brown
package? He's bought another history book from a NPS bookstore
Red grass where
the women and children hid 
Washita river. Clusters horse cleared it in a
leap
Washita river. Clusters horse cleared it in a
leap
Palo Duro! South of
Amarillo, TX May 17-21
our “limited cabin”…electricity,
fridge, microwave, wqter spigot outside, comes complete with kangaroo rats.
Palo duro.
our “limited cabin”…electricity,
fridge, microwave, wqter spigot outside, comes complete with kangaroo rats.Palo duro.
Tree pose by a
brave young girl
GEORGE at the
Big Hole
Spanish skirts, but the light wasn't good
to bring out their color
Goodbye Palo Dura
Spanish skirts, but the light wasn't good
to bring out their colorGoodbye Palo DuraI'm sitting on a border rock outside a little stone hut in Palo Duro Canyon, south of Amarillo, Texas. It's 5:00 and the sun has set enough to give shade to the patio, but not quite enough to shade the picnic table, so I sit on this little wall to enjoy the shade and the canyon breeze. I could be inside the hut. Its thick walls have kept us cool every day, but I want to be outside. I want to experience the quiet and beauty of this place. Every breath is sweet desert air. I'm surrounded on three sides by canyon walls. Various shades of orange and brown rocks, interspersed with the dry gray green of the desert, and on the floor, framing my view, the yellow green of young spring. I read that the erosion piles of the rocks, layered in orange, red, white and brown, are called Spanish skirts, because they resemble the swirling skirts of Mexican women. I actually think I have a contra skirt in these colors.
The wind is ever present, but not
at all constant. It gusts noisily, backs off to a gentle touch, then builds up
again, a soft roar in my ears. If I knew birds, I would be hearing many
species, but I'm ignorant, so I just know there are different sounds. As the
evening progresses, vultures will entertain us, soaring in great circles. We
have two desert rats living here. We tried to tell ourselves they were mice,
but on reflection they are big for mice, but smaller than TN rats. They are
actually kinda cute, if it weren't for the fact that they thought the cabin was
theirs, and we had to hide all ours potential edibles in the microwave and
refrigerator. I wish the vultures would eat them for dinner.
9pm addendum.....this evening,
the entertainment, besides the vulture air show, was a mountaineering exhibit
by three young humans who seemed part mountain goat. I sat at the picnic table
and watched them scamper around the mountain. They eventually reached a
sandstone ridge, and then shoe skied back down.
Sometimes we add our music to
that of the wind and birds.I'm not sure how far it carries. There are other
humans down here, but we are spaced apart. If they do hear us, I hope it's the
sweet notes that reach them.
George is reading about the
Comanches who stayed here before us. They, like us, were itinerant, enjoying
the canyon's protecting walls while the storms howled on the plains. As we
lazily lie on the bed in the cool cabin and read our books, we think and talk
about what life may have been like for them. Our big effort each day has been
to ride the bicycle four miles each way to the Trading Post to buy lunch.
Otherwise, we are pretty indolent.
Yesterday evening we bicycled
over to the Big Hole, a tall cave in a wall. We were content to walk over the
uneven ground to the base of the wall, but young people climbed the wall to
stand on top of the cave. I have a lovely photo of a young girl doing tree pose
on the edge. She hollered down her phone number so I can send it to her when I
have cell service again.
Ps.
Has anyone had success offing a desert rat with a fly swatter?
TAOS
Pueblo of the Red Willow People
We were headed for Big Bend but somehow ended up in Taos.
Good wrong turn
The Rio Grand in its 640 ft
narrow canyon west of Taos
Ghost Ranch
, NM
Land of Georgia O’Keefe
, NMLand of Georgia O’Keefe
Halfway expected
to see John Wayne chasing Nicholas Gage on horseback here in Monument Valley. Almost too awesome to absorb …George 
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
Navaho Prayer
I'm so happy to be in the area of the Grand Canyon again
April 24 ·
Home for a couple days. It is windy.
So the internet,
which comes and goes, might be on again, thus I am obliged to send a Photo or
two of this lovely hole in the ground. It is likely my last time here, so I
celebrated by walking a little ways down the bright Angel trail, and took the
bus to various viewpoints along the west rim, as well as walking from Pima Pt
to Hermits Rest
Mather Point at
sunset
A few minutes later
Botonizing from the car in the Mohave. My guess (from
Wikipedia) is foxtail or cottontop cactus. Any opinions
Joshua Tree==Stephanie Hanberry Bean
d
dThursday, November 05, 2015
Bear Crossing
Bear Crossing
Ash, Janet, and Dianne were tripping merrily down the beautiful trail (well, plodding wearily may be more accurate, this was mile 6 of an 8.5 mile walk, but it WAS all downhill from here). Suddenly, Janet stops, points, and whispers, "bear." Ash, currently in sweep position, stops, but misses the whisper, and says, "what?" Dianne points, and says, softly, "bear."
All freeze. Just to the right of the trail and ten feet ahead is a beautiful young bear. He looks up at them, then resumes loudly crunching acorns. In a pack, Janet, Ash, and Dianne take five steps backward, each silently reviewing her scanty bear lore.
"Don't turn your back to him,"
"He looks young, are there more? Where's the Mama."
"Hold up your hiking poles. Look big."
"Are we supposed to blow a whistle?"
Bear ambles a few steps toward them, and their alarm escalates. They carefully retreat another five steps. He does appear to be bigger than a cub. Maybe he's last year's cub, and has been put out to find his own way, especially since no Mama has appeared.
They watch as he chomps and occasionally looks at them, and unfortunately, makes slow progress in their direction.
"Let's give him the trail." There really is nowhere to go opposite the bear. They can get a few feet off the trail, but it slopes sharply. There is no possibility of detouring around the bear.
"Should I blow the whistle?" asks Ash. "Would you get it out of the top compartment of my pack"?
Then Bear ambles across the trail to their side. The three nervous hikers sidestep back across the trail ("don't turn your back on him"!) and stand in the trailside brush.
Bear crosses back to his original side and resumes chomping. Ash, Janet, and Dianne sidestep back to mid trail.
"Maybe we should try the whistle," says Dianne. "Maybe just a soft toot." They're not sure why, but things need to move along, and perhaps that will change something.
Ash gives a tiny tweet on the whistle. Bear looks up, then resumes chomping. The women stand in the trail. "Well, that wasn't helpful".
After a few more minutes, Bear suddenly leaps onto a nearby tree. The women watch in amazement as he quickly scrambles thirty feet up to the first branch.
"Wow, that was fast."
"Yeh, but if he got up that fast, he could come down just as fast."
"I think he's trying to tell us we should move on now."
"Do you really think so?"
They screwed up their courage, and in a tight pack, walked past the bear in his tree, and continued on, stealing looks back to make sure the trail remained empty.
After a tenth of a mile, Ash said, "Durn, we should have made a selfie with the bear."
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Assignment: use the following random words in a piece of writing.
Market. Feat or feet. Cow clock
Jostle cheat smile loving
My result;
Look Rock on an October Evening
My friend and I walk up the concrete steps
to the terraced overlook
Scuffling dry leaves with our feet.
We wait while a family jostles into position
for the obligatory portrait
with mountain background.
We lean on the rail looking out.
A woman, cigarette dangling, takes many photographs.
I say, "I'm not much of a photographer."
He says, smiling, and reading my mind,
"I'd rather enjoy the moment,
Look with my eyes, feel with my skin,
Taste and smell.
When you worry about getting the shot with the camera,
You cheat yourself of much of the experience.
I'd rather soak it all in
And later write a poem."
Forest green, gray green, moss green, olive green, chartreuse.
How many greens there are
In the evening light, late in the season.
Some autumn greens revert to the yellow greens of early spring
Everything fading.
While other greens darken with age.
A road runs below us. We hear voices from the valley,
Men, and a cow lowing.
Cars.
A rooster crows to his own, slightly skewed, clock.
Wildness beyond, but a narrow strip
Of human influence along the bottom.
A small break in in the mostly cloudy sky
Opens up to let a curtain of misty sunlight
Stream across the valley
Markedly dividing the near, clear world
From the world behind the veil
Blurry, imprecise
Soft, tender
Do faeries dance behind that veil?
A sunbeam shines a spotlight at curtain's edge.
As wind pushes the open spot across the sky,
First a valley, then a nob,
then another valley
Is lovingly caressed by the light,
As it holds the land, praises it,
Then moves on to embrace the next hill.
Drg 10/2014
Market. Feat or feet. Cow clock
Jostle cheat smile loving
My result;
Look Rock on an October Evening
My friend and I walk up the concrete steps
to the terraced overlook
Scuffling dry leaves with our feet.
We wait while a family jostles into position
for the obligatory portrait
with mountain background.
We lean on the rail looking out.
A woman, cigarette dangling, takes many photographs.
I say, "I'm not much of a photographer."
He says, smiling, and reading my mind,
"I'd rather enjoy the moment,
Look with my eyes, feel with my skin,
Taste and smell.
When you worry about getting the shot with the camera,
You cheat yourself of much of the experience.
I'd rather soak it all in
And later write a poem."
Forest green, gray green, moss green, olive green, chartreuse.
How many greens there are
In the evening light, late in the season.
Some autumn greens revert to the yellow greens of early spring
Everything fading.
While other greens darken with age.
A road runs below us. We hear voices from the valley,
Men, and a cow lowing.
Cars.
A rooster crows to his own, slightly skewed, clock.
Wildness beyond, but a narrow strip
Of human influence along the bottom.
A small break in in the mostly cloudy sky
Opens up to let a curtain of misty sunlight
Stream across the valley
Markedly dividing the near, clear world
From the world behind the veil
Blurry, imprecise
Soft, tender
Do faeries dance behind that veil?
A sunbeam shines a spotlight at curtain's edge.
As wind pushes the open spot across the sky,
First a valley, then a nob,
then another valley
Is lovingly caressed by the light,
As it holds the land, praises it,
Then moves on to embrace the next hill.
Drg 10/2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
The Vase
The vase
I now hold this vase
As I once held his face
Oh it doesn't replace
What is gone.
The flowers he brought
Just after we fought
Love and passion was hot
But it's done.
His kisses were fine
His tongue curled with mine
For his body I pine
All alone.
When love is a Game
And it roars like a flame
But it ends just the same
Life goes on.
I now hold this vase
As I once held his face
Oh it doesn't replace
What is gone.
The flowers he brought
Just after we fought
Love and passion was hot
But it's done.
His kisses were fine
His tongue curled with mine
For his body I pine
All alone.
When love is a Game
And it roars like a flame
But it ends just the same
Life goes on.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Making Music
Making music
You place it in my arms
As if handing me a newborn.
I cradle it
Feeling the sensuousness
Of the smooth wood
As I mold my body around
Its gentle curves.
I touch my naked fingers to the strings
And feel the first hint of the work to come.
My touch is rewarded by a soft mellow voice
But I feel the first pain, the foreknowledge
That I will have to give of myself to get what I want.
My fingers remember chords I learned decades ago
But strength has ebbed.
I scrape a pick across the strings
And the sound is mushy, garbled, impure.
Will I ever honor this beautiful guitar
By helping it sing as it should?
You teach me.
Give me suggestions.
Encourage me.
Over and over. Again and again. Error after error,
I practice my assignments.
I play until my fingertips ache
And the pick flies out of my hand into the sound box.
We find songs that push my skills
You gracefully play a melody
And I doggedly strum along.
Keeping up.
Sometimes glorious
Sometimes terrible
But with steady improvement and hope.
I hold it in my arms
As if cradling a newborn.
Feeling the sensuousness
Of the smooth wood
As I mold my body around
Its gentle curves
I strum the chords
To accent your beautiful playing
Rising and falling with you
As we joyously make music together.
Dianne May 2014
You place it in my arms
As if handing me a newborn.
I cradle it
Feeling the sensuousness
Of the smooth wood
As I mold my body around
Its gentle curves.
I touch my naked fingers to the strings
And feel the first hint of the work to come.
My touch is rewarded by a soft mellow voice
But I feel the first pain, the foreknowledge
That I will have to give of myself to get what I want.
My fingers remember chords I learned decades ago
But strength has ebbed.
I scrape a pick across the strings
And the sound is mushy, garbled, impure.
Will I ever honor this beautiful guitar
By helping it sing as it should?
You teach me.
Give me suggestions.
Encourage me.
Over and over. Again and again. Error after error,
I practice my assignments.
I play until my fingertips ache
And the pick flies out of my hand into the sound box.
We find songs that push my skills
You gracefully play a melody
And I doggedly strum along.
Keeping up.
Sometimes glorious
Sometimes terrible
But with steady improvement and hope.
I hold it in my arms
As if cradling a newborn.
Feeling the sensuousness
Of the smooth wood
As I mold my body around
Its gentle curves
I strum the chords
To accent your beautiful playing
Rising and falling with you
As we joyously make music together.
Dianne May 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
thanks be to... (sermon FUUF Dec 1, 2013)
I'm not proud of it, but I admit it makes me cringe when I hear the
happy winner thanking God for his victory, or even worse, when someone
thanks God for healing from their illness or that they were only
moderately injured in their car crash. I get it that we each
experience the world and God differently, and that my path isn't
everyone's way. And I admit part of my problem is I wish I could
"thank god" with them, without having to sort through all the knots in
the strands of my mind.
I imagine I stand with many of you in that in my mid teen years, when
I was becoming myself, I was horrified to realize that the religion I
had accepted as true, didn't make any rational sense, it didn't stand
the test of reason. I truly thought something was wrong with me.
Everyone around me could praise Jesus and expect to go to heaven, why
wasn't I getting this?
I read my first atheist writing when I was about twenty...Will and
Ariel Durant...and was ecstatic.....I WASN'T alone in the world. I
still struggled to believe for a few years, then gave it up. I could
live my life and raise my children without doing the mental
calisthenics of Squeezing religion into my world view.
There was one glitch in my secure little blanket of nonfaith. It would
show up from time to time, but always In November. thanksgiving.
giving thanks. I feel a real sense of thankfulness for my life, for my
children, for beauty, I appreciate all my abundant blessings. I want
to express gratitude. I believe it is good to be thankful, to be
mindful of the good things we experience. "counting our blessings"
makes us more aware of each good thing. G. K. Chesterton wrote,
"thanks are the highest form of thought; and gratitude is happiness
doubled by wonder."
But where do I direct my Thankfulness, my appreciation, my gratitude?
to God? to Jesus? to a Great spirit? To Gaia or one of the host of
appropriate gods or goddesses in charge of that particular thing for
which i felt thankful? To Luck or Fortune? To nothing at all, just
figuring that thankfulness is an emotion, a mix of chemicals in my
body, like happiness or desire, fear or anger?
In writing this sermon, i googled "thankful" and "atheist" and mostly
got that atheists are thankful to people who make things
happen...farmers for food, scientists for medicine and technology, the
friends and family in their lives who love and help them. That is all
very nice, and it is good to appreciate but it doesn't really address
the thankfulness we feel for that which is given to us in GRACE:
The beauty of dawn adding color to the shadowy world, or the
awesomeness of the window to infinity seen in a clear night sky.
Holding a new life in your arms, all full of future and possibilities,
thankfulness for the beauty of music, be it the song of the wind
touching leaves, or a clear human voice singing in the night, or a
whole orchestra or jazz band pounding into our senses.
I remember only one thing from a philosophy professor who was a
Christian. he said that in order to appreciate beauty you had to
believe in God, the creator of the beauty. He said There is no beauty
in random evolution. I knew in my gut this was wrong thinking, but
just didn't have the experience to disprove it, so that thought has
stayed with me all these decades, saying "prove me wrong". Is this
need to be thankful the hardwiring of God into my brain? I Don't
know....so I lived with that little dichotomy in my world view...I was
thankful, but I didn't know where to direct my thanks.
What value is in thankfulness? It is a happY feeling. Thankfulness is
expressed with a smile. It lifts us up. It makes us more aware and
therefore we actually enjoy the blessings for which we are thankful.
But does it matter? I think maybe thankfulness is only meaningful
when it is an action. GIVING thanks means acting out our thankfulness.
It means doing something to express the thankfulness..."passing it
forward." not just saying the words, but making something happen.
Fast forward on this telling of "the journey" to seven years ago. I'd
had a disruption in my life and was flailing around, unnerved and
unmoored. I needed something to hang on to. I was happy in my atheism,
but I was looking for community, and stepped through these doors.
We here at Foothills UU have learned to nurture each other, and I am
mightily thankful for that. I feel that for myself I have been
receiving the nurture, and have started to be able to give some back,
but I hope to find a way to also make a verb of thanks, and stand with
members of this faith community as we reach out into the world around
us and make a wider circle of healing and hope and love.
Ive heard this same story from others of you: i was looking for
Community, and I got it, but I also got something I wasn't looking
for. I got a whole new way to look at the spiritual. A lot of this is
from the series of books we have read in book club, and from the many
varied sermons I've listened to here, in talking with many of you, and
especially, learning from our pastor. I became more open, more
receptive. I learned a new language, or rather a new way of
understanding the language I thought I knew. From Forrest Church, from
Martin Buber, from Karen Armstrong I learned to see that god wasn't
a being, that the God I rejected was just too small in definition.
That any word I used to describe God would fail, for being inadequate.
From Thich Nhat Hanh I learn that everything is a miracle. He says,
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin
air, but to walk on earth. Thich says..Every day we are engaged in
a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds,
green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.”.
Karen Arnstrong writes in "the spiral staircase": “The fact that my
“prayer” seems directed toward no person, no end, is something that
many of the theologians I have studied had experienced. This, after
all, was what I had been writing and talking about. I had constantly
explained that the greatest spiritual masters insisted that God was
not another being, and that there was Nothing out there. Yet for all
this, at some level I had not relinquished the old ideas. I was still
seduced by the realistic supernatural theism that I thought I had left
behind, still childishly waiting for that clap of thunder, that streak
of lightning, and the still, small voice of calm whispering in my ear.
I had not truly accepted the hard, irreducible fact that “there is
nothing again.”
The Greek Fathers of the church had loved the image of Moses going up
the mountain and on the summit being wrapped in an impenetrable cloud.
He could not see anything, but he was in the place where God was. This
cloud of unknowing was precisely it. I had been expecting the thick
mist to part, just a little, and had not really known, with every
fiber of my being, that I would never know, would never see clearly."
So, for me, can I live with mystery, with knowing that I will not
know? I can't go back to the old me who thought something had to be
measurable to be real. That would be like a modern scientist rejecting
quantum physics and saying, She believes only in Newton. I can be
thankful and send my thanks into the mystery, I can send my thanks
into my community of friends here, and everywhere. I can try to make
giving thanks an action verb, and live my life in a way that will make
the lives of those near me possible just a little better. I can not
worry whether or not I believe in God, I can just know that I am loved
and be open to the grace that is freely available.
Peter Mayor teaches us that if we are aware, we will experience God in
everything.
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
I can be thankful to be always in the presence of God, even though I
remain fuzzy on what that is, because everything is holy now.
I'm not proud of it, but I admit it makes me cringe when I hear the
happy winner thanking God for his victory, or even worse, when someone
thanks God for healing from their illness or that they were only
moderately injured in their car crash. I get it that we each
experience the world and God differently, and that my path isn't
everyone's way. And I admit part of my problem is I wish I could
"thank god" with them, without having to sort through all the knots in
the strands of my mind.
I imagine I stand with many of you in that in my mid teen years, when
I was becoming myself, I was horrified to realize that the religion I
had accepted as true, didn't make any rational sense, it didn't stand
the test of reason. I truly thought something was wrong with me.
Everyone around me could praise Jesus and expect to go to heaven, why
wasn't I getting this?
I read my first atheist writing when I was about twenty...Will and
Ariel Durant...and was ecstatic.....I WASN'T alone in the world. I
still struggled to believe for a few years, then gave it up. I could
live my life and raise my children without doing the mental
calisthenics of Squeezing religion into my world view.
There was one glitch in my secure little blanket of nonfaith. It would
show up from time to time, but always In November. thanksgiving.
giving thanks. I feel a real sense of thankfulness for my life, for my
children, for beauty, I appreciate all my abundant blessings. I want
to express gratitude. I believe it is good to be thankful, to be
mindful of the good things we experience. "counting our blessings"
makes us more aware of each good thing. G. K. Chesterton wrote,
"thanks are the highest form of thought; and gratitude is happiness
doubled by wonder."
But where do I direct my Thankfulness, my appreciation, my gratitude?
to God? to Jesus? to a Great spirit? To Gaia or one of the host of
appropriate gods or goddesses in charge of that particular thing for
which i felt thankful? To Luck or Fortune? To nothing at all, just
figuring that thankfulness is an emotion, a mix of chemicals in my
body, like happiness or desire, fear or anger?
In writing this sermon, i googled "thankful" and "atheist" and mostly
got that atheists are thankful to people who make things
happen...farmers for food, scientists for medicine and technology, the
friends and family in their lives who love and help them. That is all
very nice, and it is good to appreciate but it doesn't really address
the thankfulness we feel for that which is given to us in GRACE:
The beauty of dawn adding color to the shadowy world, or the
awesomeness of the window to infinity seen in a clear night sky.
Holding a new life in your arms, all full of future and possibilities,
thankfulness for the beauty of music, be it the song of the wind
touching leaves, or a clear human voice singing in the night, or a
whole orchestra or jazz band pounding into our senses.
I remember only one thing from a philosophy professor who was a
Christian. he said that in order to appreciate beauty you had to
believe in God, the creator of the beauty. He said There is no beauty
in random evolution. I knew in my gut this was wrong thinking, but
just didn't have the experience to disprove it, so that thought has
stayed with me all these decades, saying "prove me wrong". Is this
need to be thankful the hardwiring of God into my brain? I Don't
know....so I lived with that little dichotomy in my world view...I was
thankful, but I didn't know where to direct my thanks.
What value is in thankfulness? It is a happY feeling. Thankfulness is
expressed with a smile. It lifts us up. It makes us more aware and
therefore we actually enjoy the blessings for which we are thankful.
But does it matter? I think maybe thankfulness is only meaningful
when it is an action. GIVING thanks means acting out our thankfulness.
It means doing something to express the thankfulness..."passing it
forward." not just saying the words, but making something happen.
Fast forward on this telling of "the journey" to seven years ago. I'd
had a disruption in my life and was flailing around, unnerved and
unmoored. I needed something to hang on to. I was happy in my atheism,
but I was looking for community, and stepped through these doors.
We here at Foothills UU have learned to nurture each other, and I am
mightily thankful for that. I feel that for myself I have been
receiving the nurture, and have started to be able to give some back,
but I hope to find a way to also make a verb of thanks, and stand with
members of this faith community as we reach out into the world around
us and make a wider circle of healing and hope and love.
Ive heard this same story from others of you: i was looking for
Community, and I got it, but I also got something I wasn't looking
for. I got a whole new way to look at the spiritual. A lot of this is
from the series of books we have read in book club, and from the many
varied sermons I've listened to here, in talking with many of you, and
especially, learning from our pastor. I became more open, more
receptive. I learned a new language, or rather a new way of
understanding the language I thought I knew. From Forrest Church, from
Martin Buber, from Karen Armstrong I learned to see that god wasn't
a being, that the God I rejected was just too small in definition.
That any word I used to describe God would fail, for being inadequate.
From Thich Nhat Hanh I learn that everything is a miracle. He says,
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin
air, but to walk on earth. Thich says..Every day we are engaged in
a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds,
green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.”.
Karen Arnstrong writes in "the spiral staircase": “The fact that my
“prayer” seems directed toward no person, no end, is something that
many of the theologians I have studied had experienced. This, after
all, was what I had been writing and talking about. I had constantly
explained that the greatest spiritual masters insisted that God was
not another being, and that there was Nothing out there. Yet for all
this, at some level I had not relinquished the old ideas. I was still
seduced by the realistic supernatural theism that I thought I had left
behind, still childishly waiting for that clap of thunder, that streak
of lightning, and the still, small voice of calm whispering in my ear.
I had not truly accepted the hard, irreducible fact that “there is
nothing again.”
The Greek Fathers of the church had loved the image of Moses going up
the mountain and on the summit being wrapped in an impenetrable cloud.
He could not see anything, but he was in the place where God was. This
cloud of unknowing was precisely it. I had been expecting the thick
mist to part, just a little, and had not really known, with every
fiber of my being, that I would never know, would never see clearly."
So, for me, can I live with mystery, with knowing that I will not
know? I can't go back to the old me who thought something had to be
measurable to be real. That would be like a modern scientist rejecting
quantum physics and saying, She believes only in Newton. I can be
thankful and send my thanks into the mystery, I can send my thanks
into my community of friends here, and everywhere. I can try to make
giving thanks an action verb, and live my life in a way that will make
the lives of those near me possible just a little better. I can not
worry whether or not I believe in God, I can just know that I am loved
and be open to the grace that is freely available.
Peter Mayor teaches us that if we are aware, we will experience God in
everything.
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
I can be thankful to be always in the presence of God, even though I
remain fuzzy on what that is, because everything is holy now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
