Those Who Should Be Cherished

Life sometimes seems most cruel to those it should cherish, to those who add to its value, who see into its heart.

You Be You

"Be still and know I am God."  Everything else is already taken care of and my being me means you don't have to.  You need not try being God and doing what God would do.  Do instead what makes you most yourself.  Become stillness.  Become quiet, and be at peace.

Small Talk

I haven't enough small talk.  I don't always know that until I am standing around in a crowd.

The Paradoxes of Belief

We are reluctant to pursue the paradoxes of which belief is made.  We would rather it make a sense we can accept rather than offer the contradictions of dying and rising, giving up to possess, and the notion that sharing essential things is the only way to take hold of them.  It would be simpler were things themselves rather than their opposites, if we could live only by living and have only by having, if we could be ourselves as we burrowed deeper rather than when reaching farther.  But if we could do it that way, it would not be belief.

Giving Is The Getting

It is not that you give up everything and then start receiving and continue to receive until to have gotten your hundredfold.  There is no getting some and then getting more, but rather the giving is the getting.  The giving away is the receiving.  It is the whole thing.  No need to worry what to do with the hundredfold.  It is right there.  Grab hold of the nothingness.  It is the entire thing.

Letting Go of Silence

He thinks by his silence to protect them, but from what he is not so sure.  If he began to speak, if he ever started to say whatever it might be, he thinks he might find he'd said that very worst thing and then the hurt would be done, and could not be taken back.  Still it is probably best to do away with this fear of what may not really be so terrible.  It is a kind thought to want to protect, but what has no name may not be so great a threat, and fear of the fear is a more pressing concern.  So, let it go.

Time Goes By

It seems a year gone by is not very long, but a year from now is not worth considering much less planning for.  It is that far away.  Some days, ten or even twenty years ago is almost close enough to touch.  Moments and memories in that time are so vital, so real, while tomorrow offers so little of interest.  There are things long over and friends long dead who touch me with such power, but today -- while it offers its own delights and satisfaction -- is never quite at that level.  It is not fillable with the same intensity or sadness or joy.  I sometimes wonder why this is so, but not very often and less even as time goes by.

Indifference or Hope

Is this indifference or is it better called hope?  Is it faith or do I just not care?

Who Are We

Are we good people who are sometimes wrong, or bad people who are on occasion correct?  What is the defining characteristic?  What establishes the expectation of who we will be?  Which is rule and what is exception to it?

Warning

He was welcomed by the saved, but they treated him as a trophy.  He was then welcomed back among sinners, who knew he was there now to stay.

The Thing About Truth

It is obvious but I was surprised to read we do not own truth.  We accept and can participate in it.  We can act upon it, but truth is not possessed.  Its being does not permit such control.  We can own an opinion or have a thought, but truth is different.

Trying Something New

The trouble with trying something new is you may be successful at it and, even more a danger, you might like it and so will have to either pursue or drop it, knowing there is a cost to either choice.  Of course, when it is time to try that new whatever it may be it is time and so you may as well do it.  Consequence is not the consideration.

Big Birds At The Feeder

The bigger birds arrive at the feeder with so much fluttering and flapping, strutting about in their importance only to look so helpless trying to perch where smaller birds could so easily stand.  Size then only makes them appear so much more frantic.

More Than A Burning Bush

If that bush were only burning, it would not have been something to which Moses needed to attend.

Waking Jesus

They had already decided they were drowning and woke Jesus only to ask if it would bother him.  Some decisions are premature, some questions superfluous.

Outwitting The Animals

He was going hunting.  He said it was to prove himself smarter, or at least more clever, than a wild animal in the forest.  Why this comparison had to be made, and why the answer to the question of smarter was not instead who might be dumber, and why it could be dealt with only by killing I did not ask.  I doubt, however, the challenge had been issued by the animals or that they felt their integrity was at stake in quite the same way.  This year he did not tell me his hunting them was helpful to the animals, that they were better for being fewer, an argument less likely to prove his point about being so much smarter than a deer.

Well, he is back and like last year he did not see any of his rivals, only other potential outwitters of animals.  I guess he will have to go to the supermarket and buy supper from someone who apparently outwitted a cow.

God Is Not In The Wanting

If God is everything, or if everything partakes of God, then in having only God -- in seeking only union with him -- we will have everything without the intrusive desire to also possess them.  By union with God we share in all that shares with him, or with which he shares himself.  Owning things one at a time is a far less appealing alternative.  Wanting to grasp things (or people or even ideas), to incorporate them as my very own is to invite such tragic poverty.

It is in dying that we live, and in letting go that we have.  It is in the dying that death becomes unimportant, and in letting go that possession stops being of value.  We can, by letting go of everything, allow it a freedom to be only itself rather than owned.  Letting go frees us to have in the detached way that God has, a way that encourages thriving rather than stifling and limiting, possessing as my own what I must then keep from belonging to anyone else.

Grasping, excluding others who may also want whatever it is, seems so limiting, so demanding of energy.  In having, we are the ones possessed.  Better to be instead in God, and more fully within myself.

Constraints

Rather than increasing our freedom each concession imposes a new limitation, a constraint upon achieving the fullness of our selves or the union with God of which we are capable.

Waiting for the Raising

There is no question of our being raised on the last day, but between now and then I could do with some raising.  Today, in fact, would be OK.

Gifts in the Giving

To the one who had, more was given.  From him who had little, the little was taken.  In the taking away is there a freeing from its possession, a liberation from fear of its loss, so that now instead of having little he can be all?  Is there also a gift in the giving of more to the one who has less?  If there is, it may be a lesser gift, unless it somehow increases being as well.

God's Kingdom in Us

God may be within each person, but his kingdom is in our midst.  The relationship we share as individuals is what makes us a kingdom.  Coming together makes the plan come to fulfillment.  Sharing with each other what God offers to us one by one is the kingdom.  Coming together turns its coming into arrival.

Indulging A Friend

My friend wanted to tell me how real and powerful evil could be.  He even wanted to personify it, and so we talked of Satan.  Now, I would as soon not have gotten into that since Satan is not for me the reality he seems for my friend.  I would be as pleased to dismiss Satan all together since, while he may offer some explanation of evil, he does so at the expense of more reasonable explanations.  I am uncomfortable with the thought of a power such as this.  It adds nothing to either my faith or my understanding, and should my friend ask do I believe in Satan, do I think him real, I would as soon say no.  But my friend does not ask.  We stay friends and we move on to another question.

Said Out Loud

I sometimes say aloud what I had only intended to think.  I forget people may be listening.  But it is usually what I meant and so while it seems, and indeed may be, eccentric I usually feel no need to call it back.

More or Less

For being more are they but a different kind of less?

A Life to Improve

Other lives seem so inviting.  We readily rush to alter, or improve, them.  The problem is those other lives are not our own.  If you want a life to alter, or improve, work on the one with your name attached.

Being Opinionated

Being opinionated only becomes a problem when you have dopey opinions, a category into which we would place anyone's but out own.

You Are Goodness

We act sometimes as though goodness existed as a separate entity, something outside of and far beyond us; and to approach it would be to leave ourselves, to climb out of our own being and denying who we had become, or who we had always been.  But goodness is not outside, nor is it beyond.  It is instead at the center of our being.  It is the core around which we have developed, the sources as well as the goal of our progression.  It is then a process completed by reaching into rather than fleeing from ourselves.  We are good and always have been.  Do not be afraid to recognize it as your nature.  It is a name to which you can answer, rather than one you can only call.

At The Extremes

Orthodoxy enables more radical ideas.  It provides a secure anchor, a base from which those ideas can progress and a ground to which they can be drawn (at times reluctantly) back, and from which they can again proceed.  The other aspect is that heterodoxy offers the perhaps vicarious exploration that (as reluctantly) draws tradition forward, as much a brake on retrogression as is tradition on an impulsive flight forward.  There may be no need for either end of the spectrum to welcome the presence of the other, though acknowledging the service provided might make co-existing a less trying task.

Risks of Trust

If I would let everyone be who he is I would not feel this burden that never was mine.  It would mean trusting them, but there are few other choices.  But I find it so much easier to trust those about whom I care less, those whose lives do not touch mine.  Even then, it is not a real choice, unless you would chose that anxiety you need not have.

Come aside, not to visit or even renew. Come aside this time to stay.