Seeing Rain

It rained today, a cold gray sky.   The air feels pure and clean even in the city.  It also rains in Afghanistan.  It rains on the terrorists and on the children bent over the Koran.  I know, in time, the rain will wash away the blood.   I do not know, I cannot think how they see the rain now, or if they see it.  I do not think they see how much higher its origin is than books called sacred.  In the West, we also bury our heads in a book; I do not know how many will lift their heads to see.  God knows the gleam of rain and the drip of its voice is intense.  Do they not hear its painful beauty in the dark just before sleep?  I am commanded by rain and by a thousand such voices daily.  I know the gleam of it must come to the most hardened and lost soul, but how many ages hence?   It rained in Babylon thousands of years past, not much, but how many drops of heaven do we need? I pray for rain, and for eyes that see.

Secret Sunlight in Troubled Times

Joy of my life is intense. Some days the benediction of it embarrasses me. Joy is filled with solutions, with resolutions, with community, with a curative atmosphere of secret sunlight cast wide over the Earth. The reason of my unrest is also spread wide–so much of crazy pained humanity is without happiness; so many dark and convoluted paths, so many cuts and bleedings, so many betrayals of sunlight. I sleep restlessly and a sense of urgency troubles me, a vast world of needs press on my mind, empty cups I am ill equipped to fill.

And yet there is community, quieter and more powerful than these troubled times. A time and place is allotted each of us, if only we might reach out more skillfully and fearlessly, yielding the best of our life in support of real community. Indeed we must do so, and our lot may not be the task of some grand and far reaching dream, yet it is always there, this threshold where our thoughts begin to weave in communion with all our friends known and unknown, with all those who sense the stark contrast between the world of what is and what must be.

Words and Wind of Silver

A narrative on a moment of inspiration related to illumination and revelation. A reflection about the contrast between the ideal, the vision, and current limitations. A meditation on the nature of words, meaning, and guidance.

Up from the Law of the Jungle

In ancient times, when servitors of dim instincts fought for survival, truths were no more than the fearsome laws of the jungle. Then tribal truths groped forward as magical spirits, good and bad. Then darkest instincts grayed toward mythic spirits, dragons, goddesses, and a host of red conquers. It may not seem now that truth could be red, but it was an advance over dark terror of the jungle, with glimmers of common fire, of protection and exchange.

Group truths became a fear-infused sense of right and wrong with imposition of laws and rules. Teachers came–quickly forgotten and mostly ignored–their impress shadow-shifted to religious Towers of Babel. Stolen fire heated the iron gray cauldrons of fear, desire, and power. The tattered remnants of the Great, mixed with the ancient blacks and grays, cheapened a truth-brew to feed the absolute soldiers.

Religious fanatics practiced their cruel trade and huge crowds of partly right people strained under the spell of pseudo-truths. A small number discovered thought and tried, with small success, to engender mass education. The gods of thought gave birth to science, and the truths of science generated more gods. Philosophers, theologians, and technicians made yet more gods and truths, with much metal in the earth and sky, and dry abstractions in the place of the heart. But the mind had exercise in these, and some with a stronger “I” stood apart.

 

Gradually, the truth of “I” moved toward “we,” and the green of earth began to warm the heart. More people noticed that truth could be stated in the plural, and relativity slowly dawned in the mind. The many were still fighting over absolute truth, but here and there on the planet comparative light study was shinning. From this something momentous emerged, a veritable tear in the illusory web of space and time. Thought leaped toward a vision of unification embracing both the relative and absolute, toward transcendence that includes and appreciates all that has gone before. Thought leaped toward realization of the value of all the halting steps, of all the little truths, of all the instinctual groping toward light. And illumined thought leaped up toward the cosmic, toward the vistas of stars and Space. Slowly then, there dawns a new ego-free perspective. The emerging sense of unity begins to respond to the absolute without the need to patent it as exclusive property of a particular school of thought or faith.