September 2025 (Vol. XXXVIII, No. 8)
Dear Friends ~ My young children replay variations on the same stories over and over. They are learning and growing through recurrent dramas of goodness, love, and bravery. In truth, I do the same: playing with the idea of myself.
[Scene 1: The Garden] This playground represents my teetertotter approach to existence, one moment trying to control it and when that breaks me, at first humbly and then jubilantly, marveling at that which is larger and more clever than I. I learn to simply follow the beauty, adding my own weavings, whittlings, and winding foot paths; my own song and silence.
at day's end
we notice our salted skin
(how it clings and crusts as silt deposits)
touch lightly the tomato-red sheen in that space just below the eyes.
Wearied bodies. Sticking flesh. Warmed and weighted eyes. The smell of ourselves.
We are caked with the soil that draws up seeds to plants
and the dampnesses that quench them.
The water runs off us, coffee rich against the porcelain sink.
Who was it that likened sin to dirt? Who declared purity a vast white void?
Who never noticed the gospel of a body
in the summer
at day's end?
Jesus teaches us to pray "Our Father" not "My Father."
Paul uses the phrase, "our Lord" 53 times, & "my Lord" only 1 time.
"Jesus is my personal savior" is not found in Scripture.
We are the people of God.
We belong to each other.
Starts arguing with all the bad in you
About who you really are,
Never let the bad in you
Make the better case
I'd learn a lot and get it right
I'd rent a loft I'd drink all night
I'd be a living archetype
And in a blinding flash of light
I'd see that one great insight
But silence called me deeper still
Like nothing else ever will
Teach us to sit still
Don't say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive...
...Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena ... It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
People do meditation to find psychic alignment. That's why people do psychotherapy and analysis. That's why people analyze their dreams and make art. That is why some contemplate tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum, make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up their prayers. That's why we do all the things we do. It is the work of gathering all the bones together. Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn. And the truths we tell will make the song.