Flower in the Wind

The lily bends in deference to the blowing wind and it never gives the force of nature anything more. Its weight keeps the flower in its bed. We need that lesson too because we often add more than weight to situations that only help us break.  

Knocking About

 Waking up the unconscious mind is done with a silent alarm clock.  But the first thing we need to shut off is the noise of random unsupervised thought.

When pain is so familiar you think there is no alternative but to complain about it, it may be time for a new set of questions to ask yourself.

Picking up the pieces after a fall can be a daunting experience as we sit with the "why me" too long but as one of my teachers showed me the new space I hadn't seen before isn’t so bad.

Not knowing is the most fearsome place our mind runs to. Pretend instead that not knowing means we are headed for uncharted happiness with faith as our companion.

YES

I was listening to a broadcast by Joel Osteen and he talked about the series of “no’s” before you get to the ‘Yes” and I thought how revelatory he was even though this is not a new paradigm by any means. He sighted Edison’s two thousand no’s for an example and how he just kept on moving closer to the eventual Yes. And why is it any different for us? And there is no difference it is just that we get stuck on a ‘no’ and leave it there. 

The Other 9 Pins

 There are days when God goes bowling and you’re the PIN.  And even if you do get knocked down you can always pick yourself up afterwards. And if you talk to the other 9  they’ll know exactly how you feel.  

Legible

I’ve been thinking and know what?  It doesn’t help much. I trust more in the triggers that

fall nascent when I ask the questions I need to know and as long as I am open to the answers in fine print my mind will stay legible.

The GG

Those summer visits just after the decade of the 60’s began was more about being smothered with attention which I so felt I lacked at home than anything else. I was the eldest and only boy and by that time 3 of my 4 sisters were alive and this was my way to as it were get away from it all.  And the Woodside-Greenpoint sojourns were just what the doctor ordered.

 Sometimes my father would drop me off in Queens or as he felt I could manage it he let me take the LIRR to Woodside station and trek the 5 blocks to Grandma’s house. I loved the independence of that ride and when it came to traveling to Greenpoint later in the week I took the GG subway from 65th Street to Nassau Avenue in Brooklyn on a 15 cent token ride. When I would emerge from that hole in the ground and walked but one block to turn the corner on Manhattan Avenue I would love the smell of the subway below that rushed my olfactory nerve up through the black iron gratings. I could never figure out what was so pleasant about it but it was one of the biggest anchors that reminded me heaven was just a few steps away.  

Light and Dark

The difference between light and dark is seeing and unseeing. Might sound rather obvious but I think that what we see in the dark is often more real than what we see in the light because the mind plays tricks on us when our eyes are open but when they’re closed we’re guided by instinct rather than emotion.