Cool Mind Warm Heart

Loving Knowing Nothing

Since birth, it seems somebody’s been whispering in my ear, “Look outside yourself for reflections of God, but for the experience of God, look within.” 

The universe has a great sense of irony.  I find the inner depths fathomless.  I know nothing, really.  And yet, the more nothing I know, the happier I am. 

Thomas Merton, speaking to God 70 Christmases ago, said this better than I can:

‎"Your brightness is my darkness.

I know nothing of You and, by myself,

I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.

If I imagine You, I am mistaken.

If I understand You, I am deluded.

If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.

The darkness is enough."

~  Thomas Merton, prayer before midnight mass at Christmas, 1941 [Thank you Parabola magazine.]

Peace, Irene

Hurricane Irene beat the snot out of Vermont this past August, 2011.  The most destructive natural disaster in the state’s history, they say.  A few lost their lives.  More than a few lost everything else.  Everybody lost something, if only their attachment to what is and isn’t possible in their own backyard.

We Humans Have So Much Power It Should Take Your Breath Away

Disappointment is anger.  Anger is fear.  Holding on to fear is a choice.  Therefore, disappointment is a choice.  People and events don’t disappoint us.  We impose disappointment on ourselves by how we choose to see.  Love or fear is the only choice we make...because it’s the only real choice there is.  And the fun part is: love and fear can’t exist simultaneously.  It’s either one or the other...moment by moment.  We humans have so much power it should take your breath away.

Creating Your Identity 1.0

My son the builder (known to those who love him as master of the physical universe) needed a new identity.  Not the Jason Bourne 16 different passports with matching mustaches kind of new identity, but the kind that comes from starting a new enterprise.

The essay

 

The Winds of Change

All Things Must Pass

(the winds of May 26, 2011)

 

Playful Reminders to Pay Attention

So the other day my inner guidance prompts me to take a single sheet of 8-1/2 by 11 paper and fill one side of it as quickly as I can with the names of everyone I can think of that I’ve met in the flesh who has contributed to my life.  In less than 10 minutes, the page was brimming: four full rows, 200 names.

Remembering You Kindly: The Hardest Job on Earth

 

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~ Maya Angelou

An essay about stuff that causes the heart to smile

Connecting With The Mother

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
a place to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

~ John Muir (1838-1914), American naturalist

 

Holiday Feet

Spirit of the Past Year

 
 

A photographer is someone who can take a good photograph on demand.  That’s not me.  I need all the help I can get, including magic.

A Clam Shell Is One of My Spiritual Teachers

When a clam, like the rest of us, heads off for its next incarnation and no longer needs its shell, the shell continues its own journey into dust.  A few of them travel by way of becoming anything from a treasure for the young at heart to an ashtray.  But most simply get pulverized by the ocean’s continual thrumming against the seashore.  Sooner than later there ain’t much shell left.  Before it disintegrates completely into the infinity of seemingly unrelated shards that make up ocean bottoms and sandy beaches, magic happens.  The part of the shell that is hardest to destroy, the part that once held the muscle that regulated the shell’s opening and closing, becomes a symbol of life’s essence: a heart with wings.

My guess is, all the great wisdom of holy books, saints and sages merely reflects the truth the universe has been whispering to itself forever: Only Love.

 

Celebrating the Beautiful Season of Death

 

Creating the Perfect Love

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

~ Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

(At a recent family wedding, the great-grandfather of the groom, my nephew.)

Don't Knock Down Jesus In Your Hurry To Get To Church

Three mornings ago I was bustling to get an early start to several days of travel to “important” gatherings when my inner guides said Yo!  Heading off can wait.  Gather your camera, welcome this particularly splendid day.  The voice of one of my late mothers chuckled: “Don’t knock down Jesus in your hurry to get to church.” 

These images are a few of the gifts that awaited.

 

Communicating As Beautifully As Our Dreams

A word about the power of exceptional communication and what it takes to create it: Communicating As Beautifully As Our Dreams.

We Can Never Have Too Many Healthy Parents

My youngest brother, Cris, has five biological children, ages 24 to 13, and virtually countless other children he’s parented in one way or another over the years.  And the guy’s a banker for crying out loud.

Honoring The Mother In Us All

Babies Floating in Air

There’s a family of talking robins on our farm.  They channel the wisdom of the ages.  Last spring as I was taking this photograph, the robin starts quoting Tolstoy:  “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” 

Chastened, I did.  Camera down, I just sat.  

After a while the robin impersonates Yogi Berra: “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

I Am All The People I Ever Met

 

“Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend.  I am all the languages I ever spoke, I am all the places I ever lived, I am all the people I ever met, I am all the women I ever loved, I am all the writers I ever read; I am all my ancestors – but at least they had the decency of never thinking of themselves as writers.  Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend; I don’t even know who is writing this page.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

The Light of Creation

 The Light of Creation Burns in Every Heart

Who are we, not to shine?

Grace and Gravitation

The bird attained whatever grace its shape possesses not as a result of the mere desire for flight, but because it had to fly in air, against gravitation.
~ T. E. Hulme

REMOVING YOUR BEAN FROM YOUR SIT-UPON

Think back about 12,000 years. 

Had Ben and Jerry’s been around, you can bet they’d have created a flavor the likes of “Glacier Granite Swirl.”  After all, the chief topic of discussion in those days was the block of ice two miles high that covered all of North America from the Arctic Circle to Pennsylvania.  (The tallest mountain in Vermont today is just shy of 4400 feet, so this glacier was over twice that high.)  Nothing stands still and a glacier is no exception.  On its underside, the friction created by its weight and movement reshaped a whole bunch of rock. 

You ask: What does this have to do with with the meaning of life? 

Corky Burr and the Keepers of Awe

[a story for thanksgiving]

Thirteen words that shape the world.

His name is Corky Burr, age mid-sixties by my calculations.  He and I were high school classmates.  I don’t believe our paths have crossed since, and we really didn’t know each other well then.  I have no memories of him, just a single impression: a small sparkle of kindness.  By “small” I mean his physical size, not quality of light.  Recently we became Facebook friends, which, as millions of us know, means mostly we get to glimpse at whatever sliver of a person’s life they wish to share with their Facebook companions.  The very first statement of Corky’s I was privileged to read was this: “I have 16 more days before I marry the love of my life.”

Aiming

“...in art, you never hit what you’re aiming at, but the difference may not be downward.”

~ Robert Kulicke, innovative frame maker about the painter Albert York, and surely applies to all of life.

The Spirit of You

Here’s a rewarding way to spend every minute, whether as an individual or an institution.  Be on the lookout for the “spirit of you,” the spirit of who you really are, whenever and however it may appear.  A joke, a song, a photograph, a pizza, the caress of a shirt on your skin, a gracious memo, the way someone rakes the lawn or walks their dog––every smidgen of existence is a potential expression of that distinct vibration of beauty that is you. 

Maybe all there is to creating a healthy life or a healthy enterprise is identifying the spirit of our true self, and doing our best to make choices hand-in-hand with that spirit.  And the more open we are to discovering (or tripping over) that spirit in the world around us, the easier it is to spot when we look within.

...Vermont sunlight in September, Cirque du Soleil’s collaboration with the Beatles, the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, the part of a clam shell that forms a heart with wings, offerings by crazy quilt artist Allison Aller....

My heart smiles, “Hey, that’s me.”