April 30, 2020 - Spring

It is no different than the old guitarist, who sits on his porch in the late setting sun, playing a melody he has forgotten the words to but which is as rhythmic as his own pulse, deep and calloused grooves worn permanently into his fingertips from the guitar strings, musical notes escaping down the porch stairs into the darkness beyond, searching.

Or the painter, whose brushes are old and hardened from use, like his grey unshaven beard, hard and coarse and rough, dipped into the paints from his memory, his eyesight long since clouded over, but still a masterpiece escapes his blood-red heart once again and splashes in a burgundy streak across the raw canvas, calling.

Or the baker, whose hands are covered in flour, muscular from years of kneading bread, his knuckles swollen and arthritic but with a cadence as continual as the ocean’s tides, pressing out the gift of transformation from seed dust to staff of life, the fresh scent enveloping all who wander too close, inviting.

Or the old alchemist, whose back is bent from having labored ceaselessly over his vials and potions, his life devoted to the Magnum Opus, at last gazing out the window at the setting sun, the Philosophers’ Stone finally burning into his consciousness, enlightened by the baseness of the Earth, conjuring.

It is no different:  The peeping frogs out in the cold temporary ponds in the woods.  The crimson cardinal singing out his passionate song.  The bright yellow dandelions pushing up through the rich and muddy soil.  The wolf baying at the crisp moon, haunting.  The intoxicated bee flying in his bee-line, revealing the heady pollen.  The tree buds bursting in a green riot at the warm sun.  The flowers gushing their colors across the landscape.

But it is all the same thing.  The fecundity of the season leaves its mark indelibly upon creation, regardless of age or time.  It becomes an ingrained holy mantra memorized by rote with each being wrapped up in the joy of becoming, betrothing, and begetting.  Pouring out the heart and mind and body completely in a secret love affair we often label simply as “spring,” because the sublime truth of it all would burn us to cinders if we could somehow grasp it.

April 22, 2020 - No Guarantee

You can’t hold life back forever.  It will always find a way through.  It will burst, ooze, and drip through the cracks.  It will breach the hull of Death’s ship and gain an entrance.  And, indeed, this is what I am seeing on my walks.  The tiny green shoots begin to find their way through the half-frozen crust of the ground.  You would think I would be used to it by now, but every time I see it, I am a little surprised.  Not at life.  Life is a given.  It is pushy and aggressive.  That does not surprise me.  What surprises me is its origin.

I think back to late last fall when the Witch of November was terrorizing the neighborhood, and everything fell down quickly and died as if on command.  Indeed, that is exactly what it was:  A command.  And then there was nothing.  You could have looked for tiny green shoots from sunup to sundown, and you would not have found even one.  Everything obeys the command in its season.

There was no guarantee that anything would ever live again.  No guarantee of sun—stories, hopes, and dreams, yes.  But no certainty.  Yet that did not stop Her.  Remember I told you that Nature does not plant in the springtime like mankind.  She always plants in the fall, when all is lost.  Throwing seeds down when subzero temperatures and sheets of ice are on their way might not seem like sound reasoning, but that is what She does.  She plants on Faith alone, and how fortunate we are that She has belief even as we curl up in despair.

Faith is the substance of things as yet unseen.  All things have their origin in the spirit world, in the unseen, in the as-yet shapeless.  Just as a beautiful building exists first as a thought only, so it is with the entire world around us.  And we could go back even further:  Before thought comes desire.  The architect has a desire to create a building.  The desire becomes a bit more solid and turns into thought, a tiny electrical current in the brain.  From there it solidifies into a drawing on paper, which gives it existence in the material world, and now it can be transferred to the minds of others.  From the paper it becomes a small working model on a table.  Now it has dimension.  From the table, it goes to the field, where many bodies and minds work upon it until the desire comes to fruition:  The beautiful building stands upon the field.

But it first had to stand in the heart and mind of the architect.  So it is no different with anything we see—anything at all.  Every single thing you can point to at one time existed in the unseen only.  From your furnished surroundings to your pets to your children to the woods . . . Everything was once just a tiny flash in the heart and mind of its creator.  And the only thing required to make it all work is faith.  Belief. 

There is an old man who roams the woods, grey beard, heavy pack on his shoulders.  He stops to drink at a stream that is running again.  It is always running lively in this spot this time of year.  Later on in the summer it will dry up, but for now it gushes forth, clean and strong and cold, just as it did last year and the year before that.  It is a good place to be.  He does not stop to think where the water comes from, but it too has its origin in the unseen, following a familiar pattern.  He does not have to understand the whys and wherefores.  It is enough that he believed it would be there, and so it was.  Did his experience over the years form his belief, or did his belief over the years form his experience?

April 14, 2020 - Remember Me

REMEMBER ME

Surely, you remember me?
I am the One
who died
spiraling downward
devoured
whispering in your mind
remember me
don't forget me
don't let go
please
you are all I have.
Plunged, then, into the darkness
alone
I was dead
and I wanted to be dead
but still the sun rose
coaxing.
"Do not be dead too long," he said
"For I am."
Again.
He re-members me

yet again.
I am the One.