Why are you so angry and afraid?

Accidents can happen...and they can be weird...and beautiful...catastrophic...and mythic. Three fates? Variation of Rublev's Trinity? Magic and mystery, sorcery and holiness, comedy and wisdom are all founded, sourced in the number three (as are past, present, future; beginning, middle, end). Fly Geyser in Nevada is the result of an accident---folks were digging a well in 1916. and this happened.

I had set today aside to go exploring...i simply need to hear myself think and, more importantly, feel. i have some questions (tools needed for digging) that don't have answers, perhaps, but that might provide lamp light to this current emotional path i have wandered onto. i hope to bring myself back into the balance of this listening to myself more intentionally, listening for and to the Voice i love.

so far this morning i chose to catch up on a few insights from Nadia Bolz-Weber. "Unable to pretend we are not in need," from October 1, was a providential place to start. Then "The Little Apocalypse: Superhero Showdown of Crumpled Time" carried even more of the ideas and questions buzzing my core (also a nod of recollection to T.S.Eliot---all time is eternally present; what has been and what will be are both perhaps contained in time present and time present contained in time past. that's from memory, don't hold me to word-for-word quotation, it's from Burnt Norton of the Four Quartets. looks like i'll have to dig that out, too).

took a break to eat some oatmeal and warm my cockles and everything else; i usually watch something specific on tv while i eat. yesterday i embarked on watching all of the eps of Doctor Who from the 12th Doctor (Capaldi)---another significant number in my realm of symbology. SO * MUCH * FUN to live in the open space of synchronicity. Anyway, i just happened to be up to the third, i believe, episode called, "Listen." Their adventure into the heart of listening to fear of the dark...it is a magnificent episode ("free" on Amazon Prime) and has opened a lovely TARDIS door into my own inner-exploration.

the episode is steeped in so many different ideas that resonate for me---particularly the dreaming. and i am reminded that listening to my own dreams will be as much an imperative part of this trek as anything else. i dream wild and crazy and significant stuff with story and images every single night. i have gone through phases of tracking those dreams and images; once again it is time to seriously take it on.

then when i opened the computer to get to the page upon which to begin writing today, the image of this Fly Geyser was the (i don't know the proper word for it) screen with the password window that has random images. this was the first time this image came up. i don't think it was this very image, but the image i did see clearly (and with romance in the composition of the shot) showed the three protrusions and i was immediately delighted by the sense of the Trinity Icon by Rublev as well as the mythology of the fates and so many stories involving three persons. and when i read just a smidgeon, it was too funny---digging a well, accidentally tapping into thermodynamic watchiedoo and creating this phenomenon in 1916 that still blows water today. Strikes me as a fair companion image.

i love synchronicity. magic and mystery of things that come together as you listen to the inside and outside of being. i always like to get started on a journey early so this was quite a prolific morning. it remains to be seen how faithful i will be to return to the well-spring hidden in my soul and imagination in the coming days.

it sounds schmaltzy to pose the question that i've typed and erased three times (yeah, i know--"three" again, but it's true) because asking this question in this platform sounds stupid ... the truth is i would go to each of you, my friends, and ask you face to face and facebook or this blog for all its cool advantages and possibilities doesn't really let that happen unless you "tag" someone so that's why a sincere and personal question on this platform can come off sounding kinda hokey. but i really do wish you'd also write and share what you're looking for in 2018. i'm listening.

may 2018 bring you many blessings and delightful surprises (even those that are cloaked in sorrow, loss or pain i hope will bring those unexpected joys)....

Eden is the place we leave

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(it's the running of my thoughts this morning...interesting it is also passover...just after seder...after the memory of wandering in the desert for 40 years...is that simply a metaphor for every life lived in the effort to puzzle out God's purpose for our being?)

Eden is the place we leave.  That’s the title of an episode from the third season of Ironside.  It struck me kinda like the theatrical “see your life flash before your eyes” sort of way just before death. Epiphany. Clarity. Suddenly. All the interpretation seared through from biblical to personal. Upon gaining knowledge the First Two left the garden. Theology says they disobeyed God and lost their privilege. Other interpretation says they broke trust with God and in order to protect them from their own stupidity and the inevitability of eating from the tree of life, they were evicted.

Now I see the parallel is that we simply grow out of the state of unknowing and as we realize what we didn’t know we already knew we learn that the transition itself is a kind of eviction from all that was and of course all that was is remembered as paradisaical compared to the challenges and disappointments of what is.  We long for the gardens of unknowing, or preknowing; the before. We can’t go back. The real travesty is that in breaking trust, we are condemned to linear time, to cause and effect, to the unreachable before to the dismal now.

Dismal only by comparison and the comparison made only because some of us lack imagination for some reason.  It’s easy for me to blame school and the dog because these two things distract and drain me.  I’m in some kind of weird cycle and instead of conjuring the effort to get out I am simply waiting for it to come to its natural end. It may not be the right strategy.

What if right now is some sort of Eden to the next phase which will bring other inconsolations or losses that I now know nothing about? All that I know to do to be healthy evades me in perpetual exhaustion and I just drop in a kind of collapse. Effort. Will. Ambition. Purpose. I have these drives at school but not at home. I love my house and my stories. I love Bubbi but I am not good for him and I can’t continue to live like this for long but I also can’t bear the permanence of linear reality that when he’s gone it’s forever.

They say, whoever they are, the faceless, nameless muses, say the only solution to this ennui is to be in the now. It’s a struggle and an effort to think of it. So thinking it isn’t the answer, being it is. Dropping the thinking that prevents being is really hard until it just happens. There’s the woman who speaks about collaborating with your mind ... she is right and it was helpful to hear; but ironically one must do something in order to be.

Turns out, knowing isn’t all that. Information age has rapidly deteriorated into the age of deception. Snake is ruling paradise. So much sounds true but reason for many of us keeps us...keeps us what, sane? Reeling? Hopeful? Terrified? Trapped? Even the most basic empirical evidence to the contrary doesn’t prevent the lies from destroying our world as we know it—presenting another source for the inevitable necessity to leave Eden....

I so appreciate the Dalai Lama’s attitude. Being banished from Eden means the world learns about a tranquil alternative life style and joyful attitude foreign to the insidious soul-destructive way of greed which so much “capitalism” has turned out to be.  Jesus, too, had this sense of weightless detachment from place, from Eden. Yet grieved openly for Jerusalem.

So as Eden is the place we leave...where are we headed? When will we arrive, where will we arrive, how will we know?

calm sustaining...memory sentence 2.19.13

Of all the things to remember from today, an ordinary, busy day with the usual challenges and failures and successes, and along with such fun things as Dad has packed the shoes I left there to mail them to me since I need them when it rains...and that I filed my tax return today YAY...the thing most memorable today is how calm and quiet it is right now. I am sitting on the back porch trying to gather the energy to work on my flash fiction...but I am distracted by the lingering music on a website where I am praying daily with Lent.  The temp is probably about 75 and the sky has billowing dark grey clouds but probably not going to rain.  and nothing is moving.  There is no breeze whatsoever.  None.  And this gorgeous harp music is lulling me into a kind of delicious empty-mindedness.  Soon I will have to go find dinner...but right now, this music!  It inspires me to study how to put links on the blog...but until then, check out www.sacredspace.ie and click on the daily prayer...and when it comes up, notice at the bottom the speaker icon...when it shows the X over it, it is on...and it is hynoptic...delicious...

as for the Lenten reflection...the Scripture today is about prayer and the exhortation not to heap up empty words as the Gentiles do...my "lectio" then is about the power of words...the importance of choosing carefully...especially in prayer where perhaps it is better to BE than to speak...