Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Author: Tom Davidson-Marx

lotus blooms in fire
I got it that while I talked Dharma, I wasn’t walking the path during this illness very well.
OK, that post title is a bit of click-bait. But you’re here now. So let me explain how the 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen’s phrase is the title of this post.
Some of you reading this know I tested positive for Covid-19 on July 9. At present five co-workers on the same shift on the unit in the hospital where I work also tested positive.
just fatigue and brain fog
I am fine now. No worries. I came out of 13 days of isolation yesterday, to join my family on our 25th wedding anniversary.
For those who knew this about me, the subject line might seem like I had some crisis (a fire) during which my “enlightened nature” blossomed (like a lotus).
Sorry to disappoint you.
While my initial symptoms whacked me with malaise for three days in bed, the rest of my time in isolation I just dealt with fatigue and brain fog. No raging life-threatening fire.
Mostly I struggled with the fear I would ever regain my energy and mental clarity. And die.
could I bloom within the fire of fear?
The image from the 13th century Zen teacher Dogen of the lotus blooming in fire kept my hopes up that yes, I could bloom within the fire of fear, fatigue and brain fog.
The Devil Speaks (1921) by Paul Gauguin,from The Art Institute of Chicago.
The blue lotus blooming at the time of flames
Dogen encouraged his students to practice meditation as a way of cultivating:
The blue lotus blooming in the midst of fire and at the time of flames.
Reading Dogen’s teachings in isolation touched me deeply.
Let things come and abide in your heart, and let your heart abide in things.
Like the children at play in their burning house in the famous parable from the Lotus Sutra my preoccupation with the trinkets of samsara, e.g., my Android apps, and Netflix queue, quickly faded.
I got it that while I talked Dharma, I wasn’t walking the path during this illness very well.
Suffering and the end of suffering
“All my teaching,” the Buddha is reported to have said, “is about suffering and the end of suffering.”
But he also said to escape the burning house of conditioned existence, you must first acknowledge that you are living in one. Dogen made may references in his teaching carer to this burning house we find ourselves in.
forced isolation-> go deeper into Dharma?
That’s when I realized this forced isolation was a chance to go deeper into Dharma practice and contemplation. One I might never have again.
But, this little voice in my head kept saying, I am too fatigued to meditate. I think I should just lie in bed and veg out. My doctor did say I need rest!
These words from Ajahn Chah, one of the most revered meditation masters of the last century, came to mind:
My way of training people involves some suffering, because suffering is the Buddha’s path to enlightenment. He wanted us to see suffering and to see origination, cessation and the path. If you don’t go this way there is no way out.
The inner complainer
Yeah, I sighed, he was right. He said that back in the mid 1950s. A disciple of Ajahn Chah, Luang Por Pasanno, wrote a couple of years ago, reflecting on what it felt to practice in Thailand on really, really hot days:
Often we deal with imperfect conditions by getting in touch with our “inner complainer” that’s whining away, going on and on about how miserable we feel.
When the mind is complaining about the circumstances, we observe how this simply perpetuates suffering.
Instead we’re facing reality and being honest with ourselves. At the same time, we understand that simply because circumstances are less than ideal, they do not also have to be a source of complication or oppression.
The point is to distinguish between the direct, physical experience and the layers of mental complication we add to that experience. When we do that, it gives us an inner refuge, allowing us to be comfortable in any circumstance.
That’s one of the magical things about Dhamma practice. We can be at ease and clear in any circumstance if we’re willing to direct our attention in a skillful way.”
Spot on, brother!
Slow mindful walking meditation
While my breath awareness practice was too difficult when whacked out with fatigue and brain fog, I found the slow mindful, walking meditation energizing and refreshing.
Then my breath awareness practice miraculously improved!
Speaking of walking meditation, I’ll end this with another Zen saying helps me find the Middle Path within confusion and difficulty.
Walk straight by winding along
Toward the end of his life, the Japanese Zen Master Genshu Watanabe (1869-1963) called a young disciple to his bedside and posed a question.
“How can one go straight,” he asked, “on a steep mountain road of ninety-nine curves?”
The disciple was baffled, so Watanabe Roshi answered the question himself:
“Walk straight by winding along.”
It’s just that simple.
Walk straight, winding along the “ninety-nine curves” of your life just as it is right now.
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07/23/2020
intimacy with all things
When asked about the fruit of the spiritual life, the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen Zenji replied: “Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.”
Mindfulness allows us to intimately see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience.
connection with life as it is
Breath by breath we deepen our connection with life as it is. We are more present for the beauty and the challenges we encounter. We long for this connection, this intimacy with our life, as it connects us more authentically with others.
We discover a new dimension to life, as described by Emily Dickenson: “Life is so astonishing; it leaves very little time for anything else.”
the judging mind
But we discover on the cushion that our minds are actively judging, evaluating and comparing our ourselves and our experiences.
The judging mind, that meditators are so familiar with, takes us far away from this intimacy that Dogen highlights as the fruit of our practice. Although we long for this connection, we seem to be powerfully conditioned to judge.
We are “judging machines” as one of my teachers, Michelle Smith, once said.
Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us that “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way – on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment.”
practicing non-judgment
Consciously practicing non-judgment in meditation allows us to open up more to whatever arises, and rest deeply in the mindful presence that judging blocks out. Doing this relieves us of having to do anything in particular in the present.
We just give up grasping for more of the pleasant, resisting the unpleasant, and ignoring our life as it is.
the space of intimacy
As Larry Rosenberg puts it, by practicing non-judgment we come into the space of intimacy where we are “being with life, not just dealing with it.”
Joseph Goldstein is fond of recounting that an interviewer once asked Mother Teresa what she says to God when she prays. “I don’t say anything,” she replied. “I just listen.“ Then the interviewer asked what God says to her. “He doesn’t say anything,” she said. “He just listens. And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.”
Deep listening
Deep listening, in silence, even if no words are spoken, is intimate. Like Mother Teresa we can’t explain this intimacy our mindfulness practice reveals.
We simply live it.
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10/26/2017
wholeness and redemptive suffering
Redemptive suffering suggests that even in pain, there’s potential for positive change. We’ll look at practical ways to apply it in the context of contemporary mindfulness.
Redemptive suffering is the idea that suffering can lead to growth. It can bring about a positive transformation. Theology sees suffering as a path to atonement. Philosophy views it as an opportunity for self-discovery. Psychology suggests it can build resilience.
For Buddhism, this is the foundational insight.
Suffering takes many forms. Physical pain is one type. Emotional distress, like grief or anxiety, is another. Mental anguish, such as depression, also counts. Spiritual struggles, questioning faith, are included too.
Everyone faces suffering. It is an unavoidable part of life.
The Redemptive Element
How can suffering be “redemptive“? It can atone for past wrongs. It can help with personal and spiritual growth. Pain can breed empathy.
By understanding our own pain, we grasp the pain of others.
It’s vital to avoid romanticizing suffering. Pain isn’t inherently good. Don’t seek it out. Redemptive suffering is about what you do with the pain that you can’t avoid. Finding meaning in hard times is the key.
The Benefits of Embracing Redemptive Suffering
Facing suffering with intention can bring unexpected benefits. It can improve your mental state. It can improve your spiritual life.
Increased Empathy and Compassion
Suffering expands your understanding. It makes you more aware of the pain others feel. A person who has battled depression understands another’s struggle. This understanding can lead to acts of kindness. It can inspire service to others.
Spiritual Growth and Transformation
Suffering can shake your beliefs. This leads to reflection. It leads to a stronger sense of faith. Some call it a “spiritual awakening.” Difficult times prompt deep questions. They lead to profound changes.
Developing Resilience and Strength
Overcoming challenges builds resilience. It strengthens your mind. Redemptive suffering gives you coping skills. It improves your problem-solving abilities. Each challenge overcome makes you stronger for the next.
Redemptive Suffering in Buddhism
Buddhism sees suffering as part of life. It emphasizes detachment. Liberation comes from mindfulness. Meditation can reduce pain and suffering.
redemptive suffering in Buddhism
Other Religions/Philosophies
Judaism uses remembrance to give tragedy purpose. Islam views trials as tests of faith. Hinduism embraces suffering as karma to be worked through. Stoicism teaches acceptance of what can’t be controlled.
Practical Steps to Finding Redemption in Suffering
You can take action to find meaning when life gets tough. Here’s how to cope and grow.
Acknowledge and Accept Your Pain
Don’t ignore your suffering. Acknowledge it. Acceptance is the first step toward healing. It opens the door for growth.
Seek Support and Connection
Talk to others. Reach out to friends. Join a support group. Community helps you navigate tough times. Shared experiences make the burden lighter.
Historical Examples of Resilience
Nelson Mandela spent years in prison. His suffering fueled his fight for justice. The Civil Rights Movement arose from generations of oppression. Suffering can be the catalyst for social change.
Redemptive suffering is about finding meaning in pain. It’s a catalyst for growth. It brings transformation. Embrace suffering as a chance to live a more meaningful life. There is always hope, even in the darkest times.
As we surrender more deeply, we acknowledge our multi-layered resistances and face our egoic conditioning head on. Humility allows us to recognize and allow fuller access to these layers.
Every one would agree suffering is a natural part of who we are: we are born, grow old and sick, we die. Along the way there are countless separations and insults. This aspect of suffering is undeniable.
The Buddha also described a second, more subtle form of suffering.
He taught this level of suffering was entirely of our own doing: the psychic displeasure caused by clinging, by our attachments, our reluctance to surrender our views, opinions and desires.
In the Christian view, it seems Jesus took suffering and transformed it into love. He did not flinch. Through his courage we have come to know something very precious and transformative: suffering as redemptive.
When we approach suffering as ultimately redemptive, I feel we can appreciate the work of humility. No matter how advanced you think you are in your meditation practice, if you lose sight of humility, your practice is hurtful.
There is a tendency to think we can somehow get it all together with good meditation. That we can move past suffering for good.
We can experience life with more spaciousness, with less reactivity, and more warmth, but I don’t see us getting out of suffering, no matter what we read. I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to take on the programming regarding the end of suffering that is so prevalent in the spiritual advertising handed down to us for hundreds of years.
Rather, it might be more psychologically and spiritually grounding to acknowledge the saying attributed to one of the most celebrated spiritual figures of early Christianity, St. Anthony. He is said to have remarked “expect pain and temptation to the last day of your life.”
This just feels truer. No matter how advanced you think you are, or will ever be, expect pain and temptation.
I am speaking here from some forty years of Buddhist influenced meditation. I was taught over and over that there is an end to suffering. This sets up the expectation that this will come about with deeper and more correct practice.
Rather, let’s acknowledge that this whole thing is fragile and frail all the way through, from bow to stern. It’s so easy to buy into some fairy tale like expectation of getting it all together.
What if instead of getting it together, we allowed life to be fully tragic?
Isn’t this humility?
Cynthia Bourgeault, in a commentary on The Cloud of Unknowing, which I was listening to the other day on CDs received recently as a gift from a dear friend, quoted Helen Luke when she got to the Cloud’s teaching on meekness. I don’t have the exact words, but Helen writes something to the effect that wholeness is born out of the willingness to bear the struggle between the divine and the human.
Wholeness, or the transformation we all seek (w-holiness?) doesn’t come from the divine somehow canceling out the human. We stop thinking along these collusive lines. Wholeness is simply the willingness to bear the struggle; to allow whatever is there to simply be there. And to let ourselves be moved.
Self-emptying love
I think this may be what Christianity calls self-emptying. It takes on a very rich context in Jesus’ self-emptying love.
The heightened and extended practice of Buddhist nonattachment empties the self into nothingness; it is in this nothingness that we find peace. It is in this nothingness that Christian mystics find God.
02/14/2015
Wash your bowls–meditation in daily life
There’s an old Zen story that I like very much. A monk comes to the monastery of the master Zhaozhou and asks for teaching. The master asks him,
“Have you had your breakfast?”
The monk says that he has.
“Then wash your bowls,” is the teacher’s reply, and the only meditation instruction he offers.
Zhaozhou wants to bring the monk down to the immediate present moment, as if saying “Don’t look for some profound metaphysical or yogic instructions here. Be present to this moment.”
Meditation reveals how many fixed ideas and opinions we have. How much judgment, expectation, and how much preconception we carry around with us all the time.
Have you noticed?
I come back to this simple story again and again. “Wash your bowls” for me means just do what you are doing, and that’s enough.
I think it gets even more interesting when we look at why we even bother with meditation in the first place.
When was the last time you asked yourself why you do this stuff–you know, read spiritual books, show up to a meditation group, download–upload, sit attending the breath, walk attending to walking, whatever you do…
Why do you do this? Is there something gnawing at you? Some question you want settled, once and for all?
(OK, if you are honestly in this thing out of curiosity or for stress reduction, that’s fine. But if you are still at it after a few months, well, it’s time to ask a few questions).
I do acknowledge there is something gnawing at me; often below the level of my day to day awareness. Yeah, after 40 years of doing this stuff, I do have an inner gnawing going on.
Some part of me wants to believe in something.
Maybe it’s part of our evolutionary biology; we may be wired to believe in something as a way of insuring our survival. Just look at historical frenzies around nationalism, fundamentalism, and now with the upcoming election.
This is what makes fundamentalism appealing for so many: So and so said it, I believe it, and that’s the end of it.
Our conditioning leads us to believe that there are answers to the questions which gnaw at us. And if we just work hard at it we will find those damned answers and be happy, and everything will be fine, no more gnawing.
I would love to believe in something, sure. But let’s say we did find an answer. Let’s say we did believe in something. Would we then be happy?
I know of many incredibly brilliant people, experts in evolutionary biology, philosophy, and religion who seem to have some major gnawing going on. Just ask their spouses.
OK, maybe we need to re-frame this, and consider the process rather than the imagined destination, of living the question.
Wine bottle, bowl, and plum branch, by Yashima Gakutei
The best answer I can come up with comes from a Jesuit priest whose work was banned by the Vatican. Here is Anthony de Mello, S.J.
“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
So much of what is taught as Buddhism comes across as a little flat: life is all wrapped up in a nice logical package: this is why we suffer, and this how we end suffering.
Once we are given an answer, the questions are supposed to take a back seat. Or if they come up, we are redirected to work hard on the so-called answer.
Consider this well-known passage by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (1903):
…I would like to beg you dear sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
But what if we never “live our way to the answer?” What then?
Wash your bowls.
One of the genius aspects of some radical teachers within Buddhism and other traditions is that they know this very well, that the answer to such questions is not a statement, fact or teaching but rather, is the experience of awareness itself.
What we are doing in meditation is simply developing the capacity to experience awareness itself. And not some fancy, esoteric mystical awareness, just this awareness right here and now.
Let’s take the example of loneliness. I read an article recently claiming that fifteen percent of (North) Americans report experiencing an intense feeling of loneliness once a week.
There is a simple remedy, and this is the heart of the meditation practice for me: just ask yourself:
Is what experiences loneliness, lonely?
Living our ordinary, everyday awareness with greater and greater capacity allows us to savor every instant. Every moment is a treasure, and time is never killed or wasted.
We become, to borrow a line from Kahil Gibran, “a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.”
And we just wash our bowls.
02/03/2015
Buddhist Contemplation: Four Thoughts Cheat Sheet
The text we will be studying and contemplating for the next six months or so is perhaps the most highly regarded one in the entire Mahayana Mind Training tradition on Buddhist contemplation: The Root Text of the Seven Points of Mind Training, by the 12^th century master of the Kadampa order, Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. This text was in turn based on a text by the 10^th century Bengali Buddhist teacher, Atisha.
This Buddhist contemplation text was composed in the spirit of boiling down all the essential aspects of an entire lifetime of spiritual practice into one handy volume – all you ever need to know and practice was put here, with no fluff, just the most essential of the most essential. This text has been practiced and handed down for generations, and has lived up to its billing: all you need to know and do in one concise volume.
The text is composed of seven points, and in all is made up of 59 lines. Each line is pithy and pregnant. I have found it to be incredibly essential, and have studied it and contemplated its slogans for over thirty years since I first discovered it in a book published in 1977, Advice from a Spiritual Friend, by Geshe Rabten and Geshe Dhargey. I am now on my third copy of the book, as the first fell apart from use, the second was borrowed and never returned, and the third – ah, the third is the new edition published in 1996. I have received teachings on Buddhist contemplation from many teachers, and none were as powerful as the ones taught in this marvelous text.
The seven points in this Buddhist contemplation text are:
1. Train in the preliminaries.
2. Cultivate Bodhicitta, the mind of genuine altruism
3. Transform adversity into the path of awakening
4. Maintain the practice for the duration of one’s life
5. Measure the success of the practice
6. Know the commitments of the practice
7. Know the guidelines for the practice
These seven points comprise a powerful manual for the transformation of your mind and heat.
These seven points are conveyed in this order through 59 pithy lines or “slogans.” For me that’s the raw power of the Mahayana Mind Training Tradition Buddhist Contemplation tradition, their emphasis on training with phrases. As I have mentioned in previous posts in this series, by mounting a transformative phrase on the breath as we go about our day, reflecting lightly on its meaning while we are in the checkout line at Longs – this is how we bring the practice home.
I have been urging you to make up your own slogans in response to the basic ideas presented in the past four posts because I wanted to have you try your best at working this way, because after this post the phrases all are going to come from Geshe Chekawa.
Let’s recap again. This is good to do, as we get another opportunity to reflect on these precious teachings.
There are seven points of Buddhist contemplation that cover everything we need to know and practice, see the list above.
We have just finished Point One – Train in the Preliminaries.
Point One was shorthand for reflect on the four thoughts that turn the mind towards the dharma.
The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind toward the Dharma are:
1. The rare and precious human life of leisure and opportunity.
2. Death and impermanence.
3. The awesome power of our actions.
4. The defects of samsara AKA The inescapabilty of dissatisfaction.
Here is a cheat sheet for Point One, as Geshe Chekawa simply assumes we are familiar with how to contemplate the Four Thoughts.
Deep and integrated contemplation on these for points is what is meant by training in the preliminaries. These contemplations become deep as we sit with them for half of our sitting meditation practice, and when we bring them home by mounting them on the breath as we bop around town and pick up the kids, park the car at the beach park, look at your spouse and see how lovely she or he is, wake up in the morning, or get ready to fall asleep.
Cheat Sheet for the Four Thoughts Contemplation
I. The rare and precious human life of leisure and opportunity
a. There are more than seven billion human beings on the planet; how many have the leisure to pursue a spiritual path?
b. Although seven billion humans seems like a lot, consider the number of insects, or even the trillions of cells and microbes in one human body.
c. Human life is rare.
d. We have this precious gift; it is up to use what we do with it.
e. We often overlook the things that are important to us while we still have them; we only recognize how something is as we are running out of it or are about to lose it, but by then it is often too late to do anything with it.
f. Many, many people live hand to mouth, or are devoured by addictions or trivial concerns, and have no leisure time.
II. Death and impermanence.
a. We are going to die someday.
b. In this moment right now, do you know this?
c. Death and loss are experienced every day in our lives in some way.
d. We never know when death will come to us or to our loves ones.
e. While we may think we have time left, as we grow older subjective times for many feels like it is going by faster.
f. We really don’t have as much time left as we think we do.
III. The awesome power of our actions.
a. Our actions are to a large extent conditioned by conventional models of success or failure.
b. Are we happy with these conventional models?
c. Conditioned actions create results.
d. Every moment we participate in creating the world that exists for us and others.
e. Awareness of our conditioning helps detach ourselves form it and the social model it in some small way perpetuates.
f. Everything matters.
IV. The defects of samsara AKA The inescapabilty of dissatisfaction.
a. Sorrow and discontent and dissatisfaction are inevitable.
b. We just won’t find any lasting satisfaction in the eight worldly concerns of hope for gain and fear of loss, hope for praise and fear of blame, hope for fame and fear of insignificance, hope for happiness and fear of suffering.
c. We suffer from misplaced trust and hope.
c. Seeming pleasures are only so for fleeting moments.
On this last point I love in a poignant way the following uncompromising thought by Milarepa:
Whatever one does eventually brings suffering and is futile;
Whatever one thinks is impermanent and futile;
Whatever one achieves is illusory and futile;
Even if one has it all, it is futile;
The dharmas of samsara are futile.”
I have often heard people say in our meetings that these phrases of Buddhist contemplation are downers and take away our joie de vivre, that doing these makes people feel depressed. That may happen, but that is not the purpose of this Buddhist contemplation.
The purpose of these contemplations is for us to see for ourselves that one true and authentic response to the realities of life is to give ourselves wholeheartedly to some sort of spiritual practice.
And this very practice of the First Point can be done all throughout one’s life, not just at the beginning of our journey. They help us realize that we need to live as truly and deeply as we can as an authentic response to what Norman Fischer calls “the gift and the problem that is our life.”
02/03/2013
the church of what's happening now
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only there that we are fully alive, in the church of what’s happening now.
Our son Kupai started Kindergarten last week. When I woke him up for school the other day I asked him how he had slept. He said that it was really frustrating that after we read him his story and kiss him goodnight he thinks about the events of the day.
He explained that he thinks of some apparently very meaningful things to say about his life “but there’s no one to tell” about these insights, as he is all alone with the lights off in his bedroom.
When I heard him relate this complaint, the thought of Ryokan, the 18th century Japanese hermit monk flashed into my mind. (After all these years of meditation I have come to accept that I do indeed have a monkey mind, and there’s no changing this).
There is one poem of his I vaguely remembered as my son mentioned this grievance. Later that day I looked through his poems and found the poem that had partially come into my mind:
Light sleep, the bane of old age:
Dozing off, evening dreams, waking again.
The fire in the hearth flickers; all night a steady rain
Pours off the banana tree.
Now is the time I wish to share my feelings —
But there is no one.
I am struck by the juxtaposition of the pre-sleep ruminations of a five year old boy and those of an elderly hermit Buddhist monk two hundred years before. Both deal with insights, isolation, the need to be with, to connect, the loneliness of awareness, and the awareness of loneliness.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that my true home is my life as it is, not as I want it to be, or as it used to be, or as it should be according to some spiritual notion, but as it is.
I find I need to remind myself of this every day.
Sometimes it is messy, badly in need of repairs, or unpleasant, but whatever it is, it’s my home nonetheless; I can only live this life, even if I don’t particularly like it right now.
Here is another poem, this one is by another Japanese Zen teacher, Gesshu Soko:
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
Like two arrows meeting in flight,
In the midst of nothingness
There is a road that goes directly
to my true home.
Gesshu Soko wrote this poem shortly before he died. It speaks to me more about life than about death. I hear him saying that our true home is right in the middle of what’s happening now, whether it be living or dying, moving forward or moving back, coming or going.
When we are fully with with things as they are, we meet the circumstances of our lives like two arrows shot from different directions coming together point-to-point in mid-air.
Breathing in or breathing out, we live our lives as they are, not as we want them to be or they were.
Farming Village in Spring, Kamisaka Sekka (1909-1910)
This moment, now, is our true home. The road that goes directly to our true home is the road that leads to this moment. That road doesn’t go anywhere.
It doubles back on itself and leads to this moment, as it is.
Walking the road of this moment is challenging. It is a lifelong practice. It can be a breeze when we are on easy street and difficult when we don’t like where it leads, the now that is pain or regret.
Because our life as it is is our true home, we can never really step outside of it (death is another issue, and who really knows what happens then?)
I think about the character created by the comedian Flip Wilson in the 1970s- Reverend Leroy at times, a minister of the “Church of What’s Happening Now.”
I am a very happy parishioner in this church.
Earlier we read Gesshu Soko’s lines
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
This about covers our life. Like two arrows meeting point-to-point in mid-flight, we meet our lives fully in each moment, again and again.
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only place we are fully alive- singing in the church of what’s happening now.
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02/25/2008