BEHOLD

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LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE*

I’m sorry, but something about this pop-up, if hackneyed, phrase makes me want to stick my finger down my throat. 

Maybe it’s the unadulterated narcissism with its bald premise that life should be all about you--or better yet--me. Maybe it’s feeling that our self-aggrandizing culture has upped the ante again. Living the good life is no longer good enough. No, the only life worth living is our “best” life. Maybe it’s the erroneous notion that there actually is such a thing as a “best” life out there. But you only get one so don’t blow it!  

Then again, maybe it’s the phrase’s underriding value system which implies that living is all about “besting,” that is, being, having, doing the best of this, the best of that--and so worthy of all our time, energy and resources. Maybe it’s knowing that this thinking sets us up for chronic failure by creating ever higher, ever more unattainable goals. Or, maybe it’s the arrogance of thinking that you and I can determine what’s best for ourselves--never mind what’s best for anyone else. 

As our 4 year old grandson Jonah would say to me, “Baboo, I need a little halp here.”

*I have mixed feelings about what I’ve written today. My take on “live your best life” is both critical and negative. Is it legit? (Hmm.) I can see you going at least two ways: 1. It reveals a lot about biases--mine, and maybe yours. (Hmm again.) 2. It’s a fine example of how easily our thinking can go down a rabbit hole, one thought blindly following another.

Either way, it’s dark down here.

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE THE WORLD & OURSELVES A GIFT.

LET’S THINK ABOUT OUR BIASES…& OUR RABBIT HOLES.

GLOW

So much to touch.

So much to feel.

So much to see.

So much to sense.

So much to taste.

So much to treasure.

So much to hear.

So much to hallow.

So much to smell.

So much to savor.

Go slow, my spirit, go slow, 

so you can thrill to the glorious 

that is the life within life, 

in all that surrounds you,

in all that is within you.

And you will glow.

NET WORK

Today I’d like to go to the edge with you. But first, let’s do a little “net work.”

From birth to death we humans engage in a wide array of micro and macro “nets”--from traditional social ones (family, clan, tribe, race) to volunteer/professional nets (friends, special interest groups, business) to political parties, and of course, the Internet, to name a few. There are other kinds of nets which some of us rely heavily upon as well--everything from financial security--our “net worth” (This one always makes me laugh.) to certain escape mechanisms like drugs/alcohol/violence/war/consumerism/etc. (These make me want to cry.).

And then there’s the “God net." 

There are all kinds of systems of belief out there. Whether they originate in a religion or not, they are just that--systems of belief (doctrines/dogma/creeds/confessions/etc.). But only that! What we “believe” about something, including “God,” doesn’t actually make it so. Besides, people "believe" all sorts of crazy things! (Reread the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32.) 

Religiously speaking then, when we say we believe in God/Yahweh/Allah/etc., we’re really saying two things: 1. We agree with a certain set of thoughts that someone(s) put into words. 2. These words have created concepts--a net upon which we base our words and actions--to live a good life. (BTW: Who gets to define “good” here...and good for whom?)

Still with me? Here’s where we go to the edge. What if there is no God net? What if there is no God? At least, not according to our current working definition of “God” which varies widely depending upon one’s belief system. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? (BTW: Carl Jung believed “God is unfathomable.”)

My point in all this? (Finally!) There’s much we don’t know about the God net. But this we do know: Somehow--from somewhere, someone, or something--we’ve been given each other. While we work out the details of all this, how about I be your net. You be mine. I know I’ll sleep better that way and I hope you will, too. 

After all, isn't this the intended net effect of Jesus' message?

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE THE WORLD & EACH OTHER A GIFT.

LET’S THINK ABOUT HOW WE THINK ABOUT THE GOD NET.

WE

Why am I here? 

Why have I come? 

What will carry forward

when all’s said and done?

Here solely to gain pleasure? 

Know leisure? Hoard treasure?

Or come to be present, 

fully present indeed.

This is my canon. 

This is my creed.

Come to live caught 

in delayed adolescence? 

Or here to break out, 

to become love’s essence.

It is love that wrought me,

and love, then, that brought me,

my energies freed

to serve those in need;

to bring forth love’s graces 

into all life’s dark places 

where worries creep in,

woes claim to be kin.

Why am I here?

Why have I come? 

What will carry forward

when all’s said and done?

This, clearly, I see; 

it’s not about me.

No, it’s not about me

but of love and love’s we.

YIELD

A highlight of our recent trip to Colorado was viewing the aspens at the peak of their fall colors. If conditions are just right, aspens will turn from a soft green to their iconic golden yellow to bright orange and even bolder red. It is just such a year. “Beauty beyond words!” is all I can say. Then, flying home yesterday we viewed New England’s not-to-be-outdone colorama in all its autumnal glory. And again, beauty beyond words.

Beauty, in any of its infinite forms, stops us. We can viscerally feel it (e.g. “breathtakingly beautiful”). It puts us on pause--maybe even long enough to make us stop and think.  

While doing just that while mid-flight the word “yield” came to mind. As you know, there is more than one definition of the word “yield.” To focus for a moment on two of them; there’s the “natural/spiritual” one, i.e. surrender, submit, relinquish, etc., and there’s the corporate/agricultural/industrial one, i.e. NYSE stocks and bonds, earnings, dividends, crop or hog yields, etc. 

Leaves go for the former definition--and then the latter. They yield in the natural sense to the seasonal changes which trigger the chlorophyll’s breakdown which causes the green to disappear so the colors beneath can shine forth. In doing this they produce a yield in the “corporate” sense as well. What is that yield? For one thing, it’s beauty. And beauty is something we can’t live without. 

Obviously, both definitions have their places so which comes first? 

For me, when we, like the autumn leaves, yield to our true nature (“created in image and likeness of God”), we too, produce beauty....

...naturally.

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE THE WORLD & OURSELVES A GIFT.

LET’S TAKE TIME TO THINK ABOUT HOW TO YIELD.

 

THE WAYS OF THE WIND

The earth is breathing,

breathing ever so heavily,

on this windy-wild day.

Everything that can move

is in motion. In flow. In flux.

Only the indefatigable Flat Irons 

in the distance are sitting still.

Rising high. Laying low.

My spirit is in motion, too.

Turning. Churning. Burning.

Doesn’t want to settle down.

Settle in. Settle for. Settle up.

It’s hard to be solid and staid,

like the aspen-gilded Rockies,

when winds within are writhing;

when emotions, like autumn leaves,

are contorting and cavorting;

when everything moveable,

everything malleable, is in motion

--as if my inner spirit is not one but many

and they, all of them, are out of sorts--

even some of them out for blood.

And I’m the one left lying in pain. 

But I love knowing even now that, 

when the winds without

and the winds within subside,

skies will clear. Calm will come.

Peace will preside.

Meanwhile my soul, like an eagle,

soars in splendor over the peaks 

and into the valleys of my being,

knowingly riding, gliding, abiding

on the ways of the wind.

WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?

Love, real love, gets taken advantage of all the time. 

Ironically, it’s in its very nature to get used--and even abused. It never wants this, (that would be sick) but it willingly accepts it in order to defuse or at least diminish the abuse’s (and the abuser’s) power. 

Such love is very different from the ego-energized, condition-based kind that “loves” for the sake of gaining or maintaining personal advantage. A love that is all about me, myself and I. A zero-sum love.  

Whoever the ancient was who penned the words, ”Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.” (I Peter 4:8) they had a wholly different definition of love from the ego-based one which is our usual modus operandi. They wrote of a love so all-empowering that it can defuse and disarm our ego’s abusive advances--a love so condition-free that we can practice it right where we are no matter what our circumstances--a love so real that it’s clear they knew, first hand, what they were talking about.  

This love, real love, is life-transforming for its recipient. And equally amazing, in the act of practicing it on others we actually experience the same all-forgiving all-freeing love for ourselves.

What’s not to love about that?

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE THE WORLD & OURSELVES A GIFT.

LET TAKE TIME TO THINK ABOUT HOW WE LOVE.

IN THE MOMENT

Oh, what a feeling, 

that feeling of intra-expansion, 

the swelling of your chest 

with a huge draught of air,

the deeply satisfying sigh of your lungs,

that accompanies the wellspring of your spirit 

at the moment something clicks together

like the seat belt on your flight,

and suddenly you understand. You get it.

In that moment you know you know 

what has been here right in front of you all along.

Like a child playing hide and seek with you,

it giddily, if impatiently, has waited for you to discover it, 

hoping, knowing that eventually you will come. 

And in that twinkling of your inner eye you realize 

life is not found in reaching some destination, 

though such arrivals are sweet as ice cream,

if not tart as the apple pie of the journey itself;

but in the moment of the moments along the way. 

Life comes to life in those brief but spectacular 

flashes of deep inner knowing when,

in the instant, you find yourself streaking ahead,

not of billions of others running the race,

but of the race itself. 

We don’t need such moments 

of lightning-strike clarity often, 

but without them our spirits cannot survive, 

and worse, we can know nothing 

of what it means to truly thrive.