The End of Lonely Journeys

God is Justice because Love is Just. And Love is Just because it knows all Creation as one. It knows all life as equal, which undoes the grounds for different responses. What is one cannot be judged, for it cannot be divided into that which judges and that which is judged.

Thus, true Justice is not concerned with form – with the many appearances that appear as reality – but rather with the underlying content (e.g., T-14.X.7:1-6). It does not distinguish between a King and a beggar, a shepherd and a prophet, a river and the sea.

In our lives in the world – where appearances are a constant phenomenon, and judgment inevitable – to be just is to perceive in all things either love or the call for love and to know that the answer to both is the same: love.

Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he really wants is to offer it unto yourself, for your Father wills you to know your brother as yourself. Answer his call for love, and yours is answered (T-12.II.3:1-5).

When we seek justice – for ourselves or others, be they elephants, violets, migrants or the neighbor’s outdoor cat – we recognize implicitly the radical equality of all Creation. We embrace it; we welcome it. And as it is made welcome in us, it shows itself yet more to us. It makes us welcome in it. We are transformed by its presence, the way a landscape is transformed by moonlight.

Without exception, all that exists exists through and in – and is subject to – the Laws of Creation. Because all that exists shares the same Source, all that exists is Holy, and there are no degrees of holiness. What is Holy is equal unto all else that is Holy – that is how it is holy.

It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it (T-14.X.10:1-2).

To perceive the Holiness of Creation is to honor the condition of Justice, and to honor the condition of Justice is to know God as Love, which is to say, as Life itself.

Yet one can ask: but how? How do we perceive Holiness? How do we honor the condition of Justice? How do we know God as Love and Life itself?

In my living, which is all the living to which I can speak, the path to Holiness, Justice and Love is conjoined with the path of Understanding. Understanding is healed perception, where “healed” means “nothing is excluded via judgment.” An apple tree is a horse is a sunset is a kiss.

Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it find (T-14.X.10:5-7).

How does our living change when we refuse to take “the lonely journey” but instead accept one another as companions on a journey in which everything is perceived as the same?

This concept of perception is not the function of the body’s eyes or the body’s brain, both of which are rigid producers of distinction and difference and therefore judgment. To make contact with God through through Jesus, as I suggest is eminently and practically helpful, is to let go of the body’s function, which is done by relaxing our expectations and assumptions about the body’s function.

In other words, let the body do what bodies do, and let the spiritual chips fall where they may, which they always do anyway, perfectly. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and smile when the spirit says smile.

When we begin to transition from the belief that an apple tree and a horse and a sunset and a kiss are altogether undeniably different things to “an apple tree is a horse is a sunset is a kiss,” we begin to give attention not to the appearance of distinctions but rather to the light in which all distinctions appear. What brings forth the many appearances? What brings forth our feelings about them? Our ideas? What brings forth the stories in which we weave the many disparate elements of our living together? Why are we – or who are we that we should be – so desperate for a meaningful narrative with a happy ending?

There is no single answer to these questions so much as there is a practice of living justly and happily with them. The questions are not answered so much as undone. It is like bringing all your problems to Jesus, prepared for a long healing dialogue, and he just makes you tea and goes on about how beautiful and wonderful apple trees, horses, sunsets and kisses are . . .

God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being for all. Nothing lives in secret . . . (T-14.X.11:2-3).

As we give attention to our experience of being embodied with other bodies in a material world – as we partake of the apparent vast, vivid and intimate complexity that is those bodies in that world – can we notice too the Light in which all of it appears?

Some people call this Light “awareness” or “consciousness.” Some of us call it “Christ.” It doesn’t actually matter what you call it – it answers to many names, including some that you and I will never know. What matters is that we experience it. By experiencing (i.e., by knowing, sensing, intuiting, understanding) the Light in which all Creation appears, then all things that appear become Holy because of the light in which they appear.

This feels like a decision we make a thousand times a day, but in fact it can be a decision we can make but once for all time. We decide to see only holiness and then all we see is holiness. Our decision is the decision to heal by asking our Teacher to teach us we are the light (T-8.III.1:1-4).

I wandered so lonely
My Life filled with sin
I wouldn’t let
my dear savior in
Then Jesus came
like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord
I saw the light

I do not say Hank Williams saw the light – we can only testify to our own experience, after all – but he clearly understood a particularly Christian way of talking about seeing the light.

Helen Schucman did, too.

God and His miracle are inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in His light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear (T-3.V.10:5-9).

For me, the way to practice Understanding (in order to correspondingly perceive Holiness, Justice and God as Love) is to study A Course in Miracles under the tutelage of Jesus in a very pragmatic and felt – in a very realized – way. By listening to His voice and accepting His guidance – which is to substitute my will as I understand it for Jesus’s will – I “learn to undo error and act to correct it” (T-1.III.1:6).

The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability, because conviction comes through accomplishment. The ability is the potential, the achievement is its expression, and the Atonement, which is the natural profession of the children of God, is the purpose (T-1.III.1:7-10).

The “opportunities” are our everyday lives and the challenges and upsets and struggles that appear to comprise them. The work, so to speak, is simply to practice living in the light of Christ – the One Light in which the miracle we are is perfectly clear.

How can we be helpful? Patient? Gentle? Kind? Non-dramatic?

The apparent enormity of this inner and outer work – and the promise of peace that is its promised outcome – can make it seem like we are scaling a thousand Mount Everests blindfolded, hands tied and without oxygen. Thus, it seems to require magic solutions – the suspension of natural laws, the operation of divine power, the presence of ascended masters, et cetera.

Yet healing – and living in a healed way with our brothers and sisters – is not so dramatic. It looks dramatic and difficult when one is looking out from need, but when we look together from Love . . .

That is a different vista altogether.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place or a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness and nothing else within (T-18.VI.1:4-6).

The secret (there is no secret save for those of us who believe there is a secret) is that we need do nothing (T-18.VII.5:7). The less we do, the more Christ does, and the more Christ does, the more we see that the Atonement is finished and we are simply catching up with God.

This is another way of saying that we are finished with attack – we are no longer asserting our own limited understanding of life against life. We are letting life be. To attack a sister or brother is to interpret them according to our needs and desires. But to perceive them with the eyes of Christ – to see them in Love – in the One Light that establishes our identity in and as Christ – is salvation itself. For we do not see a separate world, but our own self projected outward. All our kindness and gentleness, however meager, is always healing, and the healing never omits us.

Justice is of Christ because it heals the confused ideas and hateful images that are born of attack. When we are unsure of what we are, we project that uncertainty, and hate what it produces. Yet when we consent to know ourselves as God knows us – which is to be just unto ourselves, as God is just in Creation – then what is projected is peace, and peace becomes us.

Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see. Remember this. In this lies either Heaven or hell, as you elect. God’s justice points to Heaven just because it is entirely impartial. It accepts all evidence that is brought before it, omitting nothing and assessing nothing as separate and apart from all the rest . . . Here all attack and condemnation becomes meaningless and indefensible. Perception rests, the mind is still, and light returns again. Vision is now restored (M-19.5:2-6, 8-10).

Our happiness is not of the world, because there is no world, and we are not bodies. Yet our happiness is shared and constructs a world in which – for a while yet – such sharing is possible. I give thanks for a merciful God whose Light restores to Understanding our radical equality and underlying oneness, and I give thanks for you, in whom God’s Justice becomes our reality.

Birds, Coffee and Void: Last Thoughts

But all this is silliness.

I enjoy being outdoors in the morning listening to birds.

I enjoy the light of dawn: its shy secretive blue, its slow but steady reveal of the world.

I love coffee, even bad coffee.

No more than all this! And no less either.

No mysteries. No secrets.

Just this.

This in which the one who talks too much about “void” risks being spiritually obtuse.

This in which the one who speaks of “emptiness” and “stillness” with near-evangelical fervor . . .

. . . has forgotten something and thinks “you” have it.

This in which it is clear that nobody has forgotten anything.

This in which nothing is lost.

This in which this morning I didn’t go to the barn but stayed inside, without coffee, exhausted, laying on the couch, watching light bleed through drawn curtains due east. After hours of night given to reading and prayer, all with an intensity evoking Kapleau’s description of shikan-taza . . .

. . . shikan-taza is a heightened state of concentrated awareness wherein one is neither tense nor hurried, and certainly never slack. It is the mind of somebody facing death (The Three Pillars of Zen 56).

Which in turn recalls these two questions and their answer from A Course in Miracles:

What would you see without the fear of death? What would you feel and think if death held no attraction for you? Very simply, you would remember your Father. The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the universe and of the universe of universes, and of everything that lies even beyond them would you remember (T-19.IV.D.1:1-4).

Lay there unmoving. Eyes open then shut. Bird song but different, not like in the barn. Muffled a little. Traffic also different, groaning on the downslope of Route Nine past the village cemetery. The neighbor’s lambs bawl; a rooster crows.

Kapleau – he is summarizing a lecture of Yasutani-Roshi – also says:

Compared with an unskilled swordsman a master uses his sword effortlessly. But this was not always the case, for there was a time when he had to strain himself to the utmost, owing to his imperfect technique, to preserve his life. It is no different with shikan-taza (The Three Pillars of Zen 57).

How tired I am! Yet how grateful.

I live in you –
not as darkness
but as a light in which
even darkness cannot hide.

I live in you as that
which you long
to give away.

I live in you
as love.

In time, the world awakens. The mail truck from Springfield arrives, the driver calling “good morning” to M., who from the loading dock answers – quieter, knowing who is still asleep on Main Street – “good morning.”

For it is morning. Before judgment – good, bad, this or that – it is morning. Light streams over the hills, mist rises off the pasture.

How happy I am. How grateful.

More than this quiet joy this morning is not possible; less is possible, to the precise extent I insist on prerogatives that do not come from the Holy One. The secret to salvation is that we do this unto our own self (T-18.VIII.10:1). Shall we take this literally then? See what happens if we do, at least?

You have no problems, though you think you have . . . Think not the limits you impose on what you see can limit God in any way (T-26.II.3:3, 5).

Yes, so long as there is a perception of lack, then there will be a perception of problems, and so long as there is a perception of problems, then others will appear to “fill” the lack or “solve” the problem or “assuage the pain” or “reinforce the pain . . . ”

All a dream. All  dust even now blowing away. Not even dust. Not even a dream.

Only this. Always only this.

It is not given us to fool God or argue with God or negotiate with God or even to deny God. Every image and idea and act which implies the contrary is not and never was real. We need only surrender to this simple fact, and then love and peace and joy will flow over us the way sunlight floods a landscape, allowing it to be seen by eyes that know how to see.

In you I speak
because
in you I hear.

Between silence
and what-silence-is-not,
I wait for you to join me.

Listening to Birds with Jesus in the Void

Less poetically. Less biographically.

As a matter of experience – lived experience prior to settling into this or that language or mode of expression (science, philosophy, advaita, historical et cetera et cetera et cetera) – what happens when you listen to the birds and to the silence in which their song appears?

As an exercise, a thing done with intention and curiosity, with devotion – what happens?

You hear birds. And the sound of them variegates and complexifies as you listen, becoming not just lovely but wonder-filled. How deeply hearing goes into the two-note Spring song of a chickadee! Dylan goes quiet, Chopin goes quiet, ego goes quiet . . .

And then, between notes, you hear the silence. The rich expanse of it seemingly endless and utterly open. Oh, maybe there are other sounds, too, at first – the river in the distance, the traffic at even greater distance. Maybe the neighbors, maybe a dog.

But all these sounds – without exception – stand aside their antithesis, silence.

You listen to the silence. You give attention to it. What happens? Isn’t it almost alive? Doesn’t it almost feel like something always about to give birth to sound? This sound then that sound? This melody then that? Isn’t silence intelligent and creative? Isn’t it alive?

As you go deeper into it, you begin to see that if there were not those sounds, then there would not be this silence. Therefore, silence is not the source of sound! Whatever the source of sound is, it is the source of silence, too. What a discovery!

In this way, you begin to sense how silence and sound are like positive and negative – charges, integers, images – which, when brought together, dissolve into . . .

What exactly?

Into emptiness. Stillness. Consciousness. God.

Though as soon as you name it, you are in retreat. And it’s okay to retreat – God is not at war with you. Emptiness doesn’t care whether you stay or go. Consciousness doesn’t mind what you do or leave undone.

But still. When you name it, you also bring forth all it isn’t.

You don’t have to do that anymore. You can; you don’t have to.

And see how in all of this – this wondrous encounter with Void, this penetration into the Sacred Heart of Christ, this union with God, all the holy secrets and mysteries unraveling at the Mind’s altar – there are still birds singing, and in between the song there are still these soft silences.

And there is still the one who – hearing them – loves them. Loves them. And the love streams, pours, flows – now grateful, now amazed, now studious, now amused . . .

Only this, of course. Always only this. But also – oh my Lord – this.

Coffee and Chores in the Void

In the morning I take my coffee to the barn and sit on a bale of hay. It is still dark though eastern hills bleed pale light. Mid-April but still cold enough to button the old flannel overshirt my father wore.

Pull the purple wool cap Chrisoula made down over my ears.

Sit shivering in the dark, sipping coffee, listening to birds sing.

Listening to birds sing, then listening to the silence between the songs of birds.

Shiver: coffee: bird song: silence.

And eventually – as faint beams of sunlight enter the barn through dusty windows, and caffeine sets the blood humming – getting around to wondering:

Does bird song break – does it fill – the silence?

Does silence support the bird song? Does it make the bird song possible?

And so on, in variation.

Coffee: bird song: silence: inquiry.

Yet the questions – because of their underlying reliance on the existence of cause-and-effect, and its underlying reliance on linearity, none of which we are allowed to take as Truth – go nowhere.

Go on and on going nowhere.

And yet.

Sunlight illumines banks of cloud laying still on the horizon: mallow and lilac, roseate accents, lavender folds. How fast one’s coffee cools, the mug chilling already-chilled fingers!

The bird song and the silence cancel each other, like one plus minus one leaving zero. There is neither bird song nor silence: there is only emptiness. Only stillness.

There is only this – this this – pouring itself continually from itself into itself: the nameless and formless endlessly creating what is nameless and formless endlessly creating.

So what? Who cares?

Really: who cares?

Finish the coffee, rise and stretch. Set the mug on a shelf near the WD-40, and get going on chores. Throw feed for the chickens and fill their waterers. Throw hay to the horses, water them under watchful eyes. Head indoors to slice apples for drying, get bread dough going, hang laundry, wash dishes. Write and teach. This and that.

And so on and so forth and so on.

How sweet to touch the hem of the Mother’s dress as she passes in the morning! How satisfying to care for the Father in His many forms asking for care. Thank Christ for coffee in mid-Spring, and mornings given to the birds.

Thank Christ for you, in whom and through whom all of this is given, over and over, in love.

Easter Love and Last Steps Home

Ten years ago when my relationship with A Course in Miracles was just beginning, people talked about Gary Renard a lot. Were his ascended masters real? Was he a big liar?

It seemed to matter that one take a stand on that question. And lingering behind a lot of the conversations was an implicit longing for supernatural experiences of one’s own – to be visited by illuminated beings, to channel the newest insights of Jesus, to see lights, hear voices, taste Heaven.

folded crocus
Yet another crocus . . . there can be no secrets in Love . . .

These are old desires, familiar to all of us and our ancestors. Nor is there indication they are going away any time soon. I am hardly immune myself. Part of appearing human is the longing to be other than human, to transcend human.

And yet.

When I give attention to the world, what I notice is its lawfulness and transparency. By lawfulness, I don’t mean people’s behavior. I mean the apparent physical world itself: the appearance of violets, the flowing of rivers, the taste of apples. And by transparency, I mean the still calm intelligence in whose care all this appearing and flowing and being unfolds and is extended.

Can you make violets multiply beyond measure? Can you make them green instead of purple? Can you make the river flow in another direction? Can you make the trout in the river grow wings and fly away? Can you you go to the orchard and see bananas on the trees? Instead of black bear scat under the blueberry bushes can you see gold coins?

Easter sunrise splitting the hills that my Holy Prefect Emily Dickinson once gazed at . . .

And as you fall in love with all this – this beauty, this bounty – can you not fall? Can you stop that within you which longs to partake of the beauty and extend the bounty?

Truly: what have you ever done that God cannot undo, and what have you ever left undone that God cannot do?

When we sit quietly and give attention to living, we perceive its beneficence. It takes care; it lives and offers its living. Here, too, it is clear that “I need do nothing” (T-18.VII.h). Indeed, what even am I? “I” not apart from the dew in the meadow, the stars in the sky, the thrumming of blood between this heart meeting that heart . . .

The extraordinary experience (ascended masters, new scriptures, disco ball spirituality) distracts us from the miracle of ordinary experience – the very living presence of Love in the world as it is given, right here and right now. And when we perceive this gift – this givenness, this Love – it flows through us, undoing the sense of separation, and we learn again that the Love of God, being All in all, permits no exclusion or alienation. There is no “Sean,” no “Mike,” no “Cheryl,” no “Robin.” There aren’t even violets and rivers. There’s just this: this this.

horses on Easter morning wondering why I’ve got a camera and not hay . . .

Truth is, we don’t need ascended masters. Or rather, we already have ascended masters, save for most of us they appear in mundane forms easily overlooked. Here is the vegetable garden already being planted, here is the potato garden ready to be expanded here is the flower garden and here is its bee hive, here are the horses and the chickens, here is the nearby river and the back porch on which to sit quietly at night and listen to the river as it flows quietly beneath ten thousand stars and low rolling hills, the far side of which my wise and loving and fiery Sister Emily Dickinson once gazed at.

What wonder! What gratefulness! What a miracle!

It is not required that we stray beyond the very living that is right now, right here blessing us beyond any measure, each and every aspect of it calling us home to our God, in Whom self, other and God are utterly dissolved, melted and commingled beyond commingling.

A hidden Easter egg reminding me yet again that nothing is ever hidden
. . .

There are no secrets. Nothing is hidden. We need nothing that is not already given. Only the willingness to see it and the readiness to accept it. The Peace of Christ is here; the Love of God is here. I offer you my wordiness as a hand, that by taking it, you and I might together behold Creation more clearly, and gather it calmly in our shared heart. Shall we not – on this day of resurrection and new beginnings – together take the last step home?

Hands to Work, Hearts to God

I say not that the body is real or unreal, but that I am not a body, and so the body as such is not really my concern. But what am I then? What is my concern?

This is an old question which is amenable to many different answers. If you are reading this, it is likely that A Course in Miracles is a significant aspect of how you go about answering it. Certainly it was – is – for me.

peas
snow settles in the garden where only days ago we planted spinach and peas in sunlight under the watchful eyes of horses and crows . . .

Here is our answer: we are Creations of a just and loving God, in Whom there is no perception and so no differences and so no separation. We are extensions of God, abstract ongoing expressions of Love, utterly alike, utterly one with what extends.

And yet we have forgotten this, and have forgotten we forgot, and so we experience fear and guilt, and the world is broken, and we are without hope of a better way.

A Course in Miracles has a whole mythology around how this apparent separation and resultant grief occurred. At some point, we all want the structural comfort of a story. But stories are just pointers. They point not to themselves but to something vivid and alive.

The lovely thing about A Course in Miracles – what gently distinguishes it from most other Christian practices – is that no story is actually necessary. If we want, when we are ready, we can remember our fundamental Oneness with the Lord right now, and so never feel guilt or fear again.

That is because there is only one mistake, and so there is only one correction. There is only one problem, and so only one solution (e.g., W-pI.80.1:5). The appearance of many mistakes and problems is a distraction; we don’t have to fall for the illusion of multiplicity.

It is given us to see that the one mistake is to believe that we are separate from God. The one problem is believe that this separation is real and has real consequences.

Both instances are healed in the same way: we see that the beliefs are errors. We are one with God. When we see the belief that we are separate as a mistake, then the truth of oneness dawns on us, because it is always dawning on us. It is us.

last year’s collard greens already sprouting anew, vivid symbols that life is ongoing and sustainable, and that we too can be so reliable and tenacious and generous . . .

Hence the popular metaphor of veils (e.g. T-12.I.9:11, T-20.V.7:6). We see as through a veil – draw back the veil and see with utter clarity the real world. We cannot see the Beloved’s face – draw back the veil obscuring it and behold with utter clarity the kind and loving gaze of Christ. And so forth.

Veils are easy to move. However, believing that we are allowed to move them is another thing. Perhaps we are scared of what we will see. Perhaps we are scared of being seen. Perhaps we are scared of violating some rule or law or tradition that says don’t touch the veil. Never touch the veil.

But we put the veil up. We invented every law, tradition, story and concept surrounding veils. We are the one saying “don’t touch the veil that I’ve put up.”

So we can draw aside the veil as well.

It is healing to remember that we are not separate from God, and this healing does not occur in parts or by degrees. The veil is drawn or not. A juncture comes in our practice where this becomes painfully obvious. We are doing this to ourselves (T-27.VIII.10:1).

Yet if it’s so easy, then why not just do it? Why the big production – a massive and often overly-wrought Text, a slim and often vague Manual for Teachers, 365 lessons, this teacher and that teacher and conflicts and choices and . . .

Why?

the empty flower garden opposite the chicken pen. In a few weeks it will begin to flower, loud with bees and bright with sun and blossoms . . .

Well, because the one for whom it is easy is hidden and so doesn’t get to calmly go forth and reclaim its Home in God. In its place is an imposter whose entire existence is predicated upon fear and difficulty. We are Children of Love whose power is such that we can pretend – and even actually believe – that we are children of fear, chaos, lawlessness and death.

But this imposter – this confused, alienated and terrified child – which A Course in Miracles calls the ego – is simply another veil. We hold it with both hands before the Face of Christ; release it and it will fade to nothing before it reaches the floor. Release it and forget it ever existed because in the Loving Gaze of Christ all we will remember is what we are and that memory becomes an invitation to God to draw us back into seamless, endlessly creative Love.

“But it’s hard.” Or, “I don’t understand how to let go.” Or “isn’t it all just words?”

Well, yes. Sure. But can we at least be willing to learn that those complaints and others like them are forms of resistance which arise solely from the one who does not want us to remember God? Scared and lost kids who think they’re responsible for their own safety will say a lot of stuff. We don’t have to listen.

Indeed, it’s better not to listen. We are allowed to gently shush that child, and let them know that we are taking the reins. They can breathe. We got this.

When we learn this – when we take the reins – then we naturally reject the complaints and distractions offered by the childish ego. We quietly say, “no thanks. Not today.”

an old wooden jar beyond the pasture . . . nothing is ever actually ruined, nothing is ever actually empty . . .

For a little while, we might still wait for something to take the place of the ego’s yammering. We might subtly believe it’s our job to replace the ego’s voice with a wiser voice, a smarter voice, a more miracle-minded voice.

It’s not.

Our job is to let go in favor of Jesus and God and that’s it. That’s the work. Game over.

This takes the form of saying politely but firmly “no thanks” to any voice that insists 1) we are yoked in any way to the body’s adventures and misadventures and b) that God is mysterious, complex, inaccessible, remote or in any way apart or other than us.

Just keep saying “no thanks.” And gradually the voices testifying to our weakness and incompetence and valuelessness will subside. And what takes their place is what was always there, forgotten but not disturbed, nor compromised in any way: the Love and Peace of God. And we will know – not think, not believe, not perceive but know – that we are the Peace of God; we are the Love of God.

“Neti, neti” as our brothers and sisters say in a related tradition. Not this, not that – only Love. Thus, be not disturbed by the many veils then for there is only one. Be not disturbed by the many reasons not to see this veil or interact with this veil or draw aside this veil.

Our fear is unjustified because God is just and we are God’s Creation. Love is our shared Home; there is nothing else to learn, and nowhere else to go.

. . . writing in early April, Good Friday, in a world that is falling apart, in which we must learn yet again how to be each other’s savior. Snow falls, turns to rain, then back to snow. We hunker against a hard wind blowing through the valley as we feed the horses and chickens, check on recently-planted spinach and peas, the wintering-over collard greens. Though you are not here, you are here, and my thoughts turn to you constantly. How can I tell you how grateful I am for your patience with my slow learning? Your willingness to play along with my teacherly posturing? God and the Love of God and Christ in Whom the Love of God is made manifest only arise for me because you consent to see them in me. How else could I possibly remember them? In this way, your reading is an act of Love, service unto a brother yet struggling to put it all together. “Hands to work, Hearts to God,” taught one of my older sisters. She also taught that “God is love, and if you love God you will love one another.” So we gather yet again – here in the garden, here in the text, here in the prayer – constructing again a living altar unto Love.