FootprintsintheWind.com

O night of the soul
O bright darkness
Shimmering, shining blackness
From whom all light flows
Huggable unknowable One
Impenetrable fog who would embrace us
–If we open our hearts
–To you and to the unknowable in each other.
Amazing! Blue sky beyond the cloud!
We–even we–are invited to both cloud and blue
To live!
In this dark night of the soul,
We see brightly.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Linda and I are in the midst of watching “Phantom of the Opera.” It is filled with oceanic song and fantastic images–gargoyles on the walls, labyrinthine passages, candles, candles everywhere, oversized building, four-poster beds with sheer fabric surrounds, cobwebs everywhere. The storyline is clear but weak, held together as it were by old cobwebs. It is not that it is art, nor that it works, but that it evokes.

It evokes something from the human breast, something that is evoked in OST and in movements in history (the Munich candlelight observances) and in sporting events and in romance. This latter is perhaps a clue. People want romance, they want to fly, to float on the ocean. “The Titanic” evoked some of the same, not primarily because of the outsized scenery although that undoubtedly contributed. It was the romance, and not just between the two lead characters, but the idea that life is larger. The man had a view of a larger world, and he did not survive–a lesson? Tragedy. “The good, they die young,” the lyric goes. Tragedy evokes perhaps.

Here in “Phantom” it is about something flying–a paean to music, with overtones of darkness. Iambic pentameter, an ancient beat, not heard much these days, but which finds its home someplace deep in the human soul, and is met, met by the unconscious gut. These flowing scenes, these capes turned round and large, these floating images in the mirror! All serve to lift one to another dimension, a place of flight and romance and… meeting. Back to Buber again, are we? Yes, it seems that what the Phantom is about is meeting Christine, and Christine wants to meet the music, the count and the Phantom. She is torn among them, her heart wants all three.

She wants safety, guidance, and flight. The first two are not always consonant with the latter. Or at least that is how we see things, yet do they have to be at odds? Is not the only safety and guidance in flight? Do we control, are we safe if we cower and hide, avoid our own muses and seek for guidance from others? Are not safety and guidance alive in flight, in not following but fulfilling our destiny?

And so the puzzle has to do with destiny and going out to meet it, not as it, but as Thou.

:- Doug.

Those who see the universe as one, perhaps even as part of G-d, see humans as at home here, part of the all there is. Humans are descended from stardust. Others see man (often as male only) as thrust into a foreign and inhospitable place, here to subdue and suffer.

So we have those who think all creation is part of the same family tree, and those who think we are exiles in a foul and odious land. One wants to redeem it all, the other wants to defeat it all. Fairly antagonistic pictures: that may well be the difficulty they have in speaking with each other.

It is easy to say the first has a wider view and therefore is more likely to be the one which will gather them together. Is there another way to reconcile these brothers and sisters?

:- Doug.

Sometimes lovers
listen one to the other,
sometimes they
look into each other’s eyes,
sometimes lovers
simply sit together:
so too with prayer.

:- Doug.

Blogs are not about rants, as much as some rant. Blogs about figuring out the world, ourselves, and how the two meet. Meet they will, meet they must, and we are drawn out by meeting: the world is made larger, so are we.

:- Doug.

Life obviously is impossible, yet here it is, all about us, within us. So then we’d ought to give things we perceive as impossible opportunity, things like OST.

:- Doug.

Reading scripture expansively, oceanically gives us wide range to dive in. This is beyond midrash, into becoming part of the sea that is all around us, in these passages. What do I mean as reading expansively? To hear the ocean of mystery lapping at our very skin. To hear the erotic in the second verse of Genesis, to know that G-d is creating not the world but me, that there is in me, in us, a darkness which shines and light which allows a different kind of work to be done. To read that I am Joseph hiding my goblet in my brother’s suitcase, just to test him, even though I know we are brothers–not putting myself into the story, but knowing this story is my own, calling me to the beginning where I started from, to the shining that is integral to me.

:- Doug.

This is the turning you want, Lord, yes?–to turn the heart. It is not a simple matter, or at least not easy. But it is what metanoia is, it is what love is. It is not the simplistic matter that the fundamentalists tout, this being born again: for it requires a death before the resurrection, it requires us to give up something we held on to before, and want, still. Repent, return: what is it? To return to our beginning time? I started to read Genesis in this meditative way and got delightfully lost in the first verse. Now the second verse needs some wandering around within, some turning, some returning to you. The separation of light from dark, the things that are good, and the all that is good. If we live in this beginningness, then we see much of the Bible differently. Perhaps the idea of examen or lectio divina stems from here, or can be informed from here. This is the turning: to return time and again and allow G-d to rebirth you.

:- Doug.

G-d is beginning
us
each now

:-Doug.

Is life here to support business or the other way around?

:- Doug.

Prayer is not all about you sharing with G-d: it is listening for what G-d wants to share with you–including being together in silence.

:- Doug.

Where are the wonderful people? All around.

:- Doug.

This is the turning: to return time and again and allow G-d to rebirth you.

:- Doug.

If I am turning looking for G-d somewhere
else, behind my back, on the other side of
the mountain or on its top, or in
something spiritual,
I will not find.
But if I look
right where my eyes are looking,
in the nitty-gritty of this day, this task,
this thing that is taking my attention,
that is where G-d is.
G-d is here with me.
Do not turn: G-d is here.
Simply turn my heart to align with my eyes.
You are here. I am where you are.

:- Doug.

Let us stretch ourselves
all the way to each other
all the way to include G-d.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

This morning a glimpse that my work is a conversation. It is intercourse between my client and I and other parties involved. It is my living and working in flow and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow is in fact conversation. It is entering into a place between, a broad river less than a narrow ridge, yet the persons are brought in and brought forth, and it is a grace. It is love at work, dynamics, relationship, meeting, being met, being consumed, sacrifice, dying and being brought forth–and in all this I am describing conversation. So I can be in conversation without words, or even when I am malleating words. It is not just the intention with which I approach the work, but entering in, being vulnerable, being met by the other. This is like Buber’s teacher, intending both sides, entering into each side, engaging both sides.

Do we allow ourselves to be engaged? It is a mutual thing to be sure, for both have to break through the shell of fear surrounding our vulnerability to being met. If they do manage this, or are cracked open from outside and something of them leaks out into the space in between, then conversation is possible, and this is a grace. Yet it still has to happen, this meeting, and that too is a grace. We can open the space for it, prepare the opening, invite the guests–and no one shows up. We need to remember that we can meet in chemistry that is dissonant–explodes, as well as that which is consonant–flows together or foams and spills over. Either one is a grace, and in each we are forced to grow, to take in nutrients, to give up some of our very identity in order that we might become new. We may welcome the new or be drowned by it, and still it is a grace. All about are beings seeking conversation, this too is a grace. If we seek, we can invite. If conversation is necessary, then we can invite, encourage, announce, open, welcome, seek, and then wait for the grace.

The next question might just be How: How do we move from standing in each other’s orbit to engagement? How do we reach out? Let me count the ways…? Likely the ways are endless. How do we meet you? True: endless. What is important is the reaching forth of the hand.

:- Doug.

This turning is not easy. It takes work and sweat and thought and spirit. There is no How, only Do.

:- Doug.

We must float. We must allow G-d. We must allow life. Flow will happen if we allow, or if we do not, but easier, further, if we do. We must float and paddle with the flow.

:- Doug.

Your sky is deep blue, inviting me to explore. I turn.

:- Doug.

Let me tell you the stories
of my life and truth
in your hearing you will grow
me
and you.
Speak your heart to me
so we may together grow,
be

:- Doug.

Some of my writings have been
for others; in them I have
been grown: the giver receives
a new soul and sometimes a new
spirit from giving up his old,
yet usually unawares

:- Doug.

Conversation does not require words
many a conversation consists in work
done for another
we get lost in the flow
of giving and receiving:
read this again for
there are many gifts few words

:- Doug.

Knock, knock!
“Who’s there?”
“Are you born again?”
“Yes, a couple of times today so far.
And you?”

:- Doug.