Day: March 21, 2018

Changing Your Mind

Journal & Essays

When you want to change your mind about something—whether it’s big or small—first ask yourself how you first came by your thoughts on the matter, then determine what prompted the change.

No need for making a big to-do: just update your understanding as new evidence comes in, and remember to hold your opinions lightly, for they are liable to change again. The important thing is not so much always to be right, as it is to keep a good head on your shoulders and make an honest attempt to find the truth, wherever it may be found.

The truth is what we’re after—not the act or fact of being right. When we understand this, we are free to find our way through life with an open mind and a heart that doesn’t attack those we believe to be in the wrong. And couldn’t we all tip our hats to that?

The Principles of Light

Journal & Essays

When the world has grown tired of pushing you around, you find yourself lost in the middle of a cold and crowded place, faced with many paths but uncertain which ones will bring you life, and which will bring you death.

Imagine for a moment that you’ve climbed into bed and spent the night asleep, troubled by dark and wild dreams. When you awake, your heart is rocked by a feeling of restless unease, and your mind shrinks in horror from the visions it contemplated through the night.

We’ve all had experiences like this. But what do they teach us about life? That we can’t trust the surrender of our selves to an uncertain fate, because terrible things might befall us once we let down our guard? That the darkness can’t be touched by a healthy hand without putting fear into the heart?

We’ve learned that unknowable forces operate at night and have the power to disturb us even once we’ve come to our senses and returned to the light.

But we’ve forgotten, meanwhile, the mystery of a life lived in harmony with the Principles of Light. When GOD came into the world, He brought with Him a source of light that was so brilliant that all the darkness was scared away. GOD’s light was the antidote to a crisis of darkness, wherein people could not see their hand from their foot, and succumbed to passions of despair and doubt, because there was no ray of hope to brighten their minds.

When all is said and done, we can remember this simple truth:
The light came and cast out the darkness, and all was made well in the presence of light.

To apply this message to daily life, we might rephrase:
The power of a happy outlook, inspired by the inner light of faith, overcomes even the most insidious fears, taking away their power to haunt and disturb by washing them with the clean, clear light of truth.

Hiding from Love

Journal & Essays

Do you know what it’s like to be loved? Or do you hide from the force that gives you life? There are too many people who let love pass them by, expecting love to come packaged in a different form, a different person—and then they wind up alone and stuck in reminiscences about the days when love was knocking at their door, earnestly, only to be turned away.

Are you a person who is afraid of losing people?… If you don’t have the experience of losing someone, how can you be sure you’ve loved? I’m sure it’s possible, but the evidence is particularly sharp, particularly searing, when absence cuts in and steals the dance from you.

Wednesday Picnics

Short Fiction & Prose

Once upon a time, there was a lovely man who told me he loved me. He was kind and sweet and smelled of the rain. My favorite part of his face was his beard, which was scratchy enough to look a little gruff, but not so overgrown as to make him seem unkempt. His hair was dark, half-waved, half-curled, and it fell just a fraction below his ears (which sometimes embarrassed him because they were a bit on the large side). I thought he was, in fact, a very handsome man.

On Wednesday afternoons, we liked to walk to the park downtown and eat a picnic lunch. He always brought the sandwiches; I brought the crackers and cheese, plus a banana for him and an apple for me. If it was cold, I packed a thermos of soup and a mug of hot water for tea. I brought a blanket, too, but he usually wrapped himself around me so I wouldn’t be cold.

I remember him as being a very warm-bodied man. Sometimes I dreamed I’d run into him in a snow-storm and he’d be wearing just a shirt and shorts—no coat, no hat, no gloves—and yet, taking my hand, he’d feel so warm I’d forget it was a winter’s day.

This sounds silly and small, but he loved little things like that, and I did, too.

The Different Levels of Your Writing Self

Journal & Essays

You can write from different levels of the self: from the soul, from the deep mind, from the light and playful mind. Also from the emotions—which is, perhaps, to say—from the heart. The soul gives the clearest, cleanest prose, which rings with truth and is rich with depth. Some products of the mind can be scattered, anxious, forgettable—but some can give insight and order to a complex topic. I don’t know if it’s always possible to write strictly from the soul—or whether that’s even a desirable thing. I suppose you must speak from the place that has words to offer you at each particular instant of your life. What are the demands of your situation? What are the questions, and how can they be answered in the most helpful way (in a way that you—or others—will understand)?

Persisting through Doubt

Journal & Essays

LORD, sometimes my faith is in a crisis of doubt because it feels like all the things I’m hoping for—and all the things You seem to have counseled me to wait upon with trust—have failed to appear, have neglected to break upon the scene as promised.

Then I question whether my belief in You is really not just an illusion, conceived by the most hopeful part of my nature in an insistent desire to know that all will be well, and that there is a deeper, richer, more magical way of looking at life.

And in the face of people who would spurn Your existence, and tell me that my faith is only child’s play and in controversion of sound logical thinking—well, what can I say? I still believe, yet it must seem utterly foolish of me to persist. Why continue to trust when there is scant evidence that my trust is well-placed?

Nonetheless, GOD, my heart tells me that there is Truth in You, and my spirit is awakened to the strongest Love in Your Presence.

How can these things be explained to someone who thinks the mind is the King of our existence, that logic is the only path we have for arriving at truth?

GOD, the reasons I love You are simple and complicated all at once. But I know that, for You, the only thing that counts is the intention of the heart to act and live in love. You know my love for You, even as I am very imperfect at making it clear in the way I live.

It relieves me to know that Your ways are kindness and peace, and that the things You ask of me are not an impossible burden, but simply an invitation to a richer, more meaningful life.

Petite Poems

Poems

Poems small and weightless enough to blow away on the wind.

…

Gold leaf falling fast—
Catch the laughter as it flees!
The time for apples,
Ironed shirts, and holding hands
With handsome boys in woolen coats.

…

You forgot my name?
Ah, but look, it’s written there,
Rolled into your sleeve.

…

Kenji once cried so hard,
His tea leaves turned as salty
As the Pacific Sea.

…

Oh!
How
handsome
the swallows
are looking today,
now that their sorrowing is done.

…

Dear
sir—
If you
would like to
know if I love you,
come find me by the linden tree.

…

Pray, tell me
however you grew to be
so trapped inside my soul.

My heart hasn’t been this glad
since the day
I was born.

…

I cannot write these anymore,
I cannot write a poem.
All the fancy’s gone from me,
A long, long way from home.

 

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