Translating the Ordinary

Drawn Into the Unknown

March 3, 2024 May 14, 2024 Journal & Essays

‘Round and ’round the cycle of life continues.

How do you learn the art of peacefulness when you know nothing of the things that bring you peace? How do you strive for equanimity when your soul, alas, is bursting with the feeling of being stretched in ten directions at once?

We write, we wait, we wonder what our future holds. We dance around desire, scared and unsure, but also drawn by a hidden curiosity into the unknown.

What will we discover there? It’s all a little obscure, but the need for clarity is less important than the need for trust, and for the capacity to find delight in the unbridled mysteries which make themselves known to you only once you’ve opened your arms wide in a posture of absolute, unconditional surrender.

A Journey Worth Taking

March 3, 2024 May 14, 2024 Journal & Essays

It’s all right to ask why.

It’s O.K. to mourn the loss of someone you loved.

It’s all right to look in the face of sadness and say: “I don’t know what happened. It’s too much for me to understand.”

You can ask whether you will find a happy future, even while knowing the pain of loss. You can ask the Father whether His plans are good, even as you’re saddled with doubts.

It’s always a journey worth taking, this quest for love. When you reach into the depths, you will find a capacity for surrender and delight that surpasses the limits of your own understanding. So love, and do what you will, and all will be well, even if it doesn’t look from this particular angle like it ever really could….

The Birth of a Flower

February 17, 2024 May 14, 2024 Short Fiction & Prose

Bouquet.

“Lo, from what quiet earth does such wild beauty escape?”

There are a hundred mysteries in the birth of a flower. From the humble ingredients that roil and toil – dirt, seed, water, light – to the dauntless progress of root and stem, the slow but inexorable act of becoming plays itself out, scene by scene, as the days pass on.

Whether or not you bear witness to this miracle depends, in large part, on whether or not you marvel when the moon rises or the nightingale sings. It’s all a matter of learning the language that Nature speaks.

But don’t despair if you haven’t yet mastered her wild tongue. The possibility of beauty is still close at hand. Just open your eyes a little wider and look out your window, toward the patch of garden a few feet hence.

There you’ll find a flower waiting impatiently on the cusp of desire, ready to unfold and begin its petalous life under the white, hot, inextinguishable sun.