WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Sunday, September 12, 2021

OBSERVE

            I am usually a doer and a thinker, but I realize more clearly now that I can also be an observer, and that observing can bring me more peace than I have ever known. As an observer, I can quietly watch, as if from a vast distance, whatever my thoughts are doing. I’ll feel like I’m sitting atop a sky-scraping mountain and simply witnessing these small, frisky thoughts as they fly around in their crazy ways.  As an observer, I won’t judge or manipulate the thoughts; I’ll just watch and realize and learn – and what I will love learning most of all is that all these thoughts are absolutely harmless. They are not ‘things’ that can hurt me. They are infinitesimal, harmless wisps of energy with no more power than the smallest housefly, and the more carefully I observe them, the better I understand their innocuousness, and the more peaceful I feel. 

            Today I hope will be a day of observing. I want to spend hours and hours on the mountaintop inside me, just peacefully watching the wondrous – and harmless – workings of my thoughts. I’ll probably grow calmer by the minute.  

WATCHING - AND LETTING GO
Jimmy Lee H., 38, Blessings, CT

He loves considering the look of skies, 
the way they stay so soft and yet so vast. 
He watches all the ways of bees and flies
as they enjoy their little lives and pass

his windows with the sounds of songs and hums. 
Considering the work of winds is fun
for him, the way they sometimes sound like drums 
and sometimes sing to comfort everyone. 

When he sits back and sees the way things flow,
he marvels at each moment’s mysteries. 
The whole of life appears to be aglow,
and all things work in partnership with ease. 

This life, to him, is something to be loved, 
not ruled, or fought, or made just right for him. 
He loves to see himself be softly shoved
by life till glory fills him to the brim.

Just letting go is what he does for fun,
which makes life almost dazzle like the sun.