WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Monday, October 18, 2021

MYSTERIOUS

            October is traditionally a month of mystery, especially as we approach Halloween, and it’s a time when I often reflect on the mysteriousness of all of life. Indeed, the older I get, the more puzzling life becomes – in a wonderful sort of way. I’ve spent most of my almost 80 years searching for facts and answers, but now I see that maybe I should have been content with the mysteries and questions. Halloween symbolizes the bizarre and baffling side of life, with ghosts and witches walking the streets, but for me, every single day is bizarre and baffling, and marvelously so. I now realize that I live in a universe that is endlessly bewildering, the way the Grand Canyon or a stunning sunset is bewildering. Every moment, if I stop and consider, is an uncanny riddle. Where did this moment come from? What is it really made of?  When I try to hold a single moment and examine it, why does it always disappear, like a ghost, into the next moment? Halloween is all about phantoms, but what is more phantom-like than all the precious things in life – like love, for instance? Does love have a ‘body’ – a beginning and an end that can be captured and studied and understood … or is love truly as transcendental as a ghost, as disembodied as a wandering spirit on Halloween, as boundless as the sky on the night of October 31?  At 79, I have a sense that all of life is a limitless and wondrous mystery. Some people call this mystery God, but I prefer to call it Spirit, or Soul, or Life, or – yes – Love. On Halloween, when small sorcerers and phantasms will be wandering the streets, I will be silently celebrating the perfect and peaceful mystery of life – or Life – that I am so very lucky to be part of. 

ODD AND EXTRAORDINARY

His hands seem unconventional to him.
He sometimes studies them as though they shine
with mystery like newborn miracles.
He thinks the same of sounds he hears all day,
even the simplest ones. The whoosh of cars
that pass his house is curious to him,
like it’s the sound of baffling, far-off stars,
and when he walks across the carpet, it’s
the funny sound of feelings strolling through
his oddly extraordinary life.
The sounds his stomach makes are also fun
for him to hear, as mystifying as
the magic songs the puzzling ocean sings,
or breezes sharing stories with the trees,
or his own wondrous hands, as smooth as poems
when comforting each other in his lap.

We took a brisk 2-mile walk on River Road yesterday morning, enjoying peaceful scenes like this …

and here are some scenes from Delycia’s superb late-season garden …

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… and our chalkboard poem for today …