Compliant

WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Sunday, December 19, 2021, 4:42 a.m.

COMPLIANT

            As I sit at my desk this morning more than two hours before sunrise, I’m thinking back to yesterday, when I sat in front of our lit-up Christmas tree and, by squinting my eyes in certain ways, could see, very distinctly, seemingly separate rays of light streaming from each small bulb. I say they seemed separate, but really they were each part of the single light shining from one bulb – which makes me think of the coming rising sun. It will stream out countless ‘separate’ rays of light which, like the rays from our Christmas tree lights, are actually an inseparable creation of the sun itself. The rays of the sun are not individual lights that manage their own lighting effects; they are an indissoluble part of the sun itself, shining precisely the way the sun shines. They are compliant, we might say – always yielding to the limitless power of the sun. 

            As I sit at my desk typing these words, I know that I, too, should be compliant today, since I am an indissoluble part of the Universe and its boundless powers, like kindness and sincerity and patience and peace. I don’t need to make kindness, because it already streams in limitless quantities everywhere. Nor do I actually need to work hard to be sincere or patient or peaceful, since these qualities are always boundlessly overflowing in the universe and ready to effortlessly carry me along in its stream. I simply need to be compliant. Like a ray of the sun, all I have to do is let the endless shining happen in its own special ways. I need to relax and be pliable like sunlight always is, shining wherever and whenever there’s an opening, and there are always openings for powers like sincerity, kindness, patience, and peace.  

            Today could be a day of compliance for me. Rays of light will be compliant with our Christmas tree lights and the sun, and I hope I can yield to, and be compliant with, the vast transcendent powers – like kindness, sincerity, patience, and peace – that immeasurably flow through the universe.    

KAYAKING ON THE WOOD RIVER 
(two in their 70’s) 

They floated down the quiet, lovely stream,
just following the undemanding flow
over the glowing pebbly bottom and under 
trees in all their handsome summer styles. 
They stopped sometimes to study plants or shades 
of sunlight on the stream, and sometimes let
the paddles drop and felt the current lead
them carefully along. They knew that rivers,
like life, should best be followed and not fought, 
should be obeyed rather than battled with, 
and so they yielded to this youthful-looking
stream and shared its ease and peacefulness
with all their elderly serenity. 

Here’s our chalkboard poem for today …

And finally, here is “Winter Landscape”, an oil-on-canvas painting by  Tatiana Bezumova.