Month: April 2023

ILLUSTRATE

A Word Like Light: ILLUSTRATE

Like a well-designed book, the life I am part of is beautifully illustrated. Every single moment today will be artistically decorated with wonderful scenes. Living through the hours of this day will be like reading a magically illuminated book. Entering each of the approximately 58,000 moments of my awake hours, I will be turning to a new page in a book in which beauty has no boundaries. Each new moment will be embellished with pristine, state-of-the-art panoramas. I might be sitting with Delycia in a cafe, taking a sip of tea, and every flawless instant there will be made memorable by a brand-new graphic design – the perfect, newborn ways people are sitting at other tables, the unblemished shine of sunlight outside, the immaculate words we are speaking at that special, stylish moment. Today I will turn countless pages in the majestic book of life, and each of them will be illustrated in ways never seen before. It should make for some breathtaking reading!

MEEK

       Most of us think of meekness in a negative way. We think a meek person is somehow also a weak and timid person – someone who is easily buffeted by the forces of the material world. In fact, our world tends to venerate the opposite of meekness – qualities like physical prowess and intellectual cleverness. We tend to admire the aggressive person more than the tender and gentle one. And yet, when we look at the natural world, we see something different. In nature, it seems that the placid, laid-back, and yielding things have the greatest power. There is nothing softer than the water of the ocean, and yet it can hold ships of enormous weight, and, when it is storming, can overwhelm any material thing in its path. The waters of the ocean yield easily when we dip our hand into it, and yet their tides are strong enough to destroy whole towns. In similar fashion, wind is both one of the gentlest and one of the most formidable forces in nature. If we hold our hand up, the wind passes smoothly by it, and our hand feels only its softest touch. Yet, this same wind can topple trees and rip rooftops off houses. Today, I want to meditate on these truths, and hold in mind that true power resides in true meekness. I don’t need to be aggressive and pushy today, because I am part of the infinite power of the Universe, a power with the same kind of gentle strength as the ocean. Like the wind, I can exhibit the power of ease and peacefulness, passing among the events of the day with both unassailable power and compliant mildness.