Tag: faithful

FACILITATE

WORDS LIKE LIGHT

Wednesday, September 14, 2022

         When life seems difficult for me – when it seems like very hard work to make a day ‘successful’ – I hope I can remember that life is always a facilitator, never a slave-driver. Every moment of every day stands ready to make things easy for me. My loyal lungs, smoothly rising and falling over and over again, make it possible for fresh life to come to me, and the faithful blood in my veins and arteries smooths the way for success throughout the day. Each and every thought opens the door to a possible whole new view of life, and every feeling oils, in various and mystifying ways, the everlasting wheels of wisdom. The music of the hours of any day can clear the way for quiet understanding and appreciation. Even sitting in a straight-backed chair in silence can assist me in seeing more clearly the miracles made all around me all day long. Seemingly hard work can disappear into smoothness and success when I allow life itself to easily facilitate everything and make moment-by-moment peace possible. 

AS EASY AS THAT
(writing near the Mystic River)

Two cars came by,
then a leaf left a tree,
then a pencil started
to move across paper.
It's as easy as that.
Did the sun strain
to rise this morning?
Do stars shine
because they work hard?
This old river rolls along.
It's as easy as that.

Below, some scenes from our early morning walk on Napatree Beach (RI) yesterday …

WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

July 6, 2021

SURRENDER

            During my 79 years, I have spent far too much time in one sort of struggle or another – the struggle to fill a day with ‘accomplishments’, the struggle to stay focused on what’s happening right here and right now, the struggle to be brave in a sometimes nerve-racking world. However, in the last 30 years or so, I’ve been bringing the surrender flag with me more often, and carefully unfurling it now and then. I’ve been giving up struggling. I’ve been setting down my combat tools, putting aside my weapons of warfare. I’m still a fairly faithful and attentive do-er of tasks, but I try to be attentive in a temperate way, and faithful like flowing rivers, with a peaceful kind of pushiness. Rivers, I have always realized, do not struggle. They simply slide around rocks and move freely along, and when trees topple, the waters open wide and say “Welcome”. Rivers are powerful in a soft but persevering way, and that’s what I’m aiming for in my daily life. I’ve traded struggling for flowing, and I think contentment has followed me with more willingness than when I was a warrior. 

And here are two faces we saw in huge boulders along the trail we hiked this morning. Can you see the faces? To me, they seem utterly peaceful, just resting, as they’ve done for probably thousands of years, beside the Beebe Pond Trail in Groton, CT.