I would love to say in my writing, but that wouldn’t be quite true, as the most frequent way I express creativity is in my imaginary life. I walk around most of the time adding things, imaginary things, to embellish my day. Some of them totally made up, but mostly I get triggered to remember something. A place reminds me of somewhere and I imagine I am there…like the place I am is a movie set portraying the other place. Sounds crazy. Likely it is true that I am a bit mad. The thing is, this is a kind of creative drill, so that when something happens in real life, a challenging situation that demands a response, this part of my mind goes into hyperdrive, and it is from here that my response and creative solution will come.

While it is not an embarrassment of riches I have not gone hungry, ever, nor been without a roof over my head, or people that cared about me relatively available if needed. I am poor enough to have a sense of going without just enough to make it possible for me to therefore appreciate what I do have and to alleviate any anxiety that lack of material wealth has a connection to abundance of what really matters: the ability to be true to oneself, free of internal contradictions and the crippling fear that accompanies it that someone will find out, some rather too many good and perhaps lost causes for which to die on a hill for. And my health.

I have had the very good fortune of finding a profession that allows me to practice hospitality as a spiritual practice. When I am doing my job well, I am hospitality embodied: opening one’s life to allow others to use and take what they need, especially if what they need is something I will miss. For in that moment hospitality is truly born, when I experience that this handing over is not a diminishment at all. That in so doing my life is immeasurably richer. So in this way I am using my blessings by making them available to others and we are all the richer for it.

I am home for a brief stay between trips and was looking for something in a box. As I sometimes do, I found a small container in which I must have thrown a bunch of stuff from a bedside table or my desk before moving some years ago…it was sitting on my desk this morning and after reading this question I was pondering my reflection and looked inside it. It was like a time capsule of minutiae including a crumpled piece of paper with this written on one side of it:
“Don’t try to figure this out. Love’s work is absurd, but trying to find meaning will hide it more. Silence.”

And on the other side:

“In every moment there’s dying and coming back around”

It is my handwriting but the provenance of the quote is unknown to me at the moment.

I suppose it would be ideal if we always knew our impacts, and yet I am not unhappy with my ignorance. Theoretically something I say or do quite unconsciously can be seen or overheard by some passerby and this somehow triggers in them a decision or conviction that changes their life, for better or worse. I know from experience that something I have said or done with the very best intentions disappointingly later turns out to have had quite the opposite effect. So that even having the right intentions doesn’t guarantee positive outcomes down the line. Perhaps it is as simple as putting what effort I do have into working on being precisely who I am, and letting the chips fall where they may.

To carry the burden with them. This can be as simple as acknowledging their suffering. Seeing it. Recognizing the sense of their having the endurance required to make it through. Not by making attempts to fix it, however certain I might be that I could. This does not mean inaction on my part. Simply a sense of maintaining enough room for their dignity to remain intact. Suffering has many sources, and sometimes multiple causes interlocked. The complexity itself is overwhelming for the sufferer at times. So offering a hand, someone to lean on, a bit of light in the dark to help get over some tricky patch of ground is my most common approach.

It is not uncommon for me to underrate the power of words; of language. The act of naming, calling out, defining an aspect of anyone or anything, is like placing a charm, elevating it in my own consciousness. So that which I hold as sacred (and do not be mistaken it is an energetic embrace) has an elevated status and therefore already something I will act to protect, to guard, to watch over. Often unaware, I amend my decisions and acts, so as not to threaten its safety. It is a weaker sibling of grace, has my favor. I will align myself with all that promotes the wellbeing of that which I have declared sacred. And my word, my act, is all that validates this status. I can recognize that something is sacred to you, and respect and even honor that, and yet, not take it on as sacred without my own sanctification. Done quietly, without ritual, usually in the privacy of my own heart, once consecrated, it is protected by everything I might muster.

There is a resignation I suppose to the fact that I am hurtling through time clinging to whatever balance and center I can find in the moment. Being older has afforded some experience in just how much less important some things are and how much more important others. I am in a new environment, roaming about the western US high in the canyons (today is Bryce) and the expanse of it is overwhelming. Far horizons I am familiar with, yet this, coupled with the plunges off of sheer cliff walls thousands of feet is wild. It is intimidating in the most delicious way. And braided into my journey has been the sense of a timeline of human societies whose dependence on a coherence with the places for survival seem the sharpest contrast to my 21st century North American experience.

“In the beginning was the Word…”-John 1:1-14

The role of our word is essential if we are to move through life with any intention at all. And the power of words are unleashed upon their utterance to effect which cannot be recalled. Crafting and creating the life we want, change manifested in all domains and great destructiveness are all potential through words. So to gain the discipline so that we speak with intention, and own our words on purpose, belies wisdom. Once realized it often breeds reluctance to speak at all. Indeed, it is what lies behind the practice of silence in most spiritual communities for greater parts of the day. The very lucky gain an expertise bringing art in verse.