Clouds

Photo by Jeff Foott

Clouds remind me of heaven and God. Particularly drifting storms clouds that touch the tips of tall trees on the mountain. Blue sky alone can lose His presence for me. Lost in the grandeur and spaciousness. But clouds in all their various forms, awaken within me conscious contact - of the space between heaven and earth where God moves silently and constantly ever present like the gentle breeze borne by the cloud nudging me to remember He is here.

Growing up

"It seems to me in my experience and also in talking to other people that we come to a body of teachings like the Buddhist teachings or any spiritual path, to meditation in some way like little children looking for comfort, looking for understanding, looking for attention, looking somehow to be confirmed. Some kind of comfort will come out of this. And the truth is actually that the practice isn't about that. The practice is more about somehow this little child this I, who wants and wants and wants to be confirmed in some way. 

Practice is about that part of our being that, like that finally being able to open completely to the whole range of our experience, including all that wanting, including all that hurt, including the pain and the joy. Opening to the whole thing so that this little child-like part of us can finally, finally, finally, finally grow up. 

Trungpa Rinpoche once said that was the most powerful mantra, Om Grow Up Svaha. 

But this issue of growing up, it's not all that easy because it requires a lot of courage. Particularly it takes a lot of courage to relate directly with your experience. By this I mean whatever is occurring in you, you use it,. You seize the moment? moment after moment? you seize those moments and instead of letting life shut you down and make you more afraid, you use those very same moments of time to soften and to open and to become more kind. More kind to yourself for starters as the basis for becoming more kind to others." Pema Chodron

None of us can know the future

B - What's needed here?

B - What is it you need in this moment of despair? What do you need to bring into this moment Patty?

P - Hope. I need Hope.

B (whispers) - Hope. Yeah.


B - There is absolute Hope, Patty. None of us can know the future and what that means is that there is HOPE. That by itself means there is hope. The unknown isn't your enemy. It's just not lived in yet. So breathe into that unknown. Breathe into that future. What would it look like? What would it feel like if you could allow this peace to come?

The Tide Pulls Everyone

The tide pulls everyone
back to where they belong

round and round

in and out
up and down
expand to nothing

on impermanence

There is so much more to you than you. It's fantastic.

Double Minded

Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude. (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1956).

Without courage we can never attain to true simplicity. Cowardice keeps us "double minded" - hesitating between the world and God. ...And this hesitation makes true prayer impossible - it never quite dares to ask for anything, or if it asks, it is so uncertain of being heard that in the very act of asking, it surreptitiously seeks by human prudence to construct a make-shift answer. pg. 24