So if you are so inclined, do try to hear what was coming through me at the time.

I have been experiencing what I am clear now is an essential understanding of the spiritual life... that is the partnering of disciplined and dedicated spiritual practice and the illuminating, transcendent spiritual experiences that reach us at a deep soul level.

By spiritual practices I mean anything that we commit to on a regular basis, sometimes with results and sometimes not: meditation, walks in nature, yoga, spiritual direction, liturgy, ritual, prayer, singing or mantra. These, and so many more, are ways that we SHOW UP, receptive to what comes. Receptive is the key word, though I think perhaps for many years we probably do a lot of controlling of these practices.

Spiritual experiences are the moments when we feel like something happened. These might be on the surface positive, like a deep experience of love, an illuminating dream, a deep sense of infinite presence. Or they might be troubling... a difficult conversation, a death, the unravelling of our previous definitions.

I’m not sure I can say one comes before the other. Do the spiritual experiences drive us to the practice? Sometimes. Do the practices open us to the experiences? Sometimes. What I do know is that without the practice, we have no way to stay close to the experience. We either let it go before it does its full work on us, or it can send us into a tailspin. There must be a container to hold sacred the inner workings of our souls and the experiences of illumination.

In my personal experience, I’m learning this through the actual unwinding, or dark night, of having the experience or increase in awareness but not being disciplined enough to stick with it. It makes for a deep sense of loss or inattention. If I didn’t know better and didn’t understand myself, no doubt it would be exceedingly discouraging. But we can learn from these times, right? The whole process reveals things to us in moments when the infinite love grabs our attention and we can pause long enough to notice.

These days, I am more okay with the unwinding. It's happening every day, even as I am knit back together in the same moment. It is amazing to me that I have been saying to so many these days that we need two things really: INTENTION and ATTENTION. This is almost the clear refinement of all these words from 5 years ago. Intention in our practices and attention to the way spirit shows up in so many nuanced ways at all times. Wonder and gratitude (on my better days).

Extra time is what is needed, though. Slow cooked food, the longer route, or the less efficient solution. There is benefit in these ways, ways we are losing so, so rapidly as the algorithm and AI do our thinking and remembering for us. We consider only what is gained but not what is lost. Think about it: when was the last time you read a news article, an advertisement, or read an accurate enough account of history where you heard what was lost along with what was gained? Can people be honest about what we lose and still have hope? I’m not really sure.

So familiarity…

Familiarity is an effort in caring and in paying attention. Couldn’t this alone be enough to live for? In all the things I do and have done in my life, if they say, “he cared and he paid attention,” I would be satisfied. Seeing familiarity is in a sense an active protest against the cultural norm of pushing for the next greatest thing. It’s staying put, it’s lingering a little while longer, it’s trusting that what is in front of you is enough. Maybe even more than enough.

Familiarity comes from focusing on abundance rather than scarcity. How can we really get familiar with something if we always fear it’s being gone? Perhaps we can instead love its present beingness.

Familiarity is at the heart of animism. When each being is alive, each being becomes a teacher, each being offers themself as one to get to know. We are among the family each and every day, a family of plants and animals, stones and waters, earth and sky that is home for us. As soon as we turn off our awareness to the connection, whether from distraction or the belief that we humans are separate or better, our attention and ability to truly know wanes. We become aliens to our mother, the earth, and we claim with pride “this is not my home.”

Last week was a week of surprises and adjusting plans. On my good days, I wake up with an wonder of what today will hold. On my less trusting days, I am very attached to my plans.

Amazingly, after a week of crazy weather, traumas, deaths, diagnoses, multiple codes happening all at once, flash flooding, news of war, politicians critiquing the pope, backyard rabbit carnage, birds migrating, toads singing, and finally a double rainbow to finish it all out, I went to bed genuinely happy. This is a rare feeling for me as I usually go to bed tired or just ready for the day to be over. But Friday night, I was happy.

I am no stranger to Life’s very firm lesson that our plans are not usually the way.

I had ideas about what I wanted my life to be like, my marriage to be like, fathering to be like. But our son had Duchene Muscular Dystrophy and we didn’t know that. So much for backpacking, canoeing, driving lessons, relative health, and so many other things. Every day, I go into the hospital with no clue what the day will be like… and when I think I know, it usually changes. I don’t know who is going to be on the other side of that door when I walk into a patient room - what their story will be like, what they will be struggling with, who will be there with them.

I walked into the wrong patient room last week, expecting to see one person and finding someone else (along with a family member that I knew). These are moments of humor for me. The other side of it is finding so many people who woke up one morning thinking it was going to be a ______ day (fill in the blank) and having a stroke, getting hit by a car, rupturing their appendix, or receiving a cancer diagnosis. There is usually no more visceral and empathetic and grief filled recognition that I can offer than, “I imagine you thought that day was going to be very different than it turned out.”

There is a mantra I go back to that has become a basic operating consciousness for me:

“Oh, so this is what we are doing right now?!? This should be interesting.”

There’s some humor in this, some prayer in this, some trust and some personal address to the Life that is happening in front of and around me. I’d invite you to try it sometime, or maybe find your own way of responding to the present surprise of the moment. “It is what it is” might be close, but not quite.

I’m pretty sure that you could find in any spiritual tradition multiple writings, teachings, or scriptures addressing the hubris or foolishness of getting too attached to your plans. I’m not one for quoting verses, but trust me, they’re there. The general idea is: How can you possible predict or plan that? You are like dust or chaff in the wind. There is only one who knows. Look at nature and the trust that the plants and animals have for their basic needs. Et cetera, et cetera.

But not in our modern human culture. We INVEST in the future. We set GOALS and live for the weekend. We plan for retirement. We believe in progress, improvement, personal growth, and even “a better place.” Everything is oriented towards something better coming. It’s no wonder we are derailed by the reality of Life’s surprises.

I guess I would encourage you to hold your ideas and plans a little (or a lot) more loosely. Most of us can’t really stop thinking about the future unless we have something that regularly teaches us to “be here now.” For me, it is the reality of excruciating heartbreak just around the corner. I don’t want to miss today.

See, if we can leave ourselves open for surprises and the unexpected, we are not derailed by the tragedies, but we are also carried by the gifts.

If we are not thinking about what will be coming, we won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t and we will have our eyes open to all the visitations that life keeps offering us. I found a toad in my window well. I praised the buds coming out on the trees and the shrub flowering for the first time in five years. I noticed that hint of pride in my son’s voice. I was ready for that embrace when it came my way.

Life is full of surprises. Whether they are good or bad is our own judgement. But they will strengthen us and carry us if we let them. May you be broken and restored as you receive them with open arms.

It came to me that for thousands of years, generations of humans were not reading spiritual classics or journaling or even finding answers in their churches. And yet wisdom still prevailed! The stories were told and handed down. What were they doing instead?!? Maybe they were just living. And paying attention. And being in relationship with the world around them through their bodies and their connectedness.

A poem came to me in the last week from Mary Oliver called “Almost a Conversation.”

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression —

he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don’t jump in.

We don’t live separate from the world. Our culture teaches our separation for numerous reasons, but mostly because we are human and better, more evolved, more created in God’s image than the rest of the world. But the world doesn’t feel this way, at least if they haven’t been educated to believe this. And it IS a belief that doesn’t line up with reality. Separateness exists in our heads but not our bodies.

If we can pay attention, like Mary Oliver did, like our old, old ancestors did, if we can seek to understand what the life around us is paying attention to, we will feel it. Connectedness. True conversation. Insight that doesn’t come from something written down (as you read my words…). Belonging.

It’s belonging that is at the heart of life. A tree, a river, a bee, a cardinal, or our dogs, they don’t question their belonging. It is only us, who believe in our separateness, who feel like we don’t belong.

I literally went for 14 months or so without inspiration to write, waiting for something, for the right timing, for the season to shift. And it did eventually.

We can’t force inspiration, I think. We can set the table for it and wait. But I’m not sure that inspiration is a discipline, a job, or even a practice. It comes from outside of us.

I had an article I was working on for this morning, a good one about diversity in community, bio-diversity, and the need for variety in order to be strong and resilient. This is a truth of Nature, something that our modern and particularly Western culture actively attempts to silence. But the inspiration stopped mid-article, and so I am left with an invitation to reflect on that process.

We go through seasons, each of us as individuals and all of us as community. We are not in charge of how long they last nor what will shift to change our clear skies to fog or our wintery days to spring. We are often told, paid, or encouraged to always be growing above ground, to be reaching higher, to be making progress. But this kind of growth without the unseen, underground, winter growth is a recipe for breaking. We need seasons and we need brightness as well as darkness. We might be surprised when things shift suddenly or drag on for what seems like eternity, but stepping back and remembering, we might gain perspective and have grace and patience and sensitivity for the time we are in. There is learning to be done.

I offer this reflection on perhaps one of the most essential aspects of growth and transformation on the spiritual journey: Trust.

Without trust we cannot be truly open to others and the world. Without trust we cannot unconditionally love. Without trust we cannot venture out into the unknown and the mysterious, which is much of reality in which we exist. Without trust, we cannot truly love and care for the more-than-human world as equals. Without trust, we will find ourselves stuck, suspicious, worrying, and oppositional.

The challenge for us in western culture, raised with western ideas and in western religion is that the only way we have been led to know things is through our minds. When this becomes the norm, and is assumed to be the only way to know and grow, trust is quite hard to come by. When we think that the only way to transformation is knowledge acquisition or finally “getting it right” we develop a great degree of distrust for anything that challenges this. Our trust frankly stops at our selves and our selves alone. Granted, we may trust those who align closely enough with our beliefs, we may trust a version of the world or a divine image that “fits” within our framework of understanding. We trust what we ourselves have experienced, what we were raised with, or the way we have always done it. But the trust is small, limited, and is not going to lead to transformation.

What does it mean to trust the infinite? What does it mean to trust unconditional and unceasing love? What does it mean to trust the earth, who has been sustaining life for billions of years? Oh, my friends, this is where things can change! This is where things DO change! Nothing is not held. Nothing is not loved. Nothing is not as it should be. And the under-standing of Life in all things does not need to fit in my knowledge-base, my worldview, or my personal experience to be of value and worth.

There is always something that can reach into our deepest heart, something that can comfort, something that can bring healing and illumination. There is always something that can sustain. But it is not an idea, a new information, a power point, or a Ted Talk. It happens when we put our reliance on our head-knowing in its proper place as only part of the whole picture. Transformation and healing comes when we begin to give our hearts and especially our bodies their equal place at the table.

When we find ourselves worrying, afraid, offended, or oppositional, we can ask ourselves some very important questions:

• What is the source of this discomfort, this violence, or this discontent? Does it come from an idea or belief I hold?

• What or whom am I trusting right now?

• What is real? What is real? What is real? (If the answer is not related to your body or the ground upon which you are standing, you may want to ask again!)

• Again, what is real in this very present moment?

• What does it look like to trust something bigger than myself?

What does it look like to trust something or someone bigger than myself? There is a bigger more infinite story going on than I can possibly understand. At least from my small scenic overlook, that seems like a very good place to put my trust.

And yet, in the midst of it the pain, the trudging, and the bleary eyed attempts to see clearly, there is new life emerging. Creativity. Inspiration. Planting for the future. Synchronistic entunement to the flow unfolding around me.

I had a conversation with a dear friend who is taking movement therapy classes and they are working with basic movements of infancy to guide healing in the body. Two of the six basic movements are reaching out (or expansion) and reaching in (or embracing/contracting). Something triggered in me as I thought about the last few years of drawing inward, cave-dwelling, being quiet and small. This last month, I have (by no deliberate wanting of my own) been yanked out of this den of stillness into something else. The message has been, it’s time to expand. So a move to a bigger office space, new commitments at work, beginning writing again, a possible up-coming podcast, and attitude shifts at home have all been emerging from someplace hidden for quite some time. I even had an unmistakable directive to get back on Facebook after “quitting” social media for two years.

Multiple friends of mine have noted that they feel like there’s some new growth happening in me. More than anything, I’m trying to pay attention. I keep asking, what the hell is going on?!? Why can’t this be easeful or comfortable?

When we look at Nature, new growth doesn’t seem all that comfortable. Of course, I can’t project a human experience on other beings and I don’t know what pain feels like in a tree or a caterpillar, but what about these things? What does a tree feel when a bud or a branch breaks through layers of hard bark? What does it feel like for the entire genetic code of a full grown plant to burst forth from a germinated seed? Does a caterpillar feel it when she dissolves in her cocoon and is reborn at as a butterfly? What about the snakes, cicadas, crabs, and many others who have to shed their skin and shells? Seedlings pushing through dry earth, tadpoles growing legs, birds preening their feathers and filing their beaks. Some seeds only growing after the raging heat of wildfires. Even in the human body, our muscles get stronger through being torn and repairing.

Likely, in our own growth of consciousness, we don’t grow by staying comfortable. It might just be that the older we are or the more encased our habits, the more difficult our expansion becomes. I think of old bark or hard shells and the force of their rupture. Can we welcome that emergence? I would be suspicious of the actual change if someone told me it was all bliss and ease and joy. Perhaps we can acknowledge the pain in the breaking of our old ways while also celebrating these new things as they come. Perhaps, as my spiritual director wondered the other day, we can find resource and aid along the way to assist in our endurance and continued journeying. May we take care of our selves and our fellow beings with grace and acknowledgement in this breaking forth of new life.

When it comes to direction, discernment, or destination in life (or even in our day to day) we are so programmed by the culture we live in! There are limited options or specific routes we are recommended to take or choose that will maximize our efficiency, timeliness, or success. There are easily understood right choices and wrong choices. The difficulty arises that when many of us don’t feel the directions given are satisfying, true to ourselves and the natural way of things, or all that exciting. I could offer countless examples from education, advertising, political campaigning, career development, and religion. Instead, I will use an example that has been so readily adopted as an ease to our discomfort, feelings of being out of control, and resistance to feeling lost - GPS.

It might just be me, but my sense is that we would do well to see how things are connected. Technology, services, media, GPS - these things don’t arise out of nowhere. They become popular because they fill a need we perceive we have. They give us answers we have lost the ability to find for ourselves. There are literally teams of psychologists that work day and night to figure out the best ways to sell us things we don’t really need. Sometimes, when we look at these things in more depth we find there is an alternate, sometimes more conscious and helpful way of “navigating.”

Now according to Google (or Garmin or Waze) there are three “best” routes to get somewhere. The fastest time, the shortest distance, and the most fuel efficient. I get to “choose” between the three and I can plug in my destination and let my GPS do the rest. I don’t have to think about it while I travel and I don’t really have to learn anything as I go. As long as I stick to that track and turn when I am told to turn, I won’t have to find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to make a choice that could slow me down or send me into parts unknown. If I miss a turn, I will quickly be “redirected” to “make a U-turn at the first intersection.” Essentially, in the words of an old bus driver of mine, “Get back to where you was!”

Another person once said, where ever you find yourself, there you are. Who’s to say there are only three ways to get somewhere?!? And who’s to say which is the better way? I speak and write often about the pervasiveness of a head-centered culture. It is this culture that says, make a plan, generate a belief, come up with an idea or a goal, and stick to it. You’ll be fine and the world will shift to align to your determined reality. But this is not the way it works. We learn our directions most often by experiencing the journey in our body. It used to be that we would know which way to travel because we traveled while paying attention. Maybe we took and “inefficient” turn, but we found a special tree, a garden, a coffee shop that was just off the direct path. This then became the route that was best for us! And the next person went a different way! Amazing.

So often, I hear young people tell me they don’t know if they are doing the right thing. Or they are worried that they won’t take the necessary steps to achieve the goals they have for themselves. I say our whole lives are one great experiment. Take a step, see if it works. If not, readjust. Pay very close attention to your body, to your attention, to your mood. If something needs to be shifted, then shift. No harm done, only learning. Learning by doing. The journey is made by you walking it. And you are made by the route you take.

This is process learning and it requires a non-dual and non-judgmental mind. I had a supervisor for my chaplaincy training who had a hat that said, “Trust the process.” This is what we need. Left/right, correct/incorrect, slower/faster, efficient/more-consuming - these either/or dichotomies are less ideal than learning to constantly ask ourselves questions of recalibration:

• Was this helpful?

• Did my choice serve my ability to remain aware?

• What did I learn and should I do it the same or differently next time?

• How is the world around me affected by my action?

• What is my body telling me in this moment?

There is an art and a skill to trusting the process, to reading the signs, to what I call “following the rabbit trail” of intuition. It might not be the most efficient and the most direct, but I guarantee you there will be learning and formation and discoveries along the way. Uncovering these mysteries will serve you much better in the long run than following the glowing line given to you by predetermined information and calculations.

I think about and talk about the Flow so much in my life, I had to go back and look to see if I have written this all before. I haven’t, and these things are always evolving and growing. No doubt, my understanding of flow has come through my writing years ago and years from now this will all still resonate. That’s how Nature works, that’s how rivers work, that’s how the Flow works.

Any writing about the flow requires me to at least note a few things about my understanding of or connection to the Divine. People never actually ask me what I believe about God, and as a professional chaplain, I guess it just makes sense that they assume. I am so used to people assuming, but this is a topic for another article. (Ironically, AS I was crafting these very words for this article, one of my coworkers asked what my spiritual orientation is - the first time someone has asked in years. This is the Flow and one more reminder among so many that I am still in it.)

As an animist, I believe everything is alive and that all life is sacred. God is current. Current sustains, enlivens, and interconnects ALL things. This includes all of Nature on this planet and the universe. So there is a consistency of teaching as we look at all living beings and how things unfold in life and death. I am entirely comfortable substituting any names for God - like Spirit, the Divine, Nature herself, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, and any of the countless names and ways that humans have come to understand and relate to this enlivening current that is in and more than themselves. I’m not sure how dogs, trees, stones, rivers, bees, or any other living beings conceive of God and the flow, but my sense is that by the very nature of them being themselves they are participating in it fully.

In light of this, I would say that being exactly who we are meant to be is one of the most easeful ways of immersing ourselves in the flow as I can imagine.

I am always asking myself and the world, “What does this mean? How is this connected?” In this sense, as things feel like they are falling into place as they should or connected to the intentions we set, are setting, or are about to set they remind us of the Flow. The flow is always unfolding. After all, things happen as they do, much, even most of it, outside of our control. How is it then that I think of someone and they send me a note the very next day? Or how is it that I open up space by moving into a new office and all of a sudden people start showing up wanting to talk? This is what is happening, the flow, and I am attending to it. Opening to it. Available for it.

Being in the flow is listening, waiting, caring, attending, nurturing, caretaking, embracing, asking, conversing, opening, and unblocking. Because the flow is always moving through all things including ourselves, when we are not feeling it it’s because something is blocked. Resistance, distraction, noise, busyness, urgency (!!), inattention, apathy, and judgement are dams and barriers to the numerous opportunities we have to experience the flow. Please ask yourself how much of your life includes those things that open you to flow and how much of your life blocks your attention to the flow. Also ask yourself how much your algorithm and AI is about that first list versus the second list. There is money to be made on people who are not paying attention.

Nature is ALWAYS teaching. There is indeed truth, maybe even Truth. But it will not contradict the unfolding of life as it has unfolded for billions of years on this planet. When we begin to experience the flow we can expect things like confidence, trust, compassion, connectedness, amazement, wonder, wisdom, non-judgement, belonging, and humility of our true place in the family of life. It is so intuitive and sometimes so instantaneous. Sometimes the way our intuition or intention is mirrored by the rest of life around us feels almost like magic. But the flow of Life is not a cosmic slot machine or a genie bottle where we “manifest our reality” or say the right prayer (remember Prayer of Jabez?) and things go according to our hopes and dreams. More likely the hopes and dreams we have will be dashed on the stones and reformed into what actually will be. Our resistance to this and our efforts to control this process are what will block our participation in that flow. “Let go. Or be dragged.” Exactly.

I do invite you to slow down, to pay attention, to ask those questions of “how is this connected” and “what does this mean.” I invite you to let go. Of your need to control and manage the process. Look at what is happening around you (not just the humans!!) and do everything you can to celebrate it and wonder about it. Maybe try a little trust. Maybe try a little spaciousness. Maybe try to take a deep breath. Welcome to the flow.

I learned early on in my meditation practice that a timer was really, really good for me. I’ve shared this with many directees and friends over the years, almost as a life hack (spiritual practice hack?) that can make all the difference. For many of us, the notion of sitting in one place for any given amount of time and not doing anything, not checking off something from our mental to-do list, and focusing on our breath or anything else that feels present is close to some cruel non-burning level of hell. Of course each of those things happens in meditation anyway, but you get the idea. I can’t tell you how many people don’t meditate because it’s just too hard.

A timer helps in numerous ways. For those of us who feel like this time in meditation will never end, we can easily see, “Oh, I only have 2 minutes left! I can hang on for a little while longer.” We can make a commitment for five, or ten, or twenty minutes and trust the accountability that the timer holds for us. On the flip side, some feel that they will fall asleep and never be able to wake up. The timer holds an ending to our time for us. Finally, others have a hard time slowing down or setting aside the busy work for any amount of time. I have found that when the space is being held (and counting down) I can maintain the perseverance to let go of my busyness for just a little while. I mean, seriously, can I really not stop moving for ten whole minutes?!?

For numerous reasons, my timer is a staple for my meditation practice. When my practice was, or is, regular and I sit for fifteen minutes, I often find myself recentering or coming to almost exactly as the time reaches zero. In these times, I feel like I am fully sinking into this practice: here… for now… and present.

Imagine my surprise when life and spiritual practice welcomed an alternate approach. This last year, gong fu tea has become a very significant hobby, practice, discipline, and maybe obsession. For one who likes routine and honing something to perfection, this has been a perfect and very welcome shift in my day to day. And as one who loves his timer, it has been very comfortable for me to count down or set the clock for 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20, 30, 45, and 60 seconds. For those magical teas that go for 6, 7, 8, even up to 12 steeps, I get to set the timer for more and more time. It calls be back to my tea, interrupts my activities, and helps me hold my focus amidst all the other distractions. In the past year, I think I’ve gone through three different timers to find the “perfect” one.

Everything was going along smoothly for this timer dependent tea drinker until I came across Shiuwen and Noah from Floating Leaves Tea (and podcast) in Seattle. As I listened to them share their sessions and talk about their experience with tea, a door was opened. I consider myself a very intuitive person, for the most part quite aware of what is going on in my body, and also quite tuned in to what is happening to and with the many beings I occupy space with. Shiuwen and Noah brought it fully into their tea experience. In listening to their podcast, I do feel as though I am at the feet of masters.

One of the first podcasts I listened to addressed the use of a timer. As it is so central to my practice, why not start there? Except that they joked about it. They noted that they NEVER use a timer because they want to learn about the right time to steep from the tea itself. There is importance in trusting our intuition and staying attentive to the tea not just going around and doing whatever while the tea does it’s thing. Intention, attention, and intuition. Heard.

Here is where the lesson and the learning comes in. I know myself. As an Enneagram 9, I have to try it like they try it, I have to experience it for myself, and my own way is often much more questionable than someone else’s much perfected way. I’ve moved past a lot of this, but as far as tea and learning goes, well, what the hell… how about trying no timer for a while?

On my thermos, I have a sticker that says, “But first tea.” I suppose this is a statement of my current philosophy… but on the other side, a sticker reminds me and the world, “Easily distracted by birds.” This is not only a reminder but a warning. When I turned off the timer and started “listening to the tea” all kinds of mishaps started taking place. Many times, I didn’t even remember that I had water in the tea at all.

So I’ve come to a middle place, as any good Enneagram 9 would. Time is relative and often experienced differently based on the person, their needs, and their tendencies. Some need to use a timer and some need to not use a timer. Some give honor and appreciation to their tea or their meditation by keeping the timer on the shelf and some give that appreciation and respect by keeping the time on a very tight leash (and extra loud!). Tea has the same subjectivity. As they say in some circles, “Does your tea taste good? Well then enjoy it. If it doesn’t taste good, do it differently!”

And as I say to friends who get worried that they aren’t meditating right, “Did you stay in one place? Did you breathe while you sat there? Did you know you were doing it? Well, then you were probably doing it right.” Show up. Pay attention. Whatever helps, helps. Cheers!

Humans are so very committed to urgency, and so often, destruction is left in our wake. Perhaps there is an aspect of control and a feeling of power when we can name (for ourselves or our people) what is most urgent and then go “get it done.” Amazingly, most of our sense of what is most urgent is fed to us in a constant barrage. I mean this is literally what generates the news these days. If enough people feel like something is urgent, they will mobilize and “do something about it.”

I’m not so sure that Nature works in the ways of urgency. When we are at a loss for wise teachers, I think Nature which changes so slowly is a good place to return to. She is the oldest teacher, literally teaching the same lessons of what works and doesn’t work for millennia. It came to me recently that Nature works in the ways of Immediacy. All the rest gets buried and composted for another season. Nature is always slowly moving towards some kind of destruction or rebirth. Always moving in that direction.

Immediacy gets us into our bodies, the place most connected to what is most natural and real. Urgency seems to arise in our heads, sometimes in our hearts. But as I always say, it’s time to put our heads in service to our bodies rather than forcing our bodies to be slaves to our heads. Our brains often come up with an idea, a desire, an attachment and make our bodies get in line. This is urgency. But our bodies have a knowing too that has been all but forgotten. Our bodies can, and even want to, get in line with the shifting and changing of Nature’s rhythms. I am not sorry to say that AI and your social media algorithms do not give two Fs about nature’s rhythms. Please do prove me wrong on that one.

I get curious sometimes how we get certain words and what this means for us now. A quick search of the roots of “algorithm” comes up with the following:

ALGOL - variable star (Beta Persei) in the constellation Perseus, late 14c., literally "the Demon," from Arabic al-ghul "the demon" (see ghoul). It corresponds, in modern representations of the constellation, to the gorgon's head Perseus holds, but probably it was so called because it visibly varies in brightness every three days, which sets it apart from other bright stars.

These days, there’s rhythms and there’s algorithms. One is natural and one is unnatural… I mean it goes back to the roots of the word, it seems. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on this.

But to come back full circle, there is urgency and there is immediacy. All I can say is, when you feel urgency, when you feel a compulsion, a “need” to do/fix/solve/act, check it. Check your urgency, folks. Ask whether it’s a matter of immediacy or something else. Where did this urgency come from anyway? Love? Compassion? If that’s the case, I think we can ask if love and compassion compel us more to immediacy. This is more likely the case. Get out of your head and into your body.

**Oh goodness… it feels like something must be stirring to feel this inspiration coming this morning after such a long hiatus from writing…”

I sat down for my morning meditation thinking it was going to be one way: a timer, ten minutes, be done, drink tea. It should be noted that “morning meditation” is far from every morning. Despite having been meditating for 25 years, I would say I am anything but a disciplined meditator. But what is discipline anyway? Is it rigidity? Or is it habitual? Or is it obsessed or addicted? Or is it responsiveness? Personally, I really don’t know. I just meditate when I feel the invitation.

So, I tidied up our meditation room at the hospital and sat with some intention and heart, opened up my timer app, took a deep breath and glanced at the screen while it loaded up.

“Let go or be dragged ~ Zen Proverb”

Wait, what? Let go or be dragged. I can’t believe I haven’t heard this before. It stopped me in my perceived course of private reflection.

Let go or be dragged.

Okay. I hear that. I hear it loud and clear. I found a guided meditation on the proverb, not that I needed it, and honestly I’m not sure that I remember anything that Drunken Monk even said anyway.

Let go or be dragged.

I don’t have the space, the time, the energy, nor the need to get into what this last year of “non-writing” has been for me. I’m not sure if it has been a year of letting go or of being dragged… maybe a bit of both really. But I know truth when I see it.

There’s so much clarity in such a powerful proverb. When something can be humorous in one breath and so hard-hitting in the next we best pay attention. I know the feeling of being dragged: by life, by family, by work, by politics, by health, by shadows. All of us know what it feels like to be dragged. And perhaps it is when we feel this feeling, the simple and necessary reminder is “LET GO!!”

But there is another wisdom here. A warning. We all know what it feels like to hang on to something. The same list applies, but I might add: an image of the future, a hope, a close relationship, a dollar sign, or a purpose. Maybe even an idea of what our morning meditation will look like! Let go or be dragged. Currently, I feel the humor in this.

Let go or be dragged. It’s enough to scratch the surface here. I know there are much more levels to reflect on, but I can leave those to you. Dragged where? Dragged how? Positive, negative, towards transformation, towards destruction… I’ll leave it at that, though. Hang on tight, or maybe don’t!

I will say this though… in the midst of feeling shock but not surprise, there is an urgency on my end to be a part of bringing more good to the world. More care, more compassion, more listening, and more welcome. Nature continues to seek equilibrium and healing. I don’t know what this looks like in the context of the next four years, but when I am continually reminded that things will have to get much worse for us to come closer together as humans, I wonder if this is part of that trajectory. I, for one, don’t want to be a part of the division or the blaming, the name calling or the demonization. Let us keep looking towards healing, empathy, and diversity.

My last post about honoring reality as it comes to us articulates my stance over the last nine months well. The question that has continued to guide me is, “Why do we feel like we have to do so much to try to control or make meaning of reality rather than let it be how it shows up for us?” The same goes for relationships. for Nature, for our inspiration. I have been trying to show up for what is needed of me and not ask so many questions of whether I “should” or “why” or how much I can “control” of it.

Examples…

Most prominent was a shared journey of “marrying and burying",” which sounds so coarse in its description of what was so, so much more. A precious, dear coworker received his diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer in February and I officiated what was really a fast-track wedding for him and his husband in March. He started treatment shortly there after and it was a steady 6 month decline. I was with him fifteen minutes after he died in August and I officiated his funeral the week after. These were the book ends of what, for me, was an uncertain yet clear “showing up” with what I was capable of to support his family, our coworkers, my own heart in the midst of the rest of life happening. Of course, the learnings continue for all of us involved and it was indeed one of the great honors of my life to be in it with them.

My father was diagnosed with ALS a year ago. This too is a shared journey as I am again honored to walk through a process of his decline in health and the long-held relationship between his will/mind and his body being redefined. This too is impossible to fully put into words, but we have had so many opportunities to reflect on what this is like. He asked me something about exercises the other day and I said, “Oh Dad, I have let go of giving you advice.” The learning here is that this is a constant opportunity to release my hopes or expectations that he will process things a certain way and an appreciation, acceptance, and honoring of his own way of going through this time.

The future is uncertain, and Brendan, at 13, has wisely told me he tries not to think too far ahead.

Increasingly, I am astounded and left in wonder at the lessons that come my way when I can let Nature have her own agency. Plants have been stronger and clearer teachers as I continue to gain such inspiration from how they work together to sustain life. Interconnectivity has never felt so strong and gratitude that my every heartbeat and inhale is a gift from the vulnerable yet persevering Earth that I must not take for granted. I commit my daily activities to participating, celebrating, and stewarding that which give me life. This is what humans maintained in community for hundreds of thousands of years and have only “recently” lost connection to in our illusion that we are the pinnacle of creation and that Nature is ours to dominate, control, and profit off of.

The most natural and trustworthy force in the universe is BALANCE. Life and death, good and bad, destruction and gifting, healing and hurting are always simultaneously happening. As we lean into this, sometimes the pain and grief and sorrow is so great we have to look even harder for the gifts. We have to find life in the smallest places. When the ordinary and everyday is infused with holy, life becomes a moment to moment experience of wonder. Wendell Berry writes, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” We would do well to remember this. My heart breaks daily for the meaningless and senseless destruction of innocent lives in the Middle East and Ukraine. My brain hurts from the ridiculous and constant barrage of pre-election rhetoric. My body aches at one more ancient tree-being cut down to make way for more ecologically benign lawn. This is why I haven’t written anything for so long. I am taking it all in and working so hard to find the balance. If we can join together in this, I welcome the connection.

Growth happens in this momentous and pivotal time, while we also feel stagnancy and questions. It seems we have the opportunity to trust this… trust that in the timeline of life and the divine, this is brief. It seems we have the opportunity to honor the reality that this time causes us to face… that people can die any time, that our presence has impact, that we are connected to other lives on this planet. This is not new. New for us, yes, but not new. How can we ride the waves? Honestly, authentically, allowing ourselves to hurt when we hurt, cry when we need to cry, and struggle when we struggle. We don’t have to help everyone. We don’t even have to help ourselves. We can receive and wait and bless even in our brokenness. 

It occurred to me that I have much more allegiance to the land than some flag, nation state, or human-centric philosophy of economy or governance. It was good practice for me to reflect on my own Pledge of Allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the land

with no borders and only biomes,

and to the community that finds their sustenance there,

countless beings held by Life,

interdependent and interconnected,

with thriving and balance for all.

Eventually, I had a dad intuition that it might be a good idea if the eye clinic had both our numbers so that we wouldn’t miss the soonest opportunity to help him where he clearly was struggling. When I called, the receptionist noted that something had opened up tomorrow and do i want it? It was an unequivocal “YES!” I would drop whatever I had going on and pull him out of school. Whatever it took. Also, having had glasses myself for thirty years, I wanted to be there to witness his experience.

On the way to the clinic, Owen told me all the conditions for when he wouldn’t need to wear glasses. I asked him if he could see the leaves on the trees and if it was satisfactory to him. “They look… leafy, I guess,” he said. When he went through the various lenses and the optometrist showed him the difference, his only response was, “Wow!” He had a glimpse of his deficit and also what it could be like.

It took a week for his new glasses to come, and he was ready and eager. He asked me almost every day when the new glasses were coming. When they finally came, my wife asked if she should go with him. “No way!” I said. “I want to be there for this!” On the way to get them, he was still considering when he wouldn’t be needing them. “Okay,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure you may want them on more than you think.”

Putting his new glasses on his face, he was astounded! He lifted them off and then on again, saying, “Everything is so blurry! Wow!” and “I can SEE… with my eyes!” This was the moment I was waiting for, such a profound realization and awakening. I said to him, “Owen, you won’t understanding this now… but this is so similar to how it is when someone wakes up spiritually or they see how interconnected everything is. We don’t know what we are missing, until we finally see.” Planting the seed. Planting the seed.

How true this is: We have so many conditions to how or when we will apply our insight or awakeness. We anticipate that we will only need this in times of stress or at church on Sunday or when we are dealing with the in-laws. But awake is awake. Connected is connected. And when we see it, nothing is the same anymore. We can’t go back, even when there are so many around us who say what we are seeing is not real, valid, or objective enough. Richard Rohr said, “When the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back in.”

We need elders and guides and friends in our life who will tell us we don’t need to take the lenses off again. We need voices in our life who can say, “It doesn’t matter if no one else has those same lenses. What you see is of infinite value. Keeping watching, stay awake. Don’t go back to sleep.” Without this affirmation, the voices of our culture around us will work their way back into our consciousness and we may start to feel too much of an outsider, seeing what we see. Rumi writes in his poem Spring Giddiness,

Hold onto the wonder. Stay awake and marvel at all the new things you are seeing every day. There is more and more and more. Always more. This is seeing. This is waking up.

“Why? Why did all this happen to me this way? Why did God make this possible that I could come here?” she asked. “I ask my children this often and my 14-year-old daughter said to me once, ‘Maybe it’s so you could have us, Mom.'”

“Yes,” I agree. “For them. And for this… for this moment. For this conversation. To be here in the hospital, sharing your life with me and all those who are meeting you every day.”

People want such complicated reasons for why things happen the way they do. We want to know what our grand purpose is, why we are here, why something good or bad came our way. But what more do we really need than right now. We have been given everything we possibly need to be present and to love in this moment. This. Moment.

And yet we ask for more! There are days when asking God/the Universe/Life for more feels like such pride, such hubris. How dare we?!? How dare we say, I haven’t been given enough… not enough possessions, not enough good luck, not enough positive experiences, not enough breaths. Everything, everything, everything has been happening to us to prepare us for right now. For this very important and precious person right in front of us, this one who needs us here. Now. All manner of things have worked together to bring us to this place of taking this one breath, seeing this one sunrise, appreciating this one cup of coffee, and reveling in this one bird who sings as if his life depends on it.

Do not ask for more. Do not wait for tomorrow. Do not assume that whatever you think you need to do is more important than what is in front of you. We are given infinitely more than we will ever need.