The Trackless Path: Recent Episodes
Jonathan McCormick
Possessions speak to us all day long.
That book you purchased
But have never read
Says
“Read me!”
And the empty shelf
Says “fill me up with more.”
Some possessions warm and nurture
While others distract, dissuade, and even harm.
If we are not careful, the things we own
Can siphon off our strength.
Or they can build us up,
Make us better.
So choose carefully what you own
And don’t be afraid of letting go
Of a thing
When it no longer serves
The purpose for which it was purchased.
They say that not all who wander are lost,
And that’s true of me, I think.
I wander, wander,
Never sure
Exactly where I’m going,
But also not without a rough idea.
The inner light points in a direction
And I begin to act, to move step by step
Toward the place where it feels that I should go.
And I trust the way to open up before me.
And it does. That’s the miracle
Though it does not come
Without the work
Of exercising faith.
I relate to the albatross and its endless worldwide journeys.
It is said that the albatross can travel ten thousand miles
To bring home one meal of oily vomit for its chick.
Yeah. I think that’s it. Ten thousand miles
To find one little treasure,
One morsel
To regurgitate here upon the empty page.
I find myself wanting to expand upon this work.
To share more of what I see and feel,
More of the people that I meet
As I wander, wander,
Round the world.
A discussion of "Choose Your Story"
It is possible to serve the light
For your own sake?
To be
Dark inside,
Filthy with secret pride
While outwardly stacking up
Your achievements,
Allowing others
To laud your name,
And never once realizing
That your soul is lost,
Not in gross immorality,
But in the actor’s game
The hypocrites play.
Listen closely
To yourself.
Is your story one of redemption?
Or is it the hero’s myth?
They are not the same story.
I have a deep distrust for the latter
And an unfailing affection for the former.
So don’t tell me how you slew the dragon.
Tell me about the dragon inside of you.
That’s the story I long to hear
Because he lives inside me too,
And it is all I can do
With the help of God
To find my way.
There is the part of me that likes to go out
And there is the part of me that likes
To come back home.
And both play a part in the strange way
That I support my family,
My family.
And you are part of my family.
I go out, and I come back home.
And I share the wisdom that I’ve found from the road
With the ones I love, the ones I love.
I love you, and I pray
For you in your own journey.
Perhaps one day, you will grow up
To go out and come back home
And share your wisdom
From the road.
And the cycle goes round and round,
You are my children. And one day
You will have children
Of your own.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 11: All Day Long
I almost didn’t mention this one
Because it contradicts
Something else
That Raymond said.
But it has become applicable.
You see, I was skeptical
When he implied
That everything came to him without asking.
Sometimes, maybe. But always?
And so I asked Raymond,
Do you ever have to panhandle
To get the things you need?
“Yes,” he said.
“How much?” I asked.
“All day,” he said. “Every day.”
“Oh…” I said. And I didn’t like that answer.
Because now it appeared that our good fortune
Was a special providence, and that
I would not be able to escape
The work of asking.
Many changes are afoot.
I stand on the brink
Of, yet again, a leap of faith.
And somehow, it feels as if
These little thoughts
Might just not be enough,
As if I should be, do,
Something more…
Something more…
And I wonder,
Is it enough?
What do you think?
Might the world feed me and my little tribe
If I just keep showing up…showing up?
Soon we will find out,
Won’t we?
I weave your dreams from autumn leaves
Turned brown and drifting downward
Toward the emptiness
Of summer skies
When the snow flurries
Upward toward the starlit heavens
And the moon looks down
Upon the restless hopes
Of careworn souls
Who daren’t
Believe
That anything
Could be so real
As the grind of wheat upon the wheels of time.
And the feet of those who’ve gone before
In the dusty tracks of them
Who couldn’t find
Their way.
Today's poem... and the subject for today's episode.
I wonder, If I were someone else,
Would I be just like them.
I can't help but think
That to some degree, I would.
That makes me think that it's just me
Walking around and being everyone.
So many people can't help but be themselves,
Just like me, just like everyone.
I wish that I could be
A better friend to them
And in turn, a better friend to myself.
God help me to see it deeper
To feel myself in the others
That I meet each day
I pray.
Taking a new format for these podcasts. Today I discuss the thoughts that precipitated the poem of the day:
Note to self:
People want what they want,
And some graciously give,
God bless them.
But when it comes to making a living,
It may be better me to focus on what others want
Not what I want. Sell them something
That they are already looking for.
And then use the surplus
To graciously give.
One day, the world will change
To an economy of gifts.
I look forward to that day.
But in the meantime, it’s a balance.
We work. We sell the people what they want.
And then we give of our surplus property.
It is an imperfect system.
But it works.
And perhaps we can use it as a tool
To shine a light on the coming world of gifts.
I am the roots of the tree
The thing unseen.
I am
There but you can’t see me.
You think that it is you,
That it is he,
But it is we
Three.
Remember. Oh, remember.
And when you think that you’re alone
Draw deep from the unseen place that lingers
In the memory of what you were before you sprung
Up from the ground so many years before.
There we were together.
And though
You cannot see me.
I have never left you and I never will.
I am the source, the wellspring of your deepest desires.
And one day, when you’ve grown tired of living,
And fall down hard to the unforgiving soil.
There I will wait to meet you deep
In the hollowed end,
That is beginning.
Thank you
For letting me nourish you.
I am the roots, and I love you
And though you think that we are separated,
We are not. We cannot be, we three,
Are knit together in oneness
Always.
I have to slow down and visit meaning
Or it escapes me. I have to ask myself,
Do I find meaning in what I'm doing now?
I ask it all the time, of myself.
And to my surprise
It often says,
Aye, there's meaning.
And that's classic, to find it
In the most unexpected ways and places.
But it's not enough to find my meaning
I have to see it in others also.
I have to hear the stories.
I have to watch their
Sacred paces.
And the sight, the sound, of it
Restores my faith in meaning itself.
And as, like a flood, it washes over me,
I am restored to the unnameable meaning of it all.
There are those who try to deny hell
But I am not sure why.
There are those
Who choose hell in this life
When the light shines the day long.
I can’t imagine that the next life is so different.
But I also can’t imagine
That the light doesn’t shine brighter there.
But that means that the darkness
Must also be deeper,
The contrast more stark.
There is always hope for those who want the light
Though they flounder and fail to find it.
I do not worry about them.
But there are also those
Who do not want the light.
They seek out the shadows.
They revel in causing pain.
And you cannot force a soul to heaven
Though you extend the hand of mercy the day long.
I wish that I could give the world His love,
Not a system of belief,
But the Man
Himself.
For I am cradled in his kindness.
My home is in His heart-
And though I wander
O’er the earth
My pillow a stone,
My shelter rain,
I am at home
In Him.
It makes me think of those
Who have no home
In the love
Of One.
It makes me want to wrap them up
In the harbor of my heart,
To clothe them with acceptance,
Peace, truth, and kindness,
And to free them,
Like birds
To the belief that they are loved,
How is it done, I wonder,
When I, myself,
Am yet like sparrows?
It seems so little to love.
And yet it, so often, has been
The only thing I had to give.
Old friend, the world that you have chosen,
The spoil that you have taken,
Sits rotting
Under your canopy.
“But I could pay,” you say,
“I could pay. And here is the receipt.”
Fool! You believe that you are the hero,
The saver of the day, the victor
By the thickness of your pocketbook.
And what’s more, that you have escaped
The eye that sees all things,
When in reality,
You have dealt treacherously.
You have whisked away the hearts
And the very souls of men
For your own pleasure.
Bring them back, I say!
Bring them back!
Before, with fierce anger,
I come into your house to repay.
And your family is stripped from you,
Your pocketbook emptied.
Your soul ravaged
Of solace,
And you left desolate
Amid the furious winds
Of the desert of the soul.
Old friend, we are still friends.
But know that you can’t go on this way.
And I mourn to see the future that awaits
If you do not swiftly change your ways.
If the world will ever find peace
Good people will have to stop fighting.
It is not enough for good people to be good.
Being good has a blind spot. It makes you think
That you are justified in fighting for what is right,
In making war in defense of truth
And to preserve your freedom.
But freedom doesn’t need to be preserved.
It lives within the heart of those
Who can’t be persuaded
Not to speak the truth
Even when the enemy rages
And the tyrant oppresses.
So be good. Speak the truth.
But also be kind. It is the way
That leads to peace.
Some news.
I am going overseas.
I don’t know how I’ll get there.
But I’ve never known how I’ll get there.
And isn’t it strange that I could know such a thing?
And yet I do.
How long will it take me to get there?
I don’t know.
How will I support myself when I get there?
I think I know. More on that to come.
But in the end, God only knows.
And how long will I be there?
A year, a month, a day,
A lifetime?
God only knows.
One thing I know.
My path is a surprise.
And the joy is walking it with Him
Wherever he leads me. That’s enough.
If I were to just act
And stop thinking quite so much
I think I’d be better off.
So long as our intentions are good,
I don’t know that it matters that much
What we do so long as we do.
Do, do, do. In all things, do.
That’s what bodies are made for.
Do the best that can be done
Under the circumstances
And then move on
To another do.
I wonder if it’s the long-term
That gets us thinkers into trouble.
We try to make choices
That we can’t yet make.
I am sure there are some
Whose problem is the opposite
Who get themselves into trouble
Because they don’t think quite enough.
But for those of us whose addiction
Is trying to work it all out beforehand,
The antidote, it seems to me, is DO.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 10: Keep writing. Tell a story. Disappear.
This one surprised me.
It came in the days that followed.
Raymond had given me 2 books,
One deep, the other bubble gum.
Couldn't get past page 40 in the latter.
Couldn’t put down the former.
The author of the latter
Was all over.
But I could not find a single word
About the author of the former,
It was published in 1939,
And the writer had disappeared from history
To spite the fact that his book
Was one of the most meaningful,
Well-written, and moving stories I’ve ever read.
And in those two books, Raymond’s message
Came through crystal clear:
Tell a story. Tell it well.
Move the people,
And then disappear.
Don’t try to be great.
Just try to tell a good story.
It’s enough.
I will gather the apples before they fall,
But not my apples, your apples,
If you'll let me.
You planted the tree with good intentions
But we all know how that goes.
And they'll soon go to waste.
I'll also clean your windows,
Mow your lawn,
Walk your dog,
If you let me.
You planned to do it all,
But we all know how that goes.
I'll even take out your garbage
If you let me, so long
As I can rifle through your trash.
You bought that stuff with good intentions
But we all know how that goes.
And I can make a living of your waste if you'll let me.
And what's more, don't put it past me to wait
Until you're bothered
By the unused scrap of land
And are ready to let it go for a song.
I'll sing the song if you'll let me.
And pound out a golden paper
If you'll let me, if you'll let me.
I am the care-free scavenger.
My life is easy, risk-free, almost.
Because I know how that goes.
And I am willing to work and wait.
You can create another version of the past
That serves a better future.
When you do something you regret,
Rewrite the experience in your mind.
And give thanks for God’s grace
In helping you to choose the better part
Even though you did not choose the better part.
Be descriptive in your re-writing,
Enough that gratitude wells up
For making the right decision.
See it. Feel it.
Resist the tendency to disbelieve.
And you will actually create another reality.
Yeah…out of fantasy.
But your brain doesn’t know that it’s fantasy.
It experiences those good feelings
As if they really happened.
If you do this consistently,
Sooner or later, you’ll discover
That you start doing the right thing
So that you can experience more
Of the feeling you felt
In your made-up past.
It is a strategy for the weak
Who wish to be made strong through belief.
Bookkeeping and accountability
Is very much like a cold water plunge.
It brings me into immediate contact
With a cold harsh reality
That is at the same time
Shocking and invigorating.
Holy cow! What a reality check
To face the unrelenting numbers.
But I love it.
Every expense, however minute, counted.
Every dollar added up and carefully budgeted
With single minded intent toward wise investment.
It turns out that I don’t make as much money as I thought!
And that makes me disinclined to waste a single minute.
I can’t afford to. They are too prescious.
Most of my life was laissez faire.
I trusted God to provide
And he did.
But this new thing of facing the numbers
Is also precious. The God of Truth
Is also in the numbers.
The cold water.
He is in the miracles.
But he is also in the math.
He is in the wandering wilderness.
And he is in the rocky soil we must plow
When we reach the promised land.
A fire’s lit within me
Where the broken waters flowed,
A covenant to purchase
All the land they have disposed,
The barren wasted places
That the Spirit only knows
To feed the broken family
That in my heart like flowers grow.
I rejoice that the land is going back.
It is being claimed by the owls
And by the finches,
By the little birds
And by the great big bears.
For it appears that despite the grasping hands,
That the pebbles fall between the fingers.
For the time is up.
The lease has been reclaimed
And soon, it will be turned loose to the wild ones
Who have no other place to go. But fear not,
It’s just the land you haven’t used.
You won’t miss it when it’s gone.
You may even rejoice
To be spared the taxes.
For a curse is decreed upon the land.
Hear it, oh people! I say again,
A curse is decreed
Upon the land.
And now
Behold the One who watches over sparrows
Come to give homes to those
Without holes. Behold,
He comes
With lightning in His hand.
And there is no way to cling anymore
To anything but that which you most cherish,
So choose well.
From frugality, comes generosity.
- Tao Te Ching, Ch. 67
Who would have guessed?
But think about it,
If I am an extravagant landlord,
I can't afford to give you a break
When you lose your job
And can't pay the rent.
The same is true
If I'm in debt.
The bank is relentless
And so must I be.
Only the frugal landlord,
The one who buys with cash
Out of a fraction of his means
Can afford to give the honest man a break
When he really needs one.
Only the frugal man can remain human
Because he's free from the machine.
This morning I was trying to decide what to write
And a thought came into my mind
That had been brewing since yesterday:
“Investment is more about valuing what you have
Than it is about the acquisition of property.”
Is that really right? I wondered.
And then the second part came:
“If you make good use of your present means,
Property will fall into your hands.”
And I was blown away,
Fall into your hands!
Incredible!
I am drawn to the song of the heart, sung with others.
It’s been so many years since I sang.
Perhaps I will find a choir.
The thought feels like home.
And yet I live in the boonies,
Not many great choral groups nearby.
If I do join a choir, I want to find
Some people who take it seriously,
Not professional musicians, but musicians,
Not just a handful of parishioners
Looking for something to do
On a Sunday afternoon.
I wonder, do you too love choral music?
If so, what does it do for you?
Am I alone in the sense of home I find in it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I am feeling rather practical today,
More like a merchant, less like a poet.
I am intrigued by watching money,
Seeing it slowly trickle in,
Marking down the numbers
Alotting the returns
And pouring a portion of my means,
Into the opportunities that wait.
And what’s the point?
To grow in wealth.
How vulgar that once seemed.
And yet, as the rivers flow into the Ocean,
I am drawn unto this end,
As if from the beginning it was
And always has been my sacred pledge.
And as the rich despised my poverty,
The poor will hate my wealth.
How strange. And yet,
I cannot but follow
The Voice
That now prompts me to do it.
My life, my fortune, is forfeit unto Him.
In the early journey of the soul,
Spirits long to test the waters,
To experience all they can.
They want to try this
And try that.
They are curious.
And they grow in light
Then fall behind, then grow,
Then fall behind.
And it’s similar for old souls,
They too want to know what’s out there
But with a different motive.
They no longer
Believe that they can grow
By experience alone.
They forsake
The thing they want to know
For the unseen guiding hand.
They say “not my will be done,”
They let go of all their dreams
In preference to the will
Of the One they cannot see,
And so grow brighter and brighter.
They become ONE THING.
And that thing gets added upon eternally.
And isn’t it the same with earthly experience?
As children, we want to be a fireman,
And a pilot, a cowboy or a movie queen,
A housewife, a doctor, and a veterinarian.
But in the end, we must eventually choose.
Or not. We can choose to remain children,
Moving from this thing to that
But never really growing
Into the thing we’re meant to be.
And it’s all ok. Some grow up fast.
Some take a little longer.
Some are old souls, giving again and again,
Becoming more and more themselves.
And others paint the planet
With beautiful colors
As they try this thing and that.
It is the way of souls to be curious.
And it is the way of old souls
To be even more curious
About the will of the unseen.
We make do as best we can, don’t we?
And when we can’t, it’s over.
And that’s it.
That’s the story of life.
People living, people dying.
Some live well and some are lost
In the problems they find along the way.
But that’s all they are is problems.
And all the problems are connected
To the little life that’s ours here on this earth,
Nothing lasting. Nothing eternal.
So long as we can see it that way,
So long as when we die,
We are not bound to this earth
By a thought that wants to stay,
A bone to pick, a price to pay.
For myself, I’ll fly away,
Just like the old song says.
I’ll fly away, oh, glory,
I’ll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.
It doesn’t seem so hard now.
It’s just a matter of time
And patience
And movement
Toward the destination.
No more marathons.
No more striving for the prize.
It’s over. I’ve arrived
At the place
Where every want
Has been supplied.
So that finally
I can rest
In silence.
Waiting in silence
For the word.
Sitting.
Listening.
Looking steadily
Into the unseen place.
Children of the light
Dancing into darkness,
Forsaking all
For the shadow
Of the ones
Who’ve gone before,
Paving the way
For future generations,
Not children of the body
But children of the soul,
They transcend
The dark.
They are the fathers,
Mothers of us all.
The hush of dusk settles in
And finds me at my dest
Still working.
And that feels good,
Not because it’s virtuous
To work till the sun goes down,
But because I want to keep on working.
As the sunshine touches
The uppermost tips of leaves
With the day's first rays of microscopic bliss,
And as the birds gather to the warmth
Of the summer morning,
Even so, I sense
The hope of healing
In the outermost corners of my consciousness
And draw my focus upward toward the warmth
Of the thought of a body renewed
In strength and purpose and vitality.
I flap my wings. I move my body
Upward toward the light,
I sing the song.
I feel the vibrations fill my chest and abdomen.
It pulses through my limbs and outward
Shaking lose all darkness,
So that in, in, flows the light
Penetrating every organ,
Every dark and damaged part.
And I live in the future day of health.
“Thank you for this healing,” I say
So that its reality fills me even now.
Money is at the same time cold and harsh,
And also beautiful.
It is beautiful
Because it is cold and harsh and plain.
It is one thing in life that you can count on
To remain the same.
You bend to its reality
Or crash against its solid frame.
Two plus two is four. It is the terrible truth
That most men can never wrap their minds around.
One day we will escape into a math that bends reality.
But that new reality will require a forsaking of the old.
Until then, we face the horror of a truth we can’t escape.
And that truth is both terrible and wonderful
Depending on whether we humble ourselves enough
To slow down and know the numbers
Or race on toward the doom
That awaits all those
Who won’t.
Never trust the praise of Mammon.
It says that it loves you for your hard work,
When in reality, it covets or clings to your ability to profit.
It claims to respect your responsibility,
When in reality, it just wants a piece of your acclaim.
It is a jolly mate at sea,
A bosom friend
In arms.
And how it clings to its fellows
When the rough seas of commerce
Toss the collusion into upheaval.
But how quickly it turns mutinous
When one among its ranks
No longer serves
The gain.
It is a barrel full of fat hogs
Rubbing up against each other
Each rolling, laughing, in the mud
And clinging to the warmth of the other
While despising anyone who will not play the game
And hating even more those who've tried and failed.
There is a gift in single minded work,
Especially when it is for a worthy cause.
It is that you do not have to think
About your problems.
And there is a gift in believing
That people are supposed to have problems.
It allows you to go to work
And let go of other people's problems.
I would guess that more than half
Of our ideas are hairbrained.
Only by trying do we find out if we're right.
So step into the action.
Do something, anything
Based on a best guess
And find out if you are right?
You will have to come to me, little bird.
I cannot chase you any longer.
What I have, what I am,
Will have to be enough,
Since to chase
For me means death.
And so, I forsake your pretty feathers.
I wear my rags with dignity
And nurture these old bones with kindness.
Come close, little bird. I will not grasp you.
I will not harm you any longer.
Come and perch upon my finger
And then climb up up on my shoulder
And sing your song into my ear
While I am living.
Be my friend,
Little bird.
Do not leave me to the forest
Dark and wide and grim and open.
I am a white man still and do not trust myself
To the ravages of nature, but I’m trying.
Be my friend, little bird,
And together, perhaps,
We will survive.
A dream…
You the policeman,
I the wandering vagrant.
You upholding the laws that join house to house
And field to field til there is no more room left in the earth.
I complying, moving on from place to place.
But everywhere I go, you find me.
You are the policeman in every town I come to,
The good guy, the one with the law on his side.
But you remember that we were once of the same tribe,
Friends and brothers,
And you take it easy on me.
I remember that you crept into my home and lay with my lady.
That you took advantage of what you perceived as weakness
To steal my children and to paint me in their hearts
With the darkest shades of black.
And I can live with that.
I hold no resentment.
But all the same,
I miss them.
My soul longs for my family.
And I try to hint, to plead, that you could help me bridge the gap.
But it falls on deaf ears
Til finally, exasperated, I cry out, “I hate you, how I hate you!”
You recoil. You draw back, surprised.
“No, no,” I say. “Not really!”
And then from someplace deep inside,
“But you have no idea, how what you've done has hurt me!”
And finally, recognition sparks within your eyes.
You stand aghast at the realization.
And then I wake up
And wonder…
Did you hear my cry?
The lawn is overgrown
And there's nothing I can do about it
Because I can't afford a lawn mower right now,
Not even a $40 used lawn mower.
As at other times in my life,
I find myself waiting,
Wanting to do the socially acceptable thing
But unable to do so because of finances.
And so the grass and weeds grow up around me
With the flowers, flowers everywhere,
In and amongst the weeds,
A gift from one who years ago
Cared enough to plant them here.
And until last night, I fretted about it.
I concerned myself with neighbors
And chiggers and ticks
And dogs.
But last night, as the sun went down,
I thought I heard another voice say,
“Perhaps it's supposed to be this way for now.
Perhaps this is closer to reality.
And perhaps it might soothe your Indian soul to let it be,
And even to embrace it for a while.
After all, you are half-wild.
Only a part of you
Wants the white man's ways.
The rest, and perhaps the deeper part
Longs to let things fare according to their nature.”
I know that one day soon,
Probably not too far into the future,
I will be able to afford a lawn mower.
And I will mow the lawn
Or let somebody mow it for me.
But when I do, I wonder if it would be wisdom in me
To find another way to let things be,
To grow my hair metaphorically,
To wander through the woods,
And to be plain, and open, and wild, and free,
For despite my genealogy,
My soul is only half civilized
At least half of me stands naked before the sun
Loincloth hanging down from my hips,
My skin brown, my arrow raised,
At one with things as they are,
Not longing for anything
Except to live
And be.
Lazy days,
Putzing around the house
Doing this and that but with intention,
Letting the oil of relaxation, repose, and recreation
Seep in-between and lubricate
The little movements
That I might otherwise call work,
As if there is enough time, enough money, enough love
To nurture, ease, persuade, this frail body
Into another year of living.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, look back through previous episodes
Lesson 9 - Do It for Yourself
I have always struggled with this idea
Since it seemed self-centered.
But I have to admit that when Raymond said it,
There was a ring of truth.
“I had a woman,” he said,
“Down in Springfield.
She was gorgeous
And she wanted me to stay.
But I found myself saying ‘I’ve got to go.’
I’ve got to do this thing!
Though I hated to leave.”
And I think he meant that he had to find a home.
“You’ve got to do it for yourself,” he said,
“Before you can do it for another.”
And I think that he was right.
Deep, deep, into the light there is a city,
A country, forest, mountain, plain,
Where nobody owns a single thing.
And the residents dwell there alone,
Alone and with their neighbor.
And yet, they don’t protect.
They don’t defend.
They don't pretend that it is theirs.
They renounce and renounce,
And renounce again
With every breath their sacred claim
Upon even themselves,
And by so doing
Claim
The right to the world, the sky, the stars,
And all that’s in them.
And this is the paradox of true ownership.
All else is usurpation.
It appears that we don’t make opportunity happen.
It seems to come to those who wait for it
But who don’t waste time
While they are waiting.
Opportunity comes to those who don't waste time.
But that's not the same thing as being busy.
You know when you're wasting time.
Just stop doing that
And opportunity will come to you.
It turns out that relative morality
Is actually founded in a moral absolute.
Some things are easy. Rape is always wrong.
But it is the grey areas that make us wonder
If there is no firm moral law.
But when we look closer,
We discover that circumstance decides.
There is still a right and a wrong answer.
We just may not be wise enough to see it.
And there are even times
When the right answer
Is that any choice will do.
But in those circumstances,
Choosing to not worry about it
Is still the right thing to do.
And those who keep that law
Are blessed with sanity.
Those who violate it
Fraught with mental instability.
And it all depends upon the circumstance,
Upon the person, the place, the situation.
So, when our world presents us
With a thousand shades of grey,
Where do we turn for the right answer?
To God, and to that Spirit which is Holy
Which will tell us all things that we should do.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 8 - Keep Asking
“Make a trade,” Raymond said.
“Ok,” I said. And off we went.
We tried a dealership
But they were closed.
And then we tried a guy
Who just sold cars but he said no.
“Do you know of anyone who might be interested?” Raymond asked.
“Yeah, so and so.”
“Ok,” we said.
And we tried them, and they said maybe.
“Ok,” we said.
“Do you know of anyone else who might be interested?” Raymond asked.
“Sure,” they said. And just like that, we kept on going.”
And Raymond drank Vodka. “I want to be authentic,” he said.
He was. And more and more merry.
Till finally, we were done.
We both knew it.
We had enough leads.
And one of them turned out.
Melancholy and reflection are the poet’s friends.
They leave and come again.
They are the fertile soil
That works its way
Between the toes of his imagination
And prod and shift the kindling fires
Of his unknown, unseen, deeply buried passion.
And, in time, with much wrestling,
They bring forth the most delicate of flowers,
Perfect curves and colors
For the reader’s pastime hours.
But little does the reader know what strivings,
And what great waves heave within the soul.
At times, the poet wonders if he’s been swallowed,
Buried whole. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
For so are flowers made
That sprout and bloom
Then fade away.
They seek for their lost culture in the language,
In the fishing, the ricing, and the dance.
But they will not find it there.
It was always found
In the need
That they had for one other.
That was what gave meaning to it all.
Lose the need and you lose the culture.
The gifts of God are multitudinous,
But the witness of God is the same
To the heart and soul of man.
And he who has experienced it
Knows it.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 7: Tell them
If you are to receive the things you need,
You will need to let people know
What you are about
So be authentic.
It is how every needful thing will come.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 6: Only Ask for What You Need
“Only ask for what you need.
Calculate how much gas you’ll need
To get to the next town of any size.
And then ask for that amount.
If they give you more,
Give it away.
“This is how it comes to me,” he said.
And as if to punctuate this point,
A little later, he came out of the grocery store.
“Someone just gave me $35,” he said.
“Come in and I will buy you lunch.”
“Did you ask?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“Something like this happens every day,” he said.
And when we had eaten,
He gave me seven dollars
And spent the rest on
Cigarettes and alcohol
So that the $35 was spent.
And I don’t need cigarettes or alcohol,
But there are those who can use what I don’t need.
And I thought this sounds familiar - a life of daily faith.
Constantly letting go of all I do not need,
Trusting that more will come.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 5 - Count on Miracles
“Let go of what you do not need,” he said.
“And go to the place you feel.
I have take my shoes off on one side of the bridge
Because they were falling off my feet,
Walked across the bridge
And found another pair waiting for me.
I have felt like going beneath a bridge
To find a woman there, drunk,
And delivering a baby.
Several times, I have gone to a place, not knowing why
To discover a person dying. I told them it was time to go
And they were gone within the hour.
It has happened enough times
That I have begun to think of myself
As a kind of angel of death.
Trust the voice that leads you from within
And you will be provided for,
You will be used
By the unseen hand.
The truth is that I'm a leather tramp
Because I'm broken to the grind.
I can't go back forever.
But by the grace of God
And the help of friends, there is some rubber
Turning down beneath my wheels
As I move down the highway,
And gas within my tank.
And I trust that it will be so
For as long as He sees fit, perhaps forever.
Wouldn't that be a miracle?!
But if it ever changes
And I am seen for what I am,
I won't complain. Did you know
That once He said that he wants the world
To see me how He sees me.
Perhaps that is why,
For I
Have found rich and unseen treasures.
My mind has seen things I struggle to describe.
But I will try. I will give the world
The riches in my mind
If I am able.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who helped prepare me for the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 4: Have lots of homes
Raymond says, “The guy at the thrift store says
I can sleep under his awning.
And many people in this town have said
That I can sleep on their porch.
I am the homeless guy
Who everybody knows.”
And I think, what a mercy in the rain
To have a porch that you can sleep on.
But Raymond spreads it around.
He doesn’t stay too long.
And that seems right.
My home, too, is on the road.
And because I forsake a home
I will find many friends, many homes.
But none too much, too long.
A day here, Two days there, maybe a week,
And then move on.
And what do I offer as payment,
Except myself, a word, a conversation,
And a prayer for those who help me along the road.
These are lessons from Raymond, the homeless man I met
Who helped me prepare to live on the road.
To view previous lessons, find my playlist entitled: Raymond Lessons.
Lesson 3: Sleep Out in the Open
“Don’t sleep in some hole,” he said.
And he warned of tweakers.
And yet, he also said
That after thirty years,
He had never had any trouble.
I decided to try “out in the open”
On my first night back on the road
Mostly because of the discomfort
Of trying to sleep in the car.
It was a pavilion in a park.
And the next night I tented,
And tented once again.
And then last night, back in the open.
“You want to be able to see people coming,” he said,
And you want to be able to be seen.”
That seems right, somehow.
But we’ll see.
My heart longs for open spaces,
No man’s lands - you cannot hear.
And they are coming in the winter
They fall silent on your ear.
The peace of a land forsaken
Because nobody can hold it.
Do you hear the land a coming,
In the empty, longing, open.
It is coming, It's a coming,
Though it pass through all you fear.
It's the open sacred spaces
That nobody can hear.
But I hear the open places
Falling softly on my ear.
I find the open places
In everything you fear.
Lessons from Raymond, the homeless man
Who I met in Missouri, and who helped me
When I was preparing to make my journey by foot.
Lesson 1: Don’t do it.
This actually wasn’t the first thing he told me,
But I am putting it first so that well-meaning friends won’t worry.
It’s a hard life, he said. And when you fall to the road,
It can be hard to get back up again.
And even then,
You can take the man off the street,
But it is harder to take the street out of the man.
I wasn’t necessarily set on hitchhiking.
It was simply the only option I saw.
But Raymond convinced me to make a trade
That made it possible. And so, a little car was the result,
And I see, I saw, that it is the fulfillment of a prophecy of sorts.
Nonetheless, much of what he said about the road, still applies
Since the car is not my home. My home’s along the road,
This place and that. And the car is just a way to get there.
This is the beginning of a series called
What I learned from Raymond,
A homeless man I met
In Missouri.
When I met Raymond, I had decided
That I would continue my journey on foot
And was pondering how I would survive out in the open.
Raymond was lying under the awning of the thrift shop
And I almost went over to talk to him
But decided against it.
But then to my surprise, he sat up and saw me
And began waving his arms to flag me down.
What ensued was a bit spectacular,
One of those rare encounters
That leaves you wondering
If you’ve spoken with an angel.
If so, then Raymond was a salty angel,
And the wisdom he imparted was wisdom for those
Who believe that one day they may be called
To step out of all they know and rely on God alone.
If that sounds interesting, stay tuned.
This weariness takes me back to other days
When I pressed into the load
Deeper, longer, than was necessary
And deprived myself of rest, of peace,
Because I believed that it was righteous.
And now I pay the price of such ignorance.
I have decided that I will no longer do that.
I will choose to rest myself into a heaven on earth,
And trust that an unseen heart cares
For this frail body and beats
In time with this faint heart
And waits with unseen hands
To deliver me from the buzzards
That circle over my head
And hope for my demise.
My life is forfeit.
My future lies
In rest, in Him.
And if this life, this rest,
Is of use to anyone, I will let it be
The work with which I seal my life,
And the stone which He will place upon my grave.
The world moves fast.
The world tries to do much.
And so the world must do most things for itself.
Heaven, and the heirs thereof, move slower.
They do not try to do too much. They wait upon God.
And so, most things are done for them, before they even ask.
Often, when I have said,
“I don’t know where to go from here,”
I was lying to myself. I knew where to go.
I knew what to do. But I was hesitating,
Halting between two opinions.
And so, I renounce hesitation.
I will act. I will move unhaltingly
Into the thing I know
Trusting that the thing that’s right
Will lead to the knowing
Of the next right thing.
I kicked a quarter on my way into the Walmart.
I stopped and picked it up and said,
“Thank you, God, for this
Unsought sign of your abundance.
Thank you for providing for me in just this way.”
Simplicity is coming for us all.
But most will see it as ruin
Until they realize
That it has freed them
From the twin tyrants
Of complexity and control.
He puts around on his little bike,
Little wheels, a tiny trike
For a great big man.
And he sports some shorts and baseball cap.
From his shoulder hangs a fanny pack.
And from his mouth a cigarette
Hangs down from the straight line
Of a mouth set in the sternest of faces.
Round and round the parking lot, he rides.
And I laugh, but he doesn’t see me.
“I choose not to believe that.”
It’s something that I say to thoughts
That arise with accompanying anxiety, ingratitude, or distrust,
No matter the familiarity, plausibility, or apparent wisdom they seek to convey.
And then I turn my mind toward the loving peaceful void of not knowing what is good,
And wait for new and better thoughts to arise,
Revelations out of the unseen place.
For how else will we be led out
Of damaging paradigms
Without renunciation
Of all that comes not bearing light.
There was a man with a tat-tat-tat-t-te-tat in his heart,
That made him weak and frailer
Than the next bloke.
And he was plagued by a grief that was stuck in his lungs
That now and then made him cough.
But he traveled on,
Traveled on,
Believing that to spite all that, he’d carry on.
And he did carry on, carry on, carry on,
While the host of men gave up the…
Well, I hate to say it out loud,
But you know how it ends
For most.
But not this bloke.
Eventually, of course,
He carried on to the great beyond
But it was different for him.
I won’t relate the strange particulars,
But I will say that he was around far longer than other blokes,
Because, somewhere along the way,
He chose to carry on.
Disclaimer: If the anxiety that you experience is not your own,
This is for you. In other words,
If it visits but does not reside.
In other words,
If you don’t believe
That there is a reason to be anxious
And find that it presses in but does not arise
Or generate from deeply held beliefs
That you nurture inside your mind.
So, if it’s not your own, here’s some advice,
Or rather, something that I’ve tried
And found effective now and then.
When anxiety comes for a visit,
I don’t just welcome it in,
I wrap it up in my embrace.
I pull it in, pull it in, pull it in.
Not the worry but the feeling of discomfort
As I would a laughing child who tries
To wiggle its way out
Of my embrace.
And upon encountering such love, desire, and acceptance,
It seems to flee. I don’t know
If that’s what really happens,
But that’s how it seems.
Trust that what you have is what you need
And that the needs of tomorrow
Will come tomorrow.
When the journey ahead requires faith,
And when you are afraid of what’s next,
Don’t spend much time thinking about it.
Simply take a step, and then another step.
Step into the thing you fear
Imagining all the while
The deliverance
That you know is coming.
And if you are led by providence
Comfort will come in the movement.
But don’t imagine worst-case scenarios.
Picture best-case scenarios as you step, step, step
Into the thing that requires faith.
I know that shelter is needed,
And every want must be supplied.
But my life is an experiment
To see the unseen hand provide.
I can see a new life on the horizon.
And all I own fits on my back,
A little backpack at that,
All on my back.
What a relief!
Somewhere, always, hell has raged.
And when anyone has found a piece of heaven
It is because they chose to ignore the hell that raged
And that choice, the choice of love and peace
To spite the hell that rages, I think, perhaps,
Is the stuff of which heaven's made.
I'm digging down to the center of the earth,
And on my way, I pick up diamonds
And bring ‘em back up
To the surface.
But nobody wants ‘em
Except the occasional crazy loon.
But I'm not crazy. I dig for diamonds
On my way to the center of the earth.
I remember the day when they walked away,
They stepped out into the storm,
And some into the forest,
Some to the desert.
And we haven't seen them since
Except in dreams and in our imagination.
They haunt us there. And everywhere we turn,
We find their absence calling us into the unknown.
And the world is worse off without them,
It grows darker and darker every day.
How we hate Him for taking the best,
Almost as much as we hate ourselves
For not having faith enough to follow.
Rather than go to war, we withdraw.
We retreat, retreat, retreat,
Until, if we eat,
It is because we are fed by angels.
And then, there, we find the sacred place,
A world apart. It is a land of miracles.
And it now dawns upon the world by faith.
I long to leave in silence,
To be around, then disappear.
It is in keeping with my nature,
To pack my things by moonlight
And be gone before breakfast.
And I swear that when the heavens
Rolled forth into existence that I knew
That this would be my calling,
To witness with my presence,
And let Him witness
When I'm gone.
I cannot make heads or tails of hell.
My face is toward the light-filled place
And I will not turn back anymore forever.
How often I have longed for a hand upon my back,
A reasurring gesture, a friendly touch.
There is so much
That we don’t understand.
And demons wait in the wings
To seperate us from the ones we love.
But I have not forgotten how the world began.
It rises in my sacred imagination.
And I see you there,
The sacred one,
The friend that I’ve forgotten.
And from that place, I reach out
To put a hand upon your back,
A reassuring gesture,
A friendly touch.
Dear God, please wrap us up
In the love of friends that we’ve forgotten.
And the hope of a world that one day
Will return to how it was
In the beginning.
We can only do a little,
But if we do it faithfully,
And consistently,
Over time,
It adds up to a lot.
My life has started over at nearly fifty.
That’s how it seems. And I wonder
How much work I can accomplish
In the service of the Great Unseen
Before it’s time to go.
It is a comfort to realize
That life will soon be over.
Think of it. All that we think we are
Is temporary. And yet I suppose
If you believe that you’re “all that”,
Then the thought that it will soon end
Is not so comforting.
The coming world is slower
And as we slow down,
We will rise
To meet the angels
Who have time to spare.
But you knew that. You knew
That all the rushing, toiling, pressing, and grinding,
Was blocking your other ears, your other eyes.
So slow down. Take time to listen.
The new world can only come
One hearer at a time.
There's usually a little real
In the midst of pretense.
And where there is any
There is hope.
Old Joe sits on the porch and moans,
Or rather, growls, but under his breath
As the storm clouds gather on the horizon.
He’s seen it a thousand times in his long dog life,
The white, the grey, the nearly black,
And he knows that it will rain,
Like cats and dogs,
Like cats and dogs
They say.
Why do they put it that way?
He doesn’t rain. He sits and stays,
And watches the horizon every day.
And because of that, he has seen rain.
Rain that drives the birds away.
Where do they go? he wonders.
Far away, he thinks,
But not old Joe,
He sits and stays.
Except for the time when the twister came.
It came on a day just like today.
And blew and blew
The house away.
And old Joe wasn’t there that day.
That’s why he’s here to tell about it.
“Come on, Jack,” he said. And I did.
And we went down to the dealership
And he bought a new truck.
The color was black.
The Interior was tan.
And it smelled like new leather.
We drove to the edge of town,
And past, to the border of our state,
And past, to the Canadian Border,
And past, through Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia,
And past, into the Yukon Territory,
And past, until finally, he arrived at Inuvik.
There we boarded a ship and traveled to the North Pole,
And past, into the hole that everyone knows
Is found at the top of the world,
Where the heat rises from the earth’s core
Making the water and the land inside so warm.
And there he stayed. He didn’t come back.
He became an inner-earther.
And the tribe made him one of their own.
And he said “Goodbye Jack.”
And I said, “Goodbye,”
And then came back.
Her backdoor opens out onto the rooftop.
And of an evening, she steps out of this world
And into the otherworldly light
That can only be found
On rooftops.
And she keeps it a secret,
Lest her neighbors suggest
That she entertain them there.
But one day, she thinks
That she will share it
With someone special.
Until then, it is her private portal,
Her sacred chamber,
Her hidden temple.
And yet,
I see her there
From across the way
And avert my eyes
From the sacred place
Pretending not to notice.
Come on. Let’s go.
Where?
Out of all you know?
Why?
Because it’s over?
Why?
I don’t know.
But I have bills to pay.
I know.
And a mortgage,
A career, and dreams,
And people who rely on me
To negotiate our little piece of hell.
I know. But it’s over. Let’s go.
Because He came
We do not need to fight about it.
Because He’s here,
We can have peace.
And it’s ok that some
May be wrong about it.
We will not resist evil,
As he said.
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:39
If you count on books to quench your thirst for truth
You will be always panting after something
That is just beyond your reach.
And the books will pile high.
And you will grow old
And die
As you turn the leaf
Of yet another volume.
And it’s because the thing you seek is hiding.
And only an unseen hand
Can turn the key,
Unlock the mystery,
Open the door to the thing you seek.
And once it does, you’ll finally stop seeking it
Where it cannot be found. And it will well up inside of you
A fountain of living water. And you will no longer thirst,
No longer think that it is just around the next corner
Or behind the next page as the case may be.
The hermit who hides himself in God
Knows that what he does in silence
Is very important.
The world will never become whole
So long as we pray for what we want.
We must learn to pray for that which hurts.
“O my Father, if it be possible,
Let this cup pass from me:
Nevertheless not as I will,
But as thou wilt.”
It appears that this is the example.
And why? Because, while veiled in flesh,
We do not know what is good for us or for the world.
We have but two eyes, one life, one brain.
And so we seek the will that is on high.
And trust the eye that sees us all
And the mind that knows
What we can’t know.
And this kind of prayer, the prayer of sacrifice
Will change the world and turn it ‘round
Into a thing that looks like heaven.
The deeper I grow, the quieter it is,
And the closer I am to home.
I will dig, dig, down deep
Toward the silent place
And there, draw nourishment
With unnumbered tentacles
To feed the leafy branches
Light years away.
And little will they know that it was me,
That fed their best dreams of all that’s real.
And I will sleep in silence
As they praise the light
And say, Oh God,
How great! Oh God,
How perfectly sublime,
The message of our life
That unfolds day by day!
And so I say to myself and God
Dig, dig, down deep beneath it all.
And let me disappear.
That they may know
You better.
Let go of everything you know
And everything you think.
There are no formulas
Except to Hear Him.
The railroad man goes on and on,
On and on goes the railroad man,
From place to place
And on and on
He goes
Without stopping.
And without a home goes the railroad man
The railroad man goes on without a home,
Because his home is every place.
Yes, every place is home to the railroad man.
Can you understand it? Probably not.
Because you’re not like that,
Are you?
But that doesn’t matter.
Because the heart of the railroad man
Is broad like every place.
And in his heart
Is a home.
Will you choose the home that’s in his heart?
And let your heart travel far and wide
Upon the beating heart of the railroad man?
If so, then truly you will travel far.
And you’ll have a home
In every place.
A home in the heart of the railroad man.
It rained and rained last night,
Great sheets of rain, nonstop.
I am from the west,
I am not used to that.
But I’ll adjust.
I love how wet it is, and wonder,
Will that last? The love of wetness,
For a while at least. But for now
It is so nice after so many years
Of the mountain desert.
There is a little town and wholesome
Where they’ve sworn off technology,
And people love each other and God.
I like it there. And if it weren’t for the call to wander,
I might just stay. All the same, I wonder
If I might just make it my home base,
For a while at least, until it moves.
Sure. Why not. I cannot find a better place,
And though I have not forsaken my cell phone,
I doubt that I will find a people so in keeping
With the simplicity of my soul.
Reputation is nothing,
For it is almost always tarnished
In the service of transcendent good.
So let them drag it through the mud,
And content yourself
With the approval of immortals.
The factory man goes to work each day
To spite the fact that he knows it’s not enough,
For the factory man is a family man.
He wasn’t “smart enough”
To refrain.
And so he’s rich at home
And poor when it comes to the bank.
All the same, he keeps on going to work each day.
And one by one the bottles pass his way.
And he counts them and checks for mistakes,
Day by day. The factory man. And that’s the story.
There’s not that much to say. And yet, I cannot help
But sing his refrain, for he is the mass of men, not the exception,
To spite the fact that the movies don’t make it look that way.
The Giant of the Great Rock Face
Sits nestled in between the tribes of the North
And the tribes of the South
As an ever-present reminder
That war is not the way.
And of a Sunday,
The people of the surrounding towns
Come and picnic in his shade.
I am stopped along my path - a place to wait.
A place to organize and ponder, to reflect.
And the rain beats down.
And I wonder,
What will the summer bring?
I once thought that I could plan my life.
But, more and more, I relinquish my hold.
I surrender to the road, to the path that leads my soul
From place to place. And I don’t know what it means or where it goes.
But somehow I trust the thing that’s coming
Even though I have no idea what it is.
There are potted flowers at the entrance of the supermarket
An early sign of hopeful spring. And someone
Is asked whether she still breeds the kind of pups
That he once bought many years ago.
She does not, “But call me,” she says.
“Alexander has a dog that he’s thought of giving up.”
And he says he will.
And all along the upper half of the wall, there runs,
Like a ribbon, the route of old Highway 66,
With the cities listed one by one.
And right in the middle of the line
Sits Tucumcari, the almost proud little town
Nestled nearly halfway along
The once-famous highway leading down
From the windy city to the sandy beach of Santa Monica.
And would you guess, that the people there are just like us?
That’s how it seems anyhow. And I am grateful to have stopped.
Two things seem disconnected
But are inseparably bound,
Your creative work
And your means of livelihood.
The first is the way you serve the world,
And the second is the way
The world repays you
For your generosity.
He walks away in silence.
He does not say a word at leaving.
And ruin follows in His wake,
Precious ruin.
And it will claim all those
Who wanted Him in the first place.
To refuse to be a victim
And to refuse to victimize,
It is a mystery for the man
Who finds that he is worn out in the fighting.
And how is it done? By walking away,
And by not needing the things that they provide.
Can you find safety without the need to enforce any laws?
And can you find freedom without the need for an army?
I have. And it follows me like the dome of heaven.
He’s going away to war
And I am walking away from war.
And that’s ok. Good men go to war.
Me too. I war within myself
For the principles
That will free me from the need to go to war.
It is the last frontier,
It is the war
That, when men, finally, are willing to fight it,
Will end all wars.
I stop for the night and park
In the middle of a grassy field
Beside a stream. And nobody sees.
Or at least nobody notices.
And it feels as if it was made just for me,
Just for this night. I am amazed at the way
The world opens up for heaven
When we believe and keep moving on
Toward the thing we know is right.
I wrote a poem the other day
That was full of worldly wisdom.
It was advice for how to prosper
In this world so wily and unpredictable.
But after I did, I felt discouraged and tired.
I put the poem away and broke with my own advice.
I decided that perhaps better advice
Would be to follow Jesus
Out of the world
And into the road of sacrifice
That leads to renunciation.
And I know that many of you,
Perhaps the very ones
That I want to reach
Will turn away upon hearing that
Because you think I mean to get the old religion.
But that’s not the case at all.
Christ, just like Silence and Truth,
Is available to each irrespective
Of religion or lack thereof.
So that He can be had
For the reach.
Christ may be the only way that the world will change.
It is not the idea of Christ, but the very Spirit of Christ that changes.
It enters into the heart and offers new choices
When it appears that war is the only way.
And it seems to me that it is found most readily
In the experience of total silence
And the hearing of genuine praise.
I took home a baby bird that I found on the ground.
Because I forgot all of the things they told me
When I was a boy at school,
Like don’t take home baby birds. Look for a nest.
It’s mother can take care of it better than you can.
Oops. But now it’s here.
It cheeps in my living quarters.
Tried to feed it. No luck yet. And I think to myself,
I am not good at this. I should have remembered what I learned.
Later today, I’ll go back and look for a nest
In the hopes that the mother is not far away.
And I don’t know what to say about it
Now that I’m the one in charge,
Other than, I’ll remember next time.
When Christ reigns, it makes things personal.
When the letters rule, it's one size fits all,
And who wants that?
Don’t move around too much.
And be careful not to be lured
By that which costs too much
Of your precious time and means,
Especially by that which invites to MORE
When MORE is obviously too much
Or comes laden with complexities and waste.
Right here, without reaching out for more,
Except in the listening for
The next word
That leads on to the New and more abundant Life
Where everything is provided right here
And without reaching out for more.
“I ordain that it be slippery for 100 years,” he said.
And then I woke up from the dream.
For a long time, I mourned
Over this decree.
But now, I see
That it is a relief to know
That it will roll out in waves.
So that, I can notice my progress and say
Not bad for the first five years. Let’s see
If I can hold on to the new life
For a little longer next time.
And all of it so that
My children’s children’s children
May enter in to go not out forever.
He’s only sixteen,
And completely unprepared for life.
So was I. I had no idea what it was like.
But that’s ok. He’ll live it anyway. And so have I.
Surely he’ll break up and flounder.
And maybe he’ll get “right”.
I don’t know if I’ve ever done that.
But that’s ok. I live it anyway.
And he will too.
And it is the best we have to give.
And when we love each other, that’s still something.
Hot air balloons hovering over the city.
I wonder where they land.
Somewhere. And I don’t understand
How they do that. But they do.
I am like a balloon
Now that I think about it.
It's private property, they say.
That’s right for now. For now,
It’s in your power to endlessly seek gain
Without a thought of those who have no place.
But the tables are about to turn everlastingly
In the favor of those whose home
Is not of this world.
I always thought, when people said “work harder”
That they meant to work faster,
To be more busy,
More rushed.
Hustle is the word that comes to mind.
And I’ve never been good at that.
I struggle to sustain it
Since it so often comes with a kind of anxiety
As if I am making up for an inherent deficit.
But I have found a new meaning for “work harder”:
Work more consistently, without stopping, overthinking, or getting distracted
As long as it takes, until the project is completed.
I find this definition to be far more useful.
It is extremely effective for getting things done
And much more peaceful than what I thought they meant.
I once heard that strangers who wandered into Sodom
Were robbed, beaten, sometimes raped, and then cast out.
I'm not sure if that's completely true, but if so,
No wonder such a city met with fire from the skies.
I once heard from a homeless person
That the hardest city to survive in
Was the second-largest city
In the state that makes its living
From gambling and prostitution.
Lure them in, take their virtue and their money,
Leave them broken, then spit them out,
Chase them away, from the sight of those
Who make their living on the process.
And I can't help but think that fire waits
To pour itself down on such a place.
There seems to be power in quietly continuing
After others have retired from the game.
It is not the kind of power that will save your soul.
But it is good for getting ahead when you’ve fallen behind
So long as you have shed unnecessary incumbrances
And embraced simplicity and frugality.
This old house, weathered and gray,
Sits hunched around us,
With its windmill
That no longer spins,
And its fallow fields surrounding.
And we sit, retired, in the porch swing,
Rocking ever after,
Grateful for the ruin of that
Which once we thought was so important.
And the children watch with wide eyes
From the parlor window,
And wonder at the love
That once they thought had died
But that now they plainly see
To their amazement
Has only begun.
Perhaps the reason that He feeds us day by day
Meal by meal, moment by moment,
Is that he wants to see us more often.
He wants to have the interaction,
To rejoice in the exchange.
Me too. I like to serve out tidbits day by day,
Meal by meal, morsel by morsel.
I like to see you here,
To feel the warmth of your embrace.
But the world seems to have the attitude of
“Let’s take care of the needy in large waves
Let’s stock them up and streamline the process.
Let’s have less contact, less interaction,
But give them more stuff in the exchange.
That’s good if the goal is to move more stuff.
But I think I like His way the better.
The circle turns round and round.
The soul of man is drawn toward God
Then falls into decay. And round and round,
And up and down it turns, but not quite.
It is more like the orbit of planets around a sun,
Not a perfect circle, but an imperfect eliptical pattern.
Out it flys away from the souce of life
And into the cold unfeeling void.
Then at it’s outward limit
It turns back toward
The source of life
Hurdled by the need for warmth
And draws as close as it can get without
Being burned in the brightness of the sun’s glory.
And for a season they rejoice in each other.
Until the planet, once again, feels the need
To wander far from home
And gain experience.
And round and round it goes.
And such is the journey of the soul.
We like to think that it is an all an upward path to glory.
But we forget that even He who rose to be
On the right hand of The Eternal
First had to wander far
Into the depths
Of the cold black night, an there be forsaken by the warmth
Before He was able to make his way back home.
The tortoise and the hare,
It’s a story that I heard
From a child.
And I have tried both.
I have raced for the finish line.
And I have done my best to be steady
In the endless pursuit of more.
But the race itself seems to imply
That what I have is not enough,
That I must rely upon my wits,
My inward tortoise or my hare.
But what if I am already rich
And do not need the prize?
What if it’s enough
To be rich inside my mind?
And what if every little thing I need
An unseen hand, had promised to supply.
Well, then that would be a different story, wouldn’t it.
It’s strange to see how people gather.
Just a few miles away,
Homelessness is everywhere.
And every store has a security guard.
And here, in the suburb, there aren’t any,
Homeless people that is, or security guards.
And I don’t know what to say about that.
It’s just an observation.
And yet, it’s also a comfort that if I choose
I can put some space between myself and the world
Where I have to constantly think about things being stolen
Or where to park because they patrol the parking lots at night.
But it also means that I must venture out
If I desire to be touched by those
Who are different than myself.
You reached out to me today in a song,
Though you didn’t know you did.
And I heard the sound
And answered,
Though you couldn’t hear it,
Or perhaps you did,
And answered on the wind.
And perhaps I will hear the sound of your reply
One day, in a song, or in the way a leaf blows in the wind.
And round and round we call, round and round,
Until finally we come back home
To the very sound
Of each other’s voices.
Won’t that be well? Yes.
That will be well with us both.
God give me patience for the day.
I saw you where the sky meets the horizon,
A flash of unexpected perfect light.
And it colored my morning
In the beauty that is only you.
And I realized to my delight
That we were not so far away
From each other as we thought.
And now I sit as patiently as I can
Awaiting the rising of your essence
Into the middle of my sky. How I long
For your face to shine down upon me,
Sweet child of my delight, estranged,
But ever in my heart. It’s you for whom
I have been waiting. And I can barely breath
For anticipation. But take your time. Rise, rise,
Slowly, and only by your own intent.
For I have been up waiting,
Waiting when the storm clouds gathered,
And the terrors gave you fright.
Yes I have kept my vigil
Through the darkness of the night.
And finally, after all these years, it’s time.
Reformation doesn’t come by complaining
About a perceived misallocation of means.
True reformation begins in the heart.
It is an inward motion, a conviction
That one's way of being needs to change,
Which inevitably results in a reallocation of means,
The means of the individual.
Looking forward, I see family, the family of God
Knit together with the chords of love and sacrifice,
And the hope of what we were before we fell.
And the One who knows sheds the sacred comfort
Through grace upon all those who turn to Him,
And through knowledge to some few
Who sacrifice in similitude
Of Him.
The idea of the “right way” often causes us to miss the movement
And in the movement we have life, the life that moves
At the breath of that silent voice that speaks
In whispers, out of the unseen place.
So that, the right way is the way
That hears and moves
And changes,
Humbling bending, blowing, finding life
In the most unexpected places.
John 3:7-8 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
When I was young, I used to pray the way I wish,
But I no longer care to play games I cannot win.
Instead, I skip ahead to the final thing I hope for.
I imagine the end result clearly as if
It has already happened
And give thanks.
And if
There swells within my bosom
That unmistakable joy of confirmation,
I simply believe that it will be so.
If it does not, I let it go.
It is a way to stop trifling with God
And begin the work of aligning our will with His.
Keep your eyes forward.
Don’t look back.
Some are lost in a cause.
And others can’t forgive.
But you will not help them
By pretending that darkness is light.
All the same, be kind.
Kindness is part of the way.
And toward what, toward what?
Toward the light that shines out of the Holy Place.
If the veil that covers our minds with darkness were rent
We would see eye to eye. And we would not think
That we were better than another.
It is only this earth
That makes it appear so.
Up there, we are all the same.
And there is a mystery in it.
But we can believe it if we try.
We can imagine how it might be.
And such imagining brings humility,
And love, I think. At least it does for me.
This world hides a multitude of truths that make for heaven,
It makes it look like the only kin we have are the ones
Whose DNA most closely resemble ours,
When in reality we are all one.
And so the only way to love the ones
Who do not look like us is to imagine
That the foreign ones are ours.
It is not a natural thing to do.
But if we try, we can find ourselves loving all sorts of people
In the way we love our own.
Another thing that the world hides is the love that falls.
There is the love that loves. That one we know.
But there is also the love of the one that condescends
To fall from heaven. Sometimes I wonder if it is the greater love.
This world makes it look like the ones that cause us pain,
The ones who hate us or persecute us
Or cause us the most trouble
Are our enemies.
But it is possible to imagine that they are our greatest friends, our nearest kin.
And doesn’t that make sense? Is it not those who test and try us
That cause us to grow more close to heaven.
So that through imagination,
We can even feel love flowing from those the world calls our enemies.
I know that these ideas are antithetical to the thing we call reality.
They may even be considered evil by those who can’t imagine
That their enemies could have, through love,
Made a conscious choice to fall
In that eternal world from which we came.
But since the practice of imagining these things has caused me to love more
And to feel more love, even to feel at times that I am in the midst of heaven,
I am persuaded that it is the world's reality that’s off.
A true apologist does not tear down,
His job is to present precious light.
And in the presence of that light
The lovers of light, of their own accord,
Move toward the light, and by doing so,
Necessarily, move away from darkness.
All else is contention. And contention, in the end,
Robs you of even the light you already think you have.
We are not on the same path, and that’s ok.
It appears that we are because we can agree
To some extent and in some things.
And that is an old comfort,
But one upon which
I no longer rely.
All the same, I am grateful that our lives have touched,
And I will hold you in my heart to spite that fact,
And trust, that both of us are being led
To the place we need to be.
And in that, we are not separated.
Some can see the unseen place afar
And some see the problems of the seen
And those that travel toward the unseen place
Cannot find reconciliation with those whose eyes are here.
Because those who see the seen alone
Believe that they must rectify
The problems that they see.
And those who see the unseen place
Renounce their ability to change the seen.
They leave Egypt to its own devices.
In my life, currently, it appears that
The work that will yield immediate reward
Is more difficult and pays less,
Whereas the projects that promise long-term
And more substantial gains
Require less of my already limited physical strength
And more mental stamina, more patience, more persistence,
But with a larger payoff if I can forestall immediate gratification.
So it seems that the task in front of me, once again is faith -
To work at things that don’t pay right away
And to believe that my daily bread
Will be supplied in the meantime.
When a problem perplexes you,
Clear your mind of it and relax completely.
To do this, you may need to lie down.
Take some time. Make sure to let everything go,
Including the problem itself, especially the problem itself.
I say let go, but of course, it’s there in the background,
As if your subconscious holds it by a flaxen thread.
Then listen for anything that seems obvious.
Often we are not looking for a new insight.
We are searching for what we already know but cannot find.
And so it’s kind of like noticing something that was already there
But that you couldn’t hear for the noise.
I do not have as much drive as I once did.
A little work is enough for me.
After that,
Something begins to shut down
Because the soul has asserted itself,
And it claims more
Of the bits and pieces of my time
That I once paid for a seat
On the Rocket Ship of Life.
In short, my one-way ticket to the stars
Has been exchanged for a seat
In the slow boat that drifts
Down the lazy lagoon,
Because that is all I can handle
Which makes me poor at life for now
And rich in other lifely light.
And that is right for me,
So right,
And I am grateful.
But know this,
That there are unseen treasures
In the depths of the slow.
There are pearls
In the lagoon.
So don’t be surprised
When I rise with gold glistening.
I am surprised at how deep it goes.
Just when I think that I can’t leave the tension,
I find it in that state that comes just before sleep
When I am still awake, but my mind has already begun
To dip into the place of dreams.
Things get clear there,
And my soul finds peace and promise.
I am amazed at the change I feel
When I quiet down enough to hear.
I have begun to make it a practice
To stop and take a quarter-hour or more
In complete silence and relaxation
Before I begin an endeavor or make a decision.
And I am amazed at the clarity that comes
And the peace and encouragement I feel.
It makes me want to find that frame of mind more often.
I went off the road today
And dipped into the state trust lands
For a place to camp just outside of Tombstone,
Town of infamous report turned tourist trap.
But I like it - the little shops selling this and that,
The dusty street where they tore up the asphalt
To make it seem more real - and it worked.
I can’t afford their trappings
Nor their fare or lodgings.
But I don’t care.
I sit in my box truck,
A few miles out of town
And watch the sunset in perfect silence
As I eat macaroni and cheese I got for free
Because it was all I could afford.
And tomorrow, I will sell my wares if they’ll have them,
And offer to wash their windows if they’re dirty,
And soak in the people passing by
And be grateful to share in their vacation.
Step by step it unfurls,
The simplicity of a new economy,
More slow, more simple, more abundant,
Allowing us to relax into the more important things of life.
And it begins by looking close, not far away.
It is nurtured in the fertile soil
Of gratitude and faith,
And best of all,
It rounces
The trappings of debt.
I see, a few generations off,
A generation of simple people
Around whom springs every needful thing.
And their principal work is praise.
Nearly two miles high it rises
Into the sky above the desert valley.
And by night, it blew a hurricane, a monsoon,
A late winter rain mingled with snow,
So strange.
And I crouched low within my sleeping bag
And plugged my ears from the thunder
As Joey ducked for cover.
A late winter rain mingled with snow,
And the mountain shakes its shoulders
In the white draped frock it dons,
Showing what it can do
Before the desert sun
Chases it back into submission.
An abandoned theatre,
One, Two, Three Cinemas,
But not enough for the buzzing crowds.
They have moved on to busier venues.
And as they move out, I move in,
Into the parking lot at least.
And we sell our wares.
We wash the windows left behind
For the poor folk that rent in the dilapidated part of town.
How I love abandoned, broken, things.
How I love the fertile soil
From which springs
Abundance,
And not the type
That demands your soul,
The abundance that falls into your lap for a song.
Is there ever enough love to make up for all we’ve lost?
Yes. But until we die or He appears, we must imagine.
The home that I offer is in my heart,
For I myself live in a tent, a car,
The back of a moving van,
And I like it that way.
But the world would have me put them up in a hotel,
To take out a mortgage, to put myself in bondage,
So that they can go on living like the world.
And I wonder if that was what Christ was trying to say
When he said that the foxes have holes
And the birds have nests,
But the Son of Man has not a place to lie his head.
It seems that he was warning us
That if we fully give way
To the Spirit he possessed,
That it will prompt us to forsake our hopes of home
For the home we find in Him.
Surely.
And that’s a hard pill to swallow.
Poem 3
And when it sets it shrouds my little camp
With velvet black and starry glow.
And I, between two cedars,
Drift off to sleep
In the silence
Of a world apart.
Poem 2 - The Sun O’erhead
And the sun rises over the open valley down below.
It crosses the sky and paints the clouds
In white.
Three poems, three days, one picture…
Poem 1 - Between Two Cedars
My tent is strung between two cedars,
Old and wide. And I, alive to the gift,
Give thanks.
Unless you go back to the source for an interpretation,
And when unseen, seek light through revelation,
You will interpret the text, the person,
The past the present and even
The very thing you worship
Through the lens of your ideology
And your particular predisposition.
But if you seek the living Truth
It will reveal itself to you,
And when it does,
You will be shocked to realize
That it is not what it was made out to be.
Feeling like you have enough
Allows you to act today
In such a way
That provides for unseen tomorrows.
The opposite is also true.
Feeling like there's not enough
Will rob tomorrow
To pay for that
Which you believe you lack today.
This is a recording of The Rise of Silence, A Book of Poems and True Stories read by the author, J.A. McCormick.
To get a digital copy of the book or to view more books by J.A. McCormick, go to https://www.thetracklesspath.com/books.html.
Dear Friends,
- Here it is - my latest book: The Rise of Silence - A collection of Poems and True stories.
- Just click the link to access the Digital Version, the Audiobook, and the Easy Print Version.
- Softbound copies: Amazon and I are parting ways, but I printed 5 copies of the Easy Print (8.5x11) Versions and have 2 left. If you want one, just respond to this email to let me know and we'll arrange to get one to you.
- If you'd like to print your own, please do so! Here's the link for the files.
- The fictional short story that I had intended to include (Over - A Cosmic Apocalypse) is not included. But you can find it here, and the Audiobook here.
- Just a note for those who do not receive my daily poems / stories to their inbox, here's the link if you'd like to subscribe. -Or here for YouTube, or Tiktok, of in your favorite podcast app under the name of The Trackless Path.
- Also, please feel free to share anything I publish if you believe it might be a blessing to someone you know.
Thanks again and God bless,
Jonathan McCormick
The Trackless Path
When you know that a course of action is right,
When it meets with the approval
Of your best inner conscience,
Don’t complain. Don’t explain. Just act.
Don’t speak everything that comes into your mind.
Keep your silence. Let it work its mystery.
Act and let your action speak for itself.
If you do, you’ll be a mystery
And do far less harm
If the secret that you keep
Is in keeping with the will of the Great Unseen.
Turning the other cheek,
Or in other words,
Letting the enemy win the war,
Take the spoil,
And leave you poor,
Puts you in the proper place
To receive the spirit of humility.
Whereas winning the war breeds pride,
And those puffed up with pride grow fat and weak,
And sooner or later they start losing,
Not just with outward ememies,
But with the inward battle
For unseen things.
But not so with those
Who turn the other cheek.
They already know their weakness.
It is their constant companion.
And in it, they grow strong in faith,
For faith is the only way they can survive.
And armed with faith and humility,
They win an inward battle
That lends itself
To perfect strength
And stamina in suffering.
And you can write this down:
That those who suffer the longest always win.
In the absence of the ones you love,
Imagine that the strangers you meet are them.
Love deep into the foreign one
And it will seep into the very ones
You miss and cannot see.
Corporations and kingdoms,
Democracies and fascist regimes,
For all their pomp and pretension,
In the end, are temporary.
They have a beginning,
And they have an end.
But family is eternal.
It is the bedrock of existence.
And the family of God is the only order
Without beginning and without end.
Just think about it,
What are you
When all else is stripped away,
But a child of God,
So that your deepest definition
Is in relation to a Heavenly Parent.
It is the ultimate identity,
And it is the only authority
That transcends
The grave.
I am surprised that the Spirit of Christ
Is not a part of any cause that I can find
Except the family. It doesn’t seem
To take part in debates
Of doctrine.
It doesn’t argue.
It doesn’t try to prove itself at all.
In fact, it is most often found
In the unsolicited praise
Of those that it inhabits.
And when those who have it
Try to describe relationships in its context,
They inevitably are cast back upon descriptions of the family,
Father, son, mother, daughter, sister, brother,
These are our closest approximations
To the love that we’ve found in Him
And in those in whom he dwells.
And isn’t that a surprise,
That in Him we find a family,
And in the family, at its best,
We find something of Him.
There is a kingdom of peace.
Its banners waft in the wind.
But there is no earthly power
That has found the peace within.
Their heart is bent on anger.
Their will is set to win.
And until they forsake winning,
They’ll war and war again
Until it works a cleansing
A change from deep within,
And then, Oh then,
When men are free
From the need to war, to win,
Will the unseen peaceful kingdom
Come to Earth again.
I bang the pots.
I stir the bushes.
Fly away. Fly away.
Take to the sky, you little birds.
Take to the heavens, you big birds.
Don’t stay long! I say,
Just long enough to leave your curse upon them,
Or in other words, your blessing,
The blessing of the ruin that you took early,
The one that they’ll find late which they’ll find out
Is the key to their deliverance.
But whatever you do, move on.
Don’t stay long, lest you take sides in the coming battle,
The last and most senseless battle of them all
When the earthbound folk will kill
For the sake of killing.
You don’t yet know
How anger can clip your wings
And wet your feathers.
And drown you
In a cause
That you’ll regret long, long, after they are gone.
And it’s coming soon. It’s coming soon.
But not for those
Who can still fly away and keep on flying,
Not for those who keep on moving out
Of the life that was expected
And into the voice
That points the way
To the Unseen Holy Place.
I love to work with people.
And I live my life mostly by my gut
And prefer to deal with people who do the same.
But it becomes impossible to do that when organizations get too large.
And so I have finally stopped shadowing their thresholds.
Because if I must fill out papers before we look eye to eye,
I am not interested.
If you need to ask me a set of questions that you’ve written down,
I’m not interested. If you don’t know at a glance,
And if I don’t know at a glance
That it’s right,
I’m not interested.
The Corporation has had its day, has had its day.
There comes a great de-centralization through chaos.
And in its wake will flourish
The private enterprise,
And laughter,
Sweet, childlike merry-making,
As the little ones chant and sing upon its grave.
And we will do business with each other once again
When the great Leviathan crashes to the earth
And the children of the kingdom
Feast upon its ashes.
I live and keep on living.
I move and keep on moving.
And it suits me fine. It suits me fine.
I knew an old man who lived by the ocean.
And he said that once, years ago,
It made its way into his house.
And so the old man and his neighbors
Pushed it back. They pushed it back.
With rock and sand and a crew of engineers,
They pushed the ocean back.
Can you imagine that?!
And the man lived in a little shack.
For that, they pushed the ocean back!
Because they could not keep on moving with the tide.
They could not keep on living with the seasons.
And I realized as he told me the story,
That we were very different.
I would have moved on, I thought.
I would have moved on without a thought.
And trusted that an unseen hand had better plans.
Yes, an unseen hand has better plans.
If we can only see them
For what they are.
The sun sets upon the sacred valley.
And the clouds light up with color
As the cool rolls in off fields of green.
The smell of earth. The sound of bees.
The mountains looking down
In loving, purple, rocky grey.
And I alone with the silence,
No outlet, but to write
Here on this page,
No pallet, No colors, No music.
Just the words, the gratitude, that rolls
Through my brain and down my slippery fingers
Onto the emptiness of the barren page.
Sacred little cumulous clouds
And almost stormclouds
Grace the holy valley.
And I am lost in the fields.
The tractors drive by.
And the driver’s wave.
But nobody cares
That I live here.
I do not move
Except
When absolutely necessary.
And the longer I rest here in silence
The more I am healed.
The more I’m healed.
I close my eyes and see waving fields
Of the most golden grain I’ve ever seen,
As if the sunlight is caught up and inbetween
The stalks of grain, and as if it glows itself.
And through the field runs a telephone line,
Post, post post. And I am lost in the bright yellow.
I came upon a Blue Heron today.
It landed in an irrigation ditch
And hid behind a clump of grass.
I slowly moved up on it and it flew away,
But not far. A hundred paces down the ditch.
Incredible, a Blue Heron in the irrigation ditch,
And he’s staring back at me as if to say,
“Hello, old friend.” And I could sware
That I remember him from long ago,
Long before our names were written down,
When the morning colors of creation shone
Upon the hearts of all created things.
“Hello, old friend,” I say.
“So good to know you once again,
So grateful for the visit,
So beautiful the friendship long forgotten,
And how precious the unexpected, chance, reunion.”
It is surprising to me that wherever you go, you can hear birds.
And they live their lives without a grocery store.
They are wild, and yet, they are among us.
And yet we are a world away
When it comes to things like faith.
Still, they condescend to grace us with the song
Of simple trust. Always. Always. It chirps.
It’s there in almost every outside moment
And passes through every cracked
And open window,
A constant reminder
That no one need fret unseen tomorrows.
And yet, how infrequently we listen!
Why is Christ so compelling?
Because nobody is keeping the law.
We appeal to the law all the time
When things go really bad.
We insist that THOSE people are wrong
And that we need to get back to moral absolutes.
But that’s not what we really mean
Or what we really want.
And when we look close enough,
We discover that our choices beguile us.
We, each of us, have swallowed the culture’s poison.
We all are dead or dying by degrees
Unless we’re not.
And there is the very case for Christ -
In the fact that some of those
Who do no measure up
Are actually alive,
Alive to His very voice
That whispers out of darkness unto life.
And you know them when you meet them.
They are those who have found a King Unseen.
They are those who wait and listen and obey
To spite their imperfection.
Be still and wait upon the unheard voice to speak.
The world is running to the banner of MORE
While the children of Silence
Wait peacefully listening
Around the standard
Of ENOUGH.
Value what you have.
What does that mean?
I don’t know. But I see that there are
Two spirits that rise up in me.
One thinks that something’s lacking
And that we must go out and find it.
The other, and it is by far the quietest,
Says that we have enough.
The first would spend our means
On nets to catch the two birds in the bush
While the last would forsake such dreams
For the one we already have.
The night is still dark
And the generator running
And you are there in the darkness
Reconsidering, perhaps, the truth that is your life.
And miles away, the light is still on as I sit here waiting up for you.
There is a razor's edge between telling the truth and being kind.
God help me to walk the razor’s edge.
On the night when the Great Hurricane blew,
I came down to the docks to find you wailing inconsolably,
And knowing that there was nothing I could do but love you,
I grabbed the rope and held you fast
As the storm pushed you further out to sea.
It pushed and pushed
And I tried with all my might.
But the storm was pushing you out of sight.
And the wind blew, and the lightning flashed,
And the rain beat down upon me relentlessly.
But still, I held fast the chord upon the end of which was you
Even though God only knew if you were there.
And the rope tore at my hands.
And the darkness of the night crept in as if
To promise I had lost you in the night.
But still I held you fast.
I held long after the storm had passed.
And the people strolled by the boat wharf and laughed
As if to mock the man who stood there.
And the years rolled on
Until finally they stopped noticing.
And the summer sun baked down upon me
And dried me out and cracked my skin until
I was no more than a dead statue to most.
And they wondered at the unplaqued monument.
Some brought roses, and the city
erected a little rod iron fence.
And the years rolled on
Till now, finally,
I see you coming back,
A little dot upon the horizon.
And I wonder if you'll recognize me.
Or will you see the stone, the figurine,
The thing that you were told I am.
But I promise there is life beneath the crusty shell.
Just come and breathe upon me,
And the scent of your essence
Will bring me back to life.
For it's you that I've been waiting for all along.
I used to insist upon only glory stories for my life.
But that was when I claimed it for myself.
I now realize that there are no unimportant tales
In God’s great saga.
Our successes and our failures
Each serve up invaluable lessons
For those who watch from veiled portals
Waiting their turn to play a part.
There are ways in which I still have not been tempted.
But I do not worry about that.
He has seen me through
My yesterdays.
And I trust him with tomorrow.
I caught a ride on the rail tonight.
The sun was setting and I thought
To find a place to bed down.
I left town headed west
Toward the setting sun
And within a short time
The train track crept up on the side of the road
And I looked up to see a train moving alongside,
It was keeping time, or I kept time with it.
It was unexpected, slightly surprising, comforting,
The box cars silhouetted by the evening colors.
And the road and train veered together right.
I had only planned to find an empty field outside of town.
But the train and the colors hooked me and pulled me along.
A mile, five miles, ten miles. The road and track stayed together
Till finally, it curved and passed above me on an overpass.
What a beautiful ride! What a beautiful sight!
A ride upon the rails tonight.
We were born for adversity,
And to face this last great tribulation,
And to be marred and crushed under the weight of it.
But we were not born unto the hell of fear and doubt.
And though they cling to us the day-long
And would destroy our very souls,
We say to our eyes
“Look up, eyes, and see the unseen things
That will arise when death has had its way
And we come forth in white robes
Unto the liberation of all those
Who believed in the things they could not see unto the end.
I am willing to risk heresy
For the freedom and liberation
That comes from allowing each person
To hear the voice of God for him or herself.
It is better than the dogma that binds men to dead forms.
Volume will overcome imperfection.
In other words, do it more
Whatever IT is,
And you’ll eventually win,
Somehow, someway, somewhere.
You have no idea how little I care about your sprockets,
Nor how fast I can turn ‘em out on your machine.
But the whole big thing might matter just a little
If I could only see the woman smile
As she rolls her window down.
Then perhaps, I’d care, just a little.
Maybe it would help me believe
That all of this means something.
But I can’t see past the metal
Nor the wheel that turns the days around
And squeezes out another carefully measured dollar
Into my silent bank account
Without a word, without a look, without even
The feel of your sweaty palm
As the money passes
From your hand
Into mine.
And so, one day soon, I’ll move on.
These places are all the same.
But you knew that.
You knew that my allegiance was temporary,
And you planned for the day when
I would leave and be replaced
By another just the same.
Maybe next I’ll try a restaurant.
And there I’ll brew up pots of beans.
I’ll cut tomatoes, and chop up salad greens
And wrap them up in fine burritos.
And, now and then, I’ll look out,
To see the people smile
And listen as they
Compliment the establishment.
I am a paradox.
I have been since my youth.
Wherever I go, I do not fit.
I do not fit with the higher-ups.
I do not fit with the lower-downs.
And yet, I kind of fit with the higher-ups
Until you get to know me better.
And I kind of am a lower-down
When see the place I live.
I am more comfortable with those
Who are lost or on the fringes,
At least for a while,
Though I don’t imbibe
In the liberties of their station.
And I can fool the higher-ups
Into believing I am one of them,
At least for a while.
Sooner or later they realize
That I do not embrace the dogma
That raises them up to their lofty station.
And from then on they see me as dangerous.
And it’s ok. I don’t mind being what I am.
It just means that I have a hard time
Finding a place where I can settle down.
Dome Valley - a tiny warmth within highlights the sign
That marks the turnoff from the southbound highway.
But I don’t turn. I keep going toward a familiar metropolis.
And the next morning I find out that the person I seek
Is half an hour East. That is further than I thought.
I board the interstate and drive.
The suburbs stretch out
Mile after mile,
But then begin to thin
As I rise, rise, upon the back
Of some small range
Of mountains.
I crest the summit
And again see a sign - Dome Valley.
Something swells within me as I gaze down
Upon the green fields of lettuce and kale.
And it wraps me up in the sweet knowing
That I have again found the sheltering cloud and fiery pillar.
Thank you, dear God, that this is home for a while
And that I have a work to do here
A person to love and find
And a healing to receive
As I rest beneath
The canopy
That you spread over all those
Who keep moving toward the holy place.
A note to myself:
The vital thing is to publish.
To finish. And if that’s the goal,
Then the writing will bend itself to that aim.
It is a strategy for those of us who get lost along the way.
I am back out on the BLM,
A few hours, a night.
I had forgotten how peaceful.
The stark difference strikes me.
It could be the ocean,
Or a mountaintop,
Or an empty grassy plain,
It would be the same
So long as it was wild and unclaimed.
It’s so much easier here.
A place that nobody owns.
I knew a man who lived far out on the BLM
Where no one would notice.
Perhaps this is why.
I need this,
My family needs this,
The world needs this,
A wild place that nobody claims
To be alone with God
And the silence.
You don’t have to denounce your past
To embrace your newfound passion.
They are one thing in the end.
And he who denounces
Will continue to denounce.
But he who embraces it all with gratitude,
Will be added upon forever and ever.
I have found that people often have conflicting goals
That they do not care to notice.
And since they want things to remain the same
More than they want the change that will bring improvement,
They do not make much progress.
Once our goals are aligned
We can move forward.
Before that time,
We must either face the contradictions
Or eternally flounder and grow disenchanted with the process.
The shadow and the pillar have moved again, and I move on,
South, I believe, to the place that borders another country,
It’s funny that after all of these years,
I still tremble and feel insecure.
What if we decentralized our corporations
Not because of government mandates,
But because we want less headaches.
And what if each factory worker went home
And operated a cottage industry
That cooperated with a central idea - a central brand.
What if we shared the brand.
I did that once. I cooperated with a friend.
I manufactured certain products. He manufactured others.
And we shared the same brand.
In the end, we both made more money
And had less headaches.
What if the higher-ups
Gave the enterprise away to the lower-downs?
And what if the lower downs
Decided, out of gratitude,
How much to pay the higher-ups?
Not a rule. Not a law. But a personal policy
On the part of those who have
To be the servants of all
And a personal policy
On the part of the have-nots
To not forget to feed the ones who gave their all.
What if we could walk away from papers?
What if we could say no to the hoops
They dangle before us enticingly?
What if I never touched the things that flow through me?
What if they skipped me altogether
And landed in the laps
Of those I love?
It’s not quite what you think.
For that reason, we must listen closely
To the still small voice. And trust
That, sooner or later, it will all come together.
Black curtains separate me from the driver’s seat.
Drive on, drive on, I say from the back of the limousine.
And my chauffeur decides the places I will be.
I trust the driver enough to draw the curtains tight.
Drive on, drive on, I say,
Into the black of unknown nights.
Drive on, old friend, you know me better than myself.
And in the meantime, I will rest the rest of a forfeit life
And rejoice in the places, faces, and someones that we meet
As we stop, stop, stop, and step out into the sunshine
Of unknown but perfectly orchestrated tomorrows
And todays. And the stretch limousine
Goes on and on into the setting sun
Of God’s perfect plan for me.
I wrote this while working as a transport driver for a funeral home. We were located in a county with a large population of indigent and transient people. My job was to go out into the desert and bring back those who had died in their cars or vans or camper trailers. Most would say it was gruesome work, and it was, but I loved it. It felt more like a calling than a job. And that was a common sentiment in the industry.
I remember going into the chapel side of the funeral home when nobody was there. I would sit in the silence and soak in the sacredness of it. It was the same feeling I felt when I was taking care of someone who had died. I loved that part of it.
But there were things I didn't like, like the politics and the increasingly corporate nature of the business. The owner was the son of a funeral director. But he was more entrepreneur than undertaker. And he treated it like a business. Several years earlier, he had bought his father out and proceeded to "expand the business". He bought funeral home after funeral home. He centralized. He consolidated. He turned it all into a finely tuned machine, well, kind of. Sometimes it seemed that he was buying mortuaries faster than he could run them. But he didn't seem to care. His eyes were on some distant goal that kept moving further and further away as he approached it. And mortuaries were not all he owned. He bought sandwich shops and strip malls. He expanded, expanded, expanded. And as he did, he streamlined everything toward the goal of profitability.
Luckily for me, my little branch was not profitable, or if so, the margins were slim. And on top of that, we were ninety miles from the home office and our county had strange laws and rules that made it so that we had to do things differently than the rest of his mortuaries. This meant that I was left alone for the most part, which suited me perfectly. I did all the transports. I pushed paper around in the office. And now and then, I even met with families, a duty which was usually reserved for the funeral director who worked forty minutes away.
And since I was on my own, I didn't really notice the corporatization of our industry as much as those who were closer to the home office. Traditionally, undertaking was a family business. But things were changing. Several years before, the other funeral home in our small town had been purchased by a large corporation that was quickly gobbling up the independents. The last I knew, there were over 2800 mortuaries in the network. And to spite our owner's ambitious inclinations, we were very small apples in comparison.
But things were about to change. There were rumblings among the employees. And upper management was acting funny. They stopped having me come into the office, and they started letting things go. The sign blew down and they didn't fix it. Somebody vandalized the front of the funeral home and they did nothing. And they transferred the woman who had babied my little branch along to a different department and put me under a transport supervisor ninety miles away. Almost overnight, my little branch stopped feeling like a funeral home and started feeling like a place to process dead bodies - ship them in, ship them out, and do so with as little cost to the company as possible. It was disturbing. But still, I felt called to stay.
Until a few months later. I came to work one day to discover that we had been acquired by a larger corporation. Instead of ten, we were now two hundred funeral homes strong. And then it all made sense. I was actually relieved since the previous owner had obviously checked out early. And my hopes rose upon the winds of change.
Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that the new owners were just a larger version of the old regime. Like the corporation that owned the other mortuary in town, they were gobbling up new assets as fast as they could with little regard for the individual problems of the entities they acquired. Everything was streamlined for profitability and the sacredness that had pervaded the profession was sanitized by policy and blind protocol. The old sentiment of "from our family to yours" was gone. And it was sad to watch it disappear and be replaced with cold unfeeling numbers. At least the old owner had been raised in the business. He and his father had once been undertakers, trusted servants of a community that they served. And a portion of that remained even as he shifted his focus to other things. But now it was gone.
The difference was so stark that many employees moved on leaving those who stayed with double the workload as the new management scrambled to find new people. One woman who left, a funeral director of twenty years, said that she was checking out of the business and out of the rat race altogether. It had all become too corporate. She was going to get a little camper, park it in a friend's yard, and take a part-time job so she could do the things she loved the most, paddle board on the lake, and spend time with her daughter. I wrote this poem as I thought of her and others like her.
By this time, I had also given notice. I finally felt as if I had been released from the calling. And I wondered what the company would do. It's not easy to find people willing to get up at all hours of the night to take care of dead people. But the scarcity of help seemed to be ubiquitous. Everywhere I looked, companies were short-handed. People were working less, checking out, moving on, going home, and giving up on the rat race. And something felt strangely right about it.
"It will leave chaos in its wake," I thought. "And perhaps that's exactly what we need."
One day very near the end, I came to work to discover that our landlord had walled up the entry to the chapel from the office side of the funeral home. It was an accident, a miscommunication from one of the lawyers of the old owner. But I wasn't surprised. So many important details were falling through the cracks. And as I stood there looking at the wall that blocked the entrance to the chapel, it seemed ironically fitting. The sacred thing had been severed. And I knew that it was only time before it all began to come apart at the seams, not just the funeral industry, but every enterprise that had forsaken the sacred thing in favor of nameless goals that served the bottom line.
They are moving out, one by one,
From the system that promised so much
And now cannot deliver the pleasure that it promised.
And as they do, they leave chaos in their wake,
Precious chaos, like the heat that beats down
Upon a smoldering mass of leaves.
I always loved the Fall, so silent, so pure.
So reminiscent of a thing I couldn't place
Except in the memory of other cool and dying days,
And in the precious recollection
Of childhood feasts of love,
Of family, and of all that exists when work is put away
And we remember what we were working for.
And perhaps that's what they are doing,
Going home to the reason,
Forsaking the scream of getting more
And choosing family over the press and pressure.
If so, then I look forward to the dark and fertile soil
With which God will plant his garden
In the Spring that follows
His Long Winter.
Don’t fret the things you’ve lost
In obedience to the unheard voice.
They will come back to you.
In fact, they are already yours
And you can find them through love
And imagination.
It’s time for a new story.
And the story of the hour is an exodus story.
It is a story of coming out of what we know
And into all that was before we fell.
And there is a Moses in this story,
And unseen Holy Moses
And he’s coming in the cloud.
We can create a world that is different than The World.
Or in other words, we can think and behave
In a way that is different and distinct
From the prevailing culture.
And thus,
When the world is going down
We may choose to go up and up and up,
Our minds, our eyes, our bodies fixed upon the heavens.
If an angel had spare time on his earthly errand,
I doubt he’d take a second job
To feather his nest.
But I wouldn’t put it past him to come begging.
For we need to feed such beggars.
The sun is not yet over the mountain,
And I have already entered into His World.
And because of that, I can face the day.
We can believe that everything has gone to hell.
Or we can believe that it is unfolding according to God’s perfect plan.
It is our choice.
The first belief will cause us to shrink.
The last belief will water the seed of gratitude.
I have a home that you can’t see,
And I go there often in my mind.
But don’t be deceived,
Though I find it through imagination,
It is more real than anything you’ll find in this world.
It’s foundations reach deep into the bedrock of my soul
And touch the beginning, the first intent, the source of all creation.
It is my eternal home. It is where I choose to live my life.
And there, I house my family, my blood, my kin,
And every lost and broken soul I find along the road.
And in that place, we are not separated by the deceit of what appears.
We are one in the knowledge of our best intent.
We are united in the sacrifice we chose
When we came to this life knowing
That we would fall from love
And be treacherous to each other
To spite our best intents to do otherwise.
And there, His grace binds us up in what we were
And what we truly are and will be when lesser homes have disappeared.
At the time that I wrote Rush Rush, I was packaging apples, peaches, tomatoes and greens. I worked for a fruit farmer who dabbled in vegetables. Long days, and little pay, but I enjoyed it. It was a family farm. Good people, honest work. And they let me park my little travel trailer next to the house that they maintained for the migrant workers that they imported from Central America. The migrant workers came to the United States on a special short-term Visa. And when the farmer was done with them, they would be shipped back to Central America. They had it worse, I thought, being so far from home.
But then I laughed as I looked around myself. I was not so different from them. I too was away from home. Though I lived an hour away, I could not afford the commute, and so I had brought my little travel trailer. And I lay there alone in the dark, because the lights didn’t work, and listened to the music and the chatter that drifted over the rock wall from the house. At least I could I could go home on the weekends, I thought. Yes, we were the same, the migrant workers and I, each of us working hard for our little paycheck, and sending it home to the ones we loved, and each of us endlessly chasing the dream of a little security that never came. The likelihood was that in a year from now, we’d be doing the same thing or something similar, and two years from now, and ten, until we couldn’t do it anymore.
And I wondered how many of the masses of men had lived their lives that way. And as I contemplated these things, I was struck by the futility of it all. And I wrote this poem. And as I wrote it, an image came to mind of a sea captain bellowing at a bunch of peasants as they dragged a boat along a water way by ropes. Later, when I was looking for an image to attach to the poem, I found a painting by Ilya Repin called Barge Haulers on the Volga. It turns out that that was actually a thing. Russian peasants were hired to pull boats upstream on the Volga River. Who would have known?!
Barge Haulers on the Repin by Ilya Repin (1873)
Rush Rush
Said the Captain,
The Son of a Captain,
Whose Father was Captain before
We drive for the
Nethermost edge of the world
Where we'll meet
The great captains of yore.
We are told
That they wait us
Where ne'r a hiatus
Is known on that distant black shore.
But the devil will greet us
And slyly entreat us
With the lie
Just a little bit more.
I ran a little junk booth for a while. I went around and asked the yard sales to give me what they didn’t sell, and some did. And then I sold it at the swap meet. And I made a few dollars.
Next to my junk booth was another junk booth. And the man who ran the booth was named Rod. Now and then, Rod would come and buy some of my junk to add to his junk. He was my biggest customer. And I was surprised that he bought my junk since he had so much junk of his own, about a fifth of an acre’s worth, strewn out on plywood sheets atop little metal sawhorses, and more stuff underneath, and laid out on tarps. It was quite a collection.
People came and wandered up and down the isles of junk. Now and then, they’d want something. When we offered them a price, more often than not, they’d try to get it for less. After all, we were dealing in junk, people’s left over excesses. And the expectation was that we would let it go for nearly nothing. And in this we rarely disappointed our clientele.
One day, Rod asked me to help him move some things. “I’ll pay you twenty dollars,” he said. And I couldn’t pass that up. So we went to a long quonset hut that was full of junk. I was amazed! “The lady that owns this place says I have to get out,” he said. The building was full of the types of things that Rod sold at the swap meet. And interspersed were little piles of rotting food, old papers, nudie magazines. The next stop was a motorhome, packed full of junk, and then a large storage unit packed from side to side and high up to the ceiling, and then an out building in someone’s yard. “Do you pay rent on all of these?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “That’s why I’m so broke.”
“How many do you have?” I asked.
“Ten or twelve,” he said.
Wow! I didn’t say it outloud. But wow!
As we were lifting a weight set into my van, Rod complained. “This is hard work,” he said. “I’m getting too old for this.”
“Have you thought of doing something else?” I asked.
“Yeah. But I don’t know what else I’d do.” he said.
As we went from place to place, I wondered what the value of his stash might be. I started adding it up in my mind - just the few things that passed through my hands. And I quickly realized that even at garage sale prices, Rod might be a millionaire.
But the flow was all damned up. Too much in, and not enough out. And he seemed to lack the ability to put any real value on things. “It’s all junk,” he said. And it seemed like that was how he felt about himself. His face was dirty, his hair unwashed, his fingernails long. And he wore the same clothes every day. But there was no time to take care of what he had.
All the same, he was a busy man, stashing, hoarding, and moving it around from place to place. He sold an item here and there. And nearly every day, he bought more stuff. People stopped by his booth before going to the dump. They knew that Rod could not resist. He’d buy another pickupload full of junk with his last few dollars and go to bed worried about how he’d make ends meet.
And I had that strange but familiar feeling that I had been sent exactly to that place to witness Rod. “Why am I hear, God?” I kept asking.
After a week or so, I retired from helping Rod. I couldn’t take it anymore. I made my way to our desert camp and sat behind the steering wheel of the van thinking about Rod and about people and things. I wondered what it would take for him to turn the tide of his affairs. I realized that even if he stopped buying junk and devoted the rest of his life to the dispensing of his surplus property, he would probably die before he finished. And the canker of the dark and rotting places might just kill him in the process. The only solution I could see was to walk away from it all.
And then I thought about myself. “What am I still holding on to?” I wondered. And I wrote this poem in the spirit of that question and desire.
Walk away boy,
Walk away.
You'll never have enough
And you'll never find the thing
That you were missing.
Walk away.
You know that she's a fake
And that she lures you
With a dream.
Walk away.
And let them come
And carry it all
Into the hollow
Of their empty eyes,
Where the darkness
Needn't bind you any longer.
Fly away.
Fly away, boy,
Into the brightness
Of the morning sunshine.
And let the coolness of it's rivers
Wash away the mystery
Of all you hoped to find there.
It is easier than you think.
And it is a breath away.
It is a moment.
It is now.
A week or two after writing this poem, a friend helped me close my junk booth. We loaded it all up in the van and in his truck and dropped it off at the homeless relief center. After they served the evening meal, they let the homeless take what they wanted.
The volunteer said that most of it was gone within 15 minutes. One lady took the lion’s share, he said. But he shook his head and chuckled. “I don’t know what she will do with all that crap.” he said. “She lives in a tent!”
The body is the means through which God imparts His perfect love,
For it is the body that suffers. And it is through suffering well
That Godlike love develops.
Without the body,
We could not learn to love those
Who hate us, who hurt us, who despitefully use us, and persecute us.
None of these painful things can happen to us
While we are with Him in spirit,
Only in the body.
So cherish the body. It is the gift through which
God desires to impart his perfect love.
I live most of my life in a chair.
I eat there. I work there.
But I don’t sleep there.
The chair, it suits me,
Except when I want some exercise
Or to take a drive, or a dip in the lagoon
With friends and loved ones near.
Some dig ditches or some hang from poles in the air,
But not for me. For me, you see,
My life is best spent
In a chair.
Things are not what they appear, thank God.
And the apparent enemy is my friend
When seen through the lens
Of what is wrought through tribulation.
It’s a wonder to me that people do anything.
But you have to do something, I suppose.
And what I mean is business, economy.
There is so much work involved.
And anytime there is a need, someone fills it.
Isn’t that a miracle?!
And I suppose that the reason I am surprised
Is because my writing doesn’t feel like all the things
I do to make a living. And I wonder if all artists feel that way.
Probably not. There are those who art
In the same way I wash dishes or windows,
Or package seeds, or run a booth,
Or carry the deceased
From here to there.
I’ve done lots of things for work.
But these words here on this page are not like that.
All the same, my deepest whisper tells me
That one day these two worlds will collide
And merge into the same.
And that feels right.
To fly upon the back of steel
To ride into the risk of death, always,
Always, upon the edge of stormy days,
And to forget my mother’s worried glances.
One passenger, no luggage,
A life in the balance,
But free from the safety that would close me in
And keep me from the baking son
And the chapping wind.
I am alone in the world.
The past crumbles into dust behind me,
And no future promises anything
But the endless road,
And roaches
In cheap hotels
That line the highway of my dreams.
There is an old machine,
A massive conveyer belt I think, or at least it was.
It’s rusted and dingy, and it’s parked across the street.
It looks like a dinosaur, with it’s the long neck rising,
It’s massive head protruding from the top.
And nobody notices it there.
They drive past on their way to newer, shinier things.
But I like the dinosaur, heavy, immovable, and left behind.
I am a dinosaur, heavy, immovable, and left behind.
And yet alive. That’s what makes us different.
We, the broken, dingy, people left behind, will rise.
We’ll rise when shiny things are left behind.
Let’s say you have a child,
And the child goes away to college,
And then begins to sow his wild oats.
He skips all his classes and refuses to get a job.
He sleeps around with everyone and everything.
He starts using drugs and stealing.
And when confronted with his wrongs,
He becomes angry and belligerent.
And then, let’s suppose
That he gets away with it.
Let’s assume that he prospers in his wickedness
And that he continues for a decade, maybe two.
What would be your hope for that child?
Wouldn’t you long for his rock bottom?
Wouldn’t you hope that one day
He would reap what he has sown?
And wouldn’t his demise
Be the possible beginning of a new life?
Now, of course, he could curse God and die.
But he doesn’t really have much to lose, does he?
Well, now consider the world.
We are about to reap what we have sown.
And though it may burn our souls like fire
And shake us to our bones,
Isn’t it worth it
To be offered a new life more worth living.
I found an arrowhead,
And I tied it around my neck
As a symbol of power and strength,
A memory of the endless wars
And a message to myself and others
That I still remember the ancient art.
Not really.
It was a trinket tied with leather
That I found in a gift shop.
And I thought that it looked cool.
I wore it to school the next day
And my friends thought that it was cool,
So I kept on wearing it through my youth.
I wore it on graduation day,
And I wore it when I went away a soldiering.
And that did not go so well for me.
But we won the war and I came home
With the arrowhead still hanging around my neck.
And when I did, I found another war waiting,
The war to make a life and living
As a broken combat vet.
And that didn’t go so well for me.
I married once. I married twice. I married once again.
And all the while, I wore the arrowhead.
The leather wore out several times
And I replaced it.
But I never threw it away. I don’t know why.
I lived alone in my late forties and thereafter.
I slept in abandoned cars.
I slept in tents in the woods.
People would have said that I was homeless
But I was not. Just unable, unwilling,
I’m not sure which,
To try at a losing game.
And I drank a lot. That started with the war
And continued throughout the losing battle of my life.
And I was never able to connect with people very well,
Wives and children, coworkers.
Even my siblings, we were close when I was young,
But things were different after the war.
And by the time I was fifty, they didn’t recognize me.
To be honest I didn’t recognize myself.
But I’m not so sure I cared.
I lived a long time that way before I got help.
And I have never really gotten better.
But with the help of a higher power, I sobered up.
And when I did, I let myself remember,
Not everything, that’d be too much,
But the good things,
Particularly the people that I loved.
And even now, they stand out in my memory
With amber light around.
And I think that I am at peace with what I’ve lost
And hopeful for the thing that I have found.
And today, the winter light is bright out on the desert.
I untie the arrowhead from my neck
And hike as far as I can manage.
I dig a hole and drop the old arrowhead in,
Cover it up and tamp it down.
And then I make my way back home.
And I am not sure why I did that.
It was a trinket, bought in a gift shop.
And I’m not sure why I wore it for so long.
But now that it’s gone, I feel strangely lighter,
And the future is bright before me.
And that is a strange thing
For an old man like me to feel.
I’ve found the sacred spectacles
That open the portal to things unseen.
And every morning, I put them on my nose
And stare out a world reborn.
And if you want,
I’ll conjure you a pair
From my sacred imagination.
And there. Now they’re yours.
Just believe that it is so.
Believe that things are not what they appear
And you’re halfway there. It’s your choice.
You can keep seeing the world
Through darkened eyes
Or start to believe
That there is something more.
And if you can imagine a brighter world,
If you can refuse to see it
As anything less,
Then you have found the sacred spectacles.
Moon rocks, I suppose, are like any other rocks.
Yet they come from so far away.
And that makes them something special,
But only to those who care.
And I don’t care for rocks so much
As for the things that can’t be hauled away.
Like the feeling that you get looking at rocks
With friends who are there to stay.
And yet, at end of day,
I wouldn’t mind a trip to the moon
If I could make it there and back in a few days.
But I don’t think I would fill my pockets with rocks
Unless the friend I brought
Thought that they were beautiful.
Behind the steering wheel of life,
So many places I could go.
Luckily a still small voice
Whispers
What I really want.
Otherwise, I might choose differently.
Toilet paper, how fine an unneeded necessity!
Woven through the culture
Like silk.
And what would we do without it?
Do without it I suppose.
But it’s nice while it lasts! :-)
I eat a lot of bananas,
But I am not a monkey,
Just a guy with a weak heart.
A weak heart means less blood to everything
Including the parts that digest the food.
And so to keep things moving
I have had to adjust.
I have had to choose a gentler fare.
And I wonder if that’s how life is for all of us.
There is no “one size fits all” prescription for life.
We do our best to keep the machine running for as long as we can.
And perhaps that is a good reason to be kind to those
Who do not eat bananas.
I like to see people more than things.
And it’s so often things that are portrayed
When you glance at the cover of a magazine.
And the famous sell themselves off for parts
When what interests me is the whole.
All the same, now and then,
I search for it in between
And now and again, I find it,
But most of the time it’s fallen through
By giving the world the thing it thinks it wants.
Perhaps it is a mistake to look for a soul where there is not.
Surely. Surely. And there are plenty of wholes hiding
In my daily walk. But even there, sometimes
They’re hard to see, for so many
Advertise their useless parts,
Covering up the whole
I long to see.
And would to God
That I saw more people and less things.
I stand upon the beach of time
As the tide of stars and space
Roll in and lap up on my feet.
They soothe the memories of my fate
And remind me of sacred promises
Whispered in the night sky of my dreams
And there I see, out on the horizon
The sacred unseen streets
Of cities built without hands
And the angels that walk there
Call to me to step out upon the mystery
Of the great ocean of space, and to believe
That the impossible is possible.
“Walk upon the water,” they say.
“Come home, Adam, to the memory
Of the thing that you once were.”
And I step out upon the stars and space.
I leave the beach of time behind me,
And enter into the wilderness
That lies between worlds.
And I walk, walk, walk, by faith.
Until the beach of time disappears
And I am alone with the sacred memory
Of the call of angels.
My life did not turn out like a Hallmark Movie.
But in my heart, in my mind, it’s something like that.
I like surprises.
Not everybody does, but I do.
I like not knowing exactly where things are going.
And I prefer to believe that things will turn out just right,
Better than just right, in fact, that they will result in a thing
Far better than I can expect or hope for, or create
Through my limited means and wits.
And I like to think that I am not
The creator of the good fortune,
But that it is just that: good fortune,
And that it comes from above,
The divine reward of faith and trust.
And that seems to work for me
To spite the times when it appears that it has not.
And to spite even that, I still like surprises.
I read the books that you don't write.
I peruse the verses written
In subtle glances
This way and that.
And in the forest of your dreams
I sit for hours in the quiet of your library of themes.
For there are books you do not write.
And it is my job to take them down
From the dusty shelf,
To air them out in the sunlight for all the world to see.
I write the books that you don’t write.
And then you read them and think,
He knows me.
I am homeless in the heart of His Love.
And that is not a bad place to be.
No home but the invisible arms
That wrap me up from day to day.
Oh, thank you God for not forsaking me!
The lamppost in Narnia,
An oil lamp hanging from a tree branch,
Or the street lamp that lights
The silhouetted couple
In the empty city street by night.
It is a solitary light in an unusual place.
It is the expected backdrop light
Of every darkened city scene.
It lights the way, It marks the spot,
It frames the scene in amber tones,
Or roots itself immoveably
Awaiting Kings and Queens.
It is left by one who thinks
Of those who will come after.
And it is found by the receivers
Of the gift of things unseen.
It is the lamppost,
The lamp left for others,
The light in the darkened place,
And the landmark that shows the way
Toward better things.
I am in Amish Land,
And I look out my window
To find a horse and carriage
Tied to the post that marks the parking spot.
And I wonder at their tenacity,
Their drive to preserve the old way.
I wonder and yet, I also relate.
I am surprised at how much
I am the same.
I live far simpler
Than my contemporaries.
I do not vote. And I cannot be compelled to go to war
Even to save my life or the lives of those I love.
And some people would say that is evil.
But it doesn’t matter.
It’s who I am.
It’s who I came to be.
And though I do not drive a horse and carriage,
I do put reigns upon the places
That the world would lead.
And I find peace
In my simple life. And gratitude.
And I can only imagine that they do too.
The moon followed us home,
But my parents said that it couldn’t sleep inside.
All the same, I spread the curtains wide
And let it’s light fall on my blanket.
And every night it came,
And every night
I spread the curtains wide,
Day after day, year after year.
Except when it was cloudy
And then I was afraid.
And on those nights I shut the curtains tight
And went to sleep as fast as I could.
But always it returned.
And through my life
It’s followed me,
The moon,
A faithful friend
In times of strife.
And when I cannot sleep,
I walk beneath it’s loving light
And it follows me where e’er I go.
The light that doesn’t know
How to leave me.
Thank you, moon.
Angel Oak
Dripping down,
Shed your mantle over me.
And let me hide beneath your branches
When the world is too much for me to handle,
And spread your leaves to fan the nakedness of my frailty.
For I am not what the world expected.
I am less than what they ordered.
But here beneath your ancient branches,
Leaning back into your massive trunk,
I am safe from all that the world
Would have me be.
And it’s enough
To know
That we are here together,
Two old souls who have weathered the ages
And still remain to spite the ones
Who would turn us into lumber.
The inspiration for today’s poem came from a picture of the Angel Oak on Johns Island, SC.
What do baby gargoyles do?
And where do the ugly faces hide
Who do not want to guard the cathedral
From all those who cannot bear to see anything but beauty.
It’s kind of ugly when you think of it that way.
I am not inclined to say anything anymore.
My views have changed so much
And surely what is good for one
Will not be good for all.
I wish that people would turn to God,
The ones who don’t that is
Because he knows.
He has the answers.
I don’t.
I content myself with what comes,
And the light of ages pours itself down on me
A day at a time, a moment at a time,
And warms me to my mission.
And I cannot receive it all,
But some
Falls into my cup.
And it’s enough to keep me moving, loving, speaking, writing.
How great the Love that pours out into undeserving cups!
And it’s enough. It’s enough.
There are more people out there than you realize.
The world is full of them.
And each one
Is intricate.
I could travel the whole world round
And never meet enough of them.
And so I have to content myself with one at a time.
And yet I know that I will never really understand
The width and breadth of humanity.
And yet I think that’s what I’m doing.
And the further I go, the more I see the vastness of it.
And it fills me with wonder to know
How small we are in comparison to the whole,
And yet how wondrous and complex,
The reality of any human soul.
There is an ancient magic, long forgotten,
But we dream of it with tales of hobbit holes,
And villages that hang from rainforest canopies
And enchanted castles that only appear
At a certain time of year,
And only to the pure in heart.
It is the magic of being there,
And yet blending in so well
With the nature of things
As to be invisible.
But long ago, we lost the art.
It fell into the sacred, guarded, chasm
That lies between here and the heavenly realm.
But this magic is returning to the earth.
It is claiming all those who can forsake the extra thing
And fly upon the wings of unheard voices
That speak out of the sacred place.
But the gift of invisibility
Is only for the pure in heart.
And the sacred chasm opens now
And for a time, a thousand years perhaps.
And eventually, it will close back up.
Will you claim the sacred gift
While it is open?
I took a trip upon a starship bound for nowhere.
I thought that it would be a holiday,
But it was not.
I was disappointed
By the emptiness of space,
The vastness of it’s lonely solitude,
The unspeakable quiet of nobody there.
I thought I would go mad
For lack of somebody to talk to.
And yet, the inward voice
That had guided me in all my journeys was there.
And together, we visited planet after planet.
I let it take the lead. And the views were not half-bad
Because of that. But I missed people
And so I went back home
To be with my people,
But I told them
Not to go.
There was a time when the mystery of life held me captive,
And tomorrows were trusted to sort themselves out.
A shooting star was entertainment,
And the dream of what I’d be changed from day to day.
And it wasn’t bad,
It was good,
Childhood.
And perhaps I can go back.
Perhaps I can let go a little more to the mystery,
And let my dreams and entertainment be swayed
By the unexpected.
And maybe that’s not bad.
It might just be good
If I let it.
My mind is a dark wood
With barren trees and brown, dead, leaves, mostly fallen,
And a common finch at the heart of it.
And the deepest magic
Is found
By
Believing that barren things are green with unseen leaves,
And that the heart of spring is found
Where the whole year-round
There whispers
Life
From the imagination of the dead wood of winter’s garden.
God knows what men can’t see.
So don’t worry about the outward.
Focus upon inward things.
Don’t deny the thing inside
That tells you what is right.
You may not always do what’s right,
None of us are perfect.
And you may not always know what’s right,
There is no shame in ignorance.
But beware of saying that right is wrong
And wrong is right
When you know better.
For you might just convince yourself.
And once convinced, your state is truly terrible
Since you will fight for the wrong that’s right
And fight against the right that’s wrong.
And the spirit of all that deceives then takes control
And drives toward the abyss.
And surely, surely,
It will be a long time
Before the fog lifts,
Yes, truly, only ruin can help you when
The truth that burns within has been denied.
There is something about the form in silhouette that we like to see.
We don’t always want to see each of the particulars.
But the simple thing, the form,
Cast upon the backdrop
Of evening colors
Is beautiful.
Why is that?
Perhaps it is because peace lies
In swallowing the whole
To spite the ugly parts.
And perhaps that’s how we were persuaded
To choose earth life before we came here.
We saw the whole of our future lives
Silhouetted upon the backdrop
Of God’s perfect evening colors
And we said, sure. I’ll take it. It’s beautiful.
I can watch the life of leaves.
And so far, I have seen 49 crops,
49 crops, And they come and go
Without me doing anything.
It makes me think that life
Might be more on track
Than I realize.
Oh Great Man in the sky,
Holy Father, much maligned,
Look down with mercy upon us, your wayward children,
And shed grace upon our weakness,
For we cannot see you much of the time,
And so often we forget the way.
Oh, Jesus, Son of the Divine,
Have mercy upon us in our wayward climb,
And find us here in the depths of our worldly blindness.
And guide our steps day by day,
And forgive us when we think
That we can figure it out.
Holy Spirit, whisper of the Divine,
Please give to us this day
The manna that doesn’t keep.
Give us answers for the very moment
And keep us from thinking that we can figure it out.
For you are Holy, Perfect Spirit, Son, and Father much maligned.
And you know the way. When we stray, you know the way.
If we will but turn to you in blindness
And offer up our lofty thoughts as a sacrifice
For they make us think we know the way
When in the end, they lead astray.
And only day by day
You show the way.
Day by day you show the way.
If I had a great balloon, I’d travel
This way and that, and up and down,
And throughout the world, from nation to nation,
And from people to people.
I’d float it into the hole on the top of the earth
And visit the ones who live inside.
And I’d take it past the stratosphere
Into the open expanse of space,
Not because I had some appointment to keep,
But because I wanted to wander off
And follow the need
To amble.
And I wouldn’t tell the Martians I was coming.
I’d just show up and pretend that I was one of them.
I’d wander the streets of the alien towns
And sit in roadside cafes
And watch the people,
The alien people,
And soak up the thing they are.
And then I’d find the downcast Martians there
And put my arm around them.
I’d make them feel that I was one of them
And pretend that I was theirs and they were mine.
Yes, if I had a great balloon, I’d travel far.
I’d make the universe my passion.
And I’m not so sure that that is wholesome.
Perhaps there are reasons for the bounds
That ties us fast to this little earth.
I don’t know. But one thing is for sure,
My heart flies upon a great balloon,
It wraps itself around the downtrodden
Of people, alien people, not like myself,
But like myself nonetheless.
And I think that that’s ok.
Remember, when your project
To do a thing for God goes wrong,
When the church never rises from the prairie,
Or the community of Saints
Falls into disarray
And confusion,
That the City of God is not made by earthly hands.
It is not a thing, not a place.
It is not made of lumber or brick or mortar.
It is made of people who have come through great tribulation.
And the pillars that hold up the temple therein are people.
And the gates to enter therein are the names
Of Jacob’s dysfunctional family.
And the New Jerusalem itself is simply people
Why else would He write the name of New Jerusalem upon them
If they were not that very city that was prophesied.
And by this we see that the great work of God
Is not the thing that you build in his name,
It is the thing that you become in the process of trying.
He does not need the earthly things he asks for.
He needs your obedience when he calls.
And the purity of heart that results
From coming through “great tribulation” in His name.
Rev 7:14…these are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Rev 3:12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
Rev 21:12-13 …a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates
I am inclined to sell what sells if it is honest, aren’t you?
And to sell plenty of it so that I can let it rest
At the end of the day
And focus on other things.
After all, I am not smart or clever.
So I had better not try to speculate.
Beneath the sea there are things
That we don’t know about.
In the unfathomable cold
Of the Ocean Deep,
There is peace,
Peace for you and me,
Peace because we don’t know what lives there,
Peace because we cannot see the things
That swim in the unseeable dark
Of the Ocean Deep.
Yes, there is peace
In the great tumult of the waves
And the currents that move like highways
In and out and through the thing that we call the sea.
Yes there is peace. And the master of all that is unknown
Sees the things that we can’t see and makes his home
Amidst the chaos of the thing we can’t perceive.
And for that reason, there is peace
In the things that we don’t know about.
Even in the dark of the unfathomable Ocean Deep.
If I want to connect with Him
I resist the impulse to fill the void with noise.
I sit in silence. But even after all these years,
It still burns sometimes.
There is a planet where the sun never sets
And it is gold all over.
There is a planet where the light shines from every stick
And the buzzards lay light-filled eggs that glow all over.
There is a future planet,
And on that planet, there is a man whose vest shines
Like the sun at noonday.
Yes there is a planet where light is everything
And we are going there one day
If we can only leave this world behind us forever,
Leave this world behind forever.
And I am going there today.
Will you come with me
To the planet that shines upon the world of yesterday
And beacons to those who want the light
More than the world of darkness.
Yes, the golden light-filled planet
Shines bright in the heavens of my deepest faith-filled thoughts.
And I see it. I will see it.
And you see it. You will see it.
It is coming for us today.
Yes the golden light-filled planet
Has come for us today.
I used to try to be good.
But I don’t do that anymore.
Since I don’t know what is good.
God is good. That I know.
And I trust the thing that I am
Because I am not my own creation.
And it seems that though I am not good
That goodness still visits me to spite myself
And I am grateful for that.
And yet, I also do not throw off inhibition
Because I do love goodness.
I love each lovely thing
That I have always loved.
I cling to every beautiful virtue that I can.
And I let go of the things that I can’t cling to
Trusting that in time they will come to me
To spite my inperfection. In other words,
I believe that He is doing a work in me
And I trust the process.
Everyone wants their marriage to last forever
But to have a forever marriage,
You must stay married
Even when your spouse renigs.
And to do that you must know by the Spirit of God
That faith will do the trick.
And only God can tell you that.
And not everybody is willing to pay such a price.
And not everybody believes that God can make it known.
But for those who do, and those who know, I broach the subject.
For the Adam and Eve relationship functions upon certain principles.
And if we are ever to return to the Garden of Eden,
And to that love which bound our first parents
In an eternal, never-ending, union,
We must consider the stuff
That makes it up.
We need so little to be happy.
But you may not know that yet.
But it will come. Simplicity is on the rise.
It is claiming the world for Him,
Till only the foxes will have holes.
And then, the end.
You will never fully understand me
While we are in this world.
And I can’t explain it to you.
I wish to God that I could.
But I am unable to explain it even to myself,
Though I know the wind that blows.
And my life has been a life upon the wind,
Blowing this way and that.
And I haven’t known anything
Except that I am not my own,
And that I must go where the wind blows.
But one day, we’ll both go home.
We’ll travel north to the place
From which the wind blows.
And there it will all make sense.
And we will rejoice in it together
When the truth is no longer hidden
By solid things that don’t make so much sense as the wind.
I am a traveling man, a traveling man.
I never stay too long.
I take a job and leave it.
But when I stop, I hunker down
And search out long-forgotten friends,
Kindred, broken, torn-up, souls
The grown-ups leave behind
And they hang on by the tassels
To crumbs left for the dogs.
And I take down their stories
To tell the world about the ones
That chose the most unwanted roles
So that others could be the winners.
For someone has to lose in life.
Someone has to be the one
That falls behind.
It’s an important part,
And there is much to learn
From being broken and despised.
But it is easy to forget.
And so I take notes.
I write it down
And then hold it up before the world
In all its gruesome beauty.
A traveling man, a traveling man,
And I never stay too long.
I take a job. I write it down.
I tell the story. I leave the town.
And all because I’m a traveling man,
A traveling man, a traveling man.
It is good to receive things for free
Because we are freer with the things
That we don’t pay for,
And especially if we believe
That there will be more.
Think about it.
If you work all month at minimum wage
And then go out to eat and order fillet mignon,
And if you spend every spare dollar on that meal,
Then it is precious.
You hover over the plate protectively.
You lose yourself in the experience
And every other person in the restaurant
Disappears in the momentary bliss of that dish.
And heaven help the soul
That gets between you
And your dearly bought succulence.
And yet, when the 18 wheeler
Comes barrelling down the canyon
And turns over just in front of your house
And spills forth 20 pallets full of frozen choice cuts,
You call your friends
And the town descends upon the pile
And your only joy is that it didn’t go to waste.
Do the thing that you’re afraid of
If you know that it is right,
And let the chips fall
Where they will.
It’s better than the alternative.
When you live by faith,
You reap where you do not sow
Because you never know
How you'll be paid
For sowing seeds
Where you will not reap.
Be grateful for the future.
Do you know it?
It comes
As surely as the past has flown.
And the truth of future things is whispered
To everyone who sacrifices present joys
For the sake of better tomorrows.
Prophets and sages of every age
Have fled the rule of mammon
Because as long as they believed
That they needed money to survive,
They were not free to say the truth without fear.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
Is a one-at-a-time story.
It was an interaction
Between two people.
And because of that,
It is a love story.
I suppose that if Christ had something else in mind,
It might have been something other than
A one-at-a-time story.
It might have been a help-them-all story.
The good Samaritan, just as likely,
Might have started a 501c3
With the lofty goal
Of seeing to it that not one traveler
Perish by the wayside.
But then it would have been
Another kind of story,
And not one story,
Two stories,
The story of the founder
And the story of the recipient.
“I founded a corporation,” the founder says.
“And we helped lots of people.”
“I filled out the papers,” the Samaritan says.
“And they were very prompt
To render me their service.”
Yes, it would be a different thing altogether
If Christ had had something else in mind
Besides a one-at-a-time story.
But I am not so sure
We could call it
A love story.
And I think I like Christ’s story better.
I am so grateful, so grateful,
To enter into the Holy Land
With nothing but myself.
I came into the world naked
And I enter into the next world naked.
I am out of the mountains now
And the land opens up and spreads out
For as far as the eye can see.
And the windmills turn
And flash
Their red lights.
And it is a different world
From the world that I came from.
There is peace in the silent unbroken plain,
There is not so much going on.
And I breathe a sigh of relief.
And feel the crusty shackles fall
Around me as I weep
But not with tears.
What are we after with the new life, economically?
We are after a society
Where you can easily maintain
Every necessity of life
On a small income:
Food, clothing,
Shelter, tools,
And somebody to love.
This way of life will mean
That whether you run the factory
Or work on the factory floor, it is the same.
It will vanquish the fear of loss
And make the top and the bottom bold
To do the right thing, no matter the cost.
And doing the right thing
Will make the world better.
And what means do we employ
To bring about such a change?
Not force, Not politics, Not sweeping campaigns,
But quiet and faithful perseverance in the simple way
And belief in the hand of the unseen,
So that every convert to this way of life
Is purchased by the example of another.
And though it may seem foolish or naive,
This way of life will one day be the only way
That people can imagine living.
Write it down. It will be.
And the people of the earth will grow rich
So that, eventually, they will stop counting the cost,
But will rejoice, not in what they might obtain,
But in the thing they give away.
Love is easiest when you believe.
And resentment springs out of unbelief.
Think about it.
If the still small voice whispers that it will be alright,
And you believe that it is so,
Then it’s easy to be kind
And faithful
To spite hardships.
But if you doubt the still small voice
Then it is hard to stay positive
When the chips are down.
And that breeds harsh words
And unfaithfulness.
Even trifles become hard to endure,
And the nihilist is born.
So faith is a principal building block of love.
And the two grow up together
As the hearer of the Word of God believes.
I met “D” on the backside of the mountain.
We were parked along a wide turnout in the road.
We had stayed there for the night.
And just as the sun was creeping over the mountaintop,
I stepped out of the RV to see him,
Not 50 yards away, his shirt off,
And his great bare belly glistening in the morning sunshine.
But he did not appear fat to me,
Nor naked on the upper half.
He was exactly clothed with the thing he was,
And it was beautiful and strange.
It was like noticing a plump groundhog
Who just so happened to poke himself out of his hole
At the exact moment that I glanced out of my front door.
And I knew that we were supposed to meet.
“Hello,” I said. And he was startled.
He had been riding his bicycle down the mountainside
And had stopped to rest. Between his legs
Was an old ten-speed bike
With a little trailer following behind.
As I approached him,
My family came out to say hello as well,
And the children looked up at him in wonder.
There was something innocent about “D”, and childlike.
He fit in with the canyon and the pines
Like a wild thing, but harmless.
And when he spoke, he spoke in broken thoughts.
I translate it here so you can understand.
But it wasn’t that way that day,
Something was fractured inside his mind,
But perfectly so, I thought.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Everywhere,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“But most recently, Steamboat Springs.”
“Really,” I said. “Well, what’s it like?”
“They’ve got the mask,” he said,
“They’ve got it bad.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s too bad,”
“I won’t wear it,” he said.
“It’s of a reprobate mind,
“And they’re given over to it!”
And he pulled out a much-thumbed bible.
And quoted me chapter and verse,
But not like a preacher,
Like one who believes the thing he says
And isn’t afraid to do without for the sake of it.
“So you are homeless?” I asked.
“I have a home,” he said,
It’s here and there, it’s everywhere.
I’m at home in nature,” he said,
And I believed him.
“I’m traveling across Colorado,” he said,
“And back again, most likely.
I love the mountains.”
“Me too,” I said.
“But what about the wintertime?”
“Oh, I’ve been cold,” he said.
“I remember one time,
I was coming down the mountain
And I was so cold, I thought I’d die.
I was afraid, and it was the only time I ever did this,
But I went inside a little house.
There was no one there,
And I warmed myself.
I slept the night.
But the whole time, I was afraid
That someone would come,
And I’d be in their house.
But I was so cold,
I couldn’t help it.
And in the morning,
I left a gift to say thank you,”
I wondered what kind of gift he left
Since “D” did not think like other people.
And I wondered if they noticed
The trinket lying on the shelf.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“D”, he said.
“Dee, like DEE?” I asked.
“No, just D, like the letter D,” he said.
“Really?! I’ve never heard that name before,” I said.
“I named myself,” he said.
“I had another name my father gave me,
But that was bad and I don’t like to remember it.”
I could tell that he had had a painful childhood,
So painful that he had to separate himself
From the thing it was.
And for a half an hour
“D” shared himself with us.
And every few broken thoughts,
He’d pull out the much-thumbed bible
And read us a verse.
He loved his bible.
It was a part of the thing he was,
Like the canyon, and the pines,
And the sunshine,
And the bike,
And the trailer following behind.
And all of it, I thought, was a thing perfected.
And I was so glad that my children were there to see it.
It’s rare, I thought, to find a thing so pure.
And just then my wife
Pulled out another sacred book,
Not sacred to most, but cherished by us,
And handed it to “D”.
“If you love the bible,
I think that you will love this too,” she said.
But I could tell that “D” didn’t have room for another book.
He recoiled at the sight of it.
But he tried to be polite.
“Well, I’ll try,” he said.
And I thought that perhaps it was a mistake
To trifle with something so perfect.
“But’s it’s right,” she said.
And I knew her intuition,
So I didn’t protest.
But I wondered what it would take
To integrate anything else into the perfect wild thing
That traveled up and down and over
The mountains of Colorado.
“Well, goodbye,” he said
When we were finished.
“It was good to meet you ‘D’,” we said,
“It was good to meet you too,” he said,
And we wished each other best
And then watched as he mounted the bicycle
And took off down the mountainside,
His broad, tanned back glistening
In the morning sunshine.
And it brought a tear to my eye.
My children waved and shouted “Goodbye D.”
And he raised a hand and waved,
And that made them happy.
We’ve often talked about our travels since,
And the sacred things that we experienced.
But I don’t know if there is anything so sacred
As the day we stepped outside
Into the morning sunshine
And found the most endangered creature
Of the Colorado countryside, “D”.
She was born to travel,
To move from town to town
And to sit around the campfire
Sharing the unshiny gifts of the road
With forever friends whom she just barely met.
But for now, she’s bound up at home
With the care of little ones.
Domesticity.
What a curse, and what a blessing,
For one whose heart longs to be moving,
Whose soul needs the deep green of the redwoods
And the perfect clear blue of the Caribbean Sea.
What a curse, and what a blessing,
To sacrifice the thing she is
So that her little ones
Might be.
The gift of things is best for children
Who don’t yet know what’s best for them
Nor what they really want.
The gift of money is best for those
Who know what they want
If the thing they want
Is best for them.
A key difference between communism
And the oneness that exists between brothers
In God's unseen Kingdom
Is that God's Kingdom
Does not rely upon
Two of the principal pillars of communism -
Force and deceipt.
Truth and free will and brotherly love
Prompt all of the giving and receiving.
No force. No lies.
I am going to ask somebody else
To pay for the book that you receive.
That’s the new economy.
I’m going to give you the book for free
And I am not going to ask you to pay for it.
I’m going to ask for what I need right now.
And since you’re not here right now,
I will ask the nearest friend I meet.
Can I have food to eat?
Can I have the thing I need?
That’s the new economy.
You sow where you do not reap,
And you reap where you do not sow.
And you can buy the book on Amazon if you please.
We’re in-between and so it is a transition.
And all of this is an experimentation
Upon the Word… a work of faith
To see how far we can press
Into the New Life.
I know that God will provide for me.
But outward things press in
And beg to be taken care of.
And they can become vexatious.
And so I like to push them out, to pay them early.
And thus, to know that they are taken care of
So that I can ply my trade in peace,
Also, to define them and keep them small.
That makes every surplus dollar extra-credit.
I like to be on the edge of what I have.
I like not knowing where my next meal will come from.
It gives me sweet pleasure
To ride upon providence.
So a strategy brews
To shed what I have quickly-
To invest it into the ones I love
Before my right hand
Can know what my left hand is doing,
And to spread my bread upon the waters
And thus be ever on the very wake
Of what God provides.
This post seems contradictory to the last one.
But I sense a resolution
Though it’s hard to describe.
I think that it is something like
Shed more often, and outsource the frugality
Wherever possible to the ones you serve.
The frugal man will always have the advantage
Over the man who spends beyond his means.
But we have forgotten what it means to be frugal.
Spend far less than what you make
And never go into debt.
That definition will work.
I met a man who lived that way
And he was wealthy in a way
That I have never seen
In another human being.
It was almost unearthly,
Powerful. Humble.
And after all these years
It seems that God has brought me
To the thing I learned in him
With one addition:
To now and then shed it all
And start again.
An ad just played before the video
And suggested that I needed to manifest something,
And it pulled me in.
Yeah, maybe I need that... I thought.
But it is out there.
It suggests
That what I have is not enough.
And isn't that the opposite of wealth?
I busked today.
And it was the children
That paid my way.
They thought it was cool.
And they called their friends
And dropped coins into my case.
That surprised me. But it was beautiful.
A certain feeling visits me today.
I remember it from my childhood.
It is the feeling of looking out on the world in silence,
And seeing everything just how it appears,
Without interpretation.
And you would think that the sentiment
Would be neutral, but it’s not.
There is a warm and definite sense
Of everything being just right,
As if existence itself
Has a favorable opinion of itself.
But strangely, it’s not perfect.
The flaws are more pronounced.
And that’s part of what makes it beautiful.
And that makes me wonder
If the things we think are right
Are not necessarily right.
Perhaps reality is right
If we see it through child’s eyes.
And perhaps, the more we see it that way
The more we’ll be in keeping
With the true perception,
The rightest perception.
Perhaps then, we’ll be less likely
To try to force the world into the image
Of the thing we want it to be.
And that seems right.
I sit on the edge of the world - looking in.
And here upon the ridge of heaven
There is Peace.
If we can create for ourselves
A living hell in this life.
Then it only makes sense
That the hell that we create might continue
If the blackness of our hearts is real
And not imagined.
And if our conscience pricks us here
When our eyes are dimmed
By deceitful outward appearances,
Then the same conscience might prick us there
When the falsehood of our outer shell is stripped away,
And all the more if we see more clearly there.
We don’t see clearly here,
And that’s the problem.
Our conscience can be seared.
We can sin without regret.
All the more reason
To face the inward contradictions
Before we discover too late
That what we sowed in life
Follows us into eternity.
I will be moving for the rest of my life,
Moving, moving, ever moving.
For it calls me, ever calls me
To wander, ever wander
Down the roads and byways
In and out and through the earth until
I am called back home.
And it is such a comfort
To know that in my restless journey
I have found a home,
A place to warm
Myself beside the fire
That burns within my bosom
And calls me to the ones
Whose lonesome stories I must know.
We are one in our lost stories.
We are one in the forsaking
And together we will wander
Wander, wander, at His bidding
Till the answers come a knocking
Come a knocking and presenting
Come a knocking and unlocking
The doors that will unbreak us
Though the world itself forsake us
In the waiting,
We are not forgotten
And though lost for a season,
We will find our way back home.
I like this place.
I like this time of year.
And I like this time of day,
The way the sun reflects so gently
Off the bricks of the buildings across the street,
Not like the brutal sun of summertime.
And on the mountain,
The light casts shades
Into the crevices and dimples
Of the wooded, colored, slopes.
And the hush of Autumn blankets everything
Here on the street with the peace
That only visits once per year.
I want to wrap it up and carry it
Into the cold and clouded
Meager days of winter,
But I can’t.
All the same, it’s precious.
How can I possibly complain about anything
When there are days like this.
“A week ago,” she said,
“From Kosovo,” she said.
“Really!” I said.
“Yes.”
And there was a bucket full of roses beside her,
Ten dollars a rose,
Kind of steep, I thought,
And a sign in her hand that said,
Please help, large family.
“How many are in your family?” I asked.
“My two sisters and me
And my father and mother.”
My family is bigger, I thought.
But I didn’t hold that against her.
“And where are you staying?” I asked.
“A hotel,” she said. “A hundred dollars a night.”
And her eyes went wide,
And so did mine.
“That’s a lot,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But you’ll be ok, I think,” I said.
And she nodded her head.
They know how to beg, I thought.
And they know how to sell. They’ll be ok.
And I handed her five dollars.
The mountain is laden
With yellow veils and brown
And the red oak climbs her sides
And to the North, the evergreen
Holds steady looking down
Upon the canyon.
So what?
It’s nothing new.
And yet each and every year
I find in it the hope of new beginnings.
Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement?
You say she has one.
And I say that I never agreed to that.
We had a different understanding,
An understanding that was renounced
And not by me.
But now you weep
And mourn uncontrollably
Because you believe that it is over.
But it’s not. The love is still inside of me.
And sooner or later, that love will win,
For all other things will fall away.
But this love will never cease.
It is eternal. It is the thing
That binds our family
Everlastingly.
And it doesn’t matter how long it takes.
She came to me
Through misty vision
Lest I slip into forgetting
And told me “You are the big wave,
And I the little wave.
You’ve taught me how to sail.”
And then she wrapped me up
Within her arms as one more reminder
That she loves me.
And that was sacred, blessed.
I thought that, perhaps,
She could not forgive me,
That she could not love me.
But I see that perhaps she does
Even to spite, or because
Of the thing I am.
Thank you, Father,
And please don’t let me forget!
We start another day of work
Early in the morning,
Long before the sun arises,
When the muse won't let us sleep.
It's the sacred poet's hour,
The hour when others must slumber
But we are blest with the best
Of midnight powers.
And if we rise to meet the thing
That lifts us from our beds,
Then we are blessed to hear the voice
That speaks from heaven's crest,
And then go forth into the world
To share the fruit of Eden's tree,
The tree that comes before and after
The fall of you and me.
And it's early in the morning
That we hear His voice the best.
In the early morning hours
We enter into rest.
I am at home with myself
Wherever I am,
Thank God.
But there was a time
When I required more.
So I understand the need
For book and chair,
And tea, And hearth,
And familiar footfalls
In the corridor,
And even for the great structure
Of mud and plaster,
Board, and brick,
And paint,
That rises up around it all.
And I understand
Why people stay
Even when the enemy
Is at their doors.
It is home.
It is the sacred thing
They feel while there
That binds them fast
And will not let them go.
And so,
They stay until
They can stay no more.
And only at the point of bayonet
Will they be torn away.
But I am a traveler.
I have learned
To wander.
And so,
I go.
And where I stop
Is home.
The scripture says
That they will beat their swords
Into plowshare. But when?
Exactly when they decide to, I suppose.
And who is they?
Anyone who chooses, I suppose.
And so if it is coming for us anyway.
Then why not start now?
After all, there will never be many
Until there have been a few.
And doesn't few begin with one?
And if one, why not you?
And yet, you’re a bit too late
To be the One, the First,
The Example to us all.
He came and died
Because His sword
Was bent the wrong way.
He forsook His life for many.
And showed us how
To bury our weapons of war
Deep into the earth,
And by so doing,
Sow a crop of peace
Though we pay for it with our lives.
I love the places where nobody cares
Like this parking lot.
It is a miracle that nobody
Is rushing out to tell me to leave.
But on the other hand, I'm clean.
It might be different if I made a mess.
And I am not a vagrant. I serve a purpose here.
I simply prefer the peaceful places
That, at this particular moment,
Man's ambition hasn't claimed.
There is something sacred there,
A quiet that the world can't find
In all of its frantic getting,
And keeping, and protecting.
In the absence of all of that, I think,
God claims the solitary places
For those who do not care
For the accumulation
Of earthly things.
I live in a mini-van
All cramped and small.
It's like living in a box.
But that's ok.
The rent is cheap
And I don't mind
Because I am a poet.
I don't need much -
A place to sleep,
And a chair,
And a typewriter.
And I sit there all day long and write
Except for the days when I stand in the open air
And rhyme for spare change.
A mini-van is just right
For one like me
Who lives on the move -
A poet's palace -
A mini-van.
A night of busking,
Two dollars earned.
It’s the beginning of another life
And the way of the traveling man.
My table’s out with copies of my book.
And I lure them with song. Why?
Because if I don’t do it,
Nobody will.
The Fender Acoustasonic 40,
The beginning of amplification.
What does it mean?
I am not sure.
But I bought one
With the intention of singing a song
That people can actually hear.
The Yamaha NCX1FM,
A beautifully sounding guitar,
With electronics built in.
I bought it on a whim.
Which is a thing I never do.
An investment. An intention to spend
My life playing the song that God intends.
I am surprised at how little I care.
I once used to believe that it was my duty
To be disturbed by the wickedness of the world.
I no longer feel that way.
It is not my duty to be disturbed by anything.
It is not my business.
And I no longer expect to change the world
By letting it disturb the heaven
That lives inside of me.
I trust God with the world that he has created.
I believe that he knows what he is doing.
And paradoxically, I find
That I am better able to help the little world around me
By remaining undisturbed.
There are truths that cannot be written down.
They are dispensed from heaven
Directly to the individual.
And they are precious,
Sacred, redemptive.
Believe in these,
Even before you have heard them.
And if you seek God and obey His voice,
Sooner or later you will be taught from on high.
Many believe
That they have found God
Because they have uncovered the supernatural.
But God is not to be found in parlor tricks.
He does not bend himself to satisfy our lusts.
And just because you can manifest a million dollars
Doesn't mean that God intends it.
And yet,
All good things
Follow them who believe,
Not because they set their hearts upon them,
But because God provides for his own.
Indeed, one of the greatest struggles
Of enlisting to follow that voice
That speaks from heaven,
Is that the more like heaven you become,
The less you are able to focus on earthly things.
Your whole desire becomes for the healing of the human family.
Your life, your work, is to mend the breach
Between heaven and Earth.
And the paradox
Is that once this world is forsaken,
Every element, every breath, every earthly thing
Enlists to further that cause along
So that you truly need not worry
About what you will wear
Or eat tomorrow.
All things are yours
And you are God's
And that's enough.
If you endure it well, you’ll find
That the places, the times,
When you sacrificed the most
Are the most endearing to your memory.
4:30 am
Sitting in my van,
And I hear coughing.
I gaze out the window
Toward the McDonalds
And see the silhouette of a man
Step, step, cough, cough, cough
Step, cough, cough, step cough
Homeless. The shelter is nearby
And they are all over around here.
And I wonder as I cough, cough, type cough,
And pretend I do not see,
What can be done?
3 hot meals a day
A block away.
A bed for some.
But it is more than that,
Demons that the benevolent cannot touch,
Death that works its way into the heart, the lungs.
And I think as we cough, cough, type, step
That we are connected.
And yet I notice him.
And he doesn’t notice me.
What does that mean?
Nothing perhaps.
Or not.
If you have the right intent,
The details can be sorted out.
If you just don’t care about what’s right,
Then you will never get the details sorted out.
And as they say, “the devil’s in the details.”
But the opposite is also true:
“Virtue resides in minute particulars.” - William Blake
When I work an ordinary job,
I cannot observe the natural rhythms
That I have been discussing in the last few posts.
And perhaps that is why I struggle with ordinary jobs.
I wonder how many people struggle like me.
Pittas are good at working long hours.
They probably fair best with the 9-5,
Or the 7-7, as the case may be.
But then again,
Kaphas are steady.
They may fair best with 9-5.
And the ambitious Pittas press on into the night.
10pm - 2am is also Pitta time.
That’s when people say
That they get their second wind.
We all do our best, I suppose.
Different energies, different styles.
And we’re all needed. So grateful for that.
They say that each person favors a particular energy.
Some are Vatas, some Kaphas, and some Pittas.
I am definitely a Vata - dreamy,
Thin, moody, creative.
And I believe that is why
The afternoons are so vexatious to me
If I am not doing something creative.
Pittas, on the other hand,
Can get a lot done.
They are very productive people.
Kaphas are steady, calm, loving, and large.
Just another way to look at the world, I suppose.
Another way to categorize people
And to know ourselves
A little better
Perhaps.
Pitta time is from 10am-2pm.
Pitta is the third type of energy
According to the Ayurvedic tradition.
They say that Pitta time is the most productive time.
It is the time when you are most likely
To push through on a project.
And I have found that to be true myself.
Ten to two is my get-things-done time.
But I must be careful not to press past two.
Or it will become vexatious to me.
But I think that is because
I am a Vata person.
Tonight, I will go to bed at 8:00 pm
Which is right in the middle of Kapha Time
According to the Ayurvedics.
Kapha energy is heavy, earthy, homey.
It helps you relax and get ready for bed.
When you think Kapha, think dim lights,
Warm cups of tea, good books, and family.
Because I am geared toward the early morning,
This means that my evening starts early.
It starts in the afternoon.
And if I go to bed too late,
I will resent my wake-up call.
I will lie in bed and wish
That I was not awake.
Isn’t that strange?
And ungrateful
I suppose.
I am so glad to be writing in the afternoon.
It feels like writing time.
It feels dreamy.
The Ayurvedic tradition says that 2-6 pm is Vata time.
Vata is the etheric energy,
The creative energy.
The other Vata time is from 2-6 am in the morning.
That’s why people often rise early
To work on creative pursuits.
It is charged with otherworldly energy.
It is full of unexpected insights, and movement.
It seems like you can always get more done
In these early hours before the sun comes up,
Not because you’re working harder,
But because it comes easier.
It is early morning dark
And ten runners just ran by my van.
They didn’t notice that I live here.
Did they hear the bark, bark of my puppy
And wonder where it came from?
If so, I doubt that they cared.
And neither do I.
Ten runners,
A club of runners.
And I and Joey - just two contemplatives
Musing in the early morning dark
And wondering what to write.
I had a strangely soothing thought today:
What if I were dead?
I suppose that only those
Who have suffered great loss will understand.
While you’re alive,
There is always the possibility
That you might do something more
To change the outcome.
But once you’re dead,
That’s the end of it.
Once you’re dead,
You must accept that what you were is enough.
And there is great comfort in that.
Not only that,
But once you’re dead,
You lose the ability to change things through your words, your actions.
Prayer and spiritual connection
Becomes your only link
To this world.
So for one
Who hasn’t given up on this world
But who has been estranged from those he loves
It might help to accept the inevitable early.
Rain drips down and I don’t notice.
I am caught by a thought,
And captive to a song.
And the rain drizzles down
Around and wets my top.
And I don’t care.
Rain on.
Rain on.
I am safe within my thoughts.
You cannot wet me ‘nough
To drown the muse.
So sweet
The perfect thread
That rolls out line by line
And cares not for the drip, the drop.
I am safe, am safe, within the perfect thought,
The willing captive to a canopy of song.
People...families with children...
I watch them as if from far away
And say, oh yeah, I remember that.
It’s hard to write
And I don’t know quite why
At least it’s hard to write that story.
But this is easy,
The little daily poems,
Because I write the way I think.
And one line just flows into another.
But in the world of my story, it gets all bound up.
I am not sure how to make that more like this.
In the coming years
Understanding will blossom
While the world of the self-righteous
Is steeped in war.
And that war will end all wars.
Though I can’t really call it war.
Mere killing is more accurate.
And the world will devolve into chaos.
And men will kill each other
In one wave of carnage
Followed by another.
And at the same time will rise
The banner of a new nation
Which is not of this world.
Its citizens will not take up the sword
But will sue for peace.
They will put away their differences
And love one another.
And eventually,
When the wicked have killed the wicked,
And there is no soul left to convince of any cause,
The world will be at peace.
There is shade not too far away.
So don’t look far away.
Stay close.
Don’t move too much
Or you’ll waste the day searching.
I stand alone somewhere far, far away
From all that I see here.
I do not reside in this place only.
And the gray clouds roll overhead
As the waves lap up upon the sacred beach.
And I feel the cool sand under my naked feet.
And for as far as I can see
There is no one to speak
No one to laugh
Or peep.
I am alone.
What comfort to know
When the world forsakes me
That somewhere in the mystic sea of existence,
I am truly untouched by all that seems so terrible.
When you’re young
The world seems young
Because your eyes are on the young.
And it’s hard to imagine that one day you’ll be old.
And when you’re young
The world appears beautiful
Whether you are beautiful or not
Because your eyes are ever fixed upon the beautiful.
Our culture wants it this way
Because money can be made
By selling the illusion of youth and beauty.
And because of that, even many of the old
Still pretend that the world is youth and beauty.
Their eyes are on the cover of the magazine.
And their lives are mostly wasted chasing youth and beauty.
But that is not the truth you’ll see
When you look up from the magazine.
Most people are, in fact, a little old and a little ugly,
Or at best, kind of plain before they put on their makeup.
And I find that kind of beautiful in its own way.
There is a generation coming
That will forsake this modern culture in its entirety.
And the culture will forsake them as well.
They will be the new dissenters
The peaceful rebels,
Traitors to all that man has aspired to be.
But they will rejoice to do without.
And they will put their whole trust in the Great Unseen.
For they will have no other choice.
And He will be to them
All that the culture promised to be.
But unlike the culture, He will deliver.
There is a generation coming
That will forsake this modern culture in its entirety.
And the culture will forsake them as well.
They will be the new dissenters
The peaceful rebels,
Traitors to all that man has aspired to be.
But they will rejoice to do without.
And they will put their whole trust in the Great Unseen.
For they will have no other choice.
And He will be to them
All that the culture promised to be.
But unlike the culture, He will deliver.
They said it was impossible.
But she did it anyway.
She walked away.
And she knew that she was not fit to face the world,
And that if she left she would end up on the street.
And that the street would eat her up.
But she did it anyway.
She walked away.
And the doctors threw up their hands in disbelief.
She’s gone mad, some said.
She was already mad, said others.
But she did it anyway.
She walked away.
And now she spends her days here and there -
Dirty, unkempt, and mad.
But she feels the breeze
She sweats out in the heat
And dips her hands into the pool
And pulls the water to her face
So as to feel the coolness on her cheeks.
And laughs.
She laughs and laughs.
And talks to her imaginary friends.
And sometimes she is very scared.
And sometimes very sad.
But, she says, in her most coherent moments.
At least it’s real.
At least I am the thing I am.
I’ve experienced infatuation.
I have fallen in love to the wrong person
And had the heavens disapprove.
So I know that love can blind.
But this is not that.
There is no virtue in moving on
From a thing that’s right.
There is no virtue
In letting faith die.
Better to die yourself
Than to move on
In your heart
From a thing that’s right.
I come to it late in life:
A renouncement to the road.
But I have travelled before.
I have lived on faith
And thrived,
Trived, that is,
In the poverty way one thrives.
But now I prepare to make it my profession.
And I discover that it is just as much work as anything else.
And to do it right,
I must throw myself all in.
And trust that God will provide.
Nonetheless, at the end of the day, it is a job.
And I embrace the work.
I am nothing.
And I never thought
It would sound so sweet.
Nothing now but to lay it down,
Nothing now but to lay it down.
How many times can a man die?
A few, it seems. And the master wields the knife,
The master wields the knife.
How many times can this man die?
Again it seems. Again it seems.
And the master wields the knife,
Not long now. Oh, not long now.
But the master wields the knife.
I lay it down. And it matters not
Because the master wields the knife.
I never thought it could sound so sweet
But with empty hands and naked feet
I approach on hallowed ground
And bear my tender flesh
For the end, it seems,
Is coming ‘round.
And I never thought
That it could be this way, but it is.
I have always had a hard time sticking to things.
And yet I have published here
Over 200 days straight.
Grateful.
And I am holding my feet to the fire
When it comes to the story I am working on:
One project - one thing at a time.
And the goal is to finish by the end of the quarter:
One more month.
And I keep at it day after day.
Yet I am tempted to work on other things.
But I must finish one thing before I start another.
I think that is the key.
I lay down my life.
But what does that mean?
I don’t know. Or perhaps I do.
That I let go of all that I had hoped…again…
Which is all that He has promised,
At least my hope of receiving it in this world.
And in that, He says, there is hope
That it will surely come
When I am gone.
What a surprise?
And I feel it in my chest.
The promise that I haven’t long.
And so I baby this old frame. I treat it gently
With the hope that I can get it all down before I go.
Work, work, work.
Writing down the words
That are etched upon this flesh.
And I hear the sound ring out from the unseen place.
I hear the call of Him whom I serve.
“Work, work,” he says,
“Waste out what’s left of your life
And let me be the thing that you desire.”
Put the knife away, I say.
Put the knife away.
Go back home
And humbly pray
For faith to win the day.
There is no battle left to win
No struggle yet untried
Except the battle in man’s heart
To grapple with the lie,
The lie that we inherited
From fathers brave and true,
Fathers who believed that they
Could make the choice for you,
Who hoped that if they gave their lives
That they could make us free.
But don’t you see, nobody’s free,
Not in the way you think.
Because it doesn’t come that way.
And yet, there's One,
A hallowed Son
The Man of Liberty.
He did not fight to save his life
Yet set the captives free.
And we must fight
To be like Him.
To turn the other cheek.
We must fight to own the right
To walk among the meek.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven… Matthew 5: 38-45
For those who beat their swords into plowshares,
There is no need for Christ to appear in the sky.
He has already appeared within their heart.
Their thousand years of peace
Have already begun.
I have found that most of the time
People don’t know what they are angry about.
For that reason, it is better not to be angry.
It is better to choose peace.
Anger leads to war
And destruction.
And there are few
Who do not choose war
When the fires of rhetoric are kindled
And billowed by the machine.
And anyone who has harbored anger is at risk
No matter how righteous their cause appears.
You don’t even know yourself until then.
But if you could see ahead
To what you might become,
You might forsake your anger before it’s too late.
I don’t know what to write about today.
Perhaps I could write about the mountains.
There is no good or bad there, just beauty.
And that, it seems, is good.
Perhaps that is why people have written about nature.
In nature, there is a rest for the human mind.
It is a place where we can forget
About our endless pursuit of goodness
And about our inability to find it.
In nature, in beauty, there is mercy
If you can calm the mind enough to find it.
And that’s the best I have to offer today
An escape into the mountains,
A romp amidst their mercy.
An escape from endless thinking.
God bless you all.
When it comes to diet I am not a purist.
But there is still a part of me
That believes that I should be,
That I should remain unspotted
From all that defiles the belly.
And to be honest,
I really wonder if that part of me is right.
I wonder if I would be healthier if I could eat “right” 100% of the time.
But it can also be confusing.
For one thing, I haven’t always had the means to eat just right.
I haven’t always had a choice.
And those times are actually easier.
You eat what God places in front of you
And trust that He will preserve your life
If He intends it to be preserved.
It is much harder when you have the means to make a choice.
Then you have to do your best to be “good”.
But as in all things, there is a balance.
And too much “good”, I’ve found,
Isn’t good for me.
I’ve found that there is an untamed part within
That, if I try to eat too pure,
Will sabotage my efforts.
And so, I do my best.
I strive toward the goal of health.
But I also let myself partake in things,
Now and then, purely for the sake of comfort.
And I shun the shame that would well up and say it’s not alright.
And this seems to keep the animal part of me at bay.
It keeps the hungry monster from lashing out and taking over.
And so strangely, I eat better by not trying to be perfect.
I believe that I have found the pavilion that covereth His hiding place.
Or at least, I have found a few of the principles that define that place.
Not surprisingly, it lies on the outskirts of the culture.
Surprisingly, it moves and you must move with it.
But it is real. I have felt the shade of its sheltering canopy.
And I have also felt that shade move in an instant
And known that it was time to move on.
Scripture is the Word of God.
And God speaks to those that listen.
Few listen, but those who do
Have heard no less than scripture.
They have heard the very Word of God.
And that Word is no less binding upon them
Than what we have canonized as scripture,
Perhaps more binding, for it is God’s very word to them.
It is personal. And it is incumbent upon them to heed and to obey.
And if they obey God’s Word to them,
If they treasure their personal scripture
More than all the world,
Then God will speak again,
And again, and again, and again.
And His Word will spring up inside them,
A spring of living water welling up to eternal life.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:14
It seems that the only true refuge is in peace itself.
We can choose to be at peace with what is.
And that kind of living, peaceful living, I think, is the answer.
I let go of the thing to which I cannot cling and properly cherish in the finite moment.
And in so doing I trust that it is sealed to me by the forsaking.
This is the key by which love binds all things to itself.
And so the meek inherit the earth,
Not by means, nor by conquest,
But by letting go.
Now and then I scheme, I plan, I project.
My mind goes off in this direction or that.
It's a natural impulse. But action is better.
Action is the faith part of it.
When I plan, I show that I don't fully trust the unseen benevolent hand
To go before my face and prepare the way.
I am leery of any strategy that requires no repentance.
If you think that you are getting providence on your side by scheming better,
By being more shrewd,
By working harder,
By learning skills,
Then it is possible, perhaps likely, that you are deceived.
Remember that God rains upon the just and the unjust.
And so, receiving a blessing from God
Does not show that you serve him.
And who knows but what you serve a lower power.
Especially if the God you serve requires no repentance.
This is the beggar's bowl
The weekly edition of my podcast
Wherein I highlight one economic principle of the new life
And beg for spare change.
I've thought about this for years
But it may be an idea whose time has come.
Here it is:
What if the goal was not to get ahead
Instead, what if we tried for zero?
Here's what I mean.
Transportation: the second largest expense for modern families.
And I am not a fix-it-man. Perhaps you are not either.
And so a vehicle is a hole to put our money in.
So what if, instead of buying a car and nursing it along, I buy a car each quarter?
The State I'm in will allow me to sell four cars per year without a dealership license,
So, I buy a car, and then next quarter, I buy another car.
Now I have a spare.
But I put the first car up for sale before it needs repairs.
When it sells, I don't try to make a profit, though that would be ok.
I simply try to make at least as much as I paid for it.
And then I do it all again, four sales per year.
And if I am careful to find good deals,
I could even eliminate my fuel costs
By charging a few hundred dollars more than what I paid.
Remember, I am not in the car business.
I have more important things to do.
But selling a car each quarter wouldn't be too bad,
And it could completely eliminate my transportation costs.
More likely than not, I would grow wise in choosing cars
And eventually, come out ahead.
And if my family needed it, I could spend the profit on them.
Or God may have a different plan for the increase.
If so, then it would still work out for my benefit,
Since to serve him is to lay up future rewards.
And whether they come in this life or the next,
I come out ahead.
If you find the things I say here useful
Please consider contributing 50 cents
The links to do so are in the description.
https://www.thetracklesspath.com/donate.html
Venmo: @thetracklesspath
If you desire a house that they cannot take away, try this:
Get rid of all you do not use and cherish.
And get a good feeling for your base.
For me, it is a mat on the floor
And a backpack,
Not the hiking kind,
Just big enough to fit my life inside.
Then live as if you might just leave tomorrow.
That kind of living is just like normal living
But with less attachment.
And then wait upon the voice that says to leave
Trusting that wherever it may lead
There is a place for you.
There is another way of looking at the problem of the poor, or any problem really.
Most of us believe that we must do something.
And there is a place for that.
But often, the appropriate response is to do nothing,
To get out of the way as people grapple with their problems.
I will use the poor to illustrate, and housing.
We get in the way of simple housing.
But we don't have to.
A poor person will erect a shack if you let him.
And a shack is the perfect solution for most,
Especially nowadays.
A person can erect a shack without relying upon the state,
Without depending upon anyone but him or herself.
And there is a huge sense of accomplishment that comes with that, and security.
It is a win of monumental proportions for the man or woman that's in need.
But there's a problem.
Nobody wants the shack to be on their property,
Even if they are not using the property.
And there is another problem.
There is no property that is not claimed by somebody.
But what if we got out of people's way?
Instead of throwing money at the problem of the homeless,
What if we let them erect their shacks?
It's rare that they would try to do it on your lawn.
They would probably find a little place on an abandoned lot.
And if you own that lot, do you have to chase them away?
Perhaps you could even welcome them as a neighbor.
Perhaps you could be their friend
In the same way that you might befriend the bird
That builds its nest in your barn.
And what if the neighbors
Instead of passing laws against shacks
Were to say that it's ok?
What if we were to just get out of each other's way?
I know that this idea turns the world upside down.
We have all been striving toward the accumulation and protection of our property
For as long as history has been recorded.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
It's a new idea for a new age.
And when we embrace it, the world will change.
When we embrace it...the world will change.
Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left... Isa 5:8 NIV
An idea for the Real-Estate investor:
Why not, now and then shed it all
To the benefit of the simple
And start again.
Several times, I have seen an ad.
The investor in the ad
Boasts of how The Discovery Channel
Challenged him to remake his fortune
In a new city with no credit, no contacts, no money, no lifelines.
They gave him 90 days. Or was it 30? I don't remember.
And he did it. Isn't that amazing?!
At the end of the challenge,
He had a five-million-dollar business, or was it 15?
I can't remember.
Now, what if he had then liquidated that business,
Stripped himself down to nothing,
Lived a few days or weeks with the poor,
And then did it all again?
But instead of storing the money he earned in the bank,
What if he had then used that five or fifteen million
To purchase super simple, mortgage-free, homes
For people who either don't have a place to live,
Or who desire to exit the housing racket
And live within their means.
Of course, to do such a thing, he would have to accept
That he is putting himself out of a job.
For, sooner or later, such an idea
Would bring down the market.
It would change the culture.
It would rock the world.
Halleluja!!!
The furniture belongs to the house.
Remember that.
It does not belong to you.
Isn't that a load off your mind?
So much less to carry when it's time to go.
Or you can lug it along I suppose.
But I love to leave with little more than myself
And trust that the things I need will come.
How is it that the first will be last and the last shall be first?
Is it a universal principle?
And to what does it apply?
I think I see an application in the stories that we tell.
Words matter. They effect the way we think of things, the way we feel about things. So how might it change the way we think and feel, were we to call the placebo effect a miracle.
This is the Beggar's Bowl,
The weekly edition of my podcast
Wherein I highlight one financial principle of the new life
And beg for spare change.
This week I do not ask for 50 cents.
I ask that if you've been blessed by the things I share,
That you consider sharing a post, a video, a podcast,
With someone close to you.
The ideas that I am sharing are important
But I cannot do this work alone.
I need your help,
Which brings me to this week's principle:
You only get paid once,
So don't expect a future reward
When you have already been paid.
On the other hand, to do a good deed
Without thought of reward
Is to store up future blessings
Thank you all for listening,
And God Bless.
I did not write today's post. It was written by a friend of mine who lives in Arizona. It seems like a fitting ending to the last little series. I hope that the last few posts have not been too somber for you. I cannot say that I have any big solutions to the problems that I see. I don't think that way. But I have found that God leads me to broken people, or leads them to me, as the case may be. And when I find them, there is something he wants me to do. Sometimes, it is a conversation. Sometimes, it is a meal, or a ride, or a few dollars, or a prayer. Once he asked me to drive a man to the grocery store. That assignment lasted for two years. And I don't think I would have had time for two such assignments. And God knew that. And all the while, I watched other broken people pass me by. But I was not called to care for them. I often wondered why I was called to help that particular man. God only knows. But it's important. And I pray that you will find your own way. God only knows what the world might be like if we all listened.
Joel and Rottie
His girlfriend dumped him in the desert, looking for greener pastures I suppose. We found him camped with his little dog beneath a tree. He was from Pennsylvania. He didn't understand the desert, and the temperatures were rising above 110. He had a catheter, kidney stones, and a touch of dementia. Bad combination. He trekked three miles to McDonald's every day with his dog for food and soda, another mistake. Three miles out. Three miles back. Every day.
Eventually, he had to go to the emergency room. They took him by ambulance. I cared for his little dog while he was in. The dog was his lifeline to the world. Each time they were reunited the tears flowed. He was so grateful. The dog meant the world to him. But the world did its best to ignore him. He made the world uncomfortable. It was a world that wished he'd go away.
We couldn't get him a driver's license to get him a plane ticket. No birth certificate. No Social Security Card. No picture I.D. Our Church missionaries became his dearest friends. Out of desperation we found an abandoned motorhome in the desert and began to clean it out. For someone who had dodged Covid for three years, I was pretty sure I'd get the Hunta virus from all the rat droppings. We abandoned the cleaning and tried to get him into an R.V. park. Once they found out he was homeless, no one would rent to him. Another dead-end. They all had excuses. Joel was faceless, nameless. He had no voice. No advocate to plead his case. And the dementia didn't help. He got confused easily. He forgot appointments. He lost his phone a couple of times. Finally, a miracle. His sister back East sent money for a bus ticket.
The missionaries managed to get the bus company to consider Rottie a service dog. It was a light (of sorts) at the end of a long tunnel. Suitcase and guitar stowed safely on the bus he began his long journey East. But who would take him in at the end of his journey? We didn't know. But at least he was out from under that tree and away from the Arizona heat. But now he was entering an even more brutal desert: bureaucracy. And he would be alone in an unforgiving world.
Mary Cowan
There's another reason we don't consider reasonable housing options.
We don't want to see it.
But we will.
We have pushed back the ugly,
But the ugly is coming for us.
Why is it not ok
For someone to live in a storage unit?
Why do municipalities fight tiny homes?
I've seen 4 tiny apartments made out of a storage container.
Each unit was roughly eight feet by ten feet,
With a shared porta potty
And a spigot for water -
The perfect solution for someone
Desiring to rise from the street
Or simply live within their means.
I have visited historic sites:
Cabins raised from the prairie -
One room and a loft for the kids.
No money needed. No loan.
But that's illegal today.
We won't have it. And why?
Because it will lower our property values.
And we don't want that.
We are reveling in the spoils
Of a system that was devised to enslave.
And we don't want anyone to get out of the grind.
If I must do it, then so should my neighbor.
"And what is it to me if he can't keep up?
Am I my brother's keeper?"
Gen 4:9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?
We have grown lofty.
We have lost the sense of what we need,
We don't even know how to define it
Accept in terms of debt: the monthly payment
So that a man amounts to the quantity of debt that he can shoulder.
And most groan under the weight of it.
But instead of erecting something new,
We reach out toward the American Dream.
And what is the American Dream?
To free ourselves from debt
By heaping debt upon another.
We want to own the block,
To buy up this street and that.
We are a pack of aspiring landlords.
We practice in our youth with monopoly money.
And as the years roll on,
We exchange it for real money.
And some win. Most lose.
Until the poor have no place left
Except between the jaws of the rich,
Or on the street.
And even then, it's not enough.
We chase them from this place to that
And insist that it is their fault.
And it is.
They fell behind.
They lost at the game of life.
But I wonder if perhaps it doesn't need to be this way.
Perhaps we have been sold a bill of goods.
Perhaps we don't need to play the game.
For myself, I have ducked out.
My place is on the street.
My place is on the street.
Or in this house or that
But nothing very long,
And to speak these words while I still live,
To wander, wander, wander 'round
Raving like a madman,
And one day return home
To the world where a man is measured
Not by what he can amass,
But by the love of his Maker.
There, He says, in that heavenly place
is the inheritance of all the poor.
And I think that I can wait.
Perhaps we are all trying to be BIG.
And that keeps us from doing anything SUBSTANTIAL,
Because SUBSTANCIAL work is long and tedious.
It is LABORIOUS. It is a GRIND.
It is not a FLASH in the pan.
It is not TWO SCOOPS of Kellogg’s Raisin Brand.
It is not BIG. It’s not the SUPER BOWL.
It is CEASELESS, TIRELESS, and sometimes PROFITLESS work.
All for the sake of what?
The BOTTOM LINE?
No.
But for the IDEA that the world might be BETTER for the work we do.
For this, we constrain ourselves to the SMALL
And TEDIOUS work that is our lives,
And TRUST that an unseen hand
Will REWARD us for our efforts.
This is what is meant by HONEST WORK.
And it will grow according to its NATURE,
Some GREAT, some SMALL.
All else is born of LIES.
I bring myself back to work.
I want to stop. But I keep going.
I want to lessen the load, but I persevere.
Steadiness and consistency are what I am after.
And all of that sounds so trite,
Like a motivational speech.
But finally, I belive I am ready to hear.
I could not find a reason to try
When it was all for money.
But now it fits.
This is the Beggar’s Bowl,
The weekly edition of my podca
Wherein I highlight one financial principle of the new life
And beg for spare change.
Follow your best impulse.
Let it lead you into your most authentic interests.
Sacrifice for the sake of finding the truth that you were meant to promote.
And then use your means to spread the message.
Let yourself lose in the short run.
Learn. Then try again. And again.
Let it take what time it takes.
Look to the 200-year plan.
This is the way of tomorrow’s marketers.
They will think in mission terms.
All else will bow out.
Because it will become too complex to live selfishly.
If you find these podcasts useful,
Please consider a donation of 50 cents.
The links to do so are in the description.
https://www.thetracklesspath.com/donate.html
Venmo: @thetracklesspath
Your life is not what you think. Thank God!
And you have less power to change your fate
Than you might suppose.
But that doesn’t mean that it is nothing.
Kindness is never wasted.
And love, though it be measured out by imperfect hands
Into undeserving vessels
Is still love.
And after all of that,
Who knows what faith can do.
Because faith in God is more than you.
And that is the thing that interests me.
We are players on the stage.
Our lines are written down.
But to believe that an unseen hand can change it all
Is the twist ending.
It is better to renounce life
Than to believe that something can be gained by coming back.
You will never figure it out
By turning and returning
And you will never secure the ones you love
By human love.
Only by letting go to the will of the divine
That leads to renouncing all
For the sake of an unseen world
Can we move on from the endless cycle
Of trying to figure it out.
About a woman I met on the street corner...
Crippled
All crumpled up.
But still doing her job, her sign out.
A shopping cart - she holds the side
And with her other hand, she grasps the cane.
And wobbles.
And the cars pass by.
“Where are you going miss?” I ask.
“Do you need some help?”
And for a moment, she forgets,
And I point to the sign.
It has flopped over
“Oh yes,” she says. “That’s right.”
I hand her a few dollars.
“Do you need to get somewhere?”
“No,” she says. “He’s coming back, and I must stay.”
“My father is coming back.”
“Ok,” I say. “Ok,” and walk away.
I look back over my shoulder,
And the sign is still folded over
And she stands there
One hand on the cart
And one on the cane.
All crumpled up
And still in pain.
And the people pass by as she waits.
Sometimes it is the abundance of choices that gets in the way
Because we believe that there is a right choice,
A perfect way.
But there's not.
The heart thing is the way.
The intent is the thing that matters.
And if the heart is right and the choice is wrong
That will sort itself out. It will self-correct with time and experience.
And the idea that we must get it right before we start
Only keeps us from starting.
Nature will have its way sooner or later. Is it possible to live in harmony with nature?
This is the 3rd of a 9-part series about the Patriarchal. In this episode, I discuss further what it means to be one with God and how the idea of the Elohim denotes a oneness in the plural use of the word.
This is the 3rd of a 9-part series about the Patriarchal. In this episode, I discuss further what it means to be one with God and how the idea of the Elohim denotes a oneness in the plural use of the word.
In part 2 of this 9-part series about the patriarchal, I discuss more fully the differences between the Patriarchal and corporate structures. The patriarch, the father, serves the children. Whereas the CEO feeds upon the children.
Part 1 of a 9-part series where I discuss what Patriarchal means. In this particular episode, I discuss the difference between corporate and patriarchal. I also discuss the meaning of the Biblical word Elohim.
I am trying something new. Will I produce more by allowing myself to move from project to project?
The Beggar's Bowl 18 - Don't Take My Advice #personalfinance #financialliteracy #intuition
Charles Bukowski
What a perfectly wicked man.
Perfectly wicked!
Perfectly wretched!
But truly, honestly so.
Give me one man
Who is what he is,
And nothing more pretended.
You know that you secretly
Hang upon his poems.
Because they are real.
You steal away
When you believe
That no-one is watching.
And it is you we see
Cowering.
Hunched over.
Hanging upon:
"If it doesn't come bursting out of you...
Don't do it!"
But then of a Sabbath
You dress in your Sundays
And sit at the feet
Of your whited sepulchers.
You pretend
That you believe
The polished poison
That drips
Like Calamine Lotion
Into your itching, bleeding ears.
Tell us lies, you say.
Tickle us with your forked tongues
And make us believe
That you are truly good,
That one can be good.
You know that it is lies
But you clamor:
Tell us again
How you slew the dragon.
Tell us how you ever
And ever
Were and are
All that we hoped you to be.
We know it is lies,
but tell us again
so that we too,
May one day
Worship at our own feet.
Charles Bukowski...
Spin us a poem
From the dirty.
Wretched.
Street that you are.
Only there do we worship
The thing that is real
The thing that is best
As it is - No more.
We too
Are wretched
But are loath to admit.
Aspiring hypocrites,
We sit huddled round
To hear...
The Truth.
Not the Truth
Of what man believes,
But The Truth
Of what
We really are:
Just wicked.
Wretched.
Miserable men.
Like good old Charles Bukowski.
They are too old,
Too old to fight,
Too old to stir.
But they were fighters once…
He with fists that bruise
And her with sharp claws
And teeth that tear.
You’d think they would have found
Another room, another world, another life
To share.
But they stayed instead
And fought it through.
For the fightingest souls
Are steady.
To a passion deep within
That stays.
That stays and fights
And Fights again.
Not like those who fight to win.
But like those who cannot leave the fight.
Till they’ve discovered what
The fighting’s for.
And once they do
They fight some more
Till all the anger’s worn itself out.
And like the coals
Of an old fire
Smolder and warm
And warm some more.
Till smoldered out
They cuddle in for warmth.
Two sweet old souls
Whose fight is through
Though lingering there
The fight itself worn out to fighting
It sits alongside them
Of a summer evening
Just the three
The boxer, the alley cat and fight itself
And watch the sun set.
She leans back against his shoulder
And rests
Her gray hairs
Against his cardigan sweater.
Their breath is slow now
As is the case with old people
And their knees too bent
To contemplate another rise
And so they linger
As does fight itself
One tear slipping from his cold eye
And running down his charcoal grey cheeks.
He sits along beside.
For strange as it may be,
Porch swings are made for three.
But his tear is not
For battles lost.
Nor for battles that could be.
For he is also old
And weary of the strife.
But caught by some strange affection
To the two
Who would not accept defeat
He’s found in his old age
A refuge sweet
In the love of two old fighters
The ones he couldn’t beat.
This is the Beggar’s Bowl,
The weekly edition of my podcast
Wherein I highlight one financial principle of the new life
And beg for spare change.
Children need a healthy sense of low.
If raised with too much, they come to expect it.
Many a marriage has been ruined
By a partner whose expectations were set too high.
For this reason, set boundaries around the things that they possess.
But do not say that they cannot have a thing,
Only that they cannot have all things.
One way to do this is with space.
You might give the child a small space in which to put their treasures.
The only rules: that they keep it clean and organized
And that their possessions fit within the space allowed.
If a new treasure doesn’t fit, look at the old.
Is there an unloved thing that can go?
If not then consider a slightly larger space. But be firm.
Teach them to keep only those things that they use and cherish
If done with love, and patience,
The children will self-regulate
And grow into an understanding
Of what is important to them.
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Please consider a donation of 50 cents.
The links to do so are in the description.
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...so God created man in his own image. In the image of god created he him, male and female, created he them...
These Words I Give to You - a Poem
I am here when, in my silence, vain and foolish thoughts
Scream and proudly boast that careless words would heal.
I am here when inward longings fall helpless into unnamed chasms
And when dark shadows hide our faces from one another
And taunt us with what we think we see.
I am here when I cannot see you
And when all that's left is the memory of what I know.
Like a lifeline, my fingers hold tight their grasp of the rope,
The end of which holds the truth of you.
And for that truth, I hold tight with other hand, my tongue,
And wait, for words that are my own and not another's.
These words I give to you.
Here are a few thoughts about the folk song “500 miles” by Peter Paul and Mary and about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The song was originally written and sung by Hedy West and titled the Railroader’s Lament but the lyrics may have been derived from an older folk song. The song was covered by Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan and Stark Sands in the 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis. The Parable of the Prodigal Son can be found in Luke 15.
“Lord, I can’t go a-home this a-way”. That is a haunting lyric. “Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four, Lord I’m five hundred miles from my home.” Is there any other way to go home than as we are. You know I wonder if the reason we stay away is because we believe home is where the successful are, and why would losers like us want to meet with that. It is not the father that we fear so much as the older brother - the one who never risked anything and doesn’t know what it is to lose all and not be able to look yourself in the mirror. To be honest, it is hard for me to understand the older brother in the story. I have never known anyone who didn’t sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, only those who cannot or will not see that they have and I feel increasingly uncomfortable around that sort. We have so little to talk about. The father on the other hand, I get. And it is obvious that he understood the prodigal. He might not have spent his wealth with harlots, but it appears at least that he understood what it was to be deeply wrong and terribly ashamed. You might say that it was fatherly affection that prompted him to slay the fatted calf and throw the party. I am sure there was some of that in it but consider what you know of fathers and sons and reconciliations. In most cases, the returning prodigal is met with skepticism and the reconciliation is slow and paced commensurate with the prodigal’s improved behavior. This father seems to understand first hand what it is that the prodigal has had to overcome to return home. I may be stretching the point, but the meeting of these two is so moving that I have a hard time not believing that the Father did not understand.
And then there is this party with special gifts - a robe and a ring. Rings historically denoted ceremonies wherein there is a transfer of authority. That seems like a strange thing to do for a nasty prodigal. A party perhaps, but the ring and the robe go over the top. The brother’s angst is somewhat understandable considering the lavishness that was poured over the one that was lost. But the strangest thing about the story is how it all turned out. In the end, it is the prodigal who feasts with his father and the “faithful” son who needed no repentance is left outside - and that of his own accord. The other thing that is interesting is the fact that the father and the prodigal end up in the same boat financially. The father tells the older son that all that he has is his - the older son’s. The father is leaving all of his temporal goods to this oldest son who wouldn’t come in unto the feast and soon the father, whether through death or a transferral of deed, will be left with exactly what the prodigal son has in the way of earthly possessions - nothing. And the older brother who could not see his way to rejoice with the prodigal is left with what he wanted in the first place - to preserve at all costs his worldly inheritance.
It is an interesting story and a hopeful one for anyone far from home. “I can’t go a-home this a-way.” Maybe not. Who knows but what the father which seems so far from our humanity knows better than anyone else what it is to be loosers like us. What if the reason we chose to risk our inheritance in the first place was becuase we knew that there was something the Father knew that we did not and we desired to grow up and come to know that compassion which prompted the Father to slay the fatted calf and to bestow upon the wretched the choicest of gifts.
God Bless You,
The Trackless Path
"The cheaper your pleasures, the richer you'll be."
In this episode, I review a video by Einzelganger on YouTube. Einzelganger explores the philosophies of the stoics and surmises that luxury is overrated.
Silence is seen by most as a means to an end. It is utilized as a tool that is to be employed in attaining what we imagine to be a good life. And at that, it is one of any number of tools that may be pulled out at will and utilized to any number of ends. And Silence for now is content to be hauled along for the ride in your endeavors. It rejoices when it can soothe your nerves at the end of a long day or prepare you for that presentation whereby you hope to gain the promotion. But if it is not your constant companion, if it serves you and you do not serve it, then it is likely that there is another spirit - not so silent - who competes for the ruling of your consciousness. That not so silent spirit shakes and wrangles and chases on toward the great abyss. And the more you serve your own desires, the more need you have of that meditation hour and the less relief it proffers. For the point of Silence was never to remain silent. And if the truth is still in you, you will likely admit that it speaks even now, calling you to forsake the unthinkable - the very thing for which your flesh yearns. And so, it is not enough to silence the mind if it is not done with the intent of being made into something that resembles the Silence we worship. And that is not so transparent a task, as anyone who has spent much time examining their own thoughts and motives knows. Only when we obey those promptings that arise by themselves out of stillness, can we be made to see what presently to us is invisible. And in that, there is hope and true grace. So, don’t give up on your meditations. Rather, go on until no action, intended or inadvertent disturbs, till nothing rankles, till the slave driver who presses upon your mind and drives for the abyss has no power to decide your actions. Then you will be a Saint and will enter into the Holy City that is made without hands, whose builder and maker is God. It is the inheritance of all those whom Silence chooses or who choose Silence as the case may be. There are those even now who walk among you who have chosen to abide behind its strong walls. Will you?
Considering Rev 7:14 - And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
This episode is a response to the Big Think video with Paul Bloom entitled Kids Don't Always Make You Happier. Here's Why People Have Them Anyway.
The discovery of truth is always preceded by dreamers - those willing to believe in the impossible and even the fantastical.
This is a special archived episode of The Trackless Path: A New 2 Plus 2
This episode is a response to a video by Big Think wherein they interviewed Paul Bloom about the subject of suffering and its virtues.
Men do their best to avoid the necessity of living by faith. In this episode, we discuss this dilemma and extol the virtues of faith.
This episode is a response to a book named Corruptible - Who Gets Power and Why It Changes Us by Brian Klaas. I found Brian on a YouTube video by Big Think. The name of the video is Why Psychopaths Rise to Power.
I recently listened to a YouTube video by Big Think. In the video, they interviewed Bruce Feiler who wrote the book The Secrets of Happy Families. This episode is a response to some of his thoughts.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be an organ in your own body? Or a rock? Or a tree? In this episode, I share some ponderings that I had a few years back upon the subject of light and how it reaches places that we would not expect.
In this episode, I speak of the strange injunction that we flee, but not in haste. It is a paradox since flight implies haste. So how do we run away slowly? And why?
This is a little piece I wrote years ago. As I listened to it again, I was struck by the connection I made those years ago. Hope you enjoy!
I don't consider this podcast to be ecclesiastical. It is more practical than that. So why do I speak of God?
You won't find it here
He heard the Spirit say.
And he looked up from his device
To see the alter call.
But nobody prayed
Accept a few.
And it was a strained prayer
Between the teeth
Mingled with the desire for praise.
And the seats were empty
Except a few:
A yearner here.
A tempter there.
And a little band of those
Who wanted to prove that they were right.
"It has forsaken this place," he thought.
And he raised himself to leave.
And as he left, he heard the preacher say:
That "We are the only ones."
And the people all said "Amen."
In this episode, I responsd to Seth Godin's Podcast: Akimbo, the February 8, 2023 episode where he discusses Juggling and Bicycles and how we learn.
This is a mostly true story that I wrote several years ago when asked "Why do you write?"
In today's episode, I give some thoughts about a movie I recently saw. It was The Old Man and the Sea with Anthony Quinn. The movie is based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.
For what were they seeking
When first drawn to the other tree?
"To know," they said,
But now we cannot see.
"Our dreams a mystery
And more dreamed we be than dream."
"But better to know," said one, "than never be."
Loving... Does love have the power to change hearts? In this episode, I examine some thoughts that might closely correlate with 1 Corinthians 13 where it says that we should be kind and long-suffering, patient etc...
I call from within
My empty chamber
To no one there.
I call for a fife
But it doesn't come.
And all of the lyres are hired
To woo the world
With song,
Mirrored pools
Reflecting all the things
They most desired but lost
Or hope to loose.
And the world turns round
And the young girls
Are wooed
By smooth guitars
Into the arms of men
Who disappoint them
But not too much
And they find a little joy
Here and there
They two,
And it's enough to satisfy
For season
And an age,
A generation,
But not enough
To stop the turning
Round and round,
Death and life
An life and death
Never ending misery
Is the tune,
And hope
And beauty
And solemn resignation
And often gratitude for it all
But the song won't stop
Long enough to hear
That there is something
Deeper than it all,
Something deep beneath the boards
That frame the stage
We all stand on.
Good bye world.
I bid you adieu.
I'm down beneath
Digging down
To the thing
We lost
Before we ever knew
What it was to cry
There in our mother's arms,
The thing we knew
Before we knew,
And now and then
I stick my head out
Through the door
And call for a fife
To play the tune
Of something new
But they're all hired out.
To vanish,
To disappear
Into thin air,
That is heaven.
To exist
But to not be seen,
That is power.
To speak the truth
From behind the veil
Of mystery
And then to leave before
They ask your name,
In that there is
The hope of immortality.
But you desire to be seen
And to be known
For your good works?
And so, you are doomed to fail,
To be forgotten,
And in the mean time
To suffer for your weakness
At their lips
When your strength
Has worn out
And they can no longer use you
For their ill gotten gain.
Fools!
To have a name
Is to be forgotten.
To have a reputation
Is to one day
Have it tarnished.
Why won't you see
That it is in letting go
Of all that's you
That you will rise
To disappear
With that host
Who shine so bright
That one glimpse of them
Dissolves the eyes
Within their sockets.
For we are shadows,
Wispy glimpses
Of forgotten hopes
Of the dark fairy folk
Who were once cast out
For their self made idols.
And all of the dreams
Of what we hope we are
Is no more than
Borrowed, unsavory,
Twice chewed morsels
That fall from the tables of the fallen,
No...
Better to disappear,
And to be a no-one
And speak the truth unnamed
Than to find out too late
That they only wanted you
For the thing that you could give them.
Great poetry does not attract people who love poetry.
It attracts people who long to ride atop
The crest of the Great Wave of Truth,
To lace their fingers in its mane
And let it carry them naked, bareback and frightened
To where they know not.
And rarely is it sought by such
But must sneak its way into their lives from unexpected sources:
A movie, an advertisement, a song.
And then it haunts them ever after with the thought
That they have seen, have heard, the Truth once spoken
And can never again pretend that they have not.
We have become dreaming creatures.
And we will not stop.
And if we ever do stop,
We will die.
There is no going back,
No going back.
And that's ok.
This world was made
Unto this end
That when we could
Not but dream,
That we would pass
Into that world
Of dreams
And never come back
Come back.
Are you afraid?
Don't be.
Believe.
The story of a young missionary who had found the unseen kingdom of endless wealth.
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Why will you follow fools?
They play
And you dance
And in the end,
You both fall down.
And then you complain.
I love that thing most
That comes just before
They speak.
Silence.
Why not skip the rhetoric?
Why not settle for Silence.
She does not impose.
She does not imply.
She does not
Call upon dead others
To justify her lies.
But do not be deceived.
If you sit with her long enough,
She will speak
With words too terrible
To utter.
And then
You will either live or die
By what comes next.
For no one
Having heard her voice
Can justify their trust
In anything less.
I cannot shed old things
By looking back at dark mistakes.
And yet, they tug at my coat
And beg to be understood
As if I could figure them out.
But I can't figure them out.
They make no sense.
And when I try,
Dark clouds gather
And if I am not careful,
They portend doom from which
My mind must grapple to escape.
And so I don't look back.
I look forward to the bright light
Of all that He has promised.
I step into the sunshine,
And then into the sun,
Hot and scorching.
And it burns away the old.
But I do not notice
Accept in retrospect
That old things have fallen away.
Quietly I hide
Behind this paper.
Content to disappear
Accept for what
I choose to show
Here on this page.
For I am not what you believe.
My identity was never negotiable
And I realize now
That it was a mistake
To give you a vote.
So farewell
To all of you
Whom I love so much.
I love you still,
Perhaps better
For what you cannot see
Since I no longer allow
What you think of me
To determine what I am
And how I love you.
Nor will I allow
How you appear
To sway me
In my estimation of you.
For here in the quiet silence
Of my solitary life,
You are all I ever knew you were,
Noble, sweet, true and kind.
Brave and faithful
To what you meant to be.
But if you ever forget
Your majesty - Your beauty,
Come find me here,
For though lost to yourself you be,
You are not lost to me.
In Matthew 16:21-28, Peter tries to convince Christ not to put himself in harm's way and Christ rebukes him. Then strangely, Jesus appears to change the subject. But if we look closer, these two themes are not so disconnected.
Slow down.
Not every opportunity
Is for you.
It's true!
Be still.
Chill!
Be slow to act
My friend.
Be content
Don't vent
Your anxious impulse
On some imprudent spend.
If so,
You'll grow
Into a wealthy man
And if your soul's secure,
You'll bless the world
With all that dough.
For you did not need it
In the first place.
What about copyright? And where do we put our coins?
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It is not what you think.
You count the miles
And tally
The receipts,
But you do not see
The measure
Of what They say
You’ll be.
And when you think
Yourself behind,
You look to books
And study faces.
And all of your glory
Is no more
Than the reflection
Of the fallen.
And the pot stirs round
A witches brew
Of boiling vomit.
And in each man’s eyes
The ghastly
Countenance
Of the lost.
The skin
A ghostly pallor,
Each a demon
Set to devour
His neighbor.
But to yourselves
You’re not that bad.
And the eagles look down
Upon you
From high above
And perceive
With sharper eyes
The earthbound hosts
Grubbling about
In the dirt,
Digging
And tilling it up
In search of silver,
And they turn
Their eyes away
In shame
And fly away
To the mountains
Where they mourne
The loss
Of His supreme creation.
And all the while
You fret
Your bottom line
And fear the day
When it all collapses.
Yes, it is not what you think.
For many years, I could not sing. The songbird in my heart had been shot down. But one night this song entered into my heart and I decided to share it with you.
If your knowledge comes from books,
Beware.
Humanity cannot ascend
From the mire of its baser nature
By looking in the mirror.
But if your knowledge comes from above,
Rejoice.
There is hope in higher things.
I am sad
For how the world has gone.
But you don't know why.
If I were to tell you,
You might say
That I was intolerant
Or bigoted
Or blind.
But I am not.
It is not a sin
To believe
That one thing is better
Than another.
And I do not hate you
If I believe
That you are wrong.
It is my right
To mourn for you.
It is a prerogative
Which does not require
Your approval.
And I am content
To do so quietly.
Would to God
That you would
Mourn for yourself!
But in the absence
Of that sorrow
Which you lack,
I will grieve
In your behalf...
For I am sad.
These Beggar's Bowl episodes are like rain barrels.
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted\_button\_id=DEE7JM6EJ763A
Life is so fleeting, so fragile, so beautiful.
You can't help but go out and experience it
To spite the risks.
And the wind races past as the sun sets
And whips her braid behind,
So beautiful, so fleeting, so fast.
And the world is tired, and old,
And she races across her path
As the sun sets, so beautiful.
And I'll forget that she might die in an instant
For the sake of knowing life so close.
I suppose this poem
Will be short.
That's all I have time for.
But poems don't work that way.
They have a life of their own.
And so today
I write a bad poem.
It is bad
Because I hold it close
And do not let
It have its head.
If I did,
It would pull me along
And keep me up until
All hours.
So there you go.
My apologies.
This poem is
No more than a space
Between two
More meaningful
Works...
But you see
Already, it has drawn me in.
I try to finish
But it holds me.
"I'm not done" it says.
It insists that we end well.
And to end well,
We must say something.
Damn!
But here I go!
I am ending this poem.
I won't live this way,
Enslaved to a tyrannical muse!
Ha!
So there!
The End!
And we haven't said a thing.
And it is miserable
And we both are sad.
But I suppose it is just as well.
I will sleep tonight
After I mourn
The loss of something
I don't know what
And never will.
Good night muse.
I love you.
"I love you too" he says.
Until tomorrow muse...I am sorry.
"It's OK. I understand"
I believe he is asleep now.
He really is a faithful friend.
I could not wish for better
And I am sorry
That I treat him so.
Truly, I am ashamed.
But tomorrow I will be better.
Tomorrow, I let him roam
In sunlit meadows
Where the wildflowers grow
And we'll spin a poem
That you'll remember.
And perhaps you'll like it so much
That you'll read it again and again.
And now I suppose
That I must be to sleep also.
Good night all.
God bless.
Until next time.
Hello,
My name is Jonathan McCormick and I would like to say thanks for all of the great work that you have done on The Chosen! It seems to me that it is a very important work and that it is also timely. It seems that the world has been prepared to hear these stories retold at this time and in this way. And I am so grateful that all of you have felt called to participate in its production. Thank you!
With all of that said, I also have a small suggestion that I hope might be of use. You see, even though I have watched all of the episodes of The chosen, I have not yet made a contribution. And there is a particular reason why I have not contributed. Several times, I have watched an episode and thought to myself, you know, I think I'm going to make a donation. And then I clicked on the pay it forward button and was met with the suggested monthly amount of $150 monthly. During much of the time that I have been watching the chosen, I have been living on $200 a month. Not really, but in a way, yes. I send most of my income to support loved ones with whom I am currently estranged. After that, I try to live simply. I have embraced the new trend of van life and live mobile so that I can avoid paying rent and etc. But I do have a few bills. And after I pay them, I can count on having about $200 a month most of the time. And that money has to cover groceries and etc. And I've been able to make it all work by going to the food bank and trading for things I need and etc. Of course, sometimes the van needs a repair or some other large expense comes along, and God has to intervene in some way. And he does, for which I am so grateful. It always seems to work out. Sometimes, I work an extra shift. And sometimes some unforeseen miracle comes along. I don't tell you all of this in order to elicit sympathy. I really do love my simple life and am so much more than content with the way that God is blessing me from day to day. But I share the particulars of my budget so that you will understand the suggestion that I make. You see, each time that I have gone to make a donation, I have scrolled the donation bar all the way down to the bottom. And I have discovered that the minimum amount that I can pay has been $15. And until recently, each time that I did so, it's so happened that I could not afford $15. LOL! Of course, I know that it is easy to justify such things. It is easy to excuse oneself in never giving because we believe that we can't afford it. And so I said a little prayer to myself asking what I should do. And I seemed to hear a still small voice suggest that perhaps there are other places where I can be of help. And so I did not donate. But I really did want to donate. I found myself wishing that there was a smaller amount. I knew that I had at least had a fiver. And so I thought to myself, maybe next time.
Well, fast forward to today. I recently received a raise at work. And I have been putting in more hours. And I have found myself thinking about donating to The chosen again. But I haven't. I find myself struggling to get up the motivation to do so. You see, each time that you asked me for $150, and I had to scroll the bar down to $15, and then realize that $15 was more than I could afford, I felt a little bit discouraged. I found myself thinking "what is $15, much less $5, compared to the production costs of the Chosen? Even if I could give $150, it wouldn't even buy one round of Starbucks for the cast and crew." And so, it felt as if my small donation wasn't really wanted. And interestingly, I did not even start to think that way until I realized that you favored large donations. And by asking me for so much when I had so little, it caused me to feel disinclined to donate, not because I don't love the show and appreciate so much the work that you do, but because it felt as if you didn't appreciate what I had to give. It appeared as if you only wanted the big dollars. And it is discouraging to give when you feel like it is not appreciated.
Now of course, I know that it was not your intention to leave that impression. Dallas has said many times that we should bring what little we have and see what we can do - just like the loaves and fishes. But it occurred to me that you may not realize that your tactics may be discouraging to those who do not have much to give. I've also heard Dallas mention that less than 5% of the people who watch the show give to the show. And I cannot help but Wonder if perhaps part of the reason for that is that those who don't have much to give feel discouraged. I also wonder what would happen if everyone was encouraged to give no matter how little their donation. I think that it would be great if those numbers were just the opposite. What if 95% of the people who watched the show gave? Even if all that they could give was a cup of coffee, or a pocket full of change? And wouldn't they be more likely to give if they didn't have to compare their contribution to an implied expectation to which they cannot measure up. This seems to be kind of important, being that the show is now being sent to third-world countries. I know that my situation is rare for somebody who lives in the United States, but it is not rare in many of the countries to which this show will be going. They need to experience these stories in all their glory. And that takes a lot of money. But they also need the opportunity to give what little they can and feel as if their contribution is appreciated just as much as the man or woman who gives their thousands and their millions.
And so, I recommend that you consider refraining from suggesting an amount, or that, if you do set an amount, that you make it so low that even the widow with her mite will not feel discouraged at offering her all.
And one last thing. I have seen this tactic employed by Wikipedia. Every so many months, they beg me for money. And it really does seem like begging. They go on for about 3 or 4 paragraphs telling me how they hate to be coming once again asking for money but how much they appreciate the contributions, and how much they need them to keep their operation running. And then they tell me how much they appreciate the contributions I have made in the past. And they explain how if everyone only gave $2.75 or some other nominal amount, that it would fund their operations for x amount of time. And then they imploringly ask me for just that: $2.75. Of course they give me an opportunity to increase that amount, but they make it clear how much it means to them that I donate anything. I remember the first time I received such a message. As usual, I had very little discretionary income. But I thought about how often I use Wikipedia and what an essential part of my life it is. And I was struck by the fact that it would be ungrateful for me not to contribute something. And so I donated a small amount that I could afford. And I have continued to donate. And it feels good to donate when they come calling, because, even though their operating costs must be substantial, they recognize the importance and significance of small and simple gifts. I feel like my small donation means something to them. And though, I am sure, that they appreciate large donations, I don't feel any the less for what I cannot give.
Sincerely,
Jonathan McCormick
I was raised with worn upholstery
And so I am not
A part of that class
Which appreciates new things.
I wish it were different at times
But it is what it is.
Once in a while
My comfortable soul
Beguiles itself
Into believing
That there is a virtue
In my poverty
But there is not,
No more
Than there is virtue
In your wealth.
It is a mistake to believe
In that kind of goodness.
In former lives, perhaps,
I envied you your leather
But not any more.
I rest deep in my old things
and breath the sweet mediocrity
Which contents itself
With the old.
It sounds sad
When I put it that way.
But it is true.
Thank you.
Thank you for letting me be.
We are not so different
You and I,
Both bound by the familiar
Both resting in that thing
Which most comforts
Our afflictions.
But then again,
Don't put it past me
To stay in your hotel
Or to relish in your richness
Of a June.
But home for me
Will always be
In that thing
Which you discard.
And if you ever tire of fretting
Over your expensive cache
Feel free to rest
Upon my couch
It will not fret
Or show the scratch
Like the leather
One at home.
I wonder if it's true
This thing I've said to you.
Is it ok, that I don't care
To prosper like the masses?
I hope so,
For I am tired of pretending.
They begin to come down
This time of year
From the Mountains.
And in my town,
You are as likely
To see them anywhere
As you are to see people
Or birds at the bird feeder.
But if you are not careful,
Just like birds
They disappear.
Did you know
That there are people
Who cannot see the birds,
People who have not
Seen them for years.
It is one huge
Mass of metal for them,
And glass, and wood
And papers filled with numbers,
And dates on a page.
But for those still alive
To their soul questions
In October
After the first snows,
The deeper world
Of the mystic wood
Seeps down into the towns,
And if you watch,
You will see it
In their eye.
And then you will know
That there is hope
And that you are not
Out of reach.
Thank God!
It's time for another beggar's bowl.
But I don't know what to say.
And so I'll ask if you can help.
I will continue doing this
One way or the other.
But it means so much
When people cast a vote
To let me live, to work, another day.
I don't ask for much: a couple of quarters, or dimes, as the case may be, or not.
After all, every channel is asking for a handout now-a-days.
And so that's ok if it's just too much.
But for those with change to spare,
Thank you! God bless you.
And if you don't already know, you can contribute using the Paypal or Venmo. Here are the links:
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted\_button\_id=DEE7JM6EJ763A
Venmo: https://account.venmo.com/u/thetracklesspath
Thanks again!
The Trackless Path
Rush Rush
Said the Captain,
The Son of a Captain,
Whose Father was Captain before
We drive for the
Nethermost edge of the world
Where we'll meet
The great captains of yore.
We are told
That they wait us
Were ne're a hiatus
Is known on that distant black shore.
But the devil will greet us
And slyly intreat us
With the lie
Just a little bit more.
They believe that we are no threat.
And they are right.
Yet little do they know
The power of Silence
Though immersed and surrounded by it.
They rarely notice
And certainly, never give ear.
For there is too much to say.
Too much to do.
Too little time.
They are too busy
Doing good
To hear.
While all the while Silence grows.
With deafening stealth.
Until…
Silence only knows.
But those who listen
Hear…and wait.
For the end
We all suppose.
The end when noise
Has worn itself out
When words have had their say
When scheming, toiling, and anguish cease,
When all that’s left is deathly Silence,
That will be the day.
The day when silent
Hearts are still.
And noise is done away.
And then break forth
Eternal Day!
When Silence speaks
And earth bursts forth
In radiant Life
The fruit of silent
Suffering souls.
Thrice proven
Through woeful noise.
And then crying, weeping
Covering ears,
The chattering horde
Will hide
In rocks and hills
And corn whisky stills
With the one thing they can’t abide.
For hide as they will,
The Silence still
Will find them there
And chase them
God only knows where,
Till Silence reigns
From plane to plane
And peace
Be our reward
For bearing the grief
Of their unbelief
In Silence.
…
Yes, they believe that
We are no threat…
And they are right.
An examination of the patron model and its capacity to change the way we think about personal profit for the better.
With downward eye he cries,
But not aloud.
An inward aching, fearful
Shifting from side to side.
A turning tearful glance.
To what? To where? How much?
Alone? What if? And Why?
All at once.
And then to where his soul would fly…
No place, nowhere,
No answer.
But to try.
But he’s worn out to trying
And broken to the fight.
The world is run by wits
But when wits fail, what then?
Taking a closer look at the ideas that surround the second coming of Jesus Christ. There is more there than meets the eye.
Bright lights
And applause.
And women.
And the rush of hallow fame.
It's an illusion
With nothing more to gain
Than cankerous ruin.
Yet they run after it.
Women dress their darlings
For charade
And prance them in front
Of lecherous men
And crowds set to devour,
All for the empty acclaim
That consumes its subject
By degrees.
And the winners
Pay for their fleeting notoriety
With their souls
And the sound you hear,
That great sucking sound
Is the sterilization
Of a generation,
Their virility
Flushed down the drain
That pours itself
Into the putrid
Flowing sewer
That courses
Down every street
And in and out
Of of every house,
Each man lusting after
That which is not his own
And spewing out
The thing that should be cherished.
And the women
Having every man
And no man.
And all for the dream
That will not end
And leaves them empty.
For they did not understand
That the sacred thing
Which they desired
Is and always was
Hidden.
"To your closets!" It cries.
"Hide yourself and dance
Before the dark and mystic
Thing you don't yet know.
Pour your heart and soul
Into that performance
Which is only seen
By those not seen."
There, in the dark conceives
The cosmic and the real.
All else is smoke.
All else a dream.
Though real it seem.
And high it burns
Into the night!
Into the night!
Buuurrrn!...Buuuurrrn!
"Consume them up
And leave them dry!"
It says.
"Then blow them out
Upon the plain
Where their ashes
Mixed with gentle rain
Will sink into the fertile soil.
And from them
All around will spring
The fairest flowers,
Flowers so sweet
That little naked children's feet
Will dance among them.
And so for those
Who think they seek
For fame,
Remember...
That the thing you really want
You already have.
Seek it in your solitude.
And if you do,
In time,
When the mountains sink
Into the sea
We'll praise your notoriety
As one who shunned
The praise of men
And thus
In that eternal world
Gained it back again.
While my ambition slept,
I dreamt of a world
Where naps were allowed.
In my dream,
I met the secret side
Of CEOs
And Entrepreneurs,
The side they hide
From themselves.
And there
They were just as lazy as I,
Lazy enough to see the sky,
To feel the breeze,
To take a ride
With the windows down
In the middle of the afternoon
Without a thought
Of the bottom line
Nor even a concern
For what they'd eat
For dinner that night
Or the next.
In my lazy world,
The poets were praised
For their ability
To create so much
From lazy days.
But I had no time for pride
That was too much work
For this head of mine.
And so I slept the day away,
A nap within a nap.
Shhh........
You'll wake that grind of mine.
Let him sleep.
He's mighty tired.
He needs a little sleepy time.
A month will do,
Or perhaps an age.
Wake him when
The sun don't shine
For after that belated rest
He'll raise the cosmos
From its nest
With all his cock and crow.
Until then,
We'll sleep away
And tell you all
To hit the hay.
Now take nap,
It's ok.
Forget about
Those bills not paid.
And slumber high
Beyond the moon.
Where the sleepy wood fife
Plays a tune
Only for ambitious souls
Who now must rest
God only knows
How long.
And do not worry
It's allowed.
There has never been a time
In the history of the world
When people have felt more alone
Than today.
That doesn't mean that we are
But it seems that way at times.
If you are alone,
Remember
That loneliness is shared
With those as lonley as ourselves.
Believe in the lonely somebodies
Who must share the yoke
You bear.
We are a clan you know -
A band of ones
Who long to love
But who instead
Must suffer.
But at least we suffer together.
I sit alone in my room
With each of you beside me.
What a comfort
It is to know
I'm not alone
Within my wretched solitude.
What a joy!
I almost touch you there,
Yes. There you are,
Looking back at me
From your solitary square.
Perhaps one day
We'll meet,
In the open air I think,
Where the bluebirds sing
And flit the wing
From branch to branch.
You won't say a thing
And neither will I
Except perhaps
From heart to heart
And even if our meeting
Is no more than a simple greeting,
I'll know you
As one of mine
And hold you close
Withing my mind.
You'll pat my knee
And we'll remember
Times when we
Were not so blessed
As we will be then.
In the meantime
At least
This poem we have,
A less romantic moonlight tryst
Between two lonelys,
You in your room
Me in mine
Until the time...
Until the time...
Asking is an essential part of a healthy economy. It supports the community's financial well-being and preserves the soul of both the giver and receiver.
God moves to bring about the miracle after we have faith and after our will aligns with His will.
It takes no machismo
To be a skeptic.
It's little more than nothing
To disbelieve.
Would you be strong?
Would you stand upon the mountain
And sing the triumph song?
Then believe!
Show me one with faith
And I will show you
A thousand sheep
So weak
That they cannot be bothered
By conviction
Till it's nipping
At their heels
With proofs so terrifying
As to drain the life
From their already
Dead corpses.
So, Why not believe?
Why not be the victor
And wear the crown of the mighty?
It's reserved you know
For only those
Whose sureness
Stands the test of fire.
But we are weak
You say.
True.
So why not start today?
Build brick by brick
The tower.
There is no other way
To better tomorrows
Than through
The dark and mournful fictions
Of today.
So, don't give up
On what you cannot see.
Believe!
And when the sun
Pokes its head out
Between the clouds,
And warms you with the truth
You could not see,
Grasp it!
Hold it close!
And do not let it go!
It is the assurance
Of sunshine yet to be.
And that man
Who hordes such proofs will find
His hope, though hidden deep within
Will one day set him free.
Retreat seems to be the answer to the problem of outward evil.
All else is war...
It seems that we must forsake our ground,
Renounce our claim,
And prefer even to die
Rather than participate in a world where we see others as our enemies.
Have you ever been lost
In dreamy reverie?
Have your friends laughed
When they drew you up
Out of some misty waken slumber?
Have they chided you
For missing the obvious
Or for forgetting your location?
If so, then you are not unusual.
But there are some
For whom the call of dreams
Speaks more loudly than the thing
Which others call reality.
It seeps in
Like an early fog
Obscuring the priorities
Set for them by polite society.
And there they think they see
Just beyond the brume,
The world which others
Pretend to worship.
Some are foolish still,
Enough to linger
Listening
Deep beneath the scene
To the silence -
Daring it to speak.
To some it does,
God forbid!
And calls them far,
Far from home,
Far from polite society,
To the lands of legends deep
To harrowing quests
That threaten not only their lives
But their souls.
There they fight with giants
Not only the giants
Of the dark woods
But the giants of their minds.
And there they must keep
A constant vigil
Lest fears, like wolves, devour.
But they are not alone
In the land of dreams
For the spritely spirits
And the friendly forest folk
Of the wood
Watch over the wanderer
With deep concern over every footfall,
Lest he dash his foot
Against a stone.
He is one of theirs
And they watch over him
Though he see them not.
Did you know
That there are some
So lost in dreams
That they never return?
These are the chosen few.
And it is only those who travel far
Who are blessed
To never come back.
The end comes for them
On a distant plane
Or in a forest deep
Or on a mountain so high
That it is forgotten
By townsfolk
Like you and I,
And then all at once,
They disappear
To join the forest folk
In the bright glen
That is hidden
Even from him
Who seeks it most
And the more from unbelievers.
And there they dance
With spirits too real
For human sight
In the splendor
Of their vivid whiteness.
And when they’ve danced
The newcomers dance
And feasted at the fathers table
For a moon
And some for the passing
Of an age,
They return to the forest deep
And wander about
Seeking some fellow wanderer
Who is fool enough
To dream.
You’ll have heard
Of fairy rings
I’m sure.
But now you see
The symbol in the thing.
It’s one eternal round you know.
To dreamer and the dream.
My thoughts on Christmas and traditions that promise other-worldly gifts of inward bliss - grateful reflections and an eye toward the true gifts of the unseen world.
The Beggar's Bowl 4 - A context for going low - and some thoughts about the strategy of Dolby Sound and its founder Ray Dolby.
NOTE: I have no affiliation with Dolby and the comments in this podcast are purely my own views and thoughts. I also make no claim that anything said here is fact since the information was conveyed to me privately from a friend who claimed to have known Ray Dolby as a young man. I trust the source and so I felt that I could relate the story. But I have not verified the events related.
Two worlds.
Would to God that I
Could straddle the fence.
I wish that I could please you.
But to do so,
I would have to be
The thing that you expected
And not the thing I am.
And I am no more
Than what you
See before you.
And since I cannot please you,
I am afraid
That you will have to
Love or hate me
There is no middle road.
So here I am.
Will you love me
Will trust me
Will you share
The air you breath
And your last oil and flour
With one who cannot
Serve your fancies
Or say the things
You're longing for?
If so,
Then all my heart
I give you,
All the words
You're longing for.
I am yours
And you are mine love,
Nothing less
And nothing more.
Face a thing when it comes.
That is the key
That unlocks
A certain kind
Of peace of mind.
But face it fully
Or it will haunt
Your pocket
And beg to be
Written down.
And then
You are its slave.
That man is free
Whose simplicity
Manifests itself
In the empty spaces
In his schedule
Which yawn themselves lazily
Open and wide
Spanning the gap
Between few and deliberate
Pillars of intent.
The Truth Unaided
9/28/2019
I met a man who spoke the truth.
He did not apologize.
He did not explain.
And he did not call
Upon another
To support his claims.
It was not until that day
That I heard the truth
You'll say I knew
And I suppose you're right
But how is a man
To see the needle
For the haystack?
I fear that now
I am spoiled to the chaff.
His words reached back
Like a magnet
To find truth there
The long while shining
And now I see it everywhere.
It's with me in the grocery store
And at the office
It walks beside me
Where the path
Leads beside the river
And it haunts me
Where before I slumbered,
Blissfully oblivious to all
But that which served
My keenest fancies.
I stumble through now
As best I can
And pretend
That I still care for caviar
And that it matters
Whether I get the promotion.
But my resolve weakens
And I fear that soon
I will not be able
To keep up appearances
For though lost
To that which served me,
I am found by the very thing
Which eluded me so long.
Or was it I that eluded it?
God only knows.
It's lonely.
That, I did not expect.
At least so far it is.
But I can sense
A host of others waiting,
Longing also,
For the family promised
To those whose lives
Are sacrificed
Upon the alter of Truth.
I am young to the alter
Still I burn there slowly.
And there you have it.
It turns out
That the poets' pledge is verified
By another to join their ranks -
One more fool
Whose life is wasted (if you must)
Upon the premise
That unseen things are paramount,
That they are real
Though hidden behind unnumbered facades
Not the least of which
Being cowardly people
Who fear to speak the truth unaided.
Thank God for the man
Who dared to say that thing
Which I always knew
But could not see
For the multitude of words.
Markets fluctuate.
And that means that
During the lean times
You will not buy my Merchandise.
You will not need my t-shirt or coffee mug.
But perhaps, if you find what I say to be valuable,
You will let me live.
For this reason, now and then, I beg.
It is part of a scalable model.
And while I can,
I'll sell you books,
And things to hang on your wall.
But too, I ask that you'd consider
Dropping a few coins into my hat
If you can spare them.
You can donate through my website
Or my Venmo account: thetracklesspath
Or PayPal: thetracklesspath@gmail.com
Family is the basic unit of existence.
It exists above as it does below.
And all other social structures
Will eventually fall away.
But family is biological,
And it is biological because
It reflects the nature of the soul.
Oh fair spirit,
Sweet lover of my soul,
Floating there
Still gowned in your bridal veils.
How bright you shine!
How white your ever pure intent!
No desire but always still
To be mine
Who spurned you
Year after year
For more solid loves.
Ashamed, you turn away your face
From one so blind
As to disdain
The very image of devotion.
For there was always some other
With fairer lies
With which to be beguiled -
Those whose luster,
Though not so bright,
Still shone with neon promises
Painted on the night.
But still you linger,
Faithful still.
Do not die
Before I've broken free
From all the things
I do not love.
Do not die within me
Bride of mine!
But lend me life
Enough to spurn
Those fables dark
And bind myself
To she whose love
I always cherished most
But feared to find.
https://www.thetracklesspath.com/blog/my-fair-spirit-bride
https://youtu.be/WlRvWwxBBY4
Dogmatism is dead.
Well, no it's not.
But it is dying.
And it is because of the internet.
Fewer and fewer people are interested in creeds.
They do not want to be pitted against their neighbor for a trifle.
And they seek out the truth they need for its own sake.
They do not need you to tell them what it is.
And so, to them, your Master of Theology degree
Is worth the paper it is written on.
For they can see past all that
To the thing that unites
If they choose to,
Look that is.
And more and more, they are.
They want the truth that helps, that's all.
And most, I think, are content to keep their differences to themselves.
And I believe that it is a good thing
That the dogmatic are rendered
More and more impotent.
And yet, they rage on,
Insistent that theirs is the only truth, the only way.
But sooner or later, that spirit will die away with the brightness of His coming.
There you are
Reading this
Like peeping Toms.
Intruders.
Prowling round my soul.
Pulling away the curtains,
Tearing down the walls,
Storming the gate.
And yet it was I
That let you in.
Opening wide my chest
To wrap you up,
Blessed ogler.
Sacred intruder.
Hallowed guest.
Here - bear away my finest.
Take the candle sticks as well.
Leave me barren
But for the sweet perfume
Of one who wanted, prized my finest.
Two threads of a tapestry
Touching Once
But Eternally knit into the same cloth we are.
For in the spoils
You bear away the sacred cup
From which I drink.
Can you bear to drink
From wells of sorrow?
Can you dip the cup
Deep into the cauldron
Where boils like acid
The scourge and the affliction,
And then fly away like the bluebird
Deep, Deep into the sacred wood,
Far from human tracks,
Where shadows deepen,
Like portals to the mystic plane?
Beware the spoils
Of men who've lost their fear of death.
Beware the spoils
Of him who courts the thief.
For if he who prizes more your soul
Than all his richest treasures
Suffers you to carry off his valuables
Do not be surprised
When that same spirit
Fills your own house
And makes it his own.
Yours and his of course.
But his none the less.
And there you are
Reading this poem
Like peeping Toms?
No.
Like next of kin.
Here - pull up a chair.
Sit by my fire.
Drink deep the cup
Warm and sweet.
There now.
That's right.
Off to sleep.
Sleep well my child.
The bitter gourd
Will wait for another day.
But tonight we dwell safely here.
Deep, Deep within my heart.
Where none can hurt you.
Stay a season if you must
Or a year
Or a life time
From we are of the same cloth,
Two threads of a tapestry,
Touching Once
But eternally knit,
You and I.
There was the stone age
And then the Iron age.
After that came the middle ages
And then the industrial age
And the information age.
And there are those who claim
That the next great age
Is the Augmented age:
The age when AI will tie us all together
With augmented faculties.
It is a manmade Utopian ideal
To which many of the brightest minds
Are bending their wits at present.
But the augmented age will fail.
It is too complex for man to handle.
It is a leaning tower of Babel.
And when it falls,
Confusion will follow in its wake
And from the ashes will then rise
The last great age of man:
The age of gifts.
And for those with eyes to see,
The seeds of this last great age are being planted even now
In the hearts of those who choose to live by the gifts of God and man.
It is the only Utopia there ever was or ever will be.
I will win
Because I will suffer
Longer than you.
But there is no ill will
In the winning,
Nor shame in love's loosing
When loss is gain.
Beat away! My chest
Longs for your fists
Clinched tight.
Every ocean needs a shore or crag
To beat against,
And I have nothing else
More pressing.
Beat away!
Beat away! My breast
Longs for your fists
Clinched tight.
Till the day
The day when they've
Worn themselves out in beating.
And you fall like the meteor
Down, down...
And crash upon my breast in defeat.
Beat away!
Beat away! My breast
Longs for your fists
Clinched tight.
There is no ill will
In the winning,
Nor shame in love's loosing
When loss is gain.
Only the lesser part of Truth can be bound up in a book.
The greater part must be revealed by the Holy Spirit.
It is the sealed portion promised
To all those who have faith
Like the ancients.
It is too early to spin a poem.
Too early to know whether it is good or bad.
Too early to care.
It's here, I suppose,
That I wish I were something more
Than a poet.
Something useful or brave.
Something efficient perhaps,
Or strong and powerful.
Like one of those
That stand at the helm of industry.
Dear God - save me from that!
But then at least,
I could pretend that I was wanted.
Then I would stand with my head erect
And beguile myself into believing
That I am respected
For something more than
What they use me for.
Then, I would feign that my friends
Were friends forever.
And pretend that they loved me
For something more than my success.
We'd roam the golf courses
Discussing things of no import.
My home and office would be full
Of well wishers
And I'd spend my money
On useless gifts
Knowing all the while
That they'd ruin them in the end.
But we'd play the bluff.
And have a great time of it
While it lasted.
One thing for sure,
I would not sit at five thirty in the morning
Wondering at the silence,
Letting it move upon and around me
Like dark natives
Deciding the fate of their captive.
I wouldn't spend my days
Staring out upon an unseen world
That looms like fairy goblins
And fretting all the while
Over those
Who don't believe in such things.
But I suppose
That a man must be something.
And in the absence of all that
Which I might have made of myself,
Had I been strong or efficient or useful,
That I'd might as well say what can be said
While it can be said,
Be it good or bad.
And content myself
With the approval of the fairy folk.
Would to God
That they would let me
Get to my breakfast!
Writing takes time
But publishing takes longer.
And it's all work and I rejoice in it.
However, there are many things
That I desire to say in the days that I have left.
And the less I spend my time on publishing,
The more time I have to write.
And so I am going to try to outsource.
I figure that the cost to publish one of these short thoughts
Is probably about five dollars, maybe ten.
I am still in the process of figuring that out.
But for the sake of simplicity, we'll call it five.
Therefore, If you would like to sponsor an episode
By sending me a fiver,
I would greatly appreciate it.
My Venmo account is thetracklesspath.
And my Paypal account is thetracklesspath@gmail.com.
All of the funds will go toward the cost of publication, however,
I pray that you will consider adding 50 cents for me.
A little change that I can spend
To support the ones I love.
God bless you always,
TheTrackless Path
Who are you?
A story tell.
Buy why do I ask?
You are cold stone.
A token is enough
To start imagination
And perhaps cloudy perception
Is clearer than plain sight.
Somehow this one a century deep
Shines brighter than those not ten years dead.
But a year gone
Is plenty to silence ingratitude.
Their silence speaks to me here.
And my steps slow…
Listen heart.
Bow soul.
And there from down beneath the sod,
Deeper than six feet down,
Their music plays.
It is the old sacred song,
The song that only silence sings
Because it is too sacred for words.
It is the song of children at play
And young men working,
The song of factories and farms,
Of babies nursing
And mothers laughing,
The song of painful shyness
And bold proposals,
Of wise old women
And foolish young ones.
It is the song of painful wrongs
And tearful reconciliations.
It is love and hatred.
It is pigheaded fools
And spineless pushovers.
It carries the full hearted chorus of the triumphant.
And the fearful hiding strains of the defeated.
It is Sunday picnics
And family reunions.
It is the touch of another person.
It is kindness.
And hurt.
It is devotion.
And treachery.
It is…
The life song.
And here it plays most clearly.
Apparently the dead know something of life,
For they sing to me here.
But I must go now.
I cannot linger all day at temple.
For the sacred song awaits my own refrain,
And I must write my own lines
Before my day of life is through.
The Falling Leaves of Promise
They are moving out, one by one,
From the system that promised so much
And now cannot deliver the pleasure that it promised.
And as they do, they leave chaos in their wake, prescious chaos...
Like the heat that beats down upon a smoldering mass of leaves.
I always loved the Fall, so silent, so pure.
So reminiscent of a thing I couldn't place,
Accept in the memory of other cool and dying days,
And in the precious recollection of childhood feasts of love,
Of family, and of all that exists when work is put away
And we remember what we were working for.
And perhaps that's what they are doing,
Going home to the reason,
Forsaking the scream of getting more
And choosing family over the press and pressure.
If so, then I look forward to the dark and fertile soil
With which God will plant his garden
In the Spring that follows
His Long Winter.
The Spring Thing
A month of spring,
Joyous thing,
But dangerous too.
How dare you
Expend such love?
It seems extreme
When you consider
You might get hurt
With all that love lying about.
So you rolled up the grass
And pulled in the flowers.
A month was enough
Spring for one year.
And you said to yourself
Perhaps that spring thing
Was just a fling.
But summer and fall were all a drawl
Without spring.
And winter was worst of all
And wouldn't give way.
For without spring,
There was no...spring,
You know, the bouncy thing
That keeps it all moving
The whole year round.
And so you did your best to recall
Back past winter and before the fall,
Before the summer
To the very spring thing
You'd called a fling.
And there in your memory
All cramped and small,
In a far away corner
Not very tall,
Stood the very love thing
That had started it all.
But he whimpered and cried
And started to bawl.
He said "I'm so small
And not very tall.
Don't spread me about
I'm sure to be mauled!"
But you closed your eyes
And grabbed that love thing
And started to spread it
Around with a zing!
And though at first
It hurt something terrible,
Soon you found
It was better than bearable.
And that the thing
You'd wanted all along
Was spring.
So now with every chance you get,
You spread the love thing
And not just in spring.
For love is the very best thing of all
For turning the seasons,
Winter, spring, summer and fall.
The Completeness Doctrine
Full Text:
There are many
Whose faith relies upon a completeness doctrine.
They believe that the truth may be found
The way a shiny pebble may be found
And captured
And carried away in one's pocket.
They see the acquisition of Truth as an event and not a process.
And so once they believe that it has been secured,
And bound up within the creed,
They relax into the knowledge
That it is theirs to keep, and theirs alone.
But they do not realize that such truth never comes alone.
It is always accompanied by falsehood.
There are wolves among the sheep.
And ignorant among the best of us.
So that no framework is without its flaws.
And it is our job to look within
And seek help from the divine
To weed out all that is not true,
Not for the sake of setting others right,
But so that we may see the truth more clearly for ourselves.
But know that when you do,
There will be those who will renounce you as a heratic,
And all because you cannot swallow
The completeness doctrine.
They want you to be all in,
Or nothing.
But for those of us who want the truth at all costs,
That is not enough.
Infallible
Full Text:
Though we may not see eye to eye,
I am able to overlook our differences
In almost everything
Accept the doctrine of infallibility.
It is the one thing that truly rankles me.
Some say that their pope is infallible,
And others their prophet,
And others their book,
And others their interpretation of the book.
And that is fine as far it goes.
And it's almost true on certain days,
And in certain ways when the wind blows just right.
But then again it's not.
It's too lofty,
Too high.
And if even God,
While veiled in flesh,
Refused to be called good.
How do we dare do any different?