Active Dormancy

Isn’t it interesting, maybe even ironic, that the maple trees are so productive, so fruitful, when they would seem to be the most dormant.  While the sap runs so well, it would mostly seem to our eyes that nothing at all is happening.  I wonder what God does within us during our dormant times, the times when, to human eyes, it would seem that we’re doing nothing at all . . . what God manages to work when we release ourselves to simply being.  Perhaps, like the maple tree, life is running within us, anxious to produce fruit.  May it be so, Lord, may it be so.

A Symphony of Mindfulness

adagio
Slow driving . . . the weight of the weather somehow requires it as the clouds hang low with the weight of themselves . . . the flutes and violins pick up their tempo just a bit on the radio. . .  I glance to my right and am dumbstruck by the simple scene seen so many times before . . . the cattle roaming, chewing, staring from the field . . . it is a freeze-frame moment of beauty and awe and I am brought into mindfulness . . . the state of being that takes each sense and calls for attention . . . where I am going, from whence I have come all fade into this moment, this now . . . it is what I imagine stepping into a painting might be like, but more, oh so much, much more . . . and I am awakened . . . slowly . . .

cesura
Taking my time over the mountain I usually glide past at hyperspeed, I drift down into Monterey where the clouds have risen a bit . . . there on the left – the first house . . . the black cat sits haunched in the grass . . . eyes keen on the thing before it . . . mole?  Or just a blade of grass?  Who can say?  The moment frozen . . . time suspended . . . in that just-before-launch millisecond of feline pondering . . . the cat symphony will reach its crescendo without me as I drift on . . .

forte piano
The wind pours itself into the apartment moving the vertical blinds in a rhythm only it can name . . . sitting in silence, we two hear the infrequent traffic ebbing and flowing, underscoring in the gaping quiet the distant sound of child voices . . . perpendicular to the wind I sit . . . half of my face feels its caress, the other mindless of what it misses . . . strong then quiet . . . strong then quiet . . . feeling more than hearing . . . I am mindful that God’s lungs breathe in and breathe out a world and barely a sound is heard . . .

Less is More

- = +

Seeing the above symbols on a billboard recently, I puzzle and puzzle:  what does it mean?  The best I can do is “Less is more.”

At Christmas time in the United States, there is much preaching on less . . . less consumerism, less consumption . . . all appropriate given our over-use of the world’s resources and our relative share thereof.

But I think now not of consumerism, but of the approach of the New Year as measured on the Gregorian calendar favored in the Western world.

One of the customs here is to make New Year’s resolutions: promises or commitments, typically to one’s self, to do better, to do more, at something . . . more dieting . . . more effort at drinking less . . . more time given to good causes . . . more work at being an all-round better person.

What if, this New Year, we sought to do less rather than more, to even be less rather than more.

It goes against the grain for we can-do Yanks, doesn’t it?

But maybe, just maybe, this is a time for less promises rather than more . . . less commitments we will not keep (largely because we don’t want to, even though we think we should) . . . less effort . . .

Maybe, just maybe, this can be a year when we stop listening to the voices in our heads and on our television and computer screens telling us that we don’t do enough, that somehow we aren’t enough . . . and simply be content . . . content knowing that we are doing our best . . . content knowing that even amidst the hard times, and there will be hard times, we are blessed . . . blessed with each other . . . blessed with the ability to be useful to our fellow human beings, even if our bodies restrict us to a life of lying in bed . . . blessed knowing we can serve and allow ourselves to be served . . . blessed to simply be . . .

This year, my resolution is to make no resolutions . . . to take life on its own terms . . . as it comes . . . day by day . . . that will be enough . . . and so will I.

***

On the phrase “less is more”:

"Less is more" is often misattributed to Richard Buckminster Fuller or to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and it has become a prominent motto for minimalist philosophies. It was actually used much earlier in Robert Browning's "Andrea del Sarto" (1855), and the similar German phrase "minder ist oft mehr" by Christoph Martin Wieland in Der Teutsche Merkur (1774).  Wikiquotes

Andrea Del Sarto by Robert Browning

I do what many dream of, all their lives,

--Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,

Who strive—you don't know how the others strive

To paint a little thing like that you smeared

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,

(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

There burns a truer light of God in them,

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,

Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,

Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,

Enter and take their place there sure enough,

Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

The sudden blood of these men! at a word--

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.

I, painting from myself and to myself,

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame

Or their praise either. . . 

How to Be. . .

How to be peace rather than preach it to others?

How to be joyful rather than proclaim it at others?

How to be kind rather than describe it for others?

How to be giving rather than demand it from others?

These are my challenges of the day.

In the questions lie the answers.

Isn’t it often thus?

Let Us Be

Today, let us simply sit.

Letting go of worry.

Letting go even of hopes and dreams.

Letting go of letting go.

Let’s just sit.

And be.

In the midst of the sorrows and even the joys.

Let us be.

Which is different than the Beatle’s advice, “let it be”.

Let us simply be.

Take the week off from worry. . .
from fretting . . .
from planning . . .
thinking about . . .
stewing . . .

This week, let’s not . . .
‘work on’
anything . . .
Not even on letting it all go . . .
Whether the ‘its’ in our lives
stay or go . . .
Let us simply be.

Let’s just relish
our own created-ness . . .

Let us be.