Thoughts / October 14, 2024

Compelling Enthusiasm

The reason most people find healing so hard is that they’ve had so little help, so little guidance, and so little information. Emotional recovery can be, and should be, a joyous journey. People who get the right pieces in place find that:

  • healing moves fast.
  • some gains are immediate, with many more to follow.
  • the pleasure greatly outweighs the pain.
  • the parts that do involve hard work are so rewarding that the underlying feeling remains, “I can totally do this.”
  • healing is not a solitary undertaking, and it leads rapidly to greater and greater connection …

If you’re still alive, there’s still time. You can gain back a vibrant, connected, satisfying life. Pain, anxiety, and isolation do not need to dominate.

— The Joyous Recovery, Lundy Bancroft

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Thoughts / October 13, 2024

Patience I

Is not a child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience because my will is that of our Father, from Whom I learned of infinite patience. His voice was in me as It is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in the Name of its Creator.

Now you must learn that only infinite patience produces immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results now it renders time unnecessary.

— A Course in Miracles

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Fable / October 13, 2024

The Snake

Aesop’s The Farmer and the Viper

A Farmer walked through his field one cold winter morning. On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. The Farmer knew how deadly the Snake could be, and yet he picked it up and put it in his bosom to warm it back to life.

The Snake soon revived, and when it had enough strength, bit the man who had been so kind to it. The bite was deadly and the Farmer felt that he must die. As he drew his last breath, he said to those standing around:

Learn from my fate not to take pity on a scoundrel.

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Thoughts / October 10, 2024

Goodness

John 21

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”

16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.”

17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.

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Poems / October 8, 2024

Acts of Helplessness

Here are the miracle-signs you want: that
you cry through the night and get up at dawn, asking,
that in the absence of what you ask for your day gets dark,
your neck thin as a spindle, that what you give away
is all you own, that you sacrifice belongings,
sleep, health, your head, that you often
sit down in a fire like aloes wood, and often go out
to meet a blade like a battered helmet.

When acts of helplessness become habitual,
those are the signs.

But you run back and forth listening for unusual events,
peering into the faces of travelers.
“Why are you looking at me like a madman?”
I have lost a friend. Please forgive me.

Searching like that does not fail.
There will come a rider who holds you close.
You faint and gibber. The uninitiated say, “He’s faking.”

How could they know?
Water washes over a beached fish, the water
of those signs I just mentioned.

Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?
It’s like counting leaves in a garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges,
and crows.

Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

— The Essential Rumi, Jalal Al-Din Rumi; Coleman Barks

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