The Nameless Spiritual
An essay journey launched in ordinary moments, carried by tides and winds of life’s storms, finally landing in the Light of Mystery.
Presence in Light and Nature
1Silken Tide
“The ebb and flow of Presence is too gentle, too soft, to intrude upon our noises and plans. It slips in and out of the lagoons of morning light as a silken tide.”
2Breeze of Mystery
“Pure poetry, of course we need pure poetry. To capture the Mystery prose cannot suffice.”
3At the Ranch
“One of the two big black horses was nuzzling the little pigs this morning, on and on before he knew I was watching, licking and grooming, the two little pigs together.”
4Frantic
“The robin parents frantically cheep and cheep, or should I say cry and cry?”
5Deer and Coyotes
“Deer stand on the trail above the gamboling coyote pups in the valley, a mother and yearling deer maybe.”
6Hillside
“So beautiful, this simple hillside. So beautiful in peace and momentary safety.”
7Alternative Path Home
“So upset is that little squirrel on the utility pole.”
8Flightless Souls on Walkabout
“At the pond, post sunrise, the three Marx brothers ducks at my feet.”
9Recognizing Beauty
“The creek is running! Barely, but running! Thank You, thank You, thank You for this symbol of the inexorable return of Life in spite of our destructiveness.”
10Seeing Through Our Dreams and Scars
“What would I see? I’m not asking to see anymore. I will see what I’m supposed to see. I see blessings.”
11Small World
“The world looks small this morning, the thinness of the atmosphere somehow evident, the rippling geology only a thin crust, the burgeoning population compressed into an acutely finite area.”
Fear, suffering, and charades
12Stop for a Moment
“There is good reason mystics seclude themselves in monastic retreats.”
13Currency of the Soul
“Shadows race down the hill toward our lives, making it all the more imperative to soak up the sunshine.”
14Portal of Your Soul
“Oh ye lost children, so busy with your plans.”
15Save the World a Little Later
“Peace. It is OK to take a moment off.”
16Conversation with an angel
““Fear not” is the most common admonition/directive/command in the Bible, appearing dozens of times, by some counts more than a hundred.”
Hardship, madness, and growth
17The Death of Personal Growth
“But personal growth requires change, and change is a form of death of our existing self.”
18Successful Disaster
“Worldly disasters entangled with spiritual miracles….that’s about the best you can hope for in following the Spirit and Purpose.”
19Life Adrift or Navigating Life
“As we go through life the shallow waters of a familiar lagoon seem safe and pretty and warm.”
20Heart Blindness
“Such madness besets this poor blinded humanity! Dear God, such madness!”
21Did We Love?
“We each leave our legacy, whether an empty and unnoticed void or a towering chrome and steel corporation.”
22Would We Miss Death
“What would we do without the immense overhead of our physical maintenance?”
Harshness and storms, creation and birth
23The Scrum of Perfection
“Life is a scrum, an unfair – odds stacked – guaranteed to lose – struggle….and from the grime and blood and dung arise the Light of Beauty and glimpses of Love.”
24Ghost of Perfection
“What new can be said? What new can possibly be said?”
25Beauty in the Madness
“On a recent sunrise contemplative walk, I experienced a most curious peaceful insight.”
26Conveniently Rational Munitions
“The world, unremittingly harsh. The world, unchangeable.”
27Faith Madness
“Living in faith means of necessity living in contradiction to the world.”
28Fledging
“This world is merely a launching point. To understand the Purpose and Reality of the stew while just looking at the iron pot is impossible.”
29Storm of Creation
“Let the thunder into your life, let its peels of threat shake your soul.”
30Forgiving God
“Is it really all our fault?”
Consciousness and the self
31Enduring Consciousness
“The only thing that has endured throughout our entire lives is our individual consciousness.”
32Unlocked Door of our Solitary Confinement
“Where am I in all this writing? I fear I am at the center.”
33You Will Be Touched
“The human spirit, or is it soul, or do we have no name for it, something individual, something lost, or was it forgotten?”
34Stream of Consciousness
“There is of course only consciousness.”
35Impossible Yearning
“Is the deep Unity and Communion to which the human spirit is called fundamentally not realizable on this earth?”
36Edge
“There is a liminal peace, a liminal peace right at the edge of this temporal world, right there, right at the edge.”
37Overlapping Projections of Gods
“In that place of Light, each individual conscious being projects a soft reality, strong but flexible, without the cutting, sharp, jagged edges of the clashing, conflicting, colliding individual realities of this world.”
38Pachinko Minds
“Our minds rattle through their pachinko (a Japanese vertical pinball game) path of development, bouncing this way and that.”
39Symphony of Chance
“Hear the chimes, that penetrating sound, the sound of wind instantiated.”
Connection, worship, and the Mystery
40Bridges of Sound and Light
“Sound and light, this stuff that serves as the tenuous connection among souls, this flimsy bridge we struggle to refine and craft and carve and polish, then call it “art”.”
41More Than Meat
“Spiritual discussions: don’t hear many of those in the workplace or locker room.”
42That Person Next to You
“Inter-human interactions….. no experience comes closer to knowing God. No experience can so promptly and radically drive us away from all that is holy.”
43Crumbling Temples, Crumbling Lessons
“In each of those Roman temples we now see as ruins there had to be a last priest of that cult.”
44The Bass Voice of God
“Why would God need masks or altars or guilt or amplifiers to reach us?”
45Worship
“It is of course worship, desperate, frantic, clinging worship. It is worship of a memory, a past and prescient and present memory, a memory ineffable.”
46Three Principles
“Were we to boil everything down to three principles:”
47Truth.....Any Takers?
“Infinite and eternal Truth…. funny how we do not expect it to be relevant, or do we not expect it to exist?”
48Lessons of the Mystery
“Lessons, life lessons, learned and taken so seriously, lessons for the individual, no one else.”