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Peaceful Emptiness
It has been a while since I wrote anything concrete; it has been a while since I had any desire to. I have been emotionally and spiritually in a new place the last few years, and it was not until recently that I began to be able to put words to the sort of peaceful emptiness that I have fallen into. A place where I comfortably gaze upon the contradictions in myself, life, and others with a peaceful smirk. Where knowing and unknowing equally have a presence within each breath. A place where the prison of a reputation no longer traps my anxieties. Ultimately, it is a place where…
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Fire
There is a fire that exists.Its origin is not my own.And yet,I spend my days as if it were mine. My fire, or so I think,Crackles in pleasureWarms in honorBlazes in accomplishments. This fire, my fire,Comforts with adulationEspecially when “doing good.”So why do I fear? There was the one,The one in the desert.Who spoke of fire,An unquenchable fire. This fire, I fear.This fire, I want.This fire torches my pride,This fire is Love.
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A Hidden Truth
There is a calming truth hidden with the tide.Repetitive,Releasing,Relentless,For those who pay attention. The surge rushes ashore.Carries,Crashes,Crushes,The burden of a mind. The ebb returns in peace.Slowly,Steadily,Silently,Purifying the content of a soul. The continuous pattern cleanses.Filtering,Freeing,Forming,A heart filled with gratitude. There is a calming truth hidden with the tide.Vitality,Vulnerability,View,Of a life not my own.
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Change
We can learn much from a tree. Colorful. Spectacular. Beautiful. Standing, being who they are meant to be. That said, in a few weeks they will experience loss. Bare. Exposed. Vulnerable. Enduring change after change after change. Nevertheless, there they remain. Bold. Present. Living. Standing, being who they are meant to be. “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” -St. John Henry Newman
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“Uniquely Me”
It has been two months since I moved back to the U.S.A. from Switzerland. During this time, I have experienced two months of raw emotions filled with both extreme highs and extreme lows. Two months of anxiety and clarity. Two months of a new kind of loneliness and reunions with friends and family. As the dust continues to settle, words are still hard to come by to explain precisely what is happening within my thoughts, my heart, and my soul. That said, every once in a while, a song might come on that can highlight a feeling. There is a T.V. show or movie that can give words to the…
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The Human Balance
I recently found myself in multiple conversations about how to strike a balance between recognizing times when we need to be alone and the moments when we need nothing more than to be with others. Needless to say, I didn’t get very far, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized there wasn’t a recipe to strike the balance. That could be because the balance is innate, engrained within the fabric of our beings from the beginning. The very nature of being human is to be ourselves within the constructs of community. Therefore, the truth lies in the paradox. Life has a way of dictating our needs.…
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A Friend to Man
(Image: Bruce Fountain, Falkland, Scotland) The House by the Side of the Road by Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911) There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the peace of their self-content; There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran;- But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by- The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I…
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Turning the Big 4-0
They say that when you turn 40, you enter a new stage of life where you begin to see things more thoroughly—or, better put, as they are rather than as you want them to be. Ideology and theory become less of a focus, and the messiness of life becomes more of a comfortable norm. Maybe it is about being content within the “grey” areas of our lives, where we seem better suited to hold two opposing things together without discounting either. This has undoubtedly been the case for me as I reflect upon the immense beauty and suffering in my own life. Both of these are constantly present, but when…
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Wrestling with Time
Forever Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872 – 1906 I had not known before Forever was so long a word. The slow stroke of the clock of time I had not heard. ‘Tis hard to learn so late; It seems no sad heart really learns, But hopes and trusts and doubts and fears, And bleeds and burns. The night is not all dark, Nor is the day all it seems, But each may bring me this relief— My dreams and dreams. I had not known before That Never was so sad a word, So wrap me in forgetfulness— I have not heard.
