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Thoughtlets for a Quiet Mood

Spontaneous Brevities

by Alan Harris

For winter photos beside these thoughts, see
Thoughts Along a Winter's Walk | PDF for printing
Lily
Our Origin
Either (1) No one knows our origin, or (2) no one knows who knows our origin, or (3) people know people who know our origin and I'm not one of them. Even so, perhaps the mystery of our origin has a solution that is in plain view.

Where Are We Going?
We are like electrons laughing and dancing in a wire. We never go far along the wire, but the magic we conjure up in the process, in the here and the now, may also closely resemble our destination. Electricity abounds in laughing and loving. Are we going, then, to where we are?

What Is Doubt?
Doubt is the snake squirming inside us when we feel superior to teachings we little understand that are merely poorly taught. Doubt justifies (or tries to) a chronic indolence within those who scorn the sacred as being decay and who shun advancement as being delay.

What Is Faith?
Faith is an enthusiastic arrow shot toward the open sky in hopes of hitting some target. Faith climbs and yearns. Faith is strong enough, some say, to move mountains. But when faith and ego intermix, there can be a mighty hollowness, a thundering emptiness. Purest faith quietly and simply serves the community.

Education
Education is the process of insisting upon your essence ever more gently. A seed's essence shoots a stalk up through dirt and manure--and matures. You are the seed and stalk. The school system is the dirt. The curriculum is the manure, because of which and in spite of which you blossom.

Hiding
The eyes are the windows of the soul, and the mouth's expression is the window of the heart. Children know a fake smile because it fails to match the eyes. They use the voice as a reliable stethoscope. Gestures, too, are a wind-vane revealing the direction of the soul's breath. Eyes, mouth, voice, gestures: these instruments of discovery, plus time, reveal all hiding.

A Mess
Order unperceived is called a mess. A mountain range is then a mess of piled rock, trees, and snow. A rain forest is a mess of flora and fauna. An artist's home may be a mess of paint, canvases, and brushes. Who sees messes? The one who judges. And who judges? The one who is blind to order under disorder.

Seeking
Seek, and you shall find another thing to seek, until you find a grave. Can you drop your seeking? If you can, your seeking may in turn release you. You may then find yourself to be anchored rather than self-yanked by a leash along some self-serving path. You may safely drop all, for nothing truly needful can fall away. A light load, no seeking, no path--will roses then fail to bloom?

Isms
Isms organize great thinking into neat mausoleums, each ism occupying its cataloged row and column, sealed off from change and living. Visit a mausoleum, and you may discover that any original ideas you hear are coming from your own soul, which is not dead, nor will it ever be. Never box me up or seal me up with an ism. Being always alive, I may need to whoop or sing. Let me breathe the breeze until I am the breeze.

Middle
Everywhere we go, we are in the exact middle of all thought, all doing. Others whom we think of as far away are also in that middle. We are billions of middles, all apparently separate yet somehow all concentric--all sharing one middle. Eccentricities continually appear and prevent stagnation, but they, too, share the middle. Seen from a dynamic middle, all may be well.

Purity
A religious costume is more likely to cloak impurity than to reveal purity. Purity is more a dancing than an achievement, and it dances through every heart in unique rhythm. Purity washes the soul with tears whenever there is a breakthrough. We have seen purity manifest in strong men, in hard women, in awful children. We have known purity by the generous act, the comforting smile, the glistening eye.

Listening
To listen deeply is to give deeply. Words decorate the rise and fall of more than our voice. Words are the throbs of our heart of hearts. Take bread and wine as you wish, but honor the communion of the moment--at school, at work, and in the family circle. Hear the hearing of others as well as their speaking. Meet in receptivity.

Unfamiliar
If we observe and honor the unfamiliar feelings that haunt and hurt us, these feelings will be found the growing ground into which we have already been planted. Following the unfamiliar through the tangled thickets of the familiar may lead to a blooming. Yes, there may be awful aching, fear, and upheavals--but one day comes the sweet grace of the blooming.

Days
At the end of a day, is there one less day in your life or one more day in your life? Is your life a stack of days, like a deck of cards? Or is it a stream in which waking and dreaming ripple on a surface above unfathomed depths? "Are we digital or analog?" we might ask. "Particles or waves?" The particle folks bottle the water and sell it, while the wave folks flow in it toward the sea. Lungs and longings whisper "waves" to my own ears.

When All Goes Well
When all is going well, going badly is not far away. When all seems lost, well-being hovers nearby like the breath of an angel. Exulting will be humbled; despairing will be consoled. Lucky is the one who has no waves like these to ride--or is he?

Spirit and World
While the Spirit fills our souls with endless hints and nuances, the World carries the World home to the World in little shopping bags. Spirit or World--which is ruling? They may appear to alternate in supremacy, but if you have ever felt the intensity of being worldly, you may agree that Spirit has no rival at all except for lesser Spirit.

Alone?
I ask Above for guidance, and I remain who I am. Was there guidance? I ask who I am, and I remain who I am. I ask why I am here, and here I am, asking. I ask where my ancestors have gone, and silence reveals only their memories and legends. Answers fail. But now a neighborhood child rings the doorbell and asks to talk. We two answer for each other.