Author: itoccurstocp

Photo taken recently on the University of Texas campus.

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata:

“…and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.”

As I contemplate this line today it occurs to me that a constant failing is that of focusing on the messenger, not the message, or focusing on the receptacle, not the content.  There is some proof in Ehrmann’s line that this is a common malady.  I mean, is the “even the dull and ignorant” part even necessary.  The exhortation is really “listen to others, they too have their story” but there is this tendency to dismiss, not listen to, the story that comes in a package I don’t like.  There is, in effect, this pre-screening going on based on experience, bias, prejudice….  That is, experience be damned, I still believe I CAN judge a book by its cover because I am just that astute, that perceptive, that damn smart.  News Flash…!

Listen to others; they too have their story.  Not “your” story, but “their story.”  (Though it is surprising how often “their story” is, or at least intersects with, your story.)

Photo taken a few years back, patiently waiting in a folder for the accompanying text.

This beautiful prayer from Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart:

Brood over our spirits, Our Father,

Blow upon whatever dream Thou hast for us

That there may glow once again on our hearths

The light from Thy altar.

Pour out whatever our spirits need of shock, of lift, of release

That we may find strength for these days –

Courage and hope for tomorrow.

In confidence we rest in Thy sustaining grace

Which makes possible triumph in defeat, gain in loss, and love in hate.

We rejoice this day to say:

Our little lives, our big problems – these we place upon thy altar!

Photo taken a few years back at Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Take a slice of the past not fully understood

Muddle in an ephemeral dash of pungent now

Stir in an unknowable future

Shake erratically, yet with passion and vigor

Pour over the imagined, but seemingly real, rocks

Enjoy

DeMello effectively makes this point in one of the essays in Awareness. 

“Life only makes sense when you perceive it as a mystery.”  Anthony DeMello

This, he explains, is why we have such frustration in searching for “the meaning of life.”  Reality, as we experience it, each of us, does not fit a formula or an ideology.  As DeMello notes: “Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made.”  So what do we do then?  Well, speaking from personal experience, the inclination is to get frustrated and either 1) stick with the old formula or ideology and consider the variants to be anomalous or misguided (i.e. the grumpy old fart syndrome, or worse); or 2) create a new formula or ideology – and then something else destroys that new sense I made of things.  The latter process is like the endless “Rinse-Lather-Repeat.” loop printed on a shampoo bottle.

Thus, this friendly amendment to DeMello’s quote: “Live CAN only make sense in the long run when you perceive it as a mystery.”  And it saves you a lot of shampoo.

Photo taken of a pecan tree in the yard doing its spring thing.

This thought filters through from Anthony DeMello’s One Minute Wisdom: We don’t need to put God in our lives so much as to recognize that he is already there.  I am reminded of the bumper sticker – “If you find yourself distant from God, guess who moved.”  Those sound a bit trite as I process them, but nonetheless true.  The word that comes to mind here is “juxtaposition,” which Webster’s defines as “the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side, often to compare or contrast or to create an interesting effect.” Interesting, indeed!