It occurs to me…

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!

I read this today from Howard Thurman: “Every person thinks that it is his peculiar destiny to have the ideal come true for him.”  It strikes me that this thinking is at the heart of all conflict, perhaps all troubles with the world.  That is, despite clear evidence that known inhabitants of this universe are not clairvoyant, and as John Andrew Holmes noted, that “the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others,” each of us envisions a “peculiar destiny “and thinks/acts toward that end.  It’s kind of easy to see how this might not end well absent some radical rethinking.  Which is perhaps where Ken Burns is headed based on this quote from a recent interview: “The thing I’ve learned is that there is no ‘them.’ It’s just us.”

Photo taken in Cedar Rapids, Iowa last fall.

Awareness is the knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.  To become aware is to recognize that I and someone or something else share occupancy in this universe. 

Note to self — it is a really big universe.

Each morning this window in our house, working with the window shade, the screen, the light, the tree branches, and an occasional bird, creates a new work of art. This is a recent example.

“The thing that I’ve learned is that there is no ‘them.’  It’s just us”.  Ken Burns

I saw this in a New York Times interview of Burns.  In his wide range of documentary work, Burns has of course come across a lot.  Baseball, the Civil War, Hemmingway, National Parks, the Brooklyn Bridge, Country Music….  And he is, of course, correct — “there is no ‘them.’  It’s just us.”  I mean, it is so obvious that it is easy to forget, and headlines notwithstanding, last I checked, we are all occupying the same clod orbiting the same sun as it spins through the same universe.”

The quickest, easiest, and most certain way to have more is to want less.  Yet it occurs to me that there is a quicker, easier, and more certain path — to be grateful for what I have.  These are enigmas.  I can’t explain them, but know them to be true.

Photo taken recently in Galveston. The passage seems timely.

Photo taken early morning in Galveston. Text from something I am reading.