It occurs to me…

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.

Photo taken recently in Galveston. My distributed photos would seemingly suggest that it is always a majestic sunrise on a clear day. Alas, not true. But still…

From Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart:

“There is a curious logic in human experience that finally permits no man to escape the good and the bad…. To be alive is to be involved in events, some which take their rise uniquely in the individual’s experience and some of which flow into the life, apparently without rhyme or reason.  To accept all experience as raw material out of which the human spirit distills meanings and values is a part of the meaning of maturity.”

Wow!  There’s a lot there to unwrap there, particularly that last sentence.  I love Thurman’s admonition to “accept all experience as raw material out of which the human spirit distills meanings.”  It occurs to me in that perhaps Thurman is on to something here, that maturity arrives when I recognize (and perhaps most importantly, accept) that my “life puzzle” doesn’t have the same pieces as others’, or for that matter, the same picture on the box.

Miracles

From 2 Kings Chapter 5 through Not By Bread Alone:

So Naaman, an army commander apparently somewhat full of himself, has leprosy.  His wife’s servant, an Israelite, suggests that to be cured he go see the prophet Elisha, in Israel.  Namaan goes to his boss, the king of Aram, who sends Namaan on his way with an entourage, a lot of money, and a letter for the king of Israel.  The king of Israel balks at all this, but Elisha gets word of it and sends word for Namaan to come see him.  Namaan directs his entourage to Elisha’s place.  Elisha doesn’t bother to come out, but sends a servant to tell Namaan to “go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.

This pisses off Namaan, who thinks that Elisha should have come out to see him, waved his hand over Namaan, and cured him on the spot — he wanted, felt he deserved, a spectacle.  Namaan’s servants (obviously, less full of themselves) urge Namaan to do as Elisha told him.  So after more grumbling he does, and “his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.”

A long but effective way to make a point.  A good lesson on how easy it is to want God to be present only in the WOW, not in the now.  A point perhaps best stated by Thomas Merton:

“The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.  Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eye of a child – our own two eyes.  All is a miracle.” 

And as the Not By Bread Alone piece concludes – “Find your miracle today.”