My friend Adele reminds me that in the “Miracles” course, it’s understood that everything we do is either an expression of love or a plea for love. It’s a simple and powerful observation that frames everything appreciatively.
My buddy TC and I explored recently the distinctions of regard, trust, and respect. We’re suspecting that they are nested interactional qualities: we need to have regard for each other in order to have trust, and we need to have trust in order to have respect.
Regard is the simple and unconditional care of others. It doesn’t matter who I am with, I ask permission to smoke, I don’t interrupt, I open a door, I pick up someone else’s napkin if it’s within my reach, I ask if they have time to talk before I launch into something intensive. It’s the small, uncostly emotionally intelligent courtesies aimed purely at the simple comfort of others. Nothing more, nothing less, and totally essential to trust and respect.
Part of being undistracted is having faith in our own goodness. Anything less is a distraction.
Blogged with Flock
To the extent that we aren’t present, what’s on someone else’s plate always seems to look better than what’s on ours. The key is to remember that attraction is a statement about the observer, more than the observed.
Blogged with Flock
There are times when we can only be clear on the unclarity before us, when unknowns overpopulate the space of knowns and our questions lack the wattage of conscious light to reveal sure footing on the path. Asking different questions becomes the bridge to better questions.
In our culture, we have this uncompassionate reference to someone “using a crutch” with a connotation of crutch as an unfortunate and character-flawed choice of mobility.
Looking around the community, there are many people whose only mobility is assistance with various dependency technologies, without which social isolation would be an option or destiny. Imperfect media for our being connected are perfect in contexts of necessity. May those who depend inspire.
Blogged with Flock
My oldest zen teacher reminds me of the truth of seeing things as they are, not as we want them to be - a chipper reminder indeed.
We have added a new dimension of happiness when we look for joy equally in the cooking as in the eating. Because life on many days is 90% journey and 10% arrival, defering joy to outcomes only diminishes our potential by 90%. The choice is ours.
This time of year,
the rich greens of trees
start to twinge
with highlights of hues no one
understands better
than the crickets.
There are people, old souls, who live zen without having the words for it, only the truth of it.
