THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Monday, March 11, 2019

There is a pitcher.  Everyone alive has such a pitcher.  A pitcher that something fills with precious fluid.  I keep pouring mine out on the ground, leaving me holding an empty pitcher in wonder.  The pitcher is refilled for me.  I do not know what the fluid is for.  I want to do something with it.  I pour it on the ground and wonder.  This has been going on for more than forty years.  I am no more aware of the purpose of the precious fluid today than I have ever been.  Still, the pitcher is refilled.  It is not refilled because of any merit on my part, I know.  I continue to pour mine out on the ground and stand holding an empty pitcher wondering what this has all been about.  This is my story.  And still the pitcher is refilled. 

 I have learned this much.  Each time the pitcher is refilled,  I can feel the fullness within it and that feels good, I know.  It is satisfying, I know.  It took a long time for me to understand this much.  I lived many years ignorant of the feeling of satisfied contentment available at such a trivial price and with so little required of me.  Those years were chaotic.  I lived in dread most of the time.  I was trying mightily to achieve some goal or other that might bring me satisfaction and peace.  Nothing I tried brought more than a fleeting feeling of excited pleasure that seemed always to dissolve even before the goal was reached into another faraway goal to be reached.  All the while,  this feeling of satisfaction was lying inside as a refilled pitcher of precious fluid, refilled for me time after time by some unknown source that must have been taking an interest in me even though I was pouring the precious fluid out on the ground.  


In truth, I have explored possible ways to use the precious fluid and none have seemed to be anything other than simply pouring it out on the ground and standing rather foolishly, embarrassed, in apologetic wonder.  I have heard of people who are able to do something worthy with their pitcher of precious fluid.  They use it to grow some lasting fruit trees that continue to produce good fruit.  I must admit I  do not have evidence of it.  Only stories. Whenever I have attempted to locate one of these people they elude me.  Like smoke they elude me.  So, I am left here holding a pitcher of precious fluid that has been refilled by grace without my deserving a drop of it and , not knowing what else to do,  am  pouring mine onto the ground to stand again in wonder.  How are you doing?

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