All there is to be done by each of us is this-have the patience to await the Lord’s perfect timing in all things and this you will never regret. When your friends remark, “Oh, that’s terrible” reply simply- 

“Maybe, maybe not.”

p.s. You will fail to do as you promise yourself to do, of course, but learn that it will take a personal touch. Call it mercy. Find the Lord of your own heart and you will fall deeply in love.

I am a human being. As one, I have knowledge of my own existence. Existence is Lord. All things true arise from existence. I can forget. If I do I become the slave to non-existence. Knowledge of existence is like a pitcher of a precious fluid.

 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 feel the fullness within it, how complete it is,  and that feels good,  and I know it.  It is satisfying, and I know it.  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.  Nothing.  How little is that, Friend? Those years were chaotic.  I lived in dread much 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 remained interested 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.  No, this time I will not fail to do something worthy of the pitcher full of precious fluid. I will use it to reinvent my world.

 Come see us at Swan River Playhouse when it opens.

War, pestilence, disease, earthquakes. Arguments, hatred, vengeance, envy, loneliness. All such are not things at all.  They are the absence of heart. Efforts to rid yourself of them will fail. Have been failing for thousands of years. Look carefully at the Twelve Steps.  The difference is they have worked now for about 85 years. Notice the only mention of alcohol in the steps themselves is a simple admission: “I cannot do anything to save myself from my addiction.” The remaining eleven steps direct one to a power that can and the power is in every human heart. Only the humans can know of existence. By the way, EXISTENCE is Lord. Knowledge of existence is a human trait. It is nurtured in deep meditation. Take the time to seek what exists and lose that which exists not.

That’s it. 

Come see us at Swan River Playhouse when it opens.

The desert can be a place of desolation. It can seem hopeless. Lifeless. Empty. It is a good place to be when you want to know the truth. It will be shown to those with eyes to see.

It rains. And when it does, the place comes alive with possibility. Nothing becomes everything.  That is the truth. All has been baked down to its essence and then it rains. And then it rains. 

I have heard it said the amazing smell in the desert after a rain is the fragrance of water falling upon parched earth. You have to smell it to believe it. It is the perfume of kindness. 

There is a truth that is always here. It is now. Simple. Yet to give it attention feeds something in you that holds an artesian well of pure goodness. Sir Issac Newton looked for it in secret all his life. The Philosopher’s Stone he sought goes by at least as many names as there are religions of mankind. All the while, all mankind needed was to be kind. As a whooper swan I found that to be so.

I am Whooper Swan. I am who? I am walking, talking dirt. Made of earth stuff which was made of Sun’s fire. I walk and talk and laugh and cry. I can even fly! Now, Dear God, let my poor voice be heard.

A friend tells of a time in his youth when he lay in some grass looking up at the sky and felt completely happy for awhile. Nothing, he said, brought this experience into being. It was many years ago and he has never felt that way again. But he still searches for it. He had it for no reason, had it, and he searches. How foolish is that?  He makes gratitude lists when he already knows it comes out of nowhere for free. 

He has been told often by those he has met who are happy that gratitude comes from one thing only, it comes from knowledge you are alive. That other thing, the thought of gratitude, the words, “Thank you”, is all about good manners and has nothing to do with feeling grateful.  All the gratitude lists in the world will never bring the feeling of gratitude. And, so, my friend does not make the connection with his own simple experience lying in the grass doing nothing. Only meditating. What a tragedy!