Reflections By The Bay

Saturday, June 16, 2018

THE GARDEN

I lost my soul there for a while ….

Actually - it was a long slow while ….

Work, relationships - some iffy

for a while - family - the weekend life -

and then stuff - some forbidden fruit -

the basic indoor ingredients of actual -

verbal and non-verbal atheism -

when I had to move east of Eden ….

I was not running from God - just floating

downstream to avoid HINTS of God ….

Then I hit 67 plus - when I found myself

in the open sea of life - and death - when

I began attending more frequent funerals

of specific relatives and people I had met.

It was then, then, then, I began to know

I had this vast ruined - forgotten garden -

within me. It was overgrown with weeded

paths and a rusty wrought iron bench that

needed attention - that is, if I wanted
to meet and sit with God in the cool of the
evening after the heat of the day weeding.

God, once more, you asked, “Where am I?”

“Here,” I answered. Then I asked, humbly,

“Can I come back into the garden?”

Cf. Genesis 2: 4b to 3: 24

June 16, 2018

Thought for today:

“A translation is no translation.” he said, “unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.”

John Mllington Synge [1871-1909], Aran Islands (1907), pt. 3

Friday, June 15, 2018

June 15, 2018

SHADE

God, at least some 5 billion years ago -

came up with the idea of all of this - gnats,

hippos, stars - lots of them - mosquitoes,

rocks - lots of them as well - and then us -

but something was missing - water, no, there

was lots of water, sun, no, that was central

and necessary - something was still missing,
till it hit God one hot afternoon: shade, lots
of shade so we can hide from the heat.

June 15, 2018

Thought for today:

“She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

E.M Forster [1879-1970],

Howard’s End (1910), chapter 22

(The title-page also has “Only connect…”)

Thursday, June 14, 2018

[This is a visual and an interactive prayer. You just have to do the following gesture - take two fingers - hold them up - like a sort of sideways - like a peace sign and point those two fingers towards your eyes when I say the word “optics” - as in asking people to see or to look - and then point those two fingers out at something or someone to be seen - as in Mary officially retiring today - as in cleaning 200,000 toilets and vacuuming 567,853 miles of carpet these 35 years. Okay and then take your two hands and cup them around your ears - as in gesturing to another - listen - listen - listen.] So a prayer called, “Optics and Earicks”.