Sunday, January 17, 2010

Warehouse Feast




The sky is dark and overcast, moist as with the sweat of invisible beings. I pass through an industrial part of town - warehouses, empty parking lots, motionless trucks with lights and motors off. There is no nightlife, no movement, nothing whatsoever to invite visitors.

In times past this passage would have seemed depressing. But tonight the aesthetically dull has acquired a spiritual vitality. My awareness of the seemingly ugly scene passes beyond conventional mental filters and lands in strange new territory.

So much of the world remains unperceived regardless of how often we look at it. We see the outer surfaces, the shapes of things, but miss their essence, their magic, their "life."

Life? Yes, even old bridges and scarred buildings have life. They vibrate with the impressions of events that have happened in them and on them and around them. Of the people that have walked and talked, lived and perhaps died there.

Even the most drab and unimportant of structures has its own story, flavor and fragrance. And this neglected tale is thrilling if a person can get clear and close enough to sense it.

Because it speaks, in its own inimitable way, of the mystery of human life. Of the depth and height, the amazing richness, texture and intensity of

the spirit made flesh.

And so . . . I caress the moment's experience like a lover,

Feeling into it, yearning to penetrate its subtle essence and be nourished thereby.


Tonight there is FEAST among the warehouses,

Yet very few are crowding toward the table.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Raising Lazarus




Now there is peace in the graveyard. The dust is settling and the sun can be felt, if not actually seen.

Lazarus stumbles out of his tomb. He heard a voice - someone calling.

That voice was not plaintive, but insistant, even demanding:

"Lazarus, come forth!" it said.

And so, he comes. Somewhat reluctantly, perhaps. Death is a relief, after all.

All life's agony and pain finished at last.

"Loose him, and let him go," the voice commanded.

So Lazarus finds himself blinking in the light of day, weak and stinky after four days of playing dead. Four days of bugs crawling on his skin and nipping at his eyes.

Someone unwrapped the grave clothes around his hands and feet. He stands wobbly and hesitant, uncertain what to do.

What's your next move when you've gone on to the other side? When life's greatest mystery is a secret no more?

What do you do when there is nothing left to fear?

When you are not scared of being hurt anymore?

When you've lost everything already?

. . . Oh bliss!

. . . Oh joy!