The Unclad Soul

I was on the walking trail the other morning and happened to notice the white fluffy clouds in a clear blue sky above me. It’s hard to walk and look straight up at the same time. At least it is for me. I had to stop for a minute and take it all in. The smallness in society today, the petty wrangling over politics, the little daily insults from the President and politicians on both sides, the ridiculous media madness, the silly antics of drivers on the freeway furious because someone didn’t let them into their lane, the rude actions of store clerks and customers, seem all-consuming these days. And then, there is the sky. So vast. So mysterious. What’s up there besides airplanes and clouds? What might happen if we were to often roam the dimensions of nature? To get out of our narrow confines and seek wisdom in the sky, the ocean, the blooming flowers, and healthy plants, in the broad wide existence of our expansive environment. We might grow in maturity, in insight,...

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom, let it be / And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me / Speaking words of wisdom, let it be… And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree / There will be an answer, let it be / For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see / There will be an answer, let it be… And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me / Shine until tomorrow, let it be / I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom, let it be / Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be / There will be an answer, let it be…” That is a song written by Paul McCartney after the death of his mother, Mary. She had come to him in a dream at a difficult time in his life and told him to let it be, that things would be okay Let it be. For the longest time, I thought that was all the song was about, ...

The poet, Tyler Kent White has written, “I promise if you keep searching for everything beautiful in this world You will eventually become it.” It is a promise I cling to. When I lived in Hamilton, Texas, a small town in the central part of the state, I often took to the countryside. When small-town life got to me—yes, there are political divides and social conflicts and elitism there, too--; when the strain of ministry seemed overwhelming to me because of unexpected deaths and divorces and fixed old beliefs and my own inner questions; I would hit the walking trail East of town. Or, I would drive through groves of trees along dirt roads out North across rickety bridges and the sight of grazing cattle on the other side. I would bird hunt with friends and fish in the tanks on their property. I never killed anything I didn’t eat. But it wasn’t the hunting and the fishing that refreshed me, though I did enjoy it. It was simply being in the country, in natu...

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue,” sings Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. “And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.” If only it were that simple, to fly above the chaos, past the rainbow, where the sky is clear blue, so rich in color it almost burns your eyes. A place where “troubles melt like lemon drops, way above the chimney tops.” We can go there, perhaps in meditation, in prayer, in deeper thought in some place of quiet and calm. A seashore. A park bench. A library. A garden of flowers. A walk through lush trees. A church sanctuary. Those can be times of healing, restoration, invigoration, insight, and learning. It was the brilliant naturalist, Thoreau, who wrote, “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk in love and reverence.” That’s an idea worthy of practice. Whatever religion you follow has a similar viewpoint. Judaism calls for an intelligent mind. Buddhism asks us to honor Karma and seek rebi...

And into the world are born those spirits, those souls, those persons, who light the way for us out of whatever darkness we are in. These can be mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, teachers and ministers, coaches and mentors. They can be the neighbor or the employer, the elderly or the young, the broken or the mended, the friend or the lover. These are people who do not do things for us, they show us how to do things for ourselves. They model. They instruct. They affirm and nurture. They live and love before us in ways that influence us to be our better selves. They are not always successful, well established, or even well known. They may be on the cleaning staff at the office, or the clerk at the grocery store. They may be the stranger we pass that smiles broadly and shares a sense of warmth as we walk by them. They may be the cop that pulls us over, gives us a calm warning, and sends us on our way. There is something in these people ...

The remarkable Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, once wrote, “This hasn’t been the age for the righteous and the decent.  I know what it means to beget monsters  And to recognize in them myself.”  It is an appropriate indictment of our own day and of our own selves. I keep telling myself that what we are experiencing in our country is just a phase, something we have gone through before, where people who turn loathsome and violent, enormously greedy and arrogant, will change. That these dark clouds of hostility hovering over us will pass and the sunlight of decent behavior will shine again. But there is something alarmingly stubborn about the indignity, prejudice, violence, division and hatred among us. We seem stuck in a continuous atmosphere of rancor and bitter estrangement. And it is disturbing and frightening that our leaders seem incapable or not interested in changing the nation’s oppressive mood. Our media, in all of its forms, is clearly geared t...

“If you can risk getting lost somewhere along the day you might stumble upon openings that link you to your depths.” ~ The Ancient Mystics

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. ” ~ James Baldwin, Writer

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever”, he told the boy. “You might want to think about that.” “You forget some things, don’t you?” the boy said. “Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”  ― From The Road , by Cormac McCarthy 

  “The sea answers all questions.”  – E.B. White, Writer/Linguist 

     “Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth. If it hasn't happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky. When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else -- an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood -- or it may be easier to blame the map you were given -- folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print -- but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.      One day I'll tell my daughter a story about a dark time, the dark days before she was born, and how her coming was a ray of light. We got lost for a while, the story will begin, but then we found our way.”   ―   Nick Flynn , American Playwright/Poet ...

“Everybody’s gotta learn; nobody’s born knowing.”   ―   Harper Lee, Novelist

“The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel.  Only the young have an explanation for everything.”   ―   Isabel Allende,   City of the Beasts

“Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens.”  – Mark Nepo, Poet/Philosopher

“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.” – Mark Nepo, Poet/Philosopher/Author

“It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.”  ~ Henry David Thoreau

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ― Cynthia Occelli, Author/Attorney/Blogger

“I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.”  ―  Mary Oliver , American Poet

“But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: to melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night; to know the pain of too much tenderness.”  ~ Khalil Gibran, Poet/Mystic

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”  ~ Khalil Gibran, Poet/Author