The Unclad Soul

“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...

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. ~ Wendell Berry, American Poet ...

“Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room,  in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it,  hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness— and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing;  and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.”  ~ Mary Oliver, Poet/Writer

I have a great need to experience the sacred.  I think we all do. We live in times that so often desecrate the human spirit.  War, drones, gun violence, road rage, political wrangling, insatiable greed, sexual abuse, child abandonment, and all sorts of inhuman acts against one another too often occur which all serve to deaden our souls. The recent news of the man who systematically kidnapped three young girls in his neighborhood, who just decided to own them as his property, held them captive for years, sexually used them for his own entertainment, was unimaginable in its heartlessness.  How do those women, whose youth and teenage years and sense of self were taken from them, how do they recover from that kind of fiendish, barbaric treatment?  We see this on the news and something dies inside us.  It is so easy then to want to harden ourselves against the cruelty of others.  But in the process we lose our connection with the sacred. Each m...