The Unclad Soul

I want to run along the ocean and feel the waves wash over my feet erasing my footprints in the sand I want to skydive and sense myself falling watching the landscape below me seeing everything so clearly so cleanly until I love it all more than ever before I want to play guitar in an old bar and sing on a wooden stage with a drink at my feet making music that turns the crowd toward their dreams until all the hurts in the room melt in tears I want to write beautiful lines and put them in a book where the pages burn with longing and the reader sighs and blinks and walks toward a lost love until all of self is whole again I want to stand on a mountain ridge where the sun spreads light on slow moving cattle below where the Alfalfa smells sweet and the sky is a cloudless blue I want to ride a galloping horse in an open field until the air stings my eyes and I hear the pounding of the horse’s hooves and feel that floating that comes when you’re carried by forces beyond y...

There is a brokenness in our society, a pervasive moral collapse, a reckless disregard for community, neighborliness, courtesy, and compassion. Our government leads by this example. Both parties are incompetent to guide us into a more responsible living, into a serviceable structure of humanity. Our leaders are dominated by greedy oligarchs who don’t just want more, they want everything, even if it costs our society its dignity, its soul, even its future. What is on display here daily is a wretched lack of self-esteem. The loss now influences all of us. We’re all affected in ways that keep us shamed by our actions. When we feel powerless, aimless, without any higher goals than the accumulation of things and the momentary thrill, we then mute our intelligence. We live by raw emotions—anger, appetite, urges. We don’t think, we don’t consider, we merely react. We push. We disregard. We threaten. We act out. And we fail. Self-esteem is a learned process. It builds on gen...

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...

In the Netflix series, “Jack Taylor,” ex-cop Jack Taylor is a rebellious, hard drinking, scruffy guy who plays by his own rules, which are often questionable. Although he’s no longer a police officer, fired for unruly conduct, he still stumbles into situations where people need and want his help with some crime that’s been committed. He doesn’t always solve them, and he leaves plenty of debris along the way. He has a tough, rugged presence. And he’s a mess of a person. But inside the man, there beats a true heart for humanity. He lives in Mrs. Bailey’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s a lovely place that you would not expect to see the likes of Jack Taylor. But Mrs. Bailey took Jack in when he was disgracefully dismissed from the police force. He loved being a cop/detective. He fought for the underdog and the forgotten and the cheated. And the loss of his job sent him spiraling into a drunken bewilderment. He had no income but at Mrs. Bailey’s he found safety, welcome, clean sheets, an...

“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

“If you have twelve crayons in your box, use your creativity and resourcefulness to make the best picture you can with these. Don’t spend your time worrying that someone else has forty-eight or sixty-four crayons. As you are, you are basically adequate to life.” ~ Laurence G. Boldt, ZEN and the Art of Making a Life

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Spirituality requires humility. The kingdom of heaven is intended to be a place within us where arrogance, superiority is put aside. To be truly spiritual is to let go of the need to control life, people, fate, circumstances. It’s not about religion or going to church. It is about seeking an attitude in life that transcends selfishness, greed, power. Poverty of spirit is really healthy self-awareness, the longing and the ability to see and accept others without exceptions. ~ TM

“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 

From the Desiderata by poet Max Erhmann – A line a day for the remaining Holiday season: “With all its shame, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

From the Desiderata by poet Max Erhmann – A line a day for the remaining Holiday season: “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

From the Desiderata by poet Max Erhmann – A line a day for the remaining Holiday season: “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” (I struggle a bit with this one. I don't want to give up everything of my youth. I'm trying to age gracefully. But for me, it's not always easy. ~ TM)

From the Desiderata by poet Max Ehrmann – A line a day for the remaining Christmas/Holiday season: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”

The new Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens,” is in theaters this weekend. I was a huge fan of the first three movies. I tried to keep up with the following ones but eventually lost interest in them. This new one though I will see. It reminds me of the earlier films. In the second movie in the original trilogy, “The Empire Strikes Back,” Luke Skywalker crashes on the planet Dagobah with his mentor and guru warrior, Yoda. Luke is in training to be a Jedi Knight and at one point Yoda instructs him to enter a dark cave without his weapon. Luke looks at the cave and then looks around. He says, “Something is not right. I feel cold. Death.” Pointing to the cave Yoda says, “That place is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.” Luke hesitates, “What’s in there?” “Only what you take with you,” Yoda says. Once in the mysterious cave Luke is confronted by Darth Vader. He draws his light saber and comes at Luke. They wrestle and Luk...

“Strip me down to nothing—nude beneath the moon, stars afire under feet. And on bare unbranded body I will write: ‘This isn’t all of me.’”  – Amanda Torroni, Writer/Author

     “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 ...

“Is your first responsibility to yourself? The question is misleading; that is, it misleads the person who takes it to heart. It’s like asking, must you shift your weight in order to walk? Of course you must, but anyone who concentrates first on shifting their weight will not walk well.” – Hugh Prather, Writer/Mystic

“What you seek is seeking you.”   ~ Rumi, Persian Poet

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yelp over the roofs of the world.”  ~ Walt Whitman, American Poet  

“You are that which you are seeking.”  – St. Francis of Assisi, Catholic Mystic

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