Beauty and the feast.

A friend shared a while back that if we don't take in beauty, we'll be taken out by it. I think that's turned quite true for me - it's a pretty missional thing to consider. The responsibility to seek out beauty, and wonder at it.

Recently, thanks to one of those ridiculous buy 2 get 9 free sales (something like that), I ended up with a lot of DVDs. One that hit me upside the head in this manner was House of Flying Daggers.

It's not even completely about the story, it's just as much the aesthetic of the movie. I think the same goes for music. It can't be just the truth, as another friend has said. It's got to be truth with meaning. That's where the beauty is in it's fullness. I'm feeling that the longer I live, the less attuned my heart can get to such things. This is where I feel that second and chosen naivete or innocence is so important.

Ella Observations.

In accordance with the equal time policy on this blog, and trying to be fair and balanced, I have a small story from today, already.

We have a morning ritual of joining with Evan while he waits for his bus. I try to pray with him, if but for a second, and give a few hugs. This isn't out of fear, as much as I might sometimes feel. I actually think a boy who knows he's well loved can fight well in the world.

So, getting outside early, Ella and Evan skateboarded around for a bit. As we walked up the driveway it looked pretty grey. As Evan's bus left, I turned to Ella and said,"It looks like it's going to rain today." To which she said,"Yes, Dad. It's going to rain because all the birds are in the trees, in their nesteses."

I don't know if that's scientifically true, but you probably guessed that I believed it.

First of many...

Evan has been working on a couple of loose teeth, one destined to be his "first" lost tooth. Well, he lost it at school, and then literally lost it on the way home. So, we delayed the Tooth Fairy's visit until he recovered it. Evan recalled it blowing out the window on the bus, so we walked a quarter mile area to find it.

On our way home from the failed tooth hunt, we got a call from the bus driver, and it was left on the bus! So, there will be a tooth exchange with the Tooth Fairy!

It reminded me of a little letter writing I did as a kid, corresponding with the Tooth Fairy. I had a lot of questions. I'd put a letter under my pillow, and get a response the next morning. I'm sure my mom enjoyed writing those notes for the first 2 or 3 days in a row, and then started to discourage further written exchanges, when I kept at it. Kids...

Unlearning

Enlightenment is not so much knowing as unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is a second and chosen naivete, without forgetting all the contradictions and complexity in between. It is more surrendering than concluding, more trusting than fixing and all gratuitous grace, for which you can only give thanks. You cannot get yourself enlightened by any known program, ritual or moral practice. This drives the religionists crazy, but as Jesus said, the Spirit blows wherever it pleases. All you can do is stay on the journey, listen to its lessons, both agony and ecstasy, and ask for that most rare and crucial of gifts: true openness, which Jesus called trust or faith.

All we can really do is to keep our ego out of the way and ask that we will recognize the secret doorway that God opens out of complex consciousness. That door is usually some form of suffering.

-Richard Rohr

IT IS ON.

Good friends of this blog. You've been a part of a slow movement. It's happening. I check the comments over at the "spiral" and see that we are getting some traffic. Word is spreading - people are spiraling.