“IN THE GOD V. CHANCE debate, some of us are having a long-view chuckle over consciousness’ inability to recognize and appreciate its own inevitability within the Universe it’s trying to understand. Sure, it’s not as dramatic or satisfying as shouting at each other, but it pays the bills.”
Tag: It.
… can’t really be named, only experienced.
Scrapheap Waters
THAT’S AN ANAGRAM FOR “EARTH Warps Space,” the latest news out of NASA. Put simply: In our 4th-dimensional universe, gravity runs downhill. Put less simply, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/. Quoted lede: “Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity.”
Automatic Enlightenment
SET YOUR THOUGHT ON THIS: “I am not this thought.”
Full disclosure: I awoke from a thundering dream last night which seemed to involve everyone I ever met and everywhere I’ve ever been, but set mostly between the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and some sort of concert promotion in a house I was unsuccessfully vacating. (“Thank God,” I said when the alarm went off.) Anyway, I went back to sleep for a few minutes and awoke, thinking “I am not this thought.” It seemed profound, somehow, and important to share, so I packaged it up in a blog post at about 5 a.m. Imagine my surprise when Google disclosed 242,000 instances of the phrase, “I am not this thought.”
I guess it is important.
Cohen’s Koan
“WHO IS SMARTER — THE TEACHER or the student?”
(Answer correctly and win a free year’s subscription to Metaphorager.Net!)
Mission
THE WORLD IS FULL OF angry people. Today’s task: Do not become one of them.
(And yes, it’s easier said than done. So?)
What I Really Want For My Birthday
ANOTHER BIRTHDAY.
Pithyism #357
ONESELF IS AN INSUFFICIENT TOOL with which to measure the Universe.
Muse Ich
SOME SONGS JUST SOUND BEST on a transistor radio. (You know who you are.)
Pithyism #+1
EVERY SCRATCH MAKES ANOTHER ITCH.
Seeing Her
ALL I REMEMBER NOW ARE images, and the intimate passion of an infinite love.
I remember the room of globes, of maps of worlds and wonders, soft with pillows and draped scarves. And She was there. And She knew me. And loved me. And told me I was Her own and always would be — “but it is not yet your time to be with Me.”
And She kissed me.
Her words, warm as her arms, were now cutting ice. I cried, I begged — I think I wailed. “No! Don’t leave me! Please! No!”
She told me she would see me again, one day. “I will not leave you. But you cannot be with me. Yet.”
I awoke sobbing, but comforted in Her absence — oh so small, and cold, next to Her presence! — by the knowledge that She loves me best of all Her lovers (although She loves all her lovers this way). And so I sit by the open window in springtime, listening for Her voice.
And still She walks the hidden retreats, where a ghost of love wraps me like a veil, like a scarf hung in a room full of globes where my Lady waits for me.
One day.
(They say every poet is slipped a glimpse of the Muse unadorned and transcendent, triumphant and radiant, loving, intimate and wise. I don’t know if this qualifies, but I dreamed this, as vividly as a sunset breeze, when I was 17 or 18. And I have never forgotten it.)
Two Hands Clapping
ONE OF ANN‘S & MY favorite gestures is to gently upfling the hands at about shoulder height and exclaim, “How did they do that?”
This phrase generally applies to dancers, actors, writers, musicians, singers, comedians, directors and others whose command of craft and muscle produces transcendence: something somehow bigger than the package it came in, and which makes us bigger too.
But the arts aren’t all that produce that effect. Birds munching spiders on the windowsills. Baby deer who know how to stand up and find mom. Tube worms. Great chains of galaxies distill wonder into every atom, every second. Don’t let this one pass uncelebrated — applaud a sunset today!
What I Hope God Wants
SEEMS TO ME THAT MORE accuracy would be obtained from statements beginning “God does/wants/says” by prefacing them with “I hope.” Because seriously — that’s as far as you’re going to get with figuring out God. (If nothing else, it rather nicely neutralizes the Westboro Baptists’ main slogan. Or so I hope.)