Musings from Deeptime

 Friday, November 25th, 2022  Year 3 I love this picture I love this picture, it speaks to me in so many Love languages, bearing messages too numerous to count.  I imagine myself sitting across from the trio, considering the urge to distract the older child that the mother might get just little bit more of a badly needed respite.  But then I think, "I am but a sojourner through these parts, and I do not know the local customs and perhaps  an old man, who is a total stranger, is seen more as threat than an unknown friend offering a helping hand".  So I resist the urge to intervene and merely observe and since the mother sleeps, quite frankly I can stare, taking in the details of a life stretched thin. The mother's face is thin, perhaps a drug addict? Or the result of self-sacrifice that the children's are not? Or perhaps just accumulated fatigue of doing the duty meant for two?   Her hair is cut short.  Perhaps driven by the necessity of addit...

 November 8th, Year 3 Today We Vote. Today we vote, and in doing so we exercise a weapon far more powerful than any bomb or rocket conceived or stockpiled anywhere in the world.  Like any powerful weapon it can be used for good or evil, changing the course of lives and of history, opening the floodgates of opportunity or snuffing out the Hopes of the hopeless. Today we vote.  Today we must decide what is to have rule over us?, Fear or Love?  Optimism or Pessimism? Starships to the ends of the galaxy, or overloaded lifeboats becalmed in the Sea of Indifference?. Us/Them, or We? Today we vote.  More of the same, or Change?  Innovate or Consolidate? Ideally, or Realistically?  The Sacredness of  all Life, or Utilitarianism?  Educate to light the fires of Curiosity or to fill job slots? Today we vote. Open discussion or guided menu?  Open mic or sound bites?  To chisel plow or to rotary-hoe? Unity or A-Party-of-One?  Patriot or Nar...

 Saturday, November 19th, Year 3 Morning Meditation This was part of my morning meditation and it struck a chord with me.  For all the work we put into it, church folk don't seem to get along with each other any better, at times, than the unchurched.  The coarseness that has contaminated our political discourse at all levels has found its way into our pews as well.  To hold a grudge, to take a small issue of offense, and rather than pull it from your garden of thoughts, you dig about it roots, water and fertilize it, you put a fence about that it may grow unencumbered..  When this happens it is like when bacteria make their way past the enamel of a tooth and gain access to vulnerable interior of the tooth and rot and decay sets into the cohesiveness of the congregation. There are perfectly sound reasons to have an issue with another believer, just as there are many ways to to take offense at something, that truth be told, was only an offense to your ego.  T...

 Sunday, November 20th, Year 3 Sunday Meditation; Still Crazy After All These Years. Thanksgiving is not the holiday but the act...We need to remember that. My birthday is close to Thanksgiving every year.  Sometimes they fall on the same day.  I'll turn 70 soon and as I've age I have come to really enjoy watching my chronometer rollover.  I enjoy people who take the time to wish me well, the gifts our kids come up with and the homemade pumpkin pie.  It fun being the center of attention for something other than the big wet spot  running down the leg of your jeans. This year being the big 7-oh and that is oh-so-something else!  I have had a wonderful life, it hasn't always gone the way I would have liked and the world's probably a better place because it didn't. I know I am much better off that God knows how "to just say No!" to my fervent prayers.  I think I have done a lot maturing in my thinking, in say, the time since I retired.  I'm still...

 There comes a time when you've seen enough, done enough, and heard enough, that you step back from the crush around the Buffet Table of Life and say, "Enough is enough".  You have clocked a lot of experiences, some you can discuss, some you won't and some can't.  Some stuff you figured out, some you're still working on and some you are coming around to accepting you never will.  You thought you were keeping an eye out, but in too many still shots of too many facets, there's mounting evidence your life-tide has peaked and is in retreat. There comes a time when none of the above sets off any alarms.  You don't check overnight deliveries, you don't check with Berlin, you don't check world headlines, in fact you don't do anything.  Except to pour yourself a second cup, grab the last three Oreos and head for the sun room. It was cold and clear last night, with sunrise the the frost crystals should be brilliant on the thermo-pane window glass.  ...