Life is a Path vs Life is a Moment

Two themes about the nature of Life (that is, of human experience) keep appearing - that life is a Path, or that life is a Moment.

That life is a Journey, or that life is lived in only a single Now.

These two seem to be in opposition to me, which is why I'm thinking about them more.

On the Side of Life Being a Path

• Time proceeds in a forward direction
• Life is lived in only one direction
• Life has a beginning, a middle and an end in time
• You can remember the past, and plan for (or feel anxious about) the future
• Cause and effect works only in one direction, in time
• So, human actions in one moment in time can affect the moments down the track
• Human beings, through their actions, can change which future they have

On the Side of Life Being Not a Path

• You can only act on the present moment, your actions can't directly affect the past or the future
• One treatment for anxiety is to focus on your body and what it perceives in the present moment, in the present location - what do you hear, what do you taste, what do you smell, etc? This practice can calm the mind and restore rational thinking when it has been galloping away.
• There is no particular purpose or end goal toward which life is striving.  Life, intrinsically, is just one moment followed by another one, in which stuff happens and you are in a place.

See this video:

Alan Watts - Why Your Life Is Not A Journey from David Lindberg on Vimeo.

My Labyrinth Experience

We weren't sure whether the Labyrinth walk would be indoors or outdoors until late in the day, when the rain cleared and a breeze blew some of the sticky humidity away.

I was early, but Fr. Jim and Missy had everything set up, so we could just stand in the beautiful space and amiably enjoy each other's company.

The Gilberts arrived, and we looked up and saw about ten bald eagles circling above the clearing. There were jokes about not standing exposed in the meadow or we might be carried off, but then Emily said the best thing, which is that the eagles looked like they were walking the labyrinth from above, which they exactly did. Once they left, they didn't return while we were walking but many other birds' songs accompanied us.

Fr. Jim described the process of asking permission to hold the event, and of finding out that the parking lot belongs to The Refuge, but the labyrinth is on the other side of the small road and so belongs to the Friary.  When they went to inquire, the first two people they talked to didn't know what they were talking about, but the third one did because he said he mows it, and that sure, it was fine if we wanted to use it.

More gathered, about 16 of us in all, and when it was time, Missy called us to attention by ringing a bell, a practice I adore.  She started with an introduction of what we would be doing, and shared many of her experiences, to illustrate that there's no one way to walk, and every walk can be different.  She also added a great phrase to illustrate the difference between labyrinths and mazes.  I had picked up from previous conversations that labyrinths, being just one path, don't have any dead ends or reversals - like, you won't find yourself back at the start and outside the thing by accident, spit out, ejected.  But she said, "It's not a maze, you can't get lost."  You can't get lost.  She said if you did happen to step off the path and get on the wrong course, just keep going! She also said that she liked to open herself up to the sounds around, and if there was a car, just incorporate it into the experience - what does that remind you of?

She said she had written down a prayer, some lines from Psalm 25, which we might want to carry with us or say to ourselves as we walked.  Or we might like to say the name of a person, to hold them in our heart (this hit me with a little emotional stab, the first spiritual shudder of the experience). Some people might want to skip, or sing, and all that is fine, there's no wrong way.

Fr. Jim taught us how to draw a Classical Labyrinth (the other form, the Medieval Labyrinth, which is the one that's on the floor in the Cathedral of Chartres, was on the t-shirt he was wearing). I missed a crucial step of the drawing instructions because I had faded back to take a photo of the group, but picked it up from the paper instructions later on, and actually managed to draw a seven-course labyrinth today so the lesson stuck.

Classical 7-course Labyrinth, which I can now draw

Medieval 11-course Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral

Stephanie took us through some breathing exercises, recommended for calming the busy mind and centering us in our bodies and in the present moment.  It was a nice blend of her yoga instruction expertise and Christianity - she taught us mantras that have exact parallels in scripture, including one that goes "So hum", which is an "I am", which applies both to us and to God.

Missy then kicked off the walking. She asked Stephanie to start people off at the entrance, and keep us apart so we would have sufficient space and not be running into each other.  She pointed out that she had placed some bubbles, like, for blowing bubbles, at the center, and that she liked to use bubbles at the center because she liked to send something up, like a prayer.

For those not yet walking, she invited us to explore the table full of things she had brought - clay and silver finger labyrinths, and one elegant one that you walk with a beautiful silver stylus; labyrinths to color in, journalling notebooks (which I picked up, and from which notes I write this post).  Different types of wind-chimey bells, which I don't know if any of us carried but several people walked around the perimeter with them, and they made a beautiful, soft, fun background soundtrack.

I decided to start. Stephanie greeted me at the entrance and suggested how to time my entry so I didn't run into Susan who had gone before me.  She suggested taking three breaths before you enter, to adopt an attitude of respect for the experience.

The first thing you do is a straight, so you walk directly in and are walking toward the center, oriented to the center, before you take your first left turn.  I walked in the style of the Walking Meditation that we had used at the start of the second Deep Listening Walk - as slow as you can, don't pick your back heel up until your front heel is down.  This very soon became a walk as if I was on a tightrope, or on a balance beam like the women I'd been watching in the Rio Olympics a few weeks ago.

Balance.

My focus was on the grass just in front of me, and I put one foot in front of the other and then put my arms out to balance, and was making pretty ballerina shapes with my arms and my hands to keep myself steady, and it was really, really fun.

Play.  Circus.

I was reminded, once again, which I always forget, that to be "at peace", to be "oneself", to be "in the moment", to be "okay with just being", does not necessarily mean to be somber, downcast, serious, like a lead weight. When I am most me, I am playful and energetic.  The somber and downcast state that I feel is being prescribed for me is what takes me away from myself.

I wasn't really self-conscious, because I was attending to not causing disruption for anyone else's walk - not making noise, not flailing my arms into the course beside me where someone might be trying to walk in a different way.

There was music in my head the whole time, too, in time with my steps, but circus music.

It is true that you can't tell where you are with respect to your destination.  You get a feeling that you're getting close to the center and then a turn will take you all the way around back to where you started.  Because I was having so much fun, this was wonderful - there would be no scarcity of experience.

Because our labyrinth was mowed into grass, the corners were sort of irregular, some of them pointy, some squared off, some blobby circles.  I used their shapes to improvise lots of different flamboyant turns - pacing off the corners, spinning a full turn and then around far enough to grab the next path, a version of a three-point turn like you'd do in a car.  I almost took Emily out while executing one of these, because she was passing on the inside just as I was backing up, but I don't think she noticed the close call, and it was all good.

As I worked over to the far side, I got into a more settled state.  You can't help but think of the path as representing a life. I remembered the twirling and playful balance beam walking, and I was now more settled, but it was okay, it was like a memory from one's 20's, but still part of me - and I did realized, strongly, that I would be passing back that exact way again once I had reached the center and was coming back.  I think this is an important feature of the labyrinth - no experience is lost, you know that you will pass this way again.

I did look up, at various intervals, to different vistas, arranged orthogonally around me.  There was a bank of trees, with some sort of critter rustling in it, as it got darker. I saw Jorden walking Gillian's little white dog around the perimeter. I saw Missy walking with bells.  The most stunning vista was back toward the entrance - people I love, arranged around the meadow, either walking or finished walking and standing by, with a large weeping willow tree, lit by the golden and rose colored sunset.

I was thinking I was probably more than half way when I met the first person coming back.  This was very strikingly like being greeted by elders, by ancestors, by those who had gone before. This was a very powerful feeling.

I thought, will I be at the center now? And there would be another turn. Now?

And then suddenly I was there, at the turn to the right and the straight that clearly led to the center point, which I could easily see.  And I stopped, with another stab of emotion, thinking, I'm not ready!

I stopped, and turned and regarded that beautiful willow and the sunset and the people I love.

Others passed and it was actually getting a little crowded, and I thought, well, and I turned the other way.

And then I saw Sarah there, blowing bubbles, and I thought, it's alright, because Sarah's there.

I remember those footsteps very distinctly.  One after the other heading to the termination of this walk, and thinking, oh, well, okay, this is what this is like, I'm doing this.

As you can tell, that whole last length represented the end of life and the journey to death.  It couldn't help but represent it.

I arrived near the center and Sarah was blowing bubbles which were so perfect and beautiful, reflecting the evening light. I put my hand out and touched a couple of them, and they burst, and so those prayers didn't go up, if that's where she was sending them, but I thought (with the front part of my brain) that it was okay if I took some of her bubbles for myself. I hope that's true. The last one, I just put my hand behind, and it was like looking at the world itself, that sphere with my hand behind it.

I blew some bubbles myself after Sarah walked on, in several directions, for the others still walking the path.

Leave something behind for others to remember you by.

Now the walk back seems shorter in my mind. I did notice that I was one of the last ones walking - that balance-beam walk turned out to be a slow way of doing things.

The song in my head I tried to change, different fugue variations for each course as I turned each corner.  Walking a musical composition into being.

I had a punk rock moment in which I thought about what it would be like to just diagonally walk across all the courses and head in a straight line to the exit. One certainly could do it, the patches of grass between the courses were only like two inches high. I thought it, but I didn't do it, and didn't feel like doing it.  The borders weren't real borders, but the feeling I had for them was respect.  I felt respect for the borders and the path and the walk, and the way to get back to the exit even though it was going to take a while.  It helped me feel how it would feel to be punk rock but still respectful. You can just walk across the lines, but I didn't.

I did wonder what it would be like to take big steps, so did so for a bit and thought, "Silly Walk," like John Cleese.  I wondered what it would be like to go fast, so on one of the longer stretches, where I could see no one was in front of me, I jogged for about ten steps. I could tell it would be fun.  You get more absorbed in the rhythm of your feet because they're falling faster, closer together, and the cluttered thoughts get more effectively blasted out of your head.  Because it's on grass and uneven, it might be dangerous, ankle-risking, but I'm still interested in going back sometime and trying it for comparison.

The word I had when I came out was "Effervesce."  To truly be my true self, that's what I need to do. When I'm being my true self, playful and happy with pretty ballerina arms, I feel like a glass of champagne with bubbles rising.

Missy had said that Fr. Jim would be available for administering Holy Unction and healing after the walk, "because for some people sometimes it brings up stuff."

I asked him after my walk if he had administered a healing prayer to anyone, and he said no, and I asked, "Do you want to do one?" because my ankle did worry me, from last year's injury.  He had some Chrism oil, which is usually used for baptism but he said he brought it because it smells good. I would say sort of patchouli-y, and the scent stayed with me all night, although no one mentioned it.  Patchouli-y, but subtle.

He free-formed a prayer, which skill I greatly admire and feel like I'm one of those people that don't know how to do it and need a prayer book to read from, he free-formed a prayer which addressed my ankle but also my job search, and questions about life, and, "I'd say", he said, "worth", which I think is fair.  A phrase I wrote down in my little journalling notebook was that he asked God to help me walk "safely and confidently".

Safely and Confidently.

It was dark by the time we helped them pack up the things and the tables, and the mosquitoes were biting and there was reason to hurry.  We all sort of lingered at the cars when saying goodbye.

On Buildings Collapsing

Thoughts are with the people of Italy who were effected by last night's earthquake.

In a macabre coincidence, last night when I was trying to fall asleep, for some reason I was thinking about Stuart Diver.  He survived a landslide at Thredbo village and ski resort in Australia in 1997.  He was rescued after spending 65 hours trapped between two concrete slabs, in icy water in subzero winter temperatures.  The whole nation was focussed on the disaster and on his rescue when it happened, and he made a number of TV appearances afterward, so his story was top of mind for the whole country for a long time.

They don't go into this detail in the Wikipedia pages, but I remember him describing the space in which he was trapped being partially filled with water, so that if he lay relaxed his face was under the surface.  He had to reach his face up out of the water to take a breath of air.  For 65 hours.

His wife, who had been laying beside him in bed when the landslide occurred, did not survive but drowned when she was trapped underwater.

Some attributed his survival to the fact that he was young and, as a ski instructor, extremely fit.  I seem to remember him saying something like, "What else are you doing to do?"  Of course he reached up and took a breath every few minutes.  For 65 hours.

For some reason that story in its detail recurred to me last night, and seeing the news today, it would have been just around the time the earthquake in Italy occurred.

More on Oprah's video, leading to more on Now and Time

Thank you to those who participated in the further discussion of the Oprah video from my last post.

After hearing what you all had to say, I have a better theory on why the video included something that spoke to my friend Bob and sounded grounded in truth, while also including something that set me off on my rant and sounded false.

My understanding is based in an observation by a Boddhisatva of my acquaintance, who after watching the video said that it included some good stuff, but it's presented in a context of material success.

His comment formed a picture in my mind, of the talk as first half Buddhist wisdom, second half American ambition.

The part that comforted my friend was that part that said there is no such thing as failure, where you are now is where you are supposed to be, and every moment adds up to your whole life.

The part that sent me into a range was the part that said that there is a sacred purpose for your life, only one, and it's your job to find out what that is, and any time you feel unease - which, unease is the very definition of living, it's something all human beings experience all day every day about something or other, born of the fact that we can imagine the future and therefore imagine the present being something different from what it is - any time you feel unease, she says, that's evidence that you're not living your life according to your sacred calling, and you'd better change - quit your job, get a divorce - and keep changing until that uneasy feeling goes away.

If she says there's no such thing as failure, she must also embrace the other half of that, which is that there's no such thing as success either.

The second half of the video is an expression of American ambition and striving and continuous dissatisfaction, and if you buy that, then there is such a thing as failure, which is every moment up to and including now, because you're not there yet.

So, those are some further thoughts on the video, and then stay tuned for some further thoughts inspired by these ones, about the Now and about Time, time as a moment you're in and time as a journey.  I'm puzzling these topics through and finding I have thoughts and emotions that aren't consistent, so I'm working on framing a point of view that makes sense of it.

More as I get it written down!

Yin and Yang

Why What Oprah Says Might Be WRONG

Here.  This.  A friend shared this video on Facebook last week, and this is exactly the set of principles I heard from Oprah years ago, but which I'm now thinking are wrong, and directly contradictory to some of the most fundamental principles of my most foundational philosophical beliefs.



Listen to what she says:


"You have a supreme destiny."

"There is a supreme moment of destiny calling on your life." (just one moment, note)

"Your job is to feel that, to hear that, to know that."

"The losses are there to wake you up" (so, if you are in an unhappy or un-supremely-settled state, it's your own fault, for not discovering that one thing that you were put on the planet to do)

"When you're not at ease with yourself, that is the cue that you need to be moving in another direction." (like, you're obliged to keep changing until you are perfectly at peace, and only one thing will get you there)

"The way through the challenge is to get still and ask yourself what is the next right move." (so, moves can be right or wrong. There's an answer to what's right, and you can get the answer wrong.)


Now think about the situation of the very talented, smart, capable unemployed person, when this voice has been internalized into her head.  Your are unemployed because you are on the wrong path. You are DESTINED for something in particular.  Your JOB is to figure out what that is. And there is only one right answer, which means that there are wrong answers, so every minute of your precious life which is a precious gift from God which you spend not doing whatever that thing is, you are WASTING that time.  Every minute! Every second!

I have had this voice in my head for years, and the people around me know how it hounds me and stresses me out.

I was describing it to the new Rector of my church, and observing that it creates a lot of...pressure, and he laughed and said, yeah, I was going to say.

In the further course of that same conversation, I described how much I was influenced by Sartre in the early part of my Philosophy education, and how it formed my views about the meaning of life - that there is no essence, no meaning is given to you just from being born a human being, it is your responsibility to act, to choose into each new second as it unfolds, to define yourself as you go along by your choices, and only at the end of your life can you look back and read that history of choices and understand your essence, who you were.

This belief underpins my deep belief that the future is not actual, that nothing is determined at this point, that you can't know anything for sure about things that have not yet happened.  Not that this pen in my hand will fall when I release it, not that the sun will rise tomorrow or the earth keep turning, not that if you raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour it will either help or hurt the economy, not that if you tighten or ease up immigration requirements it will make your country either flourish or be destroyed.  People have arguments all the time about these things, but you can't win an argument about what will happen in the future, because the future is not actual.  Things are more or less likely, but you can't know them yet, not until they happen.  This firm belief I get from David Hume and his Problem of Induction, and you can see how it goes with the Sartre views of how one lives a life.

So, Oprah, that means that I cannot have a "destiny".  There is no one right answer for how I exist myself into each new second.  I choose.  No one else chooses.  I can change direction and do something different every second.  I do agree that because of their likely consequences some actions are more likely to result in something good (the greatest good for the greatest number) than others, and are more likely to lead to flourishing, but there's no one set of actions for me that will lead to that. What you say is incompatible with what I believe. No choice is the right choice, so no choice can be intrinsically wrong, there's a huge spectrum of possibilities, not yet written, it's up to me to write them.

And it's also damaging, and puts undue pressure on not just me but on all the people around me, when whatever I'm doing with them does not feel like that thing.

I can't be still and discern, like, see something that exists, what my path is or what I should do with my life.  I CHOOSE it.  I choose it.  I have radical freedom, because human beings have no essence, and the future is not actual, per my boys Jean Paul and David.

This argument will continue, I think, because this video is quite recent, but her views got into my head and started beating me up about my choices probably 15 years ago.  It will take a while to untangle Oprah vs Existentialism.  But I think what she says might not just be unhelpful, I think it might be WRONG.

Highlights from my Deep Listening Walks

During the Mile of Music, the Music Education Team put on two Deep Listening Walks.  I had life-changingly done one a few years ago (not at last year's Mile of Music because I was getting around in a cast and crutches), and so was excited to do both of them this year.

The walks kicked off with Dean Brian Pertl explaining the history and concept of Deep Listening. The term was coined by composer Pauline Oliveros.  The discovery story is that she was experimenting with recordings, while living in New York City. One day she hung a microphone out of her apartment window, and hung her head out as well.  When she played the tape back, there were all kinds of sounds the microphone had picked up that she had not attended to. Deep Listening is the practice of listening as a microphone would, of opening your ears to the full soundscape around you.

We don't do this all the time because it would make communication and getting around in the world very difficult.  When I am explaining the concept in person, I say, "For example, right now you are attending to the sound of me talking, and filtering out the background noises like the air conditioner, the clock ticking, the cars going by.  We have this capacity of attending to certain things and filtering other things out that works very well for you to understand me right now. But Deep Listening is the practice of reversing that, taking the filters off and attending to the whole soundscape."

The other instruction Dean Pertl gave us was to image the sounds we were hearing were a composed piece, organized in a particular way for us to hear.

The first walk was at 5:00 pm on Friday, a very noisy time during the Festival. We took off from Harper Hall on the Lawrence University campus and walked along the north side of College Avenue. The group included five members of the Music Education team, who were all wearing the same orange t-shirt, so at this walk and the second one both, the visual presentation of the walk was of a group of obviously linked people, moving very slowly and not speaking, and adopting very strange postures toward the objects around them - slowly pacing into doorways and nooks in building walls, putting their ears right up to an orange traffic cone, rocking toward and away from walls and glass windows, standing very still or turning in slow circles, putting their heads inside mail boxes.  Someone was taking photos of the second walk and I'd love to see them.

Dean Pertl told us to attend to the point along the walk when music from one venue faded and you could just hear the music from the next one. I heard sounds coming from The Fire, the Alley beside the History Museum and Houdini Plaza - emerging indistinctly as I approached, then loud as loud, then mixing with other sounds.

He asked us to be Sonic Explorers, to interact with things to see how the sound changed.  One Education Team member, who had designed the seven Deep Listening stations throughout the Mile, leaned down and put her ear in the opening at the top of an orange traffic cone, and then stood up and silently caught our eyes and nodded an "Oh, yeah," sort of nod, so we all tried it, and it was the best and most surprising sound I heard, especially the difference between listening to the cone when it was sitting on the ground (ocean waves) and when you picked it up an inch or so (more like radio static).

Walking into doorways and little nooks in the fronts of buildings mainly removed the hissy treble sounds of the music in the distance.  It didn't seem to matter what shape the entry was - large or small, sharp or angled corners.  Perhaps it would it I had more sensitive listening skills.

As we passed under a trestle that has been set up in front of the City Center building as they paint and replace the sign, a man came up behind me talking on his cell phone, and I heard his voice very distinctly say, "Can you hear me now?"

My most personal discovery was as we crossed the street and came to the big gray office building bemoaned by city Placemakers because it doesn't open on to the street.  One thing I always do on Deep Listening experiences is try to hear how big the space is (maybe I do this being a big fan of reverb on guitar amplifiers, and also an authenticist who was trying to discover what the "realest" amp is and considering spending $700 on a Fender Spring Reverb Tank, but then researching some more and realizing the only authentic reverb comes from standing in a big room).  We were looking down at the sidewalk during much of our walk, to focus on the sonic experience (aural experience). But when I crossed the street and entered that space beside the ugly gray office building, I could hear the larger space opening up.  I've tried this since, but it worked much better when there was so much noise being produced.

Dean Pertl's first observation in the debrief of this walk was how few times you fail to hear a Harley-Davidson.  They don't close the road during the Mile of Music, so the passing cars contribute to the music themselves.

The second walk was the next morning, early.  Some people gathered near Harper Hall, two groups with small children because it was an Education event, and they seemed worried that they didn't know what they were supposed to be doing.  I said, "Well, I know how to do it, so if no one shows up, I can lead it," and that seemed to cheer them.  The same orange-shirted Music Education Team members arrived, and then Dean Pertl, who had been stuck in traffic behind the Bike to the Beat cyclists, another Mile-sponsored event that early morning.

We began this walk with a walking exercise, Slow Walking, before we started the listening part.  We went outside in front of the building, which has a lovely array of sidewalks going in all diagonal different directions, for some distance before you hit another building or a street.  The object was to walk as slowly as you possibly could.  Have one heel just coming off the ground as the other one hits, and the same for your toes.  A little girl who was probably two years old was a very keen participant. She stuck one foot out immediately after Dean Pertl did, to follow his instructions, and walked this funny way throughout the exercise, although she couldn't quite master the slowness at first, just walked one foot in front of the other but at normal pace. She's one of those kids who wants to walk up to everyone and find out what they were doing, so she approached a number of people outside, someone moving percussion instruments on a cart, someone putting up a light, walked right up and looked up and said hello.  She looked back once and I reached a hand out to her, mainly to wave but also to keep her connected to our group, and she came right up and held my hand, and we slow walked together for a while. She finally got the pace, and looked up to me and said, "I'm doing it!" We were supposed to be keeping silence, but Dean Pertl had said that he was glad there were some little people in our group, because the sounds they make are part of the soundscape. Her excited and friendly and proud sounds were delightful.

On the walk a few years ago we had spent most of the time in City Park, and much of that playing with the fountain and its sounds as reflected off surrounding surfaces like walls and trees.  This time we never made it past the courtyard between the Chapel and the Conservatory building, because there was so much to discover there.  Dean Pertl gestured toward me and pointed in some indiscrimiate direction, urgently.  I finally realized he was pointing to the air conditioning system at the top of the Con building, and when I saw it then I heard it, I hadn't before. Then he pointed to the plate glass window on the other side, and he rocked back and forth as if he was doing push-ups on the window. I tried it and it made a very distinct and satisfying phaser sound.

At one point the air conditioning of the Chapel building kicked on, and someone had just gone in the automatic door so I thought that's what caused it, but when I pressed the button to open the door again, it didn't really do much, which is how I realized.

Because we were attending to such subtle differences in continuous background noises, it was a shock to hear something like a digeridoo or a trombone, a honking scraping noise.  It was Dean Pertl, stepping on the corner of a loose paving stone, in a way that made it squeak.  (He must know this area of campus amazingly well.)(I asked him, kidding, in the debrief, whether he had had that stone installed specially, and tuned up, and he said, yes, yes, that's right - so I still don't really know for sure that he didn't!)

At one point, in a spot where I could hear both air conditioners plus street noise, the sound almost became overwhelming, and I could imaging how they describe autism feels, with just too much stimulation and an inability to filter it and attend.  I came back away from this feeling by imaging that the sounds were a composition. The Chapel air conditioning system kicking off was very much like the denouement of a composition.  The composer was returning to the quiet themes of the opening, before the climactic build.  Imposition of imagined intention somehow gave me back control (something to muse on - made it a more conversational experience).

I took myself into parts of the staircase on the Washington Street side of the plaza area where you wouldn't normally go - sitting on the steps, on the wrong side of the railing, down into the greenery near the water pumps.  Different parts of the air conditioning noise, different car and street noises, another person on his phone, the park fountain in the distance.  I thought the discovery of new visual experiences was sometimes even more impressive than the sonic experiences of a place. On the steps on the wrong side of the railing, I looked up and the number and depth and arrangement of different square and curved shapes was remarkable.

I would love to see a photo of us, mostly in matching orange t-shirts, standing in various meditative postures arranged around this plaza area, some leaning their ears to walls, some turning in slow circles, some lying on the ground and hanging their heads over the side.

The other visual experience I had was that colors were much brighter after each walk, and I remember a friend, years ago, describing this as one of the key benefits of meditation, and his indication that it works (and is better than drugs).  Deep Listening is certainly a meditation, and a practice of mindfulness.  I suppose you can do it with any of the senses, but it has been a revelation to me to do it with the experience of sound.

Doors in My Recent Life

On May 4, 2016, this door opened, but then on Tuesday July 26, 2016 it closed again.

On July 8, in response to mounting tragedies, these big red doors were opened, and they now open every Friday.

Between July 27 and July 24, 2016, I spent the week in Door County, Wisconsin, surrounded by family and love.

In response to a conversation about how to identify talents and gifts, and what one is supposed to do to use them to the fullest, Father Jim Harrison shared with me this prayer, from the book "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals".

In response to a conversation about my finances into the near future with my financial advisor, he shared with me this meme.

Welcome in to this latest new Door.