airport flowers

Anybody get stopped today dead in their tracks, amidst chaos and pain, by a rose longing to share its sweet smell for a moment?

In oversized shoes flopping long past their comfortable life expectancy, his sockless, poor, chafed feet were red as a rose. I noticed as I dug out of my pocket a smoke he requested at the threshold to the terminal doors.

“Can you spare two?” he boldly mumbled from beneath a shaggy beard I bet he’d love to feel shaven.

He was 5 years older and 50 pounds heavier than I.

Before I asked, he said more brightly, “I have a light,” accepted the smokes and shuffled unsteadily away, threads off every article he wore snapping in the gusts.

She was probably 10 or 11, also at the automatic door’s threshold, moving tentatively but without effort to get her roll-aboard out of the back seat while perhaps mom or an aunt with an anxious or frustrated scowl barked at the windshield to bounce her words toward an unseen driver. In contrast to the righteously stomping woman, the girl seemed calm though determined to get on her way across the drop-off lane, looking both ways, stepping lowly, moderately, modestly, smoothly, until…

She tripped slightly at the curb, as the woman strode ahead. The girl smiled at herself then skipped furtively through the door to catch up, I presume.

Yes, she stumbled ever so slightly, and was stilled, at a threshold. Yet in that moment, she delighted in herself. Like two old men in very different pairs of shoes exchanging common pleasures.

Redfoot saw the action too. And, yes, he had a light. I saw that, glistening in the corner of his left eye. No ashes nor smoke could drown the sweet fragrance of those moments.

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Neil D. 2023-06-08

Lord of the dance

Here is a soundtrack to dance to as you read…
“I’ll live in you
If you’ll live in me…
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.”

Not the lord of thunder, not the lord of judgment, life and death, not the lord of salvation, the lord over heaven and earth, and not any king; “It is you who say that I am king.” It is not an invitation or a suggestion; it is a command: Wherever you may be – on your journey, DANCE!

Where is this Lord? Why, in all that is.
“I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth”

It must break the dancelord’s heart that the self-righteous won’t join in, but the lowly will do, and perhaps their hearts will soften as they watch. Surely he wishes all to join but understands hiding behind The Law.
“… I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn’t follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John
They came with me
And the Dance went on.”

It’s not just a command left hanging there, for us to fulfill alone. Nay, seems he knows the dance may make us self-conscious and fearful, so how could a loving dancelord leave it to us alone. What is ‘grace’?
“I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.”

We may hold him up as up a victor over death, etc., but his interest seems only in dancing.
“… I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame…
They buried my body
And they thought I’d gone,
***But I am the Dance,***
And I still go on.”

…

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

… I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn’t follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John
They came with me
And the Dance went on.

… I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there
On a Cross to die.

… I danced on a Friday
When the sky turned black
It’s hard to dance
With the devil on your back.
They buried my body
And they thought I’d gone,
***But I am the Dance,***
And I still go on.

… They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That’ll never, never die;
I’ll live in you
If you’ll live in me –
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he

Favored renditions

Apparently the original artists https://youtu.be/Q1zYXooGWr4

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Neil D. 2023-06-06

Trust, or, Hurt? Trust, and, Hurt?

Trust, or, Hurt?
Trust, and, Hurt?

What I had was bad
and
what I have is bad
and
what will come will be bad…

What I had was good and bad
and
what I have is good and bad
and
what will come is good and bad…

What I had was not so bad
and
what I have is not so bad
and
what will come is not so bad…

I can hurt you
and
I can’t hurt you

You can’t hurt me
and
you can hurt me.

Not so bad.

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Neil D. 2023-06-01

We get “power” wrong, often because religious prayer keeps us powerless

[Prayer, as commonly practiced, often sounds like a helpless child asking some superhero to intervene to save them. Be honest. We are brainwashed with such a mindset by oversimplifications of Judeo Christianity. Yes, “Ask, and ye shall receive,” but that is sadly oversimplified. It can completely strip us of any sense of power, and that cannot be good. A favored thinker keeps a wonderful and mysterious balance that does not require us to believe we are ultimately powerless at all. Some excerpts from such an article (source at end):]

”
We’re empowered from within.

Once we contact our Inner Source, that is what true, humble, and confident power represents. It is the ultimate meaning of a well-grounded person.

This replaces our “heart of stone with a heart of flesh.”

No wonder we seek power in all the wrong places—since we have not made contact with our true power, indwelling.

This empowerment is the ultimate answer to our prayers.

We pray not to change God but to change ourselves.

We pray to form a living relationship, not to get things done.

Prayer is a symbiotic relationship with life, a synergy which creates a result larger than the exchange itself.

*We* need prayer to keep the symbiotic relationship moving and growing.

Prayer is not a way to try to control, or even to get what we want.

The answer to every prayer is one, the same, and the best.

Prayer gives us power more than answers.

A truly spiritual woman, a truly whole man, is a very powerful person.

Prayer calls us to be adult partners who can handle power and critique themselves.
”

[more at the source, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-divine-strategy-2023-05-29/
]

More from this author, and from Brené Brown, at FeelWithNeil’s most read article: https://feelwithneil.com/2023/04/09/to-my-subscribers-the-most-viewed-article-is/

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Neil D. 2022-05-29

Impatient with depression {Dark night of the soul (12)}

When I am depressed, the same sentiments as many depressed people echo in my head:

“Please don’t try to cheer me up. You are invalidating a very real emotional experience of mine. It is mine to own, not yours to deny or take away or solve or fix. My personal failures depress me, and your prompts to cheer up – no matter how subtle or disguised with gentleness – are veiled confirmation that I am failing, that my state is a ‘bad’ or a ‘wrong’ that I must escape. Your impatience with my depression is fueling my own impatience with my depression. And that’s depressing.”

I have not enjoyed, cherished, or savored my lowest moments. Yet, efforts to abate them all failed. The state was all mine, and nothing would remove it. Nor would anyone else. All my attempts and all the efforts of others to remove the state were evidence that it could not be. Something deeper with great power signaled that I could not make life as I wished, but that life would now instead show *me* what is to be wished for. That is the enforced dark night of the soul.

“Neil, if you insist on clinging to the identities that you’ve falsely assumed to give you power, and you continue to insist that only something external can rescue you, then those falsities will be exposed as powerlessness. Your true power is there in the darkness. Wander within it until you stumble upon the foundation of your real power…”

Here are excerpts of a wonderfully different way to express the deep-rest of the depressed, from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-healing-work-of-community-and-service-2023-05-24/

“…the hard parts of my life are not failure. They are evidence…”

“Womanist theologian and pastor Dr. Monica Coleman writes openly about her experience…:
…I had to detach myself emotionally from everything just to keep from crying all the time… It took all my energy to get up and get dressed and be there and not cry through the day…
Revelation did not come to me in thunderbolts. God was just there… In the knitting. God was in my uniform rows of stitches. God was also in the dropped stitch that created an imperfection.… Whether it feels like it or not…God is making something new. Something beautiful…
I was knitting God into the hat and scarf. No. God was knitting me. With therapists, medication, …and a name for my condition… God was knitting me back together…
I don’t want to be reduced to my symptoms and diagnosis… I am learning the difference between captivity and rest, between an illness and a condition. There’s nothing wrong with me. After all, this is the only me I’ve ever known. But sometimes I need to slow down, check to see if I’m okay; look at the emotional heap of yarn in my lap, undo a few rows, and try again. I need to know that the things I drop, the things I can’t do the way I want, the hard parts of my life are not failure. They are evidence that I’m human.”
…
And the deep, deep gift of being human is not to be discovered in shallow places.

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Neil D. 2023-05-29
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What is “Dark night of the Soul?” Almost always misused and misunderstood. See Dark Night of the Soul (0) – Resources & Recommendations

The only constant is change

What is “a river”? Course changing constantly, yet it remains that river. Levels rise and fall, flow speeds and slows. Tiny pebbles moved we call sediment. Large immovable stones we call its bed. Yet we wouldn’t say “the river” is its bed. “The” river is its soul. Bed, flow, ups and downs.

Neither happiness nor health nor this moment are sustainable. If you hope for any one of those, they may come, but not because of your hope: You do not hope for sadness, but that too will come again. What is constant among these changes? You. You are the river. Changing and constant, all at once. Put your hope in your self. Put your belief in your self. You are enormous.

A famous Frenchman is rumored to have quipped:

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

So, see…

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2023-04-21 Neil D.