A Happiness That Does Not Question Itself

Morning begins in a blur: faint mallow of eastern horizon, shifting fold of curtains, dreams fading like bad t.v. too often indulged. The dog trembles a little in sleep, assorted rosaries rattle against the headboard. One stumbles to put on water for tea, steps out back with the dog to pee in crusted snowbanks, shaking so hard in cold as to make a dozen golden ellipsis. There is a happiness that does not question itself, and a self that does not wonder what it is, and our calling demands we discover both. Thus crows, thus the shoulders of so many women, and thus long hours on a zafu in the dark.

Prisms begin in the upper northwest corner of the bedroom and drift slowly south and east, deepening as they go. Reminiscent of the moon and its own slow path to the sea? J. calls from Maine to remind me of my obligation to look differently at house building. We talk about oxen, fallen trees, and the nature of possibility, its relationship to reality. "You think too much," he says at last, adding - only partly joking - "get your ass out into the woods with an ax."

C. folds laundry while I finish my sentences, eyes on the bird feeder. In a sense, to look at anything is to look at the self, and how we look is the secret to peace. With whom we look? I have never not had time to write. And yet what a complicated relationship I have had with fences!

Yesterday's blue bird is not today's sixteenth sentence nor does it appear there. Complicity abounds in all of us until we arrive at yes and consent to the helpful dismantling of guilt. Discernment precedes joy, Christ precedes Heaven and cows precede steak? Well he was right of course and so C. and I sit down to another long dialogue which is on one level about what house to build but on another level is about seeing clearly transition within the evolving blessing of our marriage but which is really simply about aligning our thinking with Truth as God created it. Ask and ye shall receive indeed.