An Abundance of Pancakes

Jays squall in the pine trees, the neighbor's voices float like tonally-augmented threads, and faint clouds bunch and gather, obscuring blue, the only color I really trust. One sees what they keep from God and so grief, anger, confusion and fear instantly attend. Oh sleep, why are we always so at odds?

One studies the lilac, its violet blossoms crimping brown and dropping like handsome cadavers into the rainy grass. Sri Ramana Maharshi keeps showing up, somewhat like a mountain I am either unwilling or unable to climb. In the morning there is tea and the decision to read this or that teacher.

Hide nothing? Each time I cross the Coolidge Bridge I mentally picture it collapsing. Survival is not our function but life is.

What a lovely and populous wilderness between the little I know and the lot I say! One folds and refolds a quilt their great-aunt made, forty years ago, a cofusing gift to a little boy but now precious in a way that makes me question God's intentions. It's been a long time since I bought a couple donuts and a coffee at five a.m. and drove with my dog to some remote forest to walk with neither compass nor map, making the trail as we go.

Jesus says patiently, "This would go a lot quicker if you'd stop trying to do it by yourself." In one dream, a red barn burning in the night, red sparks confused with stars, and in another, a paucity of words but an abundance of pancakes, butter melting in generous streams of warm maple syrup. Choose indeed.

Is it that you collect all the tools and then learn there is nothing to build? How strange - and yet instructive - that a dollar bill should remind one to place their trust in God. The internet is not a tree is not a very clear way to redirect the stubbornly misguided.

Holiness is clarity is letting go! What nectar the world is - still - to those whose faith is yet a salty gruel!