06/30/2020

01

I suggest that you 
build coalitions of 3-5 people
to explore who each of you is,
and what you think/feel
is at the heart/center/ground/source/foundation/bedrock
of each of you.

How do you decide what to do?

What directs your boat
on its path through the sea?

How do you think of what is good?

Where do your ideas of the good originate?

Who are your guides?

How do you maintain your balance and harmony?

What is your work?
(Not what you do for a living,
but what you live to do.)

What would you go to hell for?

What do you know about
what has always been called God,
that you did not get from some other source,
including the Bible?

Where do you go--
what do you do--
to be with what has always been called God?

What are your essential virtues?
The ones that form your essence.
The ones that came with you from the womb.

What is your essential nature?

How do you like to spend your time?

What are the stories that form your bedrock?
Not necessarily things that have happened to you,
but stories that connect you to the truth
of who you are and how it is.

What grounds you so solidly
that nothing can knock you off your foundation?

How do you know what is being called for
in a situation?

You might also commit to viewing all of the
Jon Kabat-Zinn YouTube Videos
(The shortest ones first)
and giving some money
to benevolent causes
throughout the year.

If someone suggests that the group
elect officers,
tell them that is cause for life-time disbarment
and don't invite them to future meetings.

–0–

02

Your personal coalitions,
and you should have as many
as you can manage,
of 3 - 5 people
will see you through,
and enable you to meet
whatever comes up
with the resolve,
creativity,
resiliency,
spirit
and enthusiasm
that has gotten us
through all that we have faced
as a species
from the beginning
to now.

Our coalitions enable "truth,
the whole truth
and nothing but the truth,"
and, more importantly--
more important because the truth
cannot happen without it--
they enable us to bear the pain
of the full realization of the "truth,
the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth."

The truth about truth
is that we rarely ever
get all the way to the bottom
of truth.

There is always more than meets the eye.
So, we have to keep looking.
No matter how things are,
there is always how things also are.

This is where sitting in the silence
in the presence of the Source
(However you imagine that to be)
and waiting for whatever arises/emerges
out of the silence,
as realization,
or as urge,
or as urgent call to action,
or as memory,
or as whatever comes up
in the silence to guide/direct
you to action,
comes into play.

Always the need to return to the silence,
to return to the Source,
and wait for whatever revelation
we need to meet whatever we face.

The silence/Source is with us always,
and those who know,
know we all draw water from the same well,
and are connected at the level of the heart
as One throughout all time and space--
and it is our ideas of how things ought to be
that separate us into factions
and divisions
and war parties,
and once we put contriving
and conniving
out of the picture
there is only all of us together
seeking together
what is in the best interest
of all of us together.

And the base unit
of all of us together
is a coalition of 3 - 5 people
speaking straight from the heart
about matters
that are important
to us all.

–0–

03

Two foundational assumptions for membership
in the Church of What's Happening Now
are your good faith
and your ability to bear the pain of your life.

Everybody wants to feel better.

Nobody wants to do what it takes
to get better.

What it takes to get better
is bearing the pain of the way things are.

The culture we have created
is a giant excursion
into the unending possibilities
of pain avoidance and relief.

Diversion,
distraction,
escape
and denial
come in myriad shapes and sizes.
There is something,
somewhere,
for everyone.

If you are in pain
in this place,
someone will hand you
a pill,
or a drink,
or an injection,
or an experience
that will take you far away
from your anguish
and transport you
to a "land of gentle breezes
where the peaceful waters flow"
(Anne Murry, Snowbird).

Always, always,
at the bottom of our pain
lies a contradiction
that cannot be borne,
which we have to bear.

We want what we do not have,
or have what we do not want.

"That" rules out the possibility of "this."

What we want runs afoul
of something else we want.
And, what we don't want is everywhere.

The song has endless verses
saying the same thing:
We have to grow up against our will!
Therefore, we choose not growing up.
And here we are.

Sometimes we can walk
two paths at the same time.

Sometimes we have to make
a choice between mutually exclusive options.

Sometimes we have to adjust
ourselves to having lost
our truest love.

Bug always, we have to come to terms
with the pain of our life being as it is.

"This is the way things are,
and this is what we can do about it,
and that's that.
And That is how things are."

Growing up means coming to terms
with how things are.
Means bearing the pain of how things are.

Doing that (growing up) will not be good
for the economy.
But.
It will be the best thing we can do
for ourselves and those we love--
though it may take a while
for all of us to realize that.