October 15-B, 2022

Queen Anne’s Lace 03 06/08/2014 Oil Paint Rendered — Charlotte, North Carolina
If your life isn't what you want it to be,
it is because you want it to be
something it is not capable of being--
and are pushing, forcing, shaping, compelling
it to be what you want it to be
and not cooperating with,
listening to,
seeing, hearing, knowing, comprehending,
assisting, serving, doing
what your life wants to be/needs to be.

We have to transform our relationship
with our life
in order to become one with our life,
if we want our life to be 
what it is capable of being
within the time and place,
conditions and circumstances,
of our living.

Our life is alive--
or is capable of becoming alive--
when we assist it
in a "Thy will, not mine, be done"
kind of way.

Enter emptiness,
stillness
and silence
as our primary mode of operation
in placing ourselves
in right relationship with our life,
and allowing everything else
to fall into place around that.

Begin with telling yourself
about your current relationship with your life.

Describe it,
picture it,
feel it,
imagine it,
find metaphors that reflect/exhibit/express it,
symbols that stand for it...

And begin to listen to what your life
is saying to you
about how it needs you to live it.

How are you living it?
How do you need to be living it instead?

Your life is your guide.
Live it as it needs to be lived.
Go where it needs to go.
Do what it needs to have done.

Amaze yourself with what can happen,
even now,
even yet,
even so.

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October 15-A, 2022

Big Bay Creek Panorama 07/17/2013 Oil Paint Rendered — Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, South Carolina
Staying out of each other's way, 
and trusting the other
to take care of their own business
would go a long way toward
peace on earth.

It may wrap it up and tie it in a bow.

Who is minding your business these days?
Whose business are you minding?

"Everybody in their own life,
and stay there,"
is not a bad rule for life.

October 14-B, 2022

Taughannock Falls Detail 01 10-01-2014 Oil Paint Rendered — Ulysses, New York
I start with the assumption--
which is more than belief,
and more on the order of perceived reality
than faith in,
or trust that,
it may be so--
that we all are always in the immediate presence
of the anchor stone,
the still point of the turning world,
the axis mundi,
the world axis,
grounding us and establishing us
in the truth of our connection 
with the tree of life,
which is the cross of Jesus,
and the tree of enlightenment
which is the Bodhi Tree of the Buddha.

At one with the anchor stone,
we are immovable and unperturbed
by the clashing rocks
and the crashing waves
of the wine-dark sea--
borne up as we are
by the strength of our original/essential nature
and our possession of the innate virtues/character
that come with us from the womb.

We are who we are,
and will not be separated from that
by anything life can do to us.

And yet, and yet...
fear and lethargy take their toll.

We do not nurture and nourish the bonds
that establish us upon the anchor stone,
and are easily blown about
by the winds of time and chance
that happen to us all.

And are far away from that which is
right here, right now,
in each situation as it arises.

Thus, the call always is
to return to the source,
to find our way back to the core,
of who we are and what we are to be about,
in order that we might dance
with what life brings us
in the confidence of those who know
we have all it takes 
to deal with the moment
and do there what needs to be done
like Sisyphus with his boulder
and Ulysses on his raft,
saying, "I will press on and endure,
and when the heaving sea 
has shaken my raft to pieces,
then I will swim!"

Words from the anchor stone,
from the source,
from the core,
calling us to be who we are,
offering what is ours to give
in each situation as it arises 
all our life long,
no matter what.

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October 14-A, 2022






Herons Leaving 09/09/2013 Oil Paint Rendered — The Bog Garden, Greensboro, North Carolina





In every situation
there is what needs to be done
and what does not need to be done.

Nature appears to be particularly attuned
to what needs to be done here/now.
A lot of that has to do with waiting
for something to nudge things along
toward something else,
doing that and waiting some more.

Some human beings work that way,
but most of us have to have something to do
to fill the time.

"Let's go bowling, Dude!"
is all it takes to move us toward bowling,
whether that actually need to be done or not.
It is something to do,
and that is better than nothing to do!

Nature doesn't mind nothing to do.
That is waiting time.
Waiting for something to spur nature to action.
Something more pertinent 
to the time and place of our living
than, "Let's go bowling, Dude!"

Nature is not filling up the time,
but responding to the time that is at hand,
and doing what is called for
by the moment that is at hand.

Learning to sense what it is time for,
here/now, 
is at the heart of the natural world.

Waiting for the right moment to act--
for the time to be right to act--
in the service of what needs to be done
is the purview of instinct and intuition.

We cannot think our way there,
but wait in the emptiness,
stillness
and silence
for the right thing to occur to us,
alert to how the awareness of the right thing
is different from thinking about
all the other possibilities.

Knowing the right thing
is not the same as considering 
a number of options
and settling on bowling, for instance,
in lieu of any better idea.

And knowing the difference
is essential knowing.





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October 13-B, 2022
	


	
	

		

Sunrise at Schwabacher Landing 02 06/26/2021 Oil Paint Rendered — Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming





When Jesus told his disciples,
"You must increase
and I must decrease,"
he was saying,
"It's all up to you, now.
You each have to be like 
the wind that blows where it will!"

There is no unified faith.
No corporate conception of 
how things ought to be.

We each have our own sense of
balance and harmony,
integrity,
sincerity,
spontaneity,
what is called for in each situation
as it arises
and what needs to be done about it.

We may agree generally that emptiness,
stillness and silence are core values,
but disagree in the specifics
regarding how to achieve them
and work out our relationship with them.

There is no ritual or practice to be imposed
upon each individual.
We are not making yogis out of each other.
We follow our own sense of what needs to be done
and how to do it.

"We are the sculptor,
the hammer,
the chisel
and the stone"
(Alexis Carrel, or words to that effect). 

We are out own guru,
our own teacher,
our own master,
our own coach,
our own spiritual director--
figuring out on our own
what we need to do
to be who we are.

There are no books of doctrine.
No systems of theology.
No dogma.
No orthodoxy.
Except to say "There is no orthodoxy!"
That is as orthodox as we 
can allow ourselves to be.

We are iconoclasts, every one.
True to our own sense of who we are
and who we are to be.





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October 13-A, 2022
	


	
	

		

Reedy Fork Sunset Panorama 01 Oil Paint Rendered — Lake Brandt Greenway, Greensboro, North Carolina





Letting things be what they need to be,
and listening,
looking,
watching,
seeing,
feeling,
sensing,
knowing,
doing
what that is
is an amazing practice 
in and of itself.

Where does thinking come in?
Not very high on the list.

Thinking has to do with contriving,
scheming,
posturing,
positioning,
engineering,
orchestrating,
devising,
concocting,
you know,
like that.

The way life is generally lived,
doing this so that will happen.
Not, doing this so this will happen.

We live in this moment 
so that moment will be better.

How about living in this moment
so this moment will be better?

Doing now what needs to be done now
for the sake of now?

With no ulterior motive in mind?
With nothing in mind?
With a completely blank mind?
Responding only to what is called for,
now?

How long since we lived like that?





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October 12-B, 2022
	


	
	

		

Hammock Creek 01 10/17/2013 Oil Paint Rendered — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, North Carolina





Our perceptions are our impressions,
our understandings,
our interpretations,
our assumptions,
our inferences,
our conclusions
regarding apparent aspects of reality.

My perceptions of a mound of dirt
near the patio of our next house
on an inspection tour
with the HOA president,
matched his when he identified it
as a fire ant bed
and began telling me how to get rid of it.

My wife noticed a large flower pot
leaning against the outside of the house,
and said the fire ant bed 
was a lump of soil
that had been dumped from the pot
by the previous owner of the house.

A swift kick proved her perception
was accurate and our perception was not.

Verifying our perceptions
is a practice not often undertaken
by people who look
and take what they see
for the way things are.

Our perceptions change
when we broaden our perspective
to take things into account
that do not readily appear
in our line of sight.

We do that by seeking to see
more than we are looking at,
by asking questions that examine
our assumptions/inferences/presumptions/etc.
and expand our field of view
to explore possibilities and alternatives
that did not come immediately to mind.

Narrow perspectives are not as accurate
as broad perspectives.
Broad perspectives are more time-consuming
and troublesome
than narrow perspectives.

Seeing asks more of us than looking.

And so the importance of including
silence,
stillness,
and emptiness
in our regular pattern 
of examining and assessing 
what we are seeing/saying/doing
in a day.

Poke
probe,
explore,
consider,
contemplate,
imagine,
wonder...
transform your world
and the world of normal,
apparent, reality.





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October 12-A, 2022
	


	
	

		


Path to Lake Martin 05/14/2014 Oil Paint Rendered –Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, Bigbee, South Carolina






Take refuge in the silence,
in the stillness,
in the emptiness,
just breathing,
just waiting,
for restoration,
recovery,
reassurance,
realization,
revitalization,
renewal,
direction,
courage,
confidence,
balance,
harmony,
stability,
security,
determination,
and the will to go on.

The silence, etc.,
is good for all of this
and more.

A day without silence
is like a day with nothing but noise.
Noise is anti-life.
Which is to say lifeless.
Which is to say death.

For every minute of noise in your life,
you need an hour of silence, etc.,
to even things out.

How is your ratio looking these days?





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October 11-B, 2022
	


	
	

		

Baxter Creek Bridge 04 10/30/2014 Oil Paint Rendered — Great Smoky Mountains State Park, Big Creek campground, Waterville, North Carolina





We have to have a regimen,
a routine,
an order of the day,
that we follow regularly,
religiously,
with fealty,
liege loyalty
and filial devotion.

Consisting of the right kind of emptiness,
stillness
and silence.

Mindful awareness.

Integrity,
sincerity
and spontaneity.

Balance and harmony.

Spirit,
energy
and vitality.

All of which connect us
at the level of the heart
with our essential/original nature
and the innate virtues/character
that are ours from birth--
which constitute
"the face that was ours before we were born."

Maintaining this practice
connects us with the anchor-stone
of our core/source,
and enables us
to see/hear/know/understand what's what
and what is called for
in each situation as it arises
and to do what needs to be done about it
throughout our life--
for the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it,
no matter what.

Without this kind of grounding practice,
we are leaves on the water,
dust in the wind,
to be carried without direction
into the wasteland
of our eternal discontent.





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October 11-A, 2022
	


	
	

		

Edisto Beach Sunrise 09 01/29/2015 — Edisto Island State Park, South Carolina





Clarity and courage are all it takes.

We can go anywhere,
do anything,
in the company
of clarity and courage.

Clarity reveals/discloses what's what
and what needs to be done about it,
in response to it,
and courage does it.

That's all there is to it.

In each situation as it arises.

All our life long.

Fear and anger interfere with both
clarity and courage.

The right kind of emptiness,
stillness
and silence
restore clarity and courage.

With this realization in hand,
we have everything we need
to meet the future
and deal well with what we find there,
every day 
for the rest of our life.





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October 10-B, 2022
	


	
	

		

Sunbeams 02 09/02/2014 Oil Paint Rendered — Water Rock Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway, Maggie Valley, North Carolina





There are circumstances producing consequences,
and consequences creating circumstances,
generating forces and momentum,
opportunities and possibilities,
with one thing following another,
spinning off from another,
becoming altogether different
from anything that has ever been
because it could.

Anything that can happen will happen
over time.
And does happen.
And has happened.

You can think of circumstances and consequences
as being the origin of all that is,
or you could call it "yin and yang."
It is the same thing.

Yin/yang working in conjunction with balance and harmony
(Everything is like water, seeking its own level,
searching for homeostasis and equilibrium,
striving to be at peace,
living for heaven,
the Elysian Fields,
the Farther Shore,
Nirvana, 
bliss,
rapture,
etc.

Our place in the mix
is seeing, hearing, understanding,
knowing, doing, being--
NOT having, gaining, getting,
amassing, owning, attaining,
gathering, storing, etc.!

We read the conditions present
in each situation as it arises,
sense the flow of things in the moment
of our being,
and assist what is trying to happen,
what needs to happen,
here/now.

We know what time it is for,
and come to the aid of what is called for.

We wait for the door to open
and walk through.

And, it is like magic.
Everything that needs to happen 
happens "in the fullness of time."

Like a tomato ripening, 
and leaves changing color in the fall.

We read the times,
feel the flow,
know what's what
and what needs to be done about it,
do it,
and let nature take its course
in each moment as it arises,
and it is all creation in its glory,
sweeping us up and away,
here and now.

We walk by these opportunities 
every day,
never knowing what we are missing.

It is all so close,
and infinitely far away,
because we have eyes on other things.

And, no one wakes up before their time.
And, everyone gets the adventure
they are ready for.
And everyone is waiting to wake up
and go on their adventure,
though everyone does not realize that,
and sleeps their life away
in the service of entertaining pastimes
and money.





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October 10-A, 2022
	


	
	

		

Lunar Eclipse 02/20/2008 Oil Paint Rendered





Reconciling ourselves 
to the world/life/the way things are
is our life-long work.

It is the Sisyphean Task,
and the core of the Hero's Journey.

We never complete it,
we always continue it.

Thinking, "Now we have done it at last,"
merely sets us up for
"Here it comes again!"

All the stages of life
are marked by different
ways of having to reconcile ourselves
to how things are here/now.

How many here/now's can you experience
before you encounter 
the requirement
of having to grow up some more again?

We never get used to it,
but we can look forward to it--
in a "I wonder what will be asked of me today?"
kind of way.

Whatever it is,
we channel Sisyphus again,
trudging to the bottom of the hill
to roll the rock up the next hill,
in a landscape of infinite hills--
hero's never running out of dragons to slay.

It is the way.

If you can come to terms with that,
you have it made,
embracing your lot
of endlessly proving your mettle
some more again.





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