I DON'T KNOW

I just simply don't know...and ( that's beginning to be) alright !

T.S. Eliot wrote : "We don't live in a Quid Pro Quo Universe" !

I read a lot, as I research Philosophy and Religion and Chi Gung , etc.

In my more recent reading I came across a word with mixed Greek and Hebrew roots;

"ALLELUIAS"; meaning 'to Praise the Creator'.

Sometimes for some people that's difficult ; but then I also know from personal experience, that nothings as good as it looks and nothing is as bad as it looks; it's

pretty much what it is...

I came across this rather interesting poem last week; and I think you'll find it

interesting as well, if not unsettling :

                                              ALLELUIA

                                                  (Andrew Glaze)

As I walk mornings down Bleecker Street

I met ten saints with filthy demands.

The tenements shout with holiness.

God reels by or sleeps on the curb.

At home everywhere in the wrecks and bars,

in the stale tobacco and business,

and everything that's wild and absurd,

Like madness with madness and holding hands.

I had rather ten faces than ten birds.

I don't face deliverance in a tree.

There is no impossible in lakes,

There is more miracle in a crowd

Than in a Rocky Mountain or me.

There is more holiness in an eye

Than in a scroll of holy words.

God's here, thank God, in the market place !

Viva the Signor of warts and turds !

***

My friend from Nova Scotia sent me a CD; and on it such rhythm of beauty, with but one word, repeated, repeated and yet again..."OM".

I hear people say, "I don't know what to do; I don't know what to say...How ?

I do know the words are never as important as your presence...

In the Book, "Caravan of Dreams" by Indries Shah , I encountered this Sufi saying :

"You make me a sinner if you stop my giving you hospitality" !

We talk so much of a 'Grounded Practice"...

What about a "Grounded Spirituality" ?

What about "where the rubber actually does meet the road ?"

Know What ? "Sometimes our notion of spirituality is in need of a kick in the ass "!

I love flowers (although I know few by name), but it's the beauty they bring to life, and the fragrance that wafts and lingers... I went to College on Colorado , and I fell in love with the Rockies, birds, trees; hallowedness, the gradeur...

I don't know, but perhaps a grounded spirituality is able to laugh at itself (and cry) and rejoice; incorporating warts and turds and smiles and tears and all...I don' know...

Every day I try to do something I'm scared to do...something that really does scare me...as a spiritual practice.

But then and again, I Don't Know...

I guess it's good to b alive while I am alive...being part of the greater whole, practicing radical Compassion !

In John Conley's : "Letters to my Friends: A No Guarantees Guide to Awakening PLUS Enlightening Dialogues with Baba Rahm Jahn" , we have these words : Love, knowing that you are human and therefore fallible and love all the more for that knowledge. For it's your devotion to love, not the perfection of your love, that will move God to tears.

Deepest Peace

  Fred