A Tranquil Rain

There is a tranquil rain falling tonight.

I can hear the quiet hush of it on the roof, hear the soft drops and streams as they cascade off. It has been a good night, rich in conversation, rich in contemplation, rich in the experience of life - which is never anything less then dazzling in its beauty and mystery.

So, tonight, amid the tranquil rain, I am seduced by the dazzling beauty and mystery of life.

Life is Mystery

It is a quiet Tuesday evening here in San Jose. I thought I'd take a few minutes and write about today. It was an interesting day. It started with the strange dreams about the nature of reality that I wrote about a short while ago and that contemplation of reality continued through the day. I had worked late last night and I went into the office early this morning with the intention of leaving early. Unfortunately that didn't happen. My calendar is kinda full this week and that is has made for some days are passing very quickly. This is my short work week so I have Friday off.

I came home tonight and stopped at JC's for some barbecue. As usual it was excellent chicken and hotlinks. I had that simple barbecue dinner and spent two hours watching the series finale of "Falling Skies". It was an excellent series and I'm glad to hear they renewed it for another year. It has an excellent cast Noah Wylie, Moon Bloodgood, and Will Patton. (I also happen to be a big fan of Noah Wylie's "The Librarian" series. It's sort of a guilty pleasure for me.) Rather than letting the DVR skip the commercials I let the commercials run and used that opportunity to start moving things back into the spare bedroom. The apartment complex is planning on coming to on Friday for a plumbing inspection, the routine deal, happens once a year. I had quite a few boxes stacked in the kitchen that I needed to just get out of the way.

I have all my books stacked on the kitchen table I'm guessing there's maybe 200 to 250. There might be less. I'm going to take a run through them, recycle more than a few and try to cut the number of actual physical books I have down to 50. I'm not really sure I'll be able to do it but I am going to give it a try. I would say that I currently do about 80% of my reading on the Kindle. I'm just a huge fan of the Kindle. Electronic media is the wave of the future whether it's books, music or movies. We can resist it but it's not a resistance we will ever win.

T.R. is traveling right now, sort of a mini vacation, sort of a getaway, sort of her retreat. All of those things wrapped together. We will communicate as we can while she travels and I'm sure I'm going to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about her. I am, as I mentioned in my profile, intensely private person. There are a variety of reasons for that, some good, some bad and most just are. it's hard for me to quantify or qualify the impact she's had on me. She moves with the simple grace, as mere TR, and it is sufficient that she is TR, and it is sufficient that she is mere. Sometimes life is about the sufficiency of things. Sometimes life is about the mere-ness of things. Whatever it happens to be about, life in all its glory is Mystery.

The Way is Mysterious

In a world of shouting, God whispers. If we sit in silence long enough, if we still all of the external and internal voices, there is God, whispering. When I woke up this morning I ran over a pair of speed bumps that threatened to take the day off course rather quickly. I have found that if the day starts good and goes bad, it still has the possibility of ending as a good day.

But, if the day starts bad, too often there is nothing I seem to be able to do except ride it out and start the next day.

So, this morning, when I bounced over those two speed bumps, I decided to immediately reset the day. I told myself what became my mantra for the day, that I am carrying with me even now, here in the afternoon, as the day winds toward its end. “Slow. Slow. Slow.” I have spent the entire day consciously and deliberately slowing down every time I felt myself speeding up.

Just stopping.

Taking a deep breath.

And going “slow, slow, slow”.

Now it is close to three PM and all in all, it has been both a good and productive day. I’ve weaved my way through a series of meetings. I’ve resolved some sticky issues. I’ve handled some customer requests. I had a nice lunch.

I am sliding into the evening with a brief plan. I want to stop and get a fresh salad for dinner and I need to stop at the accountant and sign some papers. Since I am going to be next to a Coin Star location I am going to run my bowl of spare change through the machine and then crackle with glee as I count my riches.

Well, okay, I made the cackle with glee part up. Odds are that won’t happen.

I have been thinking today, pretty much all day, about the mysterious nature of the universe. It was the thought that was on my mind when I woke this morning (well, immediately after the thoughts that involved nakedness).

My friend Tony is in a transitional stage right now. He is at a fork in the road and over the next couple of days will be choosing a path or not making a choice and letting the choice be made for him. Either way, there is a path that diverges and he is at the fork.

As human beings our path is always forward, down the inexorable arrow of time. We can’t do anything about that, we can’t turn around and go back, we can’t reverse that particular journey. We can wiggle around a bit. We can make choices that are basic and simple, choices about a little more of this, choices about a little less of that. The more complex choices are largely made by what I like to refer to as the process of incidents and accidents. Things happen. Other things happen. Some of them we are active participants in. Others we are passive participants in. Either way the journey continues.

The great mystery closes one door.

The great mystery opens another door.

We strive, imperfectly, to follow the Way.

Poetry: Mysteries in the Rhythm and the Rhyme

I hear the clink of a silver spoon
Spinning inside a coffee cup
I blink myself awake into the sun
I roll out of the bed and stand up

I slip into my old blue jeans
I button up my favorite shirt
I remember those wilder days
As I shrug through the morning hurt

Broken bones leave the echo
Of those moments trapped in time
Half remembered songs recall
Mysteries in the rhythm and the rhyme

I hear the sound of bacon in the pan
I smell the scent of biscuits on the rise
I hear the whisper of your feet
I hear the sound of your sighs

I find you in the kitchen dancing
Slowly across that hardwood floor
Stunned to stillness I stop and watch
Leaning against the open door

Broken bones leave the echo
Of those moments trapped in time
Half remembered songs recall
Mysteries in the rhythm and the rhyme

I think about the things I did right
I think about the things I did wrong
I watch you spinning on the floor
I watch you lost inside the song

You start when you see me standing there
Then twirl with a twinkle in your eye
You bare feet sliding across the floor
You pull me close inside your sigh

Broken bones leave the echo
Of those moments trapped in time
Half remembered songs recall
Mysteries in the rhythm and the rhyme

Observations: What Brings You To Your Knees Today? Or High Five God!

I have a tradition with someone very dear to me. Periodically, as we move through our days and weeks, we will text or email each other small quotations - snippets of poetry, observational quotes, little brilliant pieces of literature we have stumbled upon or deliberately sought out. Today I sent her a piece from Rainer Maria Rilke.

"But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places we can still sense the source: a play of pure power that - when you feel it - brings you to your knees."

That got me thinking about what brought me to my knees today...

I began the day in a prayer. I woke up and the first thing I did was say a small prayer of thanks for life and for the day. Sometimes I wake up and my first impulse is to take a moment or two and drop to my knees beside the bed.

I often pray as I move though the day, usually short little prayers of gratefulness. My own little way of saying "Hey, God, I just saw that! That was cool!" I think life continually surrounds us with mystery and majesty. All we need to do is take a few moments to notice it.

There are times though when I feel the necessity to pray on my knees. Part of it is a Catholic upbringing of course, but part of it is a tremendous sense of humility. I love God. God and I have a complex relationship that spans decades. Sometimes we've been close and sometimes we haven't. I consider God as a constant companion who is always there with me, wherever I happen to be. God is mostly silent. It is the comfortable silence you find with those that know you. The silence where words are unnecessary.

God, Life, Creation, Nature, Mystery - they all just fill me with a tremendous sense of awe. It is that sense of awe, wrapped in either the grandly complex or the simply sublime that sometimes brings me to my knees. It doesn't drive me to my knees. It doesn't force me to my knees. It brings me to my knees. I want to go there. I want to kneel in humility before God and simply say - "I saw that. That was far to cool. Thank you." Then we high five and I get on with the day.

And Today

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain. I love that sound. I woke from a dream of a friend of mine. She was in her garden and was upset that the local school's marching band was marching through her garden every day. In the waking world she lives near a college, so there was a natural (if tenuous) connection to her garden and a marching band.

I took a shower, drank a cup of coffee, ate a bowl of cold cereal (Special K) and dressed for work. Because of the rain I dressed warm - blue jeans, shirt, sweater, boots and my light raincoat. I stopped for a cup of coffee on the way into the office.

I got to the office just about dawn and was sitting there in the parking lot on a telephone call watching the sun come up. It was an unexpected reward. The storm was breaking up and there were patches of blue sky peeking through the gray and tumbling clouds. The high altitude wind was skipping the clouds across the sky at a good clip. The sun would periodically break through and everything would light up, white, gray, gold, orange, blue. It was simply beautiful.

Then, a wild turkey came out of the bushes to the right of me and proceeded to wander across the parking lot. There are trees in little concrete islands in the parking lot and those trees drop some sort of small black berry (tip - never park under the trees). The turkey wandered from tree to tree and seemed to be sampling the berries as she went.

So, I sat there in conversation watching the beautiful storm scattered sky and the wild turkey. It was a beautiful twenty minutes or so. Then, I headed into the office to start to the day. My schedule is fairly light today so I am looking forward to a productive day.

I think one of the great gifts God has given me is the ability to revel in the ordinary. We live in a magical world, full of simple beauty and astounding mystery. Somewhere along the line I learned to simply stop and stare in amazement. I couldn't help but notice this morning the number of people who pulled into the parking lot, got out of their cars and headed into the building without ever looking up at that stunning tapestry of sky unfolding over our heads.

So, where ever you are, who ever you are. Stop. Look up. Take a few minutes and peek into the corners of the universe and see the simple mystery of it all.

The Mystery Of October

Deep inside the late October night
The quiet clink of whiskey and ice
I open the window, turn down the light
The piper was paid his asking price

Remembering those drives along the coast
The warm days the cool nights
I am not sure which I miss the most
Of all the things we did without the lights

If we could have stayed there on the road
A quiet motel a sleepy little town
I wonder at the story left untold
Before our lives came tumbling down

Wrapped inside the mystery of October
Tangled up inside of love gone astray
Wrapped inside the mystery of October
I wonder how we lost our way

There is no answer inside this glass
No answer in the soft scent of fall
Soon enough every secret comes to pass
Sometimes we roll the dice and lose it all

Wrapped inside the mystery of October
Tangled up inside of love gone astray
Wrapped inside the mystery of October
I wonder at the next love come our way

Wrapped inside the mystery of October
I wonder at the next love come our way