Where We Are

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with this:

There.

A point in space, surrounded by infinity.

That's important: surrounded by infinity.

Too easily, we think of what is missing, what we lack.

But infinity allows for no true void. Everything is there. Everyone.

She. He. You.

We long for that touch.

Where is it?

There.

In the sea of all that enfolds us.

55

Thank you, goddess of love, for everything.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Birthdays

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with wishes of happiness and joy.

Although we should not need any special occasion to celebrate our love for those in our lives who are particularly special to us, it is nonetheless a gift that tradition tells us to commemorate birthdays. We get busy, we get neglectful, and we sometimes forget, in the course of days or weeks, to speak of and show our affection with the frequency we ought to. Birthdays give us a nice prod, which is something that we as human beings often need.

Today is my most exceptionally excellent friend Strumpet's birthday, and I hope that it is the absolute best that it can be, because she is a blessing upon my life.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends and birthdays, and the chance to share with others the warmth that they both make us feel.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A Brief Time in a Garden

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a scene.

I am on a bench in an enormous garden. A stream moves and speaks through the greenery behind me, speaks of the blue overhead, streaked with fragile white clouds. It speaks of beauty hurrying past me, from so far away to yet farther still. Its voice hangs there, constant and quick -- a small cousin to the mighty river a few miles distant, somehow louder in tone for all its lesser size. The air is cool. The only noise is the stream, although murmurs of birds and distant park-goers can also be heard.

Noisy, rushing, alive, vibrant -- how is a stream so peaceful when it is also all these things?

The answer must be that peace is not stillness. Peace is not quiet.

Peace is the calm that comes of doing what is your nature while the world moves on around you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the subtly spoken words of a brook on its way to the sea.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Brightness and Air

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an allegory.

Along a mountain pathway, I came to a place where the trail split. I had been climbing some time already, across rocky ground, sharp and ugly. Away in the distance, when I paused to look up, the sky and horizon showed me unreachable beauty. But close at hand, the terrain had only scrapes and exhaustion to give me.

At the split in the trail, I faced a choice. To one side the way became even steeper, but led up past boulders and jagged outcrops toward a sunlit summit, where I knew from the guidebook that green trees and a bubbling spring could be found, along with a quaint little hiker's refuge that had been built there long ago. The other path led down, straighter and easier -- into the mouth of a cave. The shadows inside had an unhealthy cast, as though even light found the air of the cave stale ... debilitating.

Who makes the choice to descend into darkness, to be shut off from any offer of comfort, just because the pull of gravity makes that direction less an investment in effort? Who picks cold, blanketing blackness over a strenuous push toward achievement, toward the splendor of all the world?

The proper choice seems so obvious, does it not?

Climb the mountain. It is gorgeous up there. You will be able to see so far.

Climb the mountain.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the path that should so plainly be taken.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Selfish or Selfless?

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a need to help.

It's some years now since I started this blog, and while I did so mainly in an attempt at self-administered therapy, I've also always had a hope that my thoughts here would make themselves useful to others as well. This may be selflessness or it may be egotism -- most likely a combination of both.

Whatever it is, the desire has gotten stronger of late. As I ask myself why, the answer I come up with is that I yearn to know that my thoughts are important to others.

This is different than knowing that I am important to others. I have friends and family to whom, clearly, I am indispensable. But I also have this interior world, which is constantly churning and only occasionally given voice to those around me.

And this place within that I think of as my self wishes to be useful -- wishes to matter.

I have something inside me that finds less expression than it wants, that receives less recognition than it hungers for.

Is this impulse in some way the exact opposite of what it wants to be? It desires to help, yet that desire seems to be quite self-centered, does it not?

Recognition.

Importance.

Do we really give only so that we may in turn receive these things?

Or do we give because it feels good -- and because all too many things in this world do the reverse?

I don't have a ready answer.

If we do the best that we can, if we strive to be the best that we can, and if what we get in return does not make us sufficiently happy -- then how are we to retain any sense of worth?

And without that sense of worth, how do we go on?

Hope can sustain us, but what can sustain hope?

Perhaps a better question to ask, instead of these bleak and unanswerable ones, is, "Do others feel as I do?"

For if the answer is "yes" then the course becomes clear: find those others, and find a way to make them feel worthwhile.

Sooner or later, someone will do the same for you.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to think things through.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

The Sigh of a Breeze Through Green Boughs, and

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with two sensations that began and ended my day.

A number of less pleasant things happened in between, but I had the good luck of at least two moments of beauty, each far more worthy of being focused upon than the annoyances and aggravations that separated them.

Thank you, goddess of love, for the veil of clouds that parts just long enough to reveal our crescent moon, backlit with Earthshine and hanging just under one achingly bright planet.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

My goal of the moment

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a kernel of purpose: to try to make things better.

This is what I do, and all I can do.

Try to make things better.

Try to encourage people to be nicer.

Try to have a sense of humor.

Look for smiles.

Defuse anger.

Plead the case of hope.

Remember the deepness and the breadth of love.

This is what I do, and all I can do.

Thank you, goddess of love, for meaning.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Request

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a request for hope.

If you can spare a moment to pray to whatever deity you hold dear, I'd appreciate your asking, "Please let there be good news for Devotee's friend who has cancer."

Longtime readers of this blog will recognize that I have no expectations that prayers will or won't be answered.

But I'm assuming they can't hurt.

Thank you, goddess of love, for friends -- however long we have them.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

Valentine's Day 55

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a poem for you on Valentine's Day.

May pure desire

stride through your door

tall and dark

or with flame-red hair

looking through eyes

that see only you

speaking with lips

that tell true

May you know

within a single glance

that Fate has spoke

and not mere chance

that Cupid's bow has sweetly sung

and your heart,

however old,

is young

55

Thank you, goddess of love, for this day celebrating all your work.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee

A bit of a lecture. Listen in if you care to.

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a brief and simple message.

If you wish to be cared for, you must first care.

If you wish to be loved, you must first love yourself, and then be willing to extend that love to others.

If you wish for a hero to ride in and save you, you must first be willing to become a hero yourself.

You and I -- we are the best this world has to offer. If we wait to be saved, instead of acting ourselves, then we deserve whatever disappointments that we get.

Thank you, goddess of love, for reflections -- they show us where the work must begin.

Lovingly yours,

A devotee