Is there a God?

"When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.

Think, by contrast, of the decoration on an old bench -- small hearts carved in it; simple holes, cut out while it was being put together -- these can be egoless.

They are not carved according to some plan. They are carefree, carved into it, wherever there seems to be a gap. It is not the least contrived; there is no effort in the decoration; it does not seek to express the personality of the man who carved it. It is so natural, that it almost seems as though the bench itself cried out for it: and the carver simply did what was required." (from The Timeless Way of Building, by C. Alexander)

This planet we inhabit, this universe we call home, has ego-less beauty. The beauty found on the old bench, on the forest floor, on a coastline, in the blaze of a sunset. Unplanned beauty, spectacular, breath taking beauty because it comes without without a mastermind.

I cannot concieve of God as a mastermind. But I can experience God when my breath is taken away by the egoless beauty of the world. A world that came to be without a mastermind.

God is an experience; God is a verb or maybe an adjective: awe, beauty, melancholy, tears, ecstacy, greif, love, more than any of these, something my bones, my flesh, my heart experiences in the transitory beauty of life.

family stories

Last night I witnessed as a family that had been ruptured from outside events reconstructed itself.

They gathered around a table and told stories on themselves. Remember when, remember when, remember when. Mishaps, misadventures, injuries, bad haircuts, all stories of innate humaness, of vulnerability. Someone falls from a tree, a young girl decides to trim her brothers eyelashes, someone thought it was a good idea to ride a bicycle off the roof and onto the trampoline.

They defined themselves as a family, created their own myth, created themselves in the process, defined who they were different from others: like identifying time based on the house they were living in "when did that happen?" "in the main street house," "in the coffee catch house," "in the popcorn house."

I liked being the witness. I watched myself drift off sometimes, the stories are more amusing to the participants than to an outsider, but it was good to hear them none-the-less. Good to hear normalcy return from chaos.

lucid dreams

this is where i am:
letting my dreams seep into my waking life.
letting go of another layer of fear.
dancing and flying
every day

shaman dreams

I'll tell you about my dream last night. It woke me in the wee hours this morning. Here is what I remember: Jay, the boys and I were traveling far into the back country. We came to a small village and found a place to stay. Then we went walking in the country side and climbed up a cliff. As we got toward the top I realized that we were in the midst of a great Aztec ruin. I climbed up high on a wall to collect a blue stone, something similar to turquoise. The stone was important to me, but it felt a dangerous to claim it. It was precious and I wasn't sure if it was legal for me to take. I took the risk and then we turned to walk back toward our accomodations. Jay, the boys and Allee (our dog) ran ahead. I climbed up another small hill and found myself on top of a fallen statue of an aztec warrior god. He had a white knife in his hand. I reached out and grabbed the knife for myself, feeling a little guilty about claiming it too, but I knew it wouldn't last long where it was. Then I looked down and a small mexican man, a shaman, was climbing up toward me, then the ground started to rumble. I dropped the sword and the blue stone and ran back to the room, gathering the boys and Allee as I went. Then I awoke. I told the dream to my friend Dee Dee this morning. She told me I need to learn to claim the sword and the stone and not run back to safety. So, I came home and lit a small fire and burned some copal and chanted and asked the small man in my dream if I could have the sword and the stone. He hasn't answered clearly yet.