If you’re going to follow your bliss

and make a difference in the world,

you’ll soon discover you can’t follow the herd.

……Wayne Dyer

it’s a fascinating conundrum…..to be spiritually aware of ourselves while aligning with the deep groove of this very real otherness…..the middle road is sweet with fragrant blooms and mysterious allies…..all that is ugly is cared for just the same……

The sacred often lies hidden within the fabric of the secular, and it may take an alert and educated eye to find it. In a journal entry of 1973, religious scholar Mircea Eliade reflects on the Japanese tea ceremony and quotes an ancient instruction:

The essence of the Tea Ceremony

Simply consists of boiling the water

Preparing the Tea

And drinking it.

Nothing else!

This must be understood well.

What must be understood well? Eliade says that the most natural and insignificant gestures become soterial, saving- I would say, full of soul and spirit. Then Eliade summarizes: “In this way, humans belong to several universes- the cosmic, the aesthetic, the religious- without rupture and without contradiction.” If your imagination could reach the point where those words of Eliade make perfect sense, you are ready to become a theologian for our time. His phrase “without rupture” is the key. For a thing to be spiritual, it doesn’t need a cover of spiritually bloated words. Let its sacredness speak for itself…..Thomas Moore

speak from simple joy

Thoreau got up each morning

and walked to the woods

as though he had never been where he was going to,

so that whatever was there came to him

like liquid into an empty glass.

……John Cage