"Busy, busy...................."

In my little corner of the world winter has finally conquered us, at least until my son-in-law is able to reach us with his tractor plow. Four to six inches of snow isn’t all that much, but the county, while willing to take our taxes, doesn’t extend help to this neighborhood; and, with a possible additional layer before the day is over, life beyond this house is out of reach for the moment. Henri Nouwen wrote that “When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch, or no record to play, we are brought so close to seeing the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are made so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again with the game that makes us believe everything is fine after all.” I don’t know that “loneliness” is what this old man seeks to escape, but I do admit to a continual craving to be occupied with “something”. This spirit wasn’t meant idle in some state of hibernation. Dreams, it seems to me, ought to tell us that, during slumber, something inside us is rebelling against suspended animation. An Adyashanti quote over at “Whiskey River” states that “Nobody told us that what we are is a point of awareness, or pure spirit. We’re taught rather to identify with our name, our birth date, the next thought that we have, and with all the memories our mind collects about the past.” I don’t tend to chase gurus and San Francisco Buddhists whose theology points to our “inner self” somehow being able to conquer its own problems, but do believe there is a nugget of truth within such thinking. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon declares that, within all of us, God has placed “eternity”. King James says “the world”; and the Greek roots of the word suggests its best definition is “time beyond our comprehension” or as the verse, itself, continues, “so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” We may well envision ourselves with a slice of existence, a past already determined and a future yet to be discovered, but all we really possess is this moment, this breath of air taken into our lungs, a reality around us to be filtered through our brain, and a chance to know Him in the mystery of it all. Rest is required. Physically, we cannot make it otherwise. The river, however, ceases not its flow; and life, real “life” is anchored in Him, not something else encountered along the way. He holds my hopes, my curiosity, my devotion, my next position be it in summer’s heat or February’s freeze……