angelbirdflies

  A tree. Is there such a thing? In Genesis, God got busy naming things, well not directly, but the big G got the ball rolling with that famous opening line, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And shit started happening. The whole Heaven/Earth thing linked by that mischievous word, “ and ”, simultaneously joined and separated the whole shebang in a single breath. Things got complicated after that. God passed the buck to man, giving “him” authority to name things with the caveat that, “Whatever [he] called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19). Arguably things have been going downhill ever since. The naming of a thing prioritizes our conceptual rhetoric over an experiential encounter. It’s not conscious, it's just how our conditioned brains work. For there to be an up there has to be a down . For there to be a right there must be a wrong . A tree naturally presupposes a “ not tree ”. The naming itself provides a cognitive framework for sepa...

THE TRUELOVE by David Whyte There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides, I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water, and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly so Biblically but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love so that when w...