What Can You Do?

It's another beautiful day in LA.  But as I step out into that brilliant sunshine, I wonder about the rain...we haven't had any for a while, and it's becoming a problem.

And then I think, "What can I do about it?"  People like me, of a German-Rationalist bent, generally don't put a lot of stock in rain-dancing as an effective tool for bringing about needed precipitation.  So what can I do?

Have you ever noticed that it's the things over which you have no direct control that you get the most anxious?

Is there a link between your anxiety and your lack of control?

So, what can you do?

These days I'm doing what I can to live joyfully within my limitations.  I'm doing what I can, and working to let go of the rest.

What that means is that I'm asking lots of questions.  What that means is that I'm living with less so that others can have more.  What that means is that I'm picking up trash and doing the dishes and tending to the garden and sharing my thoughts and trying not to get really angry when strangers take oranges off of our tree because they are hungry...because those are things that I CAN do...and in some small way it all makes a difference.  And a lot of "small differences" add up to big change.

And because TOGETHER there is a LOT that we can do.

Think it.  Say it.  Do it.

All the best,
Steve

"...all things are possible."

Inside Outside

The other day I stopped to think.

"There really are two realities."

Inside there's lightning, synapses firing, a conscious me only aware because I read about it somewhere.  Of what I am aware, well, most of that is a guess--those brain cells making some kind of sense--linking arms in some crazy evolutionary chain that keeps a me I hardly even know going.

Outside there's lightning too, a complex world of which I'm only partly aware, some arms linked and some aimed and here I am, this tiny sliver of consciousness plunked down right in the middle of two vast landscapes.  Inside and out.

The other day I stopped to wonder.

"What is real?"

Great Faith!

I know that in the grand scheme of things it's not a very long time.  But fifty years, for me, is practically a lifetime.  

Fifty years ago I was barely two.  My parents had a mortgage payment of $116 and talked on a party line.  Fifty years ago no one saw Dallas coming and 9-1-1 wasn't even a distress call yet, let alone a date gone down in infamy.  Fifty years ago the Beatles were just warming up and there were, as yet, no footprints on the moon.

Not long ago, as we waited on line for our marriage license, my partner and I met a couple.  They'd been together for fifty years.  In that fifty years they'd shared a life together.  They'd seen it all, lived it all, celebrated it all.  They could finish each others' sentences like any couple together for so long.  But unlike many other couples, this was the first time George and Manny had the opportunity to "make it legal."

You know, I've met a lot of couples in my time.  But meeting George and Manny, I really had to stop and think about faithfulness.  From where does that kind of enduring love come?  From where does the faith to stick with someone through thick and thin--in sickness and in health--come?  

A lot has changed in fifty years, that's for sure!  But one thing stays the same.  The Spirit of faithfulness continues to draw people together in the bonds of love.

That's for sure too.

Round and Round

Copernicus posited.  Many refuted.  Galileo saw.  We finally understood.

Have you ever wondered why you're here?  Have you ever wondered what, on earth, you were supposed to think--to believe--todo?  Have you ever longed-for, even hoped, that one day you would be vindicated?  That your life would make sense?  

Have you ever had an idea?

Have you ever expressed an opinion?

Have you ever discovered that you were wrong...or maybe even right?

One day, someone will.  Will it be you?

Burnt Offerings

It was classic 1970's horror...kind of schlocky--and scary as heck!

First, the palatial but dilapidated old mansion won them over with its charms...then it (literally!) sucked the life out of its caretaker family.  In the end, the house got a complete makeover (new roof, paint, even flowers blooming in the garden!). The unwitting summer vacationers, who sacrificed their lives in the process, were added to the photo gallery that had seemed so curious to them upon their arrival.  Only mom (played by the late Karen Black) survived...transformed into the attic-dwelling old matron of the estate.

Think Psycho meets Flip that House with a little Poltergeist thrown in.

Thing is, it's not really that much of a stretch.  If you think about it, it's actually a metaphor for what happens to many, when we allow our possessions to possess us.  We break our backs and our bank accounts, pouring our hearts and souls into things that don't last.  In the end we wind up in the photo gallery...and our possessions wind up outliving us.  Isn't there something wrong with that picture?

Maybe 2014 will provide us with an opportunity to do what Timeless Wisdom has suggested all along, and we'll store up treasure in places of eternal meaning instead of chasing after material perfection--a fiction we can all live without.

Try something new in 2014!

"...where moth and rust do not destroy."

Memory

To be remembered: isn't that what dances most in our innermost chambers of concern?

Just a rubber band?

Some stories are about big things: big events, big celebrations, big deals.

This story is about something small--some might say "inconsequential." It's about a rubber band.

The other day I was doing some cleaning and organizing around the house and there was a fist full of pens that I wanted to put into a drawer. I looked for a rubber band to hold them together and couldn't find a single one anywhere.

Not long after I went out for an afternoon jog and as I ran through an intersection I spied a single rubber band in the street. I stopped to pick it up, finished my jog and when I got home I had the perfect tie for that little bundle of pens.

It made me happy. I picked up a rubber band that was otherwise littering the environment, gained a useful tool that I didn't have earlier and avoided going to the store to buy an entire bag of rubber bands that would likely sit around and never be used.

Like I said, a story about something small. But in the end, it's the small stuff that adds up to the big stuff...each action, each circumstance meaningful and important, and all part of the process of life.