12/19/17

There is a yawning gap between good intentions and lesser performance. The promised goodness can be a blinding force, sparkling in glittering possibility and imagined effect. Blinding one to the real attention and commitment which is needed, which alone can carry the intention to some semblance of real action in the world. The steely-eyed look that miraculously and mercilessly illuminates this repeated cycle of pledge and promise fading in the face of deep habitual tendencies. Actually, beyond tendencies. Slavery to that self which has been formed over decades by forces known and unknown. This may be a holy cycle of falling away and returning, but the fact of the inability to live the life wished for, prayed for, is a source of deep remorse. Yet even that remorse, alone, is insufficient to unite the higher wish with the baser action. The struggle remains mundane and unimportant if the stakes are not seen and accepted in the light of day, not in some quiet backroom admission. It needs that illumination of a look that sees and reveals the truth of the matter. What needs to be known is not the aspiration but the inability. Somehow, in the miracle of things, it is this that can animate a movement across the divide of my aim and my reality. Somehow in this revelation, a prayer is answered. The moment is the only place if it’s appearance. In the brevity or infrequency of that revelation is not to be lamented, but celebrated each time as a blessing. Salvation lies in the paradox and shocking beauty of being lost and then, miraculously, being found.