Uradiance

       You did not come to this planet to worship a pair of sandals or a white robe. You did not come to this planet to be on the left or the right, to be a believer or a non-believer, to be the color "white" or the color "black." You did not come here to get angry at reflections in a mirror or prepare for disasters that never happen. No friend, you came to be astonished by a dust mote. You came to be torn in two by laughter and pain, then made whole again by the tang of a berry on your wild tongue. Why waste another moment arguing for or against when you could slide down this beam of breath, soft as moonlight, into the radiance you are?

It happened so softly you thought it was a robin's egg, tiny, edgeless, blue. But it was the sky in your chest. Photo: Edward Fielding

"Out beyond right thinking and wrong thinking there's a field, will you meet me there?" Out beyond Israel and Palestine there's a field, will you meet me there? Out beyond Islam and Christianity, Atheism and Religion, Oneness and Twoness there's a field, will you meet me there? Beyond Republican and Democrat, Beyond Whiteness and Blackness, Beyond the Binary and Nonbinary there's a field where wine forgets it was ever a grape, a meadow full of bees with ten thousand fragrances that all become honey. I asked Rumi, "Which path leads there?" He said, "Follow any sweetness through the gate that is always open." I asked, "Where is that gate?" He pointed, and his finger ever so gently pressed the hollow in my sternum, where the heart breathes. Photo: a field near my home, view of Mt. Rainier