Uradiance

                                  "Who do you say I Am?" ~Luke 9:20 I called you my Lord, but this was not the whole truth. I called you my Self, but this was not the whole truth. I called you Christ, but the Mystery was deeper. Then I called you Friend, and this was enough. This was everything. Here is the portrait of "Christ at 33" by Hoffman. Please don't tell me this is not how he really looks, because this is very much how he looks when he looks at me. How he looks at you is your business. Incidentally, for what it's worth, Paramhansa Yogananda said that this portrait of Jesus was the closest portrayal of his likeness ever made. How would he know? Who really knows? Nobody.  Your own heart reveals the countenance of the Friend according to the mystery of the divine will, and the clarity of your inmost Eye. No one has any right to tell others how to perceive the face of Christ...

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, "Be a wanderer." Jesus has an affinity for wanderers, especially those who are lost. I prefer to be lost. It is precisely when I am lost that I pay attention, with an utterly quiet mind. The mind is quiet when I am lost because I do not know the name of the place. So I notice each twig and cilium and fallen feather of detail, without any labels. This is where I meet the Friend. Not because the Friend comes to find me, but because the Friend is already here, off-trail, waiting patiently for me in the wayless, the nameless, the flowering of absences. The Friend is also deeply, irretrievably lost, greeting me in the cry of a Raven, the eye of a Coyote, the stillness of a Hummingbird in mid-flight, a distant star that somehow pulses in my fontanel, the formless caress of Grandmother Wind at dawn. If I am truly lost, I don't even need to go out into the wilderness. The wilderness is my heart.

     "I'm lazy," she said, "I just can't bring myself to meditate." "Maybe diving deep into Being Lazy is your meditation," I said. She sipped her green tea but not so quietly as to avoid a slurp of thanksgiving. I said, "I'm just a poetry bum. I can't bring myself to do anything useful." She said, "Maybe diving deep into Uselessness is where poems come from.” Her tea was brewed so subtle and clear. I didn’t know how  to make that wabi slurp of gratitude. But there was a tear of perfect silence in my eye, and one in hers. Without trying, we savored the scent of emptiness, which gave us the energy to turn the planet green and polish the moon and guide the stars home. But all we did was dance.