4:22 A.M.

"Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. 'Couldn't you keep watch with me for one hour?' he asked." ~Matthew 26:40

At precisely 4:22 A.M. my work is listening: a thrush in the darkness, a frog in the wetland. Their duet.

At 4:22 A.M. I need the earth to be just as it is, so that I may keep watch, so that I may witness my strange, familiar, lovely, terrible world, my sorrow and pain, my aloneness and unspeakable wonder, embrace it all, forgive it all.

Don't you need your life to be unequivocally as it is right now?

I promise I will not improve you or reform your world, because you need it to be 4:22 A.M. But I will stay, if you like, and keep watch with you.

I vow not to be your 'life coach' or 'spiritual teacher.' I vow not to interfere with this moment, this unique opportunity for you to embrace the sum total consequence of all your choices, then let it go and be free.

For how else but in this hot-mess of karma, from all these little fragments of disaster, randomly fallen precisely where thy ought, might you re-member and complete yourself?

In reality, all that seems capricious occurs with impeccable necessity at the right moment, so that you may unfold, through the playfulness of time, the eternal miracle of your Being.

I vow to remain awake with you. But no more than this. Won't you remain awake with me? It is true service.

Now come out in the wet grass and take off your shoes, for wherever we stand is holy ground. Just before dawn, it is early, not late. We will watch over one another. We will let the mind of yesterday and tomorrow dissolve into Presence. This is love.

Listen to the thrush and frog. Listen to the wind and chimes. Listen on behalf of those who sleep. Listen with all the silent stars, who also watch and pray.