I’m No Saint

I’m no saint. I have maintained this website for years, finding my voice and using it here. It has lost money, on the whole. It’s only been during the last three or four years that I even put up a Donate button. Most people don’t bother and two people, believe it or not, have paid the operating expenses for a whole year. That tells me I am going in the right direction.

I try and leave a trail of breadcrumbs back home to where we all live and move and have our being. Lord knows, most of the time the crumbs get eaten by hungry birds and we lose our way. Then it is we sit in darkness and curse it. But what happens when we just sit there and let it be? That is what we are called to do on the path of awakening. To trust that higher forces are watching us and will not leave us comfortless.

What does it mean to awaken? It means to be so familiar with your state of sleep that you know when you are beginning to snore. When you see yourself sleepwalking and bumping into the furniture of your fellow human beings...that you have reduced them to things that get in your way. The bruises on the shins of your soul are an angry purple and your face is red with anger. That is sleep with a capital S.

I’m no sinner, either. (See first paragraph) Vernon Howard said, “You are not your strengths and you are not your weaknesses.” To see that, you must be in a state of wakefulness. And to be in a state of wakefulness is to be in a state of grace. But today I must go to the dentist and get my teeth cleaned. I dread going, I always do. But if I didn’t go, I would ultimately be sorry. There are parts of life that we do because we “must.” There are other parts we do because we are fed by doing them. Trying to awaken feeds not only us, but the multitudes.

I fail every day and so do you. We get up and try again. The path is in front of us and behind us. It is all around us. It IS us. As you follow it, be mindful of yourself and how dreadfully difficult it is. It’s hard-going and the route seems to keep changing. Sometimes I sit down and cry. But I get back up because something is impelling me that is not my ego. The mystery is pushing me out of the birth canal and who will there be to catch me? I am not a baby, either. I am full-grown.

So together let us say a prayer: “Lord, keep me going.”