I think songs have a way of talking into the future.* Nick Cave
The future remembers you. Will you remember it back?** AleXander McManus
Not all write songs but all create stories, and through our imaginations we are capable of folding time – so the future shapes the present and makes it possible to rework our past through recognising our talents, energies, and values,^ and also through foresight, intention, and love.^^
*Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage; **AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments; ^Our talents, energies, and values have been shaped through our years and experiences, whether good or bad, meaning that when we recognise these, we shape our stories with reality rather than fantasy; ^^I remember AleXander McManus speaking of shaping the future with foresight, intention, and love, though it strikes me that these qualities also work for the past.
Always ask the questions. Always know that you don’t know anything.* Adam Kahane
Blessed are the doubters, for they shall see through false gods. Blessed are the lovers, for they shall see God everywhere.** Brian McLaren
What if we turn out to be the false gods? – Nurturing a practice of doubt feels healthier,^ Reflective-doubt in humble solitude shaping tools of doubt to bring to work – Certainty can be the enemy.
Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. they are much more like you than you believe. So try not to compare your insides to their outsides.* Anne Lamott
It’s where we are though not where we have to be – We can take all our screwed-broken-clingy-scaredness on a journey, out of the familiar and into wonder and mystery.
First of all into wonder, As first Philip Newell and then Robert Macfarlane speak of it:
Our journey of wonder into the landscape of the natural world is, at the same time, a pilgrimage into the inner landscape of the soul.**
Stephen Graham‘s also among a line of pedestrians who saw that wandering and wondering had long gone together; that their kingship as activities extended beyond their half-rhyme^
Then into mystery, as the journey is imagined by James Carse and then AleXander McManus:
It is one thing to see something remarkable appearing inexplicably in the world, it is quite another thing to see the world itself as remarkable and all existence is inexplicable.^^
This is the Path of Fire. It cannot be diagrammed or decoded. It must be entered like a mystery. Not because the way is safe, but because something sacred stirs within the flame.*^
Have I forgotten our screwed-broken-clingy-scaredness? – Not at all, we just haven’t let it get in the way of what we are equally capable of – A great search, a hero’s journey – and who knows what might happen on the way?
*Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations For Mortals; **Philip Newell’s The Great Search, seeing nature as a means of returning to our home in Earth and soul; ^Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places, how wandering can upset and reset the way we see things; ^^James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory, understanding that beneath our labels and explanations, life is far more mysterious; *^AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments, inviting us into a modern day mystic’s understanding of the hero’s journey .
Experience pain, anger, sorrow, and more. Don’t judge them as bad. Notice how they really feel.* Derek Sivers
Define the dragon … The Innocent (doesn’t know the dragon exists) … The Orphan (overwhelmed or consumed by the dragon) … The Martyr (persecuted by the dragon … The Wanderer (avoids the dragon) … The Warrior (fights the dragon) … The Sorcerer (accepts the dragon … and in doing so transforms the dragon).** Stephen Gilligan and Roger Dilts
Who understands a dragon, who can look and listen beyond the fire and stench, and roar. to hear its voice behind the growl and sulphurous smoke – its pain and need?
Not to ignore or run away or hide or fight, but facing it with kindness and understanding its fury may even lead to some path of purpose to tread forwards together.
The world is alive, generous, and waiting patiently for us to figure it out.* Tom De Blasis
Reality emerges in dialogue, ignites in presence, and unfolds in participation.** AleXander McManus
We don’t have to slow down to listen and feel and play, but we could.^^
*”Autopilot” is how Mindfulness describes moving through our lives without awareness; Theory U refers to this as “downloading.” **Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being; ^AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments; ^^The alternative to autopilot- and downloading-living is to open our minds, open our hearts, and open our wills – and example is the naturalist John Muir who would spend time making the acquaintance of new plants to him, even speaking with them.
But the act of looking at something does not create that thing; neither does the act of not looking annihilate it.* Viktor Frankl
Staying open-handed, treasuring but not grasping, is critical to the contemplative stance.** Krista Tippett
Beware the one who squeezes tightly the name of subject or object; Welcome the person who appelates lightly because of what they cannot see and do not know.
We don’t just get wise by adding and adding. We also need to subtract.* Derek Sivers
We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.** Madeleine L’Engle
If knowledge survives learning, unlearning, and relearning, and manifests itself in heart, soul, mind, and body living, then it can probably be called wisdom.
What we call “mind” and “matter,” “material” and “immaterial,” are not separate realms, but names we give to the patterns that arise in an interactive dance.* AleXander McManus
Distancing ourselves from the multidimensional world of the senses, coming to label and quantify and classify as our primary mode of knowing, we relieve ourselves from the abundance of these realities and say, with a sigh of relief, “This is only this, and that is only that.** Jean Houston
If I could slow down, put aside for a moment the things that demand my attention but won’t matter tomorrow, if I would allow myself to be curious and to explore this person, this view, this object, this idea, this interruption, Then I will understand this world is far from being a this is only this and that is only that world.
If we don’t create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.* Marshall Goldsmith
Reality, we begin to sense, is not made of things. It is made through relation – through generative interaction, where presence meets presence, where attention touches form, where the seen and the unseen converge.** AleXander McManus
It’s a relationship.
We find ourselves in enriching and enervating environments – These are different for each of us: one person’s deenergising space can be energising for someone else; We can’t always avoid the spaces that empty us, but the person who knows and lives from their strengths^ is best able to relate and co-create with their environments, avoiding damaging or being damaged.
Regardless of collective affiliations or influences, our challenge. in behalf of the wild soul and our creative spirit is to not merge with any collective, but to distinguish ourselves from those who surround us, building bridges back to them as we choose.* Clarissa Pinkola Estés
We do not merely exist – we resonate. As light bends to gravity, so too do we bend toward one another.** AleXander McManus
There is no box for you to fit, Your true shape is unrepeated light; Only as light with light shall we find our belonging together, Our completeness.
THIN|SILENCE 
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