Stuff That's In the Way

...went out to take pictures of a sunset a week or so ago...like people with cameras and artsy-fartsy pretensions do...was kinda frustrated by the opportunities offered by my neighborhood for a good clear wide-open cloudscape...too many things in the way of open sky...so, walked around a bit trying to find a better vantage point....then, looking at the photos last night, ended up deciding the ones I liked best were those with the most interference...

...in the end, we’re always somewhere...always someone...always immersed in context...much as we might, sometimes, like it to be otherwise...

To say we are all God is well and good, but not at the cost of denying our humanity with all its seeming foibles.
Joel Kramer/Diana Alstad

...a week or two ago, got up Saturday morning, did some yoga and meditated, then went kayaking with a friend on a lake I’d forgotten was such a short drive away, then lay on a float in a pool reading a book on mindfulness...and, a bit later, started a completely pointless argument with people I care about...

There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.
Jack Kornfield


...in sixth grade, we read this story by Ray Bradbury...about a shoe store owner and a kid who wants a pair of sneakers but can’t afford to pay for them...the kid pleads, talks about what it would mean to him to have the sneakers, evoking antelopes and gazelles and, for a moment, kinda bringing back the shoe store guy’s own lost youth....in the end, they make a deal...the kid can have them but will have to work off the cost...the kid says thanks, and the shoe store guy says something like you’ve given me so much more...which, the teacher explained, referred to the kid giving his time to work in the store after school...which struck me, even then, as an incredibly shallow reading....up to that point, I’d had disagreements with teachers...but they generally involved matters of behavior....that, I think, was the first time I realized that teachers can’t always be trusted to understand what they’re teaching...

...though, of course, just how clueless a teacher can be didn’t quite hit me 'til I became one myself...