Month: January 2015

• January 26, 2015

  ‘I have been thinking about existence lately…’

  I have been thinking about wonderment and amazement, and I came, again, across this rich passage from Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful novel Gilead. The Reverend John Ames, writing to his son, recalls an early morning: I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly…
• January 25, 2015

  ‘I was a bride married to amazement’

  From Mary Oliver’s poem ‘When Death Comes,’ I pick up beautiful images. Like this one on wonderment: I want [when death comes] to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And this one on amazement: When it’s over, I want to say all my…
• January 24, 2015

  How does insistence manifest itself?

  In what typical statements does insistence manifest itself? I know how it is (and must be and cannot be otherwise). This is how we’ve always done things around here (and this is how we’ll continue to do things around here). That’s how I was taught (and I’m just doing what I was told: you should…
• January 21, 2015

  Say what you believe, do not insist, be open: A paradox

  Say what you believe. Do not insist that it is so. Surrender in openness. Can any sense be made of these three statements, of this apparent paradox? Yes. ‘I believe that P’: this is where we begin. You do not claim to know that P. You do not insist that P must be the case. (When you…
• January 17, 2015

  Insistence, Openness, Wonderment, Amazement

  1. O cease your insistence. Nothing has to be just so. You do not know how it has to be, do you? Without insistence, you are open. And free to let what is be. 2. O surrender yourself to openness. Nothing being just so, whatever is here is here. Whatever is not here is not here.…