Upstate NY Autumn Light

This Morning

I slept well and woke refreshed.

My cup of coffee was particularly delicious. As I poured from carafe to mug, I noticed how smooth it was, how the aroma wafted up to me.

My child and I enjoyed some bantering and conversation preparing for and driving to school. 

It was a peaceful, quietly joyful morning.

These observations are worth noting and appreciating, because doing so reinforces them. This post is an antidote to the doomscrolling, the slightly tight and tense way I inhabit my body, the default position of general, low-level foreboding.

"Yes, and the luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can't help it."
 - Nick Cave and Seán O'Hagan
Faith, Hope and Carnage
booklover
& still, the waves

Prayer Doesn't Work; Praying Does

Denise Levertov writes: 

“With what radiant joy he turns to you, and raises you to your feet, and strokes your disheveled hair, and holds you, holds you, holds you close and tenderly—before he vanishes.” 

The homie Garry says, “God is the intake of breath and we are the exhaling of it. So… we need to take every breath personally.” Prayer is as sustaining as a breath and not a plea to God to keep us safe from dangers and temptations or begging for favors. For example: “God answers knee-mails.” Prayer doesn’t work; praying does. Not sure how else we breathe in the God of unfathomable compassion if not by our own spiritual practice and silent solitude. This allows us to land on God’s oceanic shore and it organizes things for us.

The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness
by Gregory Boyle