rest

From dust I have risen to dust I must go, until resurrection swallows me whole. Late have I loved you. Late have I tried. Late have I loved you, but never mind the time.

Andy Squyres

Something about that is so beautiful to me. It’s like the person who got hired at the end of the day and partakes in the labor at the eleventh hour and gets the same reward as the other folks, because the reward is love and being seen known and heard in all that I am, as I am. I’m super grateful for that kind of energy.

I love these words. They are so deep and rich and as someone who has looked deeply into the world and what it has to say about forever. It’s such a powerful idea. There is this eastern idea of being ground out in the karmic wheel until you are “done” or like ‘fully cooked” as Ram Dass would say. Like you reach enlightenment and then you get to chose if you want to stay “vow of the Bodhisattva” until all creatures reach enlightenment.

Then there is the words that Solomon spoke about how he had peered deeply and tried everything and there was this aspect of just being with what God had given. Enjoying the labor of the day and eating my bread with gladness because this is the lot of man and then we perish back to dust. Then there is the Buddhist ideas of non-being and being. The plight of suffering and how to transcend the trappings of all this through compassionate, loving awareness. The shamanic way seeks to bring humans back into union with nature. I see all of this energy articulating something deep.

I think what I find so beautiful about Christ is the vision of being made new. No longer being ground out through iterations of a Karmic wheel of cause and effect. Energy cannot be created or destroyed only moved from one form to another. Law.

Christ goes beyond the veil of death and comes back with the keys to ultimate reality and says “come in all who would be healed from your striving and grasping. I will give you rest. I have dressing gowns for you all and you are welcome at the feast.” Communion in the forest palace of the Most High, breathing deeply in the union of all that is when creation finally is fully freed from the egoic grasping of a self that is seeking to be god outside of god. (That last sentence is metaphors from when I was on my ego dissolution trip and literally that interpretation of the wedding feast of the Lamb was wild.)

Karma exists. (I think I can say that and mean it.) It isn’t a wrong way of understanding the world in my opinion. There’s just something deeper for me to interact with. Ultimate reality is maybe what I’m talking about. I don’t know all the deep mysteries and frankly I’m kind of done falling down certain rabbit holes. I have found the one who satisfies the deepest places of my heart and I will peer into the ever deepening mystery of love embodied. The communion of love with all who hear the sound and come and eat the bread and drink the wine of the Word of life. It’s the one story that echoes in all the contextual experiences of my life. I drink deeply from the water and the well springs up in my belly and I am a witness to resurrection in the now that burns for what is yet to come. Yoga at the ocean. Hospitality at a wine bar. Conversations with a fellow hearer. The wholesomeness of friendship. Sweet sleep in a camper in the woods. Making art with charcoal and acrylic and canvas. Contemplative practice. Writing words and letting them breath in spaces like this.

A connection that cannot disappoint. A coming love who is already reshaping the world into the beauty of transformative love, until all the shadows that seek to exist outside of him are swallowed in that brilliance and I am swallowed whole in this oceanic love.