Essays along the margins
The beauty of other languages is that you can see… beyond the walls your own grammar has constructed. The mind finds easy passage in some avenues, where in English, say, or German or some other tongue, it had been constricted. Why consider the Earth an anarchy, a Babel? Were it not for the incomprehensible complexity …
We tell ourselves that what we experience in a moment's time, also passes in a moment's time. We step out into the street, for example, and while crossing a car ignores the red light, and you are nearly hit: whew! That was close. And now it is history. That is a mistaken impression, however. We …
When the eyes are open, all of Creation is reduced to surfaces… imagine the poverty in a world of surfaces. As though all that an ocean offered us was its waves! As soon as the eyes open, the interiors begin to close, the interiors of everything that sight obscures from us, the interior of our …
It began the year that you became a father, the year of your transformation. In those months following the birth of your first child, your son, the chaff of accumulated living was burned away, and those things you had believed with more and more conviction to be True, became in the end only ideas you …
Work is what sustains us — work that we have chosen — sustains us by bringing bread for the service we have provided, gives us purpose and, hopefully, a sense of satisfaction as the world turns on its axis, and whirls us into shadow of the Earth once again. Todo amor é sagrado e o …
You walk through your day dissatisfied; there is something missing, or something amiss. In the evening you are tired, but it is weariness of spirit, not a physical depletion. Your body has not been a channel for a day well lived, life flowing into and through you, now ready to be replenished; instead, your energy …
You must acknowledge the beauty of loss: it makes your smile more natural, your glance deeper, your touch more compassionate. How many adults have been toughened to rigidity by the demands of a life, only to be snapped — like that — by an event that should have been expected? It’s too bad if you try, …
There are so many useful goals for a life. There seems to be one for every occasion, all so very useful. To be a success, to raise fine children, to travel the world, to follow pleasure where it leads, to save souls… My goals have been high, now they are not so lofty: to write …
If you do not meet the sacred in yourself, you will not meet the sacred in anything; if you meet the sacred anywhere, even in the smallest thing, you will have found the sacred within yourself. That is the first lesson, before all others. If you have not learned this lesson, reaching for another will …
As a driver, you choose where you are going (usually within the confines of paved roadways), when to get there (depending on traffic), and how stressed you wish to be over the process (all options available). But as a driver, your field of vision is drawn in: to a narrow strip of pavement ahead, to …
Evolution is a process that most of us associate with a geological time scale — the slow elucidation of life over the last 3.5 billion years. We also tend to assume that the most recent signs of continuing evolution must be happening in species with short life spans and rapid reproductive rates. A team of …
It is not the Sun that turns around us: the Sun doesn't come to shine down upon us. In fact, it is we who turn our faces toward the Sun. An important distinction. The sun was not made for us. We were made, and the Sun exists. From a birthright to a gift. From a …