We each have the capacity to mediate the loving gaze of God to one another!

One of the most beautiful aspects of life is the fact that we each have the capacity - and the calling - to shine the light of love, respect and admiration on one another, and then to sit back and watch with delight and awe as the sacredness of the other person unveils itself from under its usual hiding places and begins to glow. How do we practice this highlighting? Through compliments, through loving gestures, and through mindful attention to the beauty of one other. When we practice in this way, we actually begin to mediate the "loving gaze of God" to one another :)  How amazing!

Photo: Chimney Rock, Ghost Ranch, NM, May 25, 2015

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women.

"I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Photos: The desert country where O'Keeffe painted, near Ghost Ranch, NM, May 25, 2015

All that is beautiful is difficult

"All that is beautiful is difficult."

Plato
 

Photos: Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM, May 22-23, 2015

Reflections on the Ilusion and Necessity of the Personality Cult

All my life, I've lived by the notion once expressed by Eleanor Roosevelt: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." However, over the past six months or so, I've come to a stunning awareness: most people are only interested in "ideas" insofar as they are embodied in concrete PEOPLE. I've avoided the "cult of personality" for forty years, but now I find myself smack dab in the middle of it. To be honest, when I go out to speak, people often seem just as interested in the passion and personal style I use to express my insights as the insights themselves. Who would ever have guessed? And now I find myself in the curious position of being advised to focus on marketing "myself" - my passion and my personality (as an earthy contemplative or "worldly monk") rather than on the insights themselves. How do I reconcile these two opposing viewpoints?

My trip to Chaco Canyon several weeks ago has provided one possible solution. As I spent the weekend visiting the remains of ancient pueblos and examining some fossil shells and pottery pieces that appeared along the trail, I realized that my own life - when looked at from the perspective of the 4.5 billion-year history of the Earth - is really more like an ECHO of a bygone era than a substantial and lasting reality.

This means that when I'm forced to market myself and my persona (rather than simply my insights, which I like to think have more universal value) as a means of making a living, I can only do so by PRETENDING my personal style is something lasting and substantial. In other words, it's a sort of "game" I - and all of us - are being asked to play. How crazy! There really does seem to be a Trickster Spirit at work here! However, since this need for role-playing seems to be the case, I find that solitary times of retreat are needed in my life - especially now - to help me see through the relative unreality of the personal social role in order to identify with a vast and spacious cosmic perspective that goes far beyond my own short life and persona! For it is THIS vastness - beyond social role-playing - that is, I'm still convinced, the TRUE self  :)

Photos: Evening-Primroses, Anasazi dwellings, fossil shells and pottery shards, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM, May 23, 2015

In ceremony, we are the land chanting, we are the land dancing.

"In ceremony, we are the land chanting, we are the land dancing."

Joseph Rael
Beautiful Painted Arrow
Picuris Pueblo

(Top) Verbena and a ceremonial Kiva; (Middle) Claret Cup Cactus; (Bottom) Petroglyph. All three photos were taken at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM, May 23-24, 2015. The Ancestral Puebloans flourished here from about 850 through 1250 A.D.

Echo Amphitheater: A Shrine for Christian Insight Meditation

Echo Amphitheater, in Northern New Mexico, is a spiritual shrine for me because it embodies perfectly the practice of Insight Meditation. It is a large concave bowl carved out of the sandstone cliff and accessed by a path that leads right up to its base. As you face the amphitheater, you find a small hill and a thicket of densely-packed pinyon pine and juniper trees spreading out behind you. Then further behind those is the state highway. The fascinating thing is that if you position yourself just right between the trees and the concave cliff, you can hear echoes of the cars that pass on the highway resounding off the sandstone wall, but you can’t hear their original sounds. I've experienced the same phenomenon at night with coyote calls whenever I've stayed in the campground adjacent to the amphitheater. When the coyotes are placed just right, the calls take on a magical quality as they echo off the amphitheater, especially when I can’t hear the original sounds because of the thicket of trees. 

Similarly, in Buddhist Insight Meditation, our thoughts appear like echoes coming from a great distance, with no original Sounds ever present! In the context of Christian Mysticism, all thoughts and emotions - insofar as they have a desire for love and fulfillment at their root - are echoes of a Divine Love-Word that never had a chance to be spoken, on account of the fact that God - the Great Mystery - eternally lost himself in love before he even had a chance to speak the Word! And yet - and HERE is the mystery - those echoes of divine love continue appearing ANYWAY! How amazing!

Photos: Echo Amphitheater and surrounding cliffs, near Abiquiu, NM; May 22 and 25, 2015

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Photos: Looking down on O'Keeffe's "backyard"; May 25, 2015

Stories are the communication device of the land and the people.

"I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death . . . You don't have anything if you don't have stories."

Leslie Marmon Silko
Laguna Pueblo

"The stories are the communication device of the land and the people. Through the stories, the ceremony, the gap between isolate human being and lonely landscape is closed."

Paula Gunn Allen
Laguna Pueblo

Photos: Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM, May 23, 2015. The Puebloans who lived at Chaco (c. 850-1150) are the ancestors of Laguna and other modern Puebloans.

Flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free . . .

"I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of yourself. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it's all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Photo: Chimney Rock and The Pedernal, near O'Keeffe's house, Ghost Ranch, NM, May 25, 2015

Silence will speak for us.

"There is no need for us to speak.
Silence will speak for us."

Ramson Lomatewama
Hopi

Photos: (Top and Middle) Ceremonial Kiva and Petroglyph, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM; (Bottom) Sagebrush, rain and distant mountain, near Questa, NM; All three photos were taken on May 23-24, 2015

Interest, not happiness, is the key to a fulfilling life.

"I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary - you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Photos: Looking down on the country O'Keeffe painted, Ghost Ranch, NM, May 25, 2015. In the Paintbrush photo, O'Keeffe's home is just behind the red badlands.

The beauty of northern New Mexico mirrors the grandeur of the soul . . .

The high desert of northern New Mexico mirrors my own soul's native grandeur, regal sacredness, simplicity, brightness, and quiet, enabling me to let go of the constrictive ego that causes so much suffering to myself and others.

Photos: (Top) Cliffs at Ghost Ranch, NM; (Middle) Stephen at Chimney Rock, Ghost Ranch, NM; (Bottom ) Formations near Ghost Ranch, NM. These photos were taken on May 23 - 25, 2015

Actually TOUCH the New Mexico country, and you will never be the same again.

"Actually TOUCH the country, and you will never be the same again. I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I ever had. It certainly changed me forever. It was New Mexico that liberated me from the present era of civilization, the great era of material and mechanical development. The moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high over the desert, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend. I had no permanent feeling of religion till I came to New Mexico."

D.H. Lawrence,
English novelist

Photos: (Top) Chimney Rock, Ghost Ranch, NM; (Middle) Ancient Pueblo in Chaco Canyon, NM; (Bottom) Cliffs and Cottonwood trees at Ghost Ranch, NM. All three photos were taken May 23 - 25, 2015

I have been to the end of the earth, and I have found none that are not my friends.

"I have been to the end of the earth, I have been to the end of the waters, I have been to the end of the sky, I have been to the end of the mountains; I have found none that are not my friends."

Dine' (Navajo) Proverb

Photo: Multi-colored cliffs near Ghost Ranch, NM, May 22, 2015

Oh our Mother the Earth, oh our Father the Sky . . .

"Oh our Mother the Earth, oh our Father the Sky,
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you the gifts that you love.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
Oh our Mother the Earth, oh our Father the Sky!"

Songs of the Tewa

The Tewa are descendents of the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) Peoples who inhabited Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Canyons of the Ancients, and other ancient pueblos in the Four Corners area. The Tewa live in the following Pueblos: Nambe', Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan), Santa Clara, and Tesuque. The descendents of the Ancestral Puebloans also include the Tiwa, Towa, Hopi and Zuni among others as well.

Photos: (Top) Evening-Primroses and Pueblo at Chaco Canyon, NM; (Middle) Red badlands at Ghost Ranch, NM; (Bottom) Doors inside Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM; May 23-25, 2015

New Mexico fitted to me exactly.

"When I got to New Mexico, that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I'd never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly."

Georgia O'Keeffe
Landscape painter

Photos: Various scenes from Ghost Ranch, NM and the Chimney Rock Trail. In the top photo, the house in the distance is O'Keeffe's. May 24-25, 2015

Emptines can serve as a window onto another world.

Each life-situation in which we are tempted to feel empty of meaning and purpose is designed to serve as a window out onto a whole new world!

Photo: Window onto a cliff, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM, May 23, 2015