Author: barryschade@gmail.com

I hesitate to use the word intimacy, because most of us instantly think of bed sheets.    But that actually is what closeness is, intimacy.   I seem to be running up against the fear of going deep, which of course means closeness.   Revealing ourselves, where we really live.  And if we reveal ourselves, we will be shunned or loved.    It’s risky business, but my appetite for it  has become demanding and impatient.

As I become more accustomed to mindful time, I find that I  am more comfortable and familiar with what I find, inside and outside.   I find it easier to be truly present and open to people.   When people approach the Master Gardener Q & A table, I find it easy and enjoyable to really be with them, listen, be present.    Their response is typically positive.

But with people I am closer to, the response is mixed.   There is the bed sheet factor, I think, that pops up.  I think it is an issue for men and women, whether they are coupled with someone or not.    And there is the simple matter of fear of closeness.

I am impatient.    I like where I am learning to live.   I love my life of being  alone, and I welcome closeness.

We’ve known for some time that there is a hidden, unseen world.   Not a matter of belief; it is part of the human experience.   To make sense of our experience, we’ve populated that part of our world with Gods and Goddesses, personifications of the forces and powers we been aware of.   Sometimes this awareness has been on the edge of experience, almost in a dream-like state.

Even the Jews, Christians and Muslims gave appearance or  personality to some kind of hidden individual.   Every  christian culture has known what Jesus looks like, a deity with form and substance.    Our imagination has been able to go only so far, but it has been a fertile ground for creating our Gods and Goddesses in our own image.

While we’ve given them faces that resemble our own, the reality has been just beyond our grasp.    We mostly know and experience nothing else other than the world we see and touch.   The exception is when we clear our minds of all images and thoughts and open ourself to become aware of that invisible aspect of our world.   It is a face-less world, but we can become aware of it.   Our whole body becomes aware and glows in its presence.

Time and distance sometime reveal themselves to me when I sit in my room or at the end of my dock.   Together, they invitingly uncloak the mystery of the deceptive illusion in which I live.   I am not a solitary drop in the ocean; I am the ocean.   I do not stare into the night sky;  I am the night sky.

What an artifact of time and distance we have conspired to create.   It is what we do to live together, but really we are one, joined forever in the time-less now.    Occasionally, I get a small glimpse.

It has been over 30 years since I fell in love with my cabin’s site and got so emotionally involved.    Over the years, I have replaced most of the cabin’s surface, the outside, the windows, the floor, the inside.     I’ve built an annex with a composting toilet and a wood shed.   But my heart clings to the trees, the land, the water, the view from the dock.    I was nearly devastated when the storm blew down so many towering oaks.  Now I smile to watch the young pines stretch to take their place.

When I am not there, I know that somewhere the wind blows thru a tall White Pine.   I know that daily, a crowd of other pines are reaching enthusiastically to fill openings in the canopy.    I know that every morning, the sun creeps over a horizon across a lake and sends an avenue of fire toward a  dock.   I know when I swim in a pool at the “Y” that there is a cool lake that holds me in its grasp and brings my skin alive.

I’ve been wondering what is happening in our little earth world.    What gigantic mechanisms have we set in motion that we only faintly understand.   I’m curious where this all is going.   I’m fascinated by what I have been told about climate change.   I’m alert to the unique surprises that pop up around many corners.

I am concerned that the changes have begun to usher in much suffering.   People, animals, plants all console one another in their shared fate.  I expect I will suffer too, but I will welcome the awe.   I am curious about the beauty in the changes we have initiated, the awesome power we have chosen to unleash.   We have been unknowingly guiding major forces in our little world and they are already in motion.    So it must be time for me to get aboard and boldly ride into the future, eyes open, without caution or regret.  I choose fascination over fear.

I am beginning this site because I found myself writing things down on a regular basis.   I also noticed that I have been repeating some of those same things to friends after I wrote them down.    So I decided to make those written items more accessible, for anyone who finds this site, for myself, and for any future exploration into their Father’s mind that my sons might undertake.

I intend that some thoughts be personal, what I know of the path that I am on, how it is affecting me, where I intend to go.   Some thoughts will be more general, but still full of my perspective.

So, Welcome.   For now, I am stumbling because I am still trying to understand and apply the software.   I hope to keep it simple and easy for me to learn.