This is the time of day when
I almost always feel
aching
groundlessness
As if
nothing I have done this day
matters,
And I’ve left undone
everything
necessary.
Tag: waiting
… 
On waiting and squirming
“On waiting and squirming” was my fourth post when I began The Empty Path in 2007, nine years after I lost my South Carolina prison counseling career to right-wing politics, seven years
…I feel stalled
and confounded.
Snow
not yet fallen
chills me and
gets in my way.
I do not want to slow down,
let go,
wait.
Yet I must,
either restlessly
or willingly.
Nothing seems fixed.
… Are modern Friends still driven
by the nineteenth century’s social
gospel, that
worthy yet material world
oriented political drive,
standing in for waiting
worship and
seasoned
leadings?
My morning practice often includes reading from American Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chödrön. Here is this morning’s reading from The Pocket Pema Chödrön.
…Loneliness
Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. Its restless and pregnant
and hot with the desire to
We’re all stuck on hold.
The pioneers thrust out
with their usual
armed vengeance,
no clear purpose
except to recreate
the old world
in the new.
The rest of us
…You don’t know what will happen if you go down that road. That’s why you should go there.
Why do what you have already done?
The world never changes, and it is never the same. Each step opens a new door to the same old life. Infinite variations on the same thing.
Remember
…About a month ago I made a mistake. It happened sometime between my early morning preparation for waiting worship and the rise of Meeting.
The concept of the transpersonal is one which I have thought I understood intellectually for decades, going back to my naïve fascination with mystical paths in the 1970s, and maturing through years of contemplation and study.
That First Day, though, the concept became viscerally alive as I read a selection in The Essential Ken
…In the comments to the latest post on the Quaker Universalist Fellowship blog, I posted my current approximation of a 60-second answer to “What do Quakers believe?:
…
Quakerism is not so much a set of beliefs as a form of spiritual practice.
We sit silently, putting aside our personal or social or political or religious concerns, and
This past year, I’ve been using C.S. Lewis’ anthology of selections from the writings of George MacDonald as my morning devotion. Mom gave me a copy of this book years ago, and this is probably the third time I’ve read through it.
