Refining Fire

I'm sedentary in Moab & it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere for a good while, except for a trip to Colorado for a couple weeks to my brother's cabin. I'm hoping to leave within the next few days.

The BBC interviewed me (on the Equinox) for the program, "Outlook," which might air sometime next week. They told me they'd let me know for sure when. Hopefully I can post when it is scheduled. Part of me is amazed, in a surreal way, at what's happening, but the other part of me feels it is as natural as the sun shining.

I still have hundreds of emails I haven't even been able to look at, much less answer. So please don't feel slighted if you don't get an answer. I've been asked to house-sit in months to come, so I'm hoping I can eventually read them all & do more writing then. But being at a computer all the time is not my idea of healthy. Life is about loving our neighbors, & our gadgets have tempted us into loving everybody but our neighbors, isolating us from society. It's a strange irony to be going out into the cyber-world to say this. It doesn't do much good to preach to the choir, to talk about techno-isolation with my houseless friends outside this library. Yes, it's tempting for me to get sucked into cyber-isolation even as I write this.

I'm enjoying a sense of community here in Moab, feeling a grand potential here again. I'm liking the idea, more & more, of working with what we already have, of bringing out the moneyless mind of "freely-give, freely receive" that already exists & cultivating it - not separating out & trying to make a community apart from what is here & now. Everything in the universe, no matter how grand & miraculous & unattainable it might seem, begins with the small - with easy, patient steps, using what's already here & now, honed down by the trials of Natural Selection. There's nothing, in fact, that does not come about by small, easy, patient steps, using what's already here& now, honed down by the trials of Natural Selection! If you prefer religious lingo, call Natural Selection the Consuming Fire that burns the dross and leaves the Remnant, the Very Elect. Call it the Cross. The vision of the Grand Glory coming from the Small, Simple Insignificant through the Divine Fire is called the Hope of Faith. And the whole Universe is created right now by this Hope of Faith. Yup, the Seven Days of Creation are Ever Right Now, as sure as the moon waxes & wanes! That which is hopeful in you, in a sea of cynicism & intense pain & horror, understands. Hope, overcome cynicism! But don't condemn cynicism, for cynicism is the Fire that hones you down!

No time to write more, though there are infinite musings on the universe swimming through this noggin. Lots more FAQs, but that'll have to come later.

Time to turn off the damn computer & mingle with flesh & blood neighbors. Care to join me?