Rectangular Idiocy

April 7.

Another miracle arises.

The Dutchman's breeches are already blooming. These tiny flowers celebrate each spring for just a few brief moments and are gone; yet for those few moments, low to the ground, they rule the world with the sublime goodness of every leaf and flower they nestle up against the cool, damp soil where they grow.

Yesterday I ended my morning considerations of how life is by appreciating how much good there is in each day. I had to put that aside to begin my workday, but it is back here with me this morning.

Last night our neighbor Dimitri cooked pizza in a wood oven he painstakingly built by hand. He made the food by hand. Dmitri is Greek by way of Italy. This food is a grounding part of his tradition. There are lots of other good things about Dimitri—he, his wife, and young kids still have a bit of the wild left in them—but we'll leave that for now. 

What especially struck me about eating the pizza last night—aside from its unadorned and sublime favor, the crunch of its crust, the smoke of the wood that fired it –is that it was made by hand, with care, and cooked in a truly rustic, almost casually handcrafted  brick oven which was also made with care. I watched it being built—it began as a mess and came out a gem.

All of the care that went into that oven and the food that it cooks were present in that pizza; and the food was so much better because of that. Anything that is done with care, and even the least attention, rises above the ordinary into the extraordinary with so little effort one forgets how extraordinary the ordinary actually is.

We don't pay enough attention to life. It's that simple.

My mind has a tendency to lean towards negativity. If I see it at work, I begin to understand this predisposition. There are destructive thoughts about the future, and about other people and their opinions. Destructive thoughts about my own potential and that of others, especially people who disagree with me. Yet all of these arisings in me are completely imaginary, inventions that come from a place I don't understand very well. 

Yet the day is good. I see that as I sit here in my chair preparing for the day to begin. My body can receive my life in an intelligent way, one that has nothing to do with my negativity. The impressions of life, the sensations of it, are filled with an inherent goodness that begins before my mind interferes with it. This goodness flows into Being throughout creation from a source that can be sensed if I’m sensitive to it. It doesn't come from my thought. It's already there in the action of life itself. 

If I become simpler, it's possible to just receive this goodness and to accept it.

This action is difficult for the mind to tolerate. All kinds of apparently bad things happen; relatives die. Friends have strokes. I lose money. Things break. Other humans struggle with difficulties in their life. My mind firmly wants me to believe that because of all of this, things are bad. Objective analysis proves that this is so.

Doesn't it?

Well, it doesn't. The inflection that projects badness on the each of these situations is partial and opinionated. The situations are all just situations. I make a decision about whether they are good or bad. Each situation that arises, as it enters me, is already divorced from its objective manifestation as a fact. 

It’s a good thing that I am alive and can receive various facts; they are blessings before I start messing with them. It's true that some of them are very difficult for me to absorb, but it's my duty as a living creature to simply confront facts, not to manipulate them and deny them in order to to suit my own egoistic purposes. Treating everything as a threat of one kind or another is no way to live; yet that attitude is all-too-familiar, isn't it?

This question of the inherent goodness of life isn't a philosophical question. It's a question of being here for what life offers. Something as simple as the color of a Post-it note on my desk has a food of goodness in it that flows into being as I perceive it. The color itself is a miracle, a manifestation of a divine quality. 

It's possible to be grateful for that quality, instead of acting like it's too ordinary and obvious to deserve my attention. It's even possible to be grateful for the fact that the note is rectangular; shape is also a divine property and a gift. If I am truly aware of life, I can sit here and be grateful for the simple fact of the color pink and the shape of a rectangle. These are good things that help build the world I am in. 

It may sound like the vision of a child; but if we do not become as children, the kingdom of heaven is forever distant.

As it happens, the kingdom of heaven is here within me in the way that I receive life. If I receive it with gratitude and Thanksgiving, that heaven is never far away.

Even my negativity can become a servant in this action. The more powerful it is, the more it can help me, if I see it. I shall think about this more and write of it later.

Be well today, and take in life with care.

Lee