Tag Archives: “Closing Time”

Straight Lines and Circles

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Education, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

May 5, 2023- In the back room of yet another blessed, beloved coffee shop, Williams’ Brewed Awakenings, I joined a study session on “Participating in Public Discourse”. In it, we consider what is the most productive and ethical means of encouraging and promulgating civil, spiritually-nourishing public conversations on a multitude of issues.

A key premise, that occurred to the participants this morning, is that linear thinking can be disrupted, in and sent off into tangents- “Us vs. Them”, in so many words. Such a dichotomy is surely tempting. It is, after all, an outwardly reasonable means to make sense of a world in which there are so many different choices. It allows for such concepts as spectrum, continuum and degrees of influence. It allows for a beginning and an end. Linear thinking also allows for “Games of Gotcha”, “Cat Have Your Tongue?” and all other systems that let human beings sit in judgement of one another-as individuals and as groups.

The circle is a symbol of unity. When I was challenged by another member of the group for having said that love is the foundation of all virtues, while she held that truth is actually that foundation, it helped to note that love and truth are part of the circle. Neither really has prominence over the other, and the two are actually one another’s basic companions. So it is with the round, enclosed entity; nothing that nourishes, that fulfills, really exists separately from anything else that provides sustenance and affirmation. The ending of one cycle is the beginning of another-as is shown in everything from the Mayan calendar to the 1998 pop song, “Closing Time”. Indeed, when Baha’u’llah wrote “This is the Changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future”, He was pointing out that the Creative Force (God, if you will) is quite capable of having set about a Universe, before the one we know now, and is quite capable of bringing this Universe to an end, many eons from now, or next week, and bringing a new Universe into being.

I have lived a life that seeks understanding, unity and harmony. It seems that is more attainable using the inclusiveness of the circle, rather than the separation suggested by a linear model-though some are sure to say, “Well, a line does connect.” Fair enough, and the circle that heals, does have to be permeable.

The Road to 65, Mile 277: Every New Beginning…..

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Social

August 31, 2015, Prescott- I almost used the byline, The Universe.  I have begun reading “Way of the Peaceful Warrior”, Dan Millman’s 1980 book which loosely describes his inner journey to a higher functioning self, using the anthropomorphoses of  Agape and Eros, a spirit guide named Socrates and a whimsical, attractive spirit named Joy.

Like Dan, I have spent a lot of my life following the Prescribed Path- following, first, a maudlin, alcohol-and-marijuana-fueled series of efforts at fitting my square peg into society’s round hole.  When I was 25,  I encountered an eleven-year-old boy named Mickey, who got me to quit smoking dope; in exchange for which, he gave up smoking tobacco.  Five years later, I met Penny, my own spiritual guide, who became my wife, and alcohol was cast aside.  At age 58, after a roiling series of life setbacks, I gave up credit cards- and the habit I had developed of blaming others for our family’s ill fortune.  At age 60,  I saw my wife, my Heaven-on-Earth, transition into the spirit who guides me, day by day, no longer kept prisoner in a body that had been failing.

I have experienced beings, and phenomena, that are not easily explained in human terms:  My maternal grandmother’s spirit visiting me, early one morning, when I was ten; my father’s angry spirit pushing my head into a tile wall, in response to a wayward thought I had, about a year after his passing; Penny’s spirit filling our bedroom, as her body lay dying in a hospice, ten miles away; a bright, multi-coloured light flashing frenetically, at a spot called Sipapu (Emergence Place), on the floor of Palo Duro Canyon, as I sat on a nearby bench; my maternal grandfather’s spirit, regarding me with a stern eye, when I stopped shy of climbing to the top ledge of Cathedral Rock, in Sedona.  These are experiences that many would regard as hallucinations, but they all occurred during daylight, when I was awake, and I haven’t used mind-altering substances since 1981.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”.  So goes a line from the song, “Closing Time”, by SemiSonic.  I see this, in terms of each day, week, month and year.  I have seen my own transition from married caretaker to wandering widower.  Now I am becoming a solitary seedsower, concentrating on helping to build a community. There will be other transitions ahead; other tides, rolling in, rolling out.