The mystery of new beginnings . . .

In the mailbox this full-Spring final day of April Sunday . . .

Today is the birthday of Annie Dillard, the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A prolific writer, she was born on this date in (1945) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Today is also the 146th anniversary of Alice B. Toklas' birth. Born in 1877 San Francisco, she was lover, companion, and secretary of Gertrude Stein for 39 years in Paris.

And John Crowe Ransom, the poet and founder of the Kenyon Review was born on this date in 1888 Pulaski, Tennessee.

We are amid a necessary decentering of we humans in the cosmos. We are now aware of and opening to a “planetary sapience”— the synthesized intelligence of all lifeforms that are part and parcel of one self-regulating system and to which human technological capacities must align. . .this revelation will anchor the spiritual condition of humanity in the centuries to come.

The mystery of transformation more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. It is then we are invited to listen at a deeper level, and sometimes forced to go to a new place. We will normally do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart, yet this is when we need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. “Letting go”confronts us in order to “treat others as you would like them to treat you.” – after Richard Rohr

Chaos has an order all its own. It is a natural part of the apparently infinite and eternal unfolding and enfolding of the universe which gives the impression that it knows exactly what it is doing amid the illusion of time.

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the Mystery. – Ram Dass