"No, you subject the tradition to your irreverence to get back to where it began, only that, back down to the ground of simple ... unmediated awe. It is there, which is necessarily the state of reverence, the sharp perception of God's presence in the fact of our consciousness ... and therefore everywhere and in everyone and everything - it is that constancy of awe we hope for, a pre-Scriptural state as alive to us as the contemporary moment, and which, of course, comes with absolutely no guarantees. That is where we begin ..."  E.L. Doctorow, City of God.

Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were life other people's songs.
They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their head and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did.
Ah, that was just what had united them and had made them so akin! Never, never, even in their moments of richest and wildest happiness, were they unaware of a sublime joy in the total design of the universe, a feeling that they themselves were a part of the whole, an element in the beauty of the cosmos.
This unity with the whole earth was the breath of life to them. And the elevation of man above the rest of nature, the modern coddling and worshipping of man, never appealed to them. A social system based on such a false premise, as well as its political application, struck them as pathetically amateurish and made no sense to them. - Larisa Feodorovna. Dr. Zhivago

“Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ’s words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe isn’t big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They’d be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for animal life.
But, all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and didn’t notice it.”
“Consciousness is a light directed outward, it lights up the way ahead of us so that we don’t stumble. It’s like the headlights on a locomotive – turn them inward and you’d crash.”
“And now listen carefully. You in others – this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life – your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you – the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”

— Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak

"So many new thoughts come into your head when your hands are busy with hard physical work, when your mind has set you a task that can be achieved by physical effort and that brings its reward in joy and success, when for six hours on end you dig or hammer, scorched by the life-giving breath of the sky. And it isn't a loss but a gain that these transient thoughts, intuitions, analogies are not put down on paper, but forgotten. The town recluse whipping up his nerves and his imagination with strong black coffee and tobacco doesn't know the strongest drug of all - good health and real necessity."

“About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn't bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.” Yurii Andreievich. Dr. Zhivago.

"I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats - any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death-then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself."  Nikolai Nikolaevich, Dr. Zhivago.

prairie path

walking along the prairie path,
gentle September breeze,
pale blue sun lit sky,
fake sunflowers, hyacinth, goldenrod
strolling past
when realizing I wasn't alone,
footsteps gently crushing limestone,
not a word was said
as I tried to recall the many questions,
not  a one came to mind
only raspy singing of grasshoppers
and occasional twitters of goldfinch passing bye.
nothing seemed to matter
once realizing I was not walking alone.

Come to the altar all who are blameless and worthy

Come forward to receive me,
all who are blameless and worthy
freed from sin and pure of faith


Deny me to the unworthy and all are unworthy


Come forward to receive me,
all who are blameless and worthy
freed from sin and pure of faith


Deny my body to another and tear me apart


Come forward to receive me,
all who are blameless and worthy
freed from sin and pure of faith


Cast out the unbeliever and all are outcasts


Come forward to receive me,
all who are blameless and worthy
freed from sin and pure of faith

IF

If born a son of Greece,
would I have seen the God of unity
from which proceeds all good?


If I had sprouted from the seed of a Bodhi
would I have seen the end of suffering
in the ever present now?


If I had been born a roman centurion
during the time of our Lord,
would I have pierced his side?


If born a brother Jew,
would I thought him crazy too,
and ringed him a thorny crown?


If born in Mecca, would I too
profess there no God, but God alone,
and Muhammad his messenger?


If I were born on a plantation
would I have lived in luxury amidst
my chained servants?


If born on the plains,
would I have seen red men
on my land and dispensed with them?


If I had been born in Germany and seen
the renewal of my country
would I have helped to purify my race?


If I were Arab in Palestine
would I worship in the mosque
while I make a holy war?


I were a Jew in the land of Israel
would I proclaim the one God
while I walled off Palestine?


If I had been born an African in Liberia
would I suffer and die with by sisters
and brothers hungry and malnourished?


If if were a Christian, would I be born again
with Jesus in my heart, or would I find him
born anew amidst the sin and suffering?