Our greatest gift to ourselves is the gift of being present to our life, to show up in every moment. When I enter a rough patch in life, I seek refuge in my illusions and magical thinking that ignores who I am, where I am, and my resources to “fight the good fight.” My myopic perspective ignores the here and there, the near and far. For example, we occasionally have problems with Koko, our Motorhome on the road. If it is something minor, then I may ignore it, magically thinking that it will go away because I do not want to deal with it at the moment. This avoidance seldom works out very well because when it finally becomes a more significant problem, it will occur at a less opportune time! But in the last year, I have been gifted with many beautiful horizons that have invited me to stretch my vision to the horizon and beyond. Here are a few of those horizons and the whispers they offered to my soul. They have all helped me see the wisdom of staying present to myself and the world around me.

This horizon appeared as we walked through Lincoln Memorial Garden outside Springfield, IL. We had been on the road for eight months and spent a week exploring all things Abraham Lincoln in his hometown. I was growing weary in mind, body, and soul. We saved this small park for our last day in Springfield. The trails were beautifully curated forest landscapes, including this little cove on the end of the lake, looking back toward the city. The reflections in the water enhanced the day’s beauty as the clouds drifted slowly across an azure sky. Ducks and songbirds surrounded us, along with the sweet aroma of the forest. I took all this into my soul. I traced the thin line of hills at the horizon and revisited the pleasant memories of the city hidden from view. The magic of horizons is that they offer us both the seen and the unseen in one moment. What we see may be beautiful, but remembering pleasant memories can be more soul-sustaining. This horizon was a feast for the eyes and the mind and nourishing for the soul as well.

This image is from the hills of Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake. This parched landscape teems with life and offers elegant testimony to the adaptability and ingenuity of life itself. This place is no Dead Sea. The hills support a flora that has found a way to thrive on the salt-laden rocks laced with thin soil—every crevice shelters moisture from the abundant sunshine. Life survives in these small oases and supports the fauna of the island. Large herds of bison graze on the grasslands and hillsides. Rabbits, mice, and lizards skitter through the landscape, where Burrowing Owls and other birds of prey hunt them down. The island is a rich and varied landscape that supports a wealth of life.

But life is not limited to the land. The waters beyond the shoreline are also teeming with life. They are too salty to support fish, but they support a wide variety of bacteria and algae that colonize the shore, painting it with a rainbow of hues. These microscopic colonies support a large insect community that swarms over the water. These huge swarms attract large numbers of Gulls and Terns who feast on the abundance of food at the water’s edge. Pelicans gather here in large numbers, feasting off the surrounding wetlands and finding safety for their young on the barren islands scattered throughout the area. When I raised my gaze to the far horizon, I saw the Wasatch Mountains, where life has found a home in alpine meadows and valleys. Turning in another direction, I saw the Oquirrh Mountains, where life has taken hold among deep winter snows and blistering hot Summers. Elk, Bighorn Sheep, Foxes, and other creatures make these mountains their home. Life on the Great Salt Lake and in the surrounding mountains demonstrates that it survives and thrives with a diverse abundance! Horizons help us see beyond our near-sighted biases and embrace the impossibilities of life in the undiscovered lands beyond our imaginations!

This image is from the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Bodega Bay along the Central California Coast. This image captures two mystical, thin places in creation, where the water meets the shore and the vast stretch of an ocean horizon. In the foreground, we discover the complexity of life. Wildflowers of varying hues live among the brilliantly colored Ice Plants. But life is a struggle on these rocky cliffs. Native wildflowers battle the invasive Ice Plant. They fight for a foothold in this unstable ground as the weather and active seismic activity drag everything to the edge. The Sea Stacks just offshore speak of land that has already been lost, but even here, life has found a foothold as a nesting place for birds and nurseries for seals. The near ground of this image speaks to the complexity of life as it struggles to maintain its footing on a creation that will ultimately yield to the chaos of nature, but not yet! This foreground is a magical place indeed!

The distant horizon is no less magical. The simple thin line between the sea and sky contains the realm of deep imagination. Every generation of shore-bound people has sat at a place like this and imagined what lies beyond. For some, it was the chaos of the edge of creation that, once reached, would lead to a fall into the abyss of time and space. For others, it represented unknown lands where they could build new lives. Every mind has had its imaginative journey over that line and dreamed of the possibilities. It inspires, terrifies, and instills hope, beckoning us to reach beyond our familiar shore to glimpse what lies beyond. The deep magic of this horizon is that it invites us to hope in the unknown, believing that life abounds on distant shores as it does on our own.

During our 2024 stay in West Memphis, we were fortunate to have an RV site that was steps away from “that Old Man River.” The foreground is lost in shadow, but the horizon is on fire with the glory of a Southern Sunset. And in between lay a piece of history, both human and natural, that drains 41% of the lower contiguous United States before entering the Gulf of Mexico far to the South. But horizons are not just about geography; they are also about time, and this shot offers a glimpse of a horizon in time that awaits all carried in its currents. Each of us continuously flows into a new moment, night or day! We live on that thin line called “now” that sits between “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” But, like a river, time has a direction, and sometimes we must trust the “river.” It has been flowing for a long time and has found a path over the “snags” and log jams. Roll on, Big River, Roll On! The horizon awaits us all in the glory of a brilliant sunset.

This image is from a Whale Watch out of Ventura Harbor in the Channel Islands off the California Coast. The vastness of the Pacific stretches to the distant horizon. This horizon is a limitless wonder where these massive beasties find joy in the currents of life. At their best, our horizons are sources of joy as we imagine life out there. But imagining is not enough. These whales spend the summer in the Bering Straits of Alaska, feeding and finding mates. They then swim 3,000 miles to the Hawaiian Archipelago, where they bear and raise their young before returning each Spring. In the vastness of life, we cannot simply sit and enjoy. The horizon invites us to live our lives fully. Its presence demands that we push our horizons regularly to claim the abundance life offers for our hearts and minds!

I am a child of the Texas Hill Country. My earliest memories include the rocky limestone hills covered with Juniper and Live Oaks. But this place, Enchanted Rock, is a powerful place that fills my soul and lifts my eyes to the horizons of life! This rocky prominence outside of Fredericksburg is one of the oldest rocks in the world. It rose above the surrounding hills 1.1 billion years ago. I have climbed on, fallen on, sat on, and pondered life on this magical pink granite dome throughout my 71 years. From this trail, it dominates the horizon. But, from its peak, the Hill Country reaches into forever in all directions. Life exists on its summit, where seasonal ponds sustain weathered juniper trees. These trees hold onto life in the cracks and crevices. Yet, the star is the rock itself. It speaks to the far horizons of time from its creation to the moment it will be absorbed back into the earth itself. Standing here allows time to stop, and I take in the universe’s depth, breadth, and width. Here, I rediscover that the rock and I are temporary sojourners. We live, move, and have our being between the near and far of life.

I hope always to be aware of the world around me, from within my reach to the distant horizons, from the ever-present now to the farthest reaches of yesterday and tomorrow. All that we have been, or ever will be, exists between those horizons. These horizons offer us the gift if we have the wisdom to unwrap them here and now!

Travel well, my friends,

Bob

This is a picture of Comal Springs at Landa Park in New Braunfels, Texas. This is one of the historic Balcones Fault Springs where humans have quenched their thirst for 13,000 years. They flow from the Edwards Aquifer, deep beneath the Balcones Escarpment that represents the Eastern edge of the Texas Hill Country. The pure, crystal-clear water has been naturally filtered through hundreds of feet of limestone and bubbles at Comal Springs, San Marcos Springs, Jacobs Well, Little Arkansas, Sink Springs, and hundreds of other places across the region. I grew up on the Balcones and, like my Appalachian ancestors, fell in love with the rocks, the Cedars, the Live Oaks, and the springs. I have been listening to them my entire life. Walking past this part of Comal Springs, I heard them again, “Help me!”

The springs know that I am an old friend. This one reached out to me in whispers beyond mere words. In a timeless moment, it reminded me of my lifetime by its waters. I learned to swim, caught my first fish, paddled my first canoe, daydreamed, and wandered to their timeless music, splashing, singing, and dancing with joy over the river and creek beds of the escarpment. In that same timeless moment, I saw my Dad and Aunt Vikie sitting by the water, holding a cane pole and spitting on their bait to increase their luck. I tasted the watermelon we chilled in the springs flowing out of the hillside of Little Arkansas. I walked along the banks of the San Marcos River with my childhood friend Richard as we discovered our world during lazy Summer Days. My old friend spoke to me from the dusty, dry rocks at the bottom of that Spring and whispered, “Help me, old friend.”

For millennia, these springs have provided the essentials of life: clean water, cooling compresses for feverish brows, and joyous music for weary souls beaten down by hardship and worry. Fish and four-legged creatures, long-extinct, found life in these waters. Humankind found a welcome respite after thousands of years wandering from the African deserts. Countless tribes have gathered along the banks of these springs, streams, and rivers to celebrate their harvests, welcome their children, and mourn their losses. These waters have taken delight in every word of thanks uttered by the successful fisherman and the laughter of every child as they were bathed by loving hands in their waters. These springs offered abundance from the aquifer below, and rejoiced in the life that flourished above because of their gift. As I stood there, gazing at the parched spring bed, I heard the voice once again, “Help me, old friend. I’m thirsty!”

A combination of drought and over-pumping from the aquifer has dropped the water level within a few feet of the springs. We stole their water before they got it. Fueled by industry, our cities demand more and more of the aquifer’s resources. They are pumping out the lifeblood of my old friends. Global warming holds more water in the warming air and denies the ground its needed moisture. Droughts have been made more severe. We have built massive concrete caps over the recharge zones where the rain should begin its journey back to the groundwater. We deny the springs their future ability to care for us and our world. And yet, the springs still see us as cherished friends. They depend on us to show gratitude and wisdom about our inter-connectedness and beg us, “Help me, old friend. I’m thirsty, and I need your help!”

My heart ached for my old friend, but I had to step away. Sometimes, getting lost in another’s pain is a way to avoid our own pain and our responsibility for theirs. It is too easy to “wail and gnash” our teeth at injustice and, in the process, do nothing to stop it. I felt lost in the dry Spring’s melancholy and needed to move on. It was time to see what lay around the bend of that dry creek bed.

Within a few yards, I heard the music once again.

There was one Spring still flowing from the hillside. It was small, but its voice re-awakened hope in my weary, worried soul. “Help me, old friend. There is life in this old Spring yet. We have not reached the end. You can make a difference.”

The music of the Universe invites us to step out of our lament with the faith that we can make a difference. We must seek out the wellsprings of life that still flow from the hillsides of history. We need to listen to the pleading of those who are being crushed and feel their pain. But we must also listen to the voices of joy, speaking hope for a new day. Let those voices pull you out of your self-pity so that you can claim the future that can be.

“Help me, old friend! I’m thirsty, and I need your help! But don’t give up! Remember the music! Sing along with me. Do what you can. Share my song.”

Together, we can revive these life-giving springs. We must believe that those who come after us will be able to quench their thirst for life once again because we heard the Universe’s cry for help and song of hope!’

Listen well, my friends! The Universe is calling out to you!

Bob

The wind whispered through the tall pine trees. Sparrows danced in the foliage. Dappled sunlight painted the leaf litter with varying shades of green and brown. There was something extraordinary about the forest that surrounded Devil’s Tower. Eons of time weighed heavily in the pine-scented air. Each step rested in the holy ground of a thin place where the sacred and profane are separated with a tissue-thin veil of holy presence. I was walking in the shadows of spiritual power.

Thin places are part of the Celtic Tradition, where the “veil” between the everyday and the extraordinary touch one another. The slightest breeze will offer a fleeting glimpse of another dimension to our lives. Some see this as the division between the ordinary and the spiritual. I struggle with the dualism of the two. They are part of the same web of life and reflect the world where we live, breathe, and have our being. For me, a thin place is where I see my life from a different point of view.

In my experience, three thin places speak to the human journey in creation.

The first is musterion, a Greek word usually translated as mystery. The second is aeternitas, traditionally understood as eternity. The third is communitas or community. Each of these perspectives offers paths through our distracted daily lives and allows us to catch a shimmering glimmer of what is constantly before us, the everyday holy that steals our breath.

Generally, our day-to-day seeing looks past anything that is not useful now. Mystery shakes us out of this blindness. It evokes awe and fears that awaken our senses and opens our minds to new possibilities and explorations.

When the depths of time, eternity, shows up, it throws the ticking clock against the wall of reality. Eternity challenges the flow of time that lulls us into a shallow and false certainty about cause and effect. Eternity awakens us to the reality behind the mythologies of everyday living. It breaks the common, reminding us that we are constantly surrounded by the extraordinary.

Life in community forces us to accept that we are creatures of limited understanding and perspective. Meaningful relationships take us to foreign lands beyond our experiences and perceptions. We come face to face with the inner experiences of others. Those moments also shine a light on our inner lives and offer a glimpse into the shadows in our self-understanding.

Devil’s Tower rises out of the prairie of Northeastern Wyoming. It has been a beacon for humanity for thousands of years. Early native tribes used it to navigate their trails through the open prairies. The spirit of the place seeped into their oral traditions and spoke of bears that lived in the forest surrounding the place. It was a place filled with awe and wonder where the earth shook when the rock columns would split off and crash down the cliffs.

A large thunderstorm arrived the night after we hiked around the monolith. The lightning streaked across the sky. The thunder boomed and rolled all around us. Had I endured the tempest in a small tepee and been exposed to the howling winds sweeping off the grasslands, I would have known that we were in the hands of something far more significant than ourselves. I would have been moved to awe and fear, the central elements of worship and prayer. This is the power of thin places. They awaken our spirits to an existence far beyond our day-to-day experience and evoke gratitude, awe, and wonder. As Rudolf Otto said, they create “tremens et fascinans” in our deepest selves.

These times and places challenge our ego that tries to sum up life in formulas that begin “I am….” We are far more than any words we can use to complete that statement of who we are.

These sacred places attack the core statements about life that begin with the words “I think….”  Life is greater than any thought that tries to tame and control it with our mind.

Thin places such as Devil’s Tower wipe away our “I believe …” proclamations and leave us living in awe of a world that will never allow any certainty of belief.

Our egos, ideas, and beliefs obscure such places from our souls. We cling to a shredded reality that does nothing more than protect us until the storm becomes too great. We are then overwhelmed by reality. But a powerful encounter with a thin place will blow the tent away, leaving us naked, cold, and afraid. The pounding rain, thunder, and lightning shatter our self-understandings, thoughts, and beliefs. This is the great gift of the thin places in our lives.

When we cannot voluntarily let go of these things in contemplation, the thin places emerge and force us to face the deeper reality of our lives, where genuine love, trust, joy, and hope exist and become the paths to survival. In such moments we become shrouded in the spirit that moves into our lives in thin places. We encounter that wondrous mystery that forces us to acknowledge the eternity that is our natural home in time. We discover that we are part of a community of people whose only hope is in the love of their neighbor and whose only joy exists in the trust of the community that created and sustains us.

I hope you will stumble upon a thin place just as the storms build. In such moments, may you hear the bears roaring in the thunder. I pray you catch a glimpse of the world beyond yourselves in shadows cast by lightning. I sincerely wish that you find comfort and peace in being part of the great flow of life that exists in the eternity of time (past, present, and future) in that single fleeting moment as the veil moves between this world and the next.

Journey on, My friends.

Bob

Reality can get a bit overwhelming at times.  We all need an occasional break from the daily struggle.  We need to be restored by the essential goodness of living.  We need a happy place that reacquaints us with the joy of living.  For thousands of years, we have called this place paradise.

The dictionary defines paradise as “a place of delight or bliss,” meaning exceptional happiness.  It is a place where we can relax into living, knowing that “all shall be well.”  It is a place where we feel safe.  We feel accepted because we belong there.  We are not a visitor.  We are a resident homeowner who does not fear eviction.  We can accept our responsibilities without hesitation because we are grateful to be in this paradise.  Paradise is the place where we live, and move, and have our being in happy delight.

This word comes from the Greek Paradaisos or Royal Park.  It referred to a place that was closed off and used exclusively by the gods.  It grew out of the desert experience of the ancient Persians and was an oasis in a dry and parched land.  Our most common image for a paradise is the Garden of Eden, a gated place where God strolled through the abundance.  It was surrounded by flowing water and came with a single responsibility, to remain ignorant of good and evil.  We could stay in paradise as long as we remained innocent of the ways of the world beyond the gate.  We could stay as long as paradise remained clean and undefiled.  Paradise was not “in heaven.”  It was a place on earth.

This was no utopia, an idea of Sir Thomas More in his writing by the same name.   Utopia is a composite Greek word that means “no place.”  In using this particular word, More claimed that lives of perfection were not of this world.  A utopia was a fiction that existed only in the mind.  It was the unattainable goal that lived in stark contrast to the stark political realities of More’s chaotic society under Henry VIII.  Utopia was a pipe dream of political perfection.

In comparison, paradise is a living reality for those with the eyes to see and the heart to embrace it.  Utopia was a creation of the mind that lived beyond the living reality of our lives.  Paradise is a living reality for those who live in innocence of the world.  This innocence may grow out of a lack of experience with the world.  But, it may also develop after a long and arduous journey back through those gates.  In this brief post, I want to explore the latter.

The image above is from the North Shore of Oahu. We spent an hour or so at this spot after a long drive around the island.  Construction detours and traffic, my two least favorite driving experiences, bedeviled our journey.  Also, the people were not all that courteous on the road or in the parking lot.  Besides, I had a schedule to keep and several other stops to make.  I generally drive past such “paradises” because I am too preoccupied with the stuff in my head.  I blindfold myself to the world around me because I have a schedule to keep.  But this paradise was different.  I suspect there was something different in me as well.

Once I got there, the place itself spoke to an emptiness in my soul.  We spent an hour walking around the North Shore.  I began to look past the crowds and found what Carlos Castaneda called a “place with heart.”  It was a paradise.  It was far too real to be a utopia.

When we reached this particular spot, we pulled off the busy main road and found a parking spot between a trash can and a closed vendor stall.  The sound of crashing waves drew me to the sidewalk that overlooked the shoreline.  I was transfixed.  The crowds and noise behind me evaporated.  I stood there, unable to move.  I felt tiny when I looked out on the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.  My mind knew that there was very little between Asia and me. I remembered reading about the Bonsai Pipeline that ended in this cove.  These massive waves were nothing compared to the waves that arrived during the height of Surfing Season.  They reached 50+ feet.  These were a “mere” 25 feet.  Their roar blended with the howling wind to create a rhythmic symphony that challenged the mastery of Mussorgsky and Stravinsky.  Rainbows appeared in the mists of the shattered waves.  They glowed with the promise of even greater delights.  I could not turn away.  I was enraptured.  My soul found comfort as I wandered through that tiny piece of paradise.

Paradise overwhelmed me with delight.  It lit up my life with wonder and awe.  I stood in a liminal space, the edge of being itself where life stretched out into the great unknown.  The tingle of unknowing and the wonder of the moment wrapped me into a deep sense of awe.  It spoke to my soul.  It shut off the voices that were urging me to move on to other places to see and things to do.  And in that stillness came the soothing voice of grace and gratitude, celebrating where I stood and who I was.  Paradise had called out and found me.

The essence of paradise is not that we have to go out and find it!  Paradise has a way of finding us.  How do we “get found” by paradise?  It is really quite simple.  We need to be ready when it shows up on the doorstep of our daily life.  Here are a few ideas that I have found helpful.

Stay in touch with the state of your soul.  Acknowledge your hurriedness and the world that is slipping by.  Recognize when you are letting paradise slip by because you are distracted by lesser things.  Listen to your inner dialogue.  Review your recent memories.  You can assume that you have missed out on at least one experience of paradise if your internal dialogue and memories have ignored them.  Give yourself permission to slow down and look, listen, and stop when a glimpse of paradise comes into view.

Look past the noisy, clanging of the ego, the cynicism, and the despair.  You will not find your paradise with anxiety or fear.  Paradise cannot be found at all.  Instead, slow down and pay attention to the edges of your life so that the eyes of your heart will be open when beauty, goodness, and joy appear.  Stop and listen with the ears of your soul, as paradise announces itself in the shadows of your everyday living.  You cannot reach out and grasp it.  It is beyond your reach.  You cannot shame or guilt it into appearing.  It is far too honest for those games.  Striving for it leads to anxiety and the fear that you will miss it. It will also guarantee that you will miss it.  Slow down and pay attention to the wondrous mystery that lingers on the edge of your awareness.

Let yourself be awed.  Awe means giving up control of our perceptions.  Go where awe is experienced and let go of your expectations of what you will see and hear.  Let the world show itself without any comment or explanation.  Allow the moment to speak for itself.  The first waves of awe will touch the edges of your soul.  When paradise whispers into your soul, allow your delight as it overflows into your mind and body.

Lastly, admit that there is much more to life than we can ever really know.  We are not smart enough to believe that we see, feel, and know all things.  We are not really smart enough, perceptive enough, or experienced enough to know how the rest of our story will turn out.  When we replace our unknowing with visions of utopia, we create depression and anxiety at how far we must travel to find perfection.  But, by allowing awe, wonder, and gratitude to flow into our unknowing, we will find ourselves surrounded by paradise and be drawn further into the beauty and wonder of life.  Embrace the energy that surrounds you, and the gate to paradise will open before you.  Paradise will inform and guide your today and your tomorrow.

These steps make it possible to regain our innocence even after we have eaten a whole bushel of the knowledge of Good and Evil.  In them, we find forgiveness for our personal experiences of evil.  We discover the grace of loving acceptance of ourselves and others.  Our second experience of innocence is an “eyes wide open” variety.  We know the choices that are available to us and have found ways to fill our soul with the strength to choose “the better way.”   We have found the path of faith, hope, and love, especially love.

We are not barred from paradise if we can reclaim the core of our innocence and see good and evil for what it is, rejecting or accepting responsibility for ourselves and those around us.  We do not eat to serve our inner desires and passions.  We eat in order to enjoy and find delight in the life that we have and that we share with those around us.  Paradise can be a Hell on earth for those who approach it with greed and ego.  But a soul that delights and takes responsibility for that delight can find a paradise to be a heaven on Earth.    The gate is open to those with the body-mind-soul to see, hear, taste, and touch their way into the garden that awaits us in paradise.

Blessings,

Bob