After work, day one getting over the aches, letting the body recover, then there is the next day, letting the mind recover.  The gyroscope is spinning, realigning, setting one straight again and upright.  First was the body sore and tired, and then, so is the mind, the voice, the thoughts, from the effort to sustain the good thoughts through the workweek's hustle.  Both physical and mental energies, but importantly spiritual energies have been put to the effort of matching the work to be done.  The spiritual energies too need a bath in salts to get back on track.  Which might mean, hmm, maybe I'm in the wrong line of work, too indirect, too blocked, too contrary.

But then you look out at the world and its gainful professions, and you see no other real better place within it, the secular world...

And still it is cold out, with tree pollen, and there is no energy for the walks in the wood.

One tries his best to deal with the secular world, to live in it, to match it, to follow, to keep up with it.

(In the midst of that, there are dreams to remember.  Why do we dream?)

More and more you ask yourself, though, why?    Really, is it for me?  What does it offer me?  Do I abide by the logic of the secular world...

Or rather, is not there another gift within you, an important thing, that makes the effort to work within the secular world like a creature out of its element...  Kindness of the deep sort does not fit in with the model of the modern health insurance business;  believe me, I tried.


And so things come to pass, on this path of realization, encounters with the honest self.  The main observation is the fake, the falseness of human behavior.

Jesus did not glow, shimmering, clad in white, upon the mountaintop at the Transfiguration in just one day right off the bat.  It seems he has to work up to it.  He has to take the steps of correcting people, of showing them the obviousness of what he can see.  It takes the telling of parables.  It takes building the temple up, piece by piece, to understand, from foundation on up.

The world he encounters is, despite its best intentions, despite all its learnings, and its laws, one of pettiness, rote law abiding without the law brought to live in real life.  And it would seem, Jesus has a list, to encounter, to go through things one by one...


But even then, even with all the rest, then there is the work of all the good information to take in, to sup at the table of the banquet, freely given, of God's love and wisdom, sustaining us, healing us.  And this is full work too, a day that wants for no distraction, how sweet its water tastes.

One is left again, in the chasm between the two worlds, but closer to the holy, and further away from the secular is a pleasant change, a welcome balm.  Each little period of days off you work your way up toward the far hill, and with each little hike toward it, the air is pleasant, salubrious, and your muscles are working again toward something rich with spirit and meaning.

Now, the body needs to be fed again.  The cold-cuts from the Safeway, despite their best intentions, taste of preservative chemicals and unnatural texture, why...  is that necessary?  The roast beef was okay, but still.  The food from the secular world, not the spiritual world of that from God.


The body is sore and stiff, after the recuperative rest.  One's molecules, the atoms, the little dynamo genies of energy of which we are comprised, are beginning to fire again, after this long period of interminable work that required the great patience, the patience of the enslaved and in Babylon.  And that firing is a good thing.  Come out, come out, Lazarus of deadened flesh, rise from the worldly tomb they stuck you in," here lies Lazarus, whatever he did."  Take off your burial garment.  Laugh with me and be joyful, taste the sweet fresh air that rejuvenates all of us poor folk.  Come and taste the wonderful feast the Lord hath prepared for you (in need of no Yelp review...)  Let the still warm waters bathe you.

And there is lots for Lazarus to say, reawakening.  He has been, for his part, dreaming enough that he might grasp this new light of the spiritual, non-secular, this burst before him of white life giving energy...


Here you can reawaken, cast off all the admonitions, the nitpicking accusations that you are not following the law to perfect little order, that come from the controlling sort of people who are not willing to leave their precious earned spot on the secular hill and its city.  Here all the laws are easy and friendly, beneficial, obvious, supportive, and one can only follow them with deep renewed appreciation.  In their attack upon you, they knew not the fullness of your being, your actions, your intent.  Humorless, blinded, that they went after you is rather funny.

Yes, even Moses had too much wine and had to be put to bed, but after all that, and you can't blame him.  That's the human heart for you.  Better to have human heart than none.  The people who enforce such laws, who accuse others, of course, they are only responding to their own sins known deep in their own hearts, the staining lack of morality covering their beings in an unpleasant way, such that there is much anger.

What do the old people, worn down by their own immeasurable day in day out workweeks and lack of proper rest, need but to be brought back to the spiritual?  We cannot give them new bones and new brains.  No wonder they are addled, having lived so long in their separate secular world prisons, without getting that which is necessary and sustaining, only getting it in small amounts, and even then probably arguing with themselves and their own logic of how best to defend themselves...  The lack of that support which is pure faith, even as that faith is the furthest thing from self-protective rational thought.

Sad it must make you to witness their frailty, their infirmities, their dotard confusions from years of leaning on the wrong support.  But rejoice, they were healthy enough to get so far, intact, and they must obviously had known that which supports, the real life of love for fellow humanity amidst all the toils they did even as they were not made to do.  The being, made after God, was not meant to be a prison guard, a humorless bureaucrat, an angry clerk, a futile pounder of hard rock and stone, and lastly not made to upstart nor correct the holy law of divine order and health of creation.  People were not meant to pollute the waters of life with toxic compounds made in a laboratory to our own grievously short-sighted ends.

And so to heal them, one needs to wipe away a lot of falseness.  Sin, we call it.  Sin of being the proponent of an "Ism."  Nazism, Fascism, whatever the particulars...  nothing more than words in the end, though the words can bear deeds terrible and cruel beyond all proportion... Isms accusing others of their own predominant fault...  Isms created to begin arguments...

Only he who knew all such things would offer support to the poor and the troubled, to the infirm and the weak of mind, for otherwise he would have fear of being useless, of doing more harm than good, not the good shepherd.

Sleep the gentle just sleep of the holy child tucked in the safe bosom of the Father.  He who does not act to gather causes then to scatter.


I spend much of days off with kitchen related things.  Exercise means going out in the cold to gather some groceries for dinner.  The secular pleasure of going out to dinner is less a joy, only a necessity.