An Invitation to Wonder

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up the joy, be awake at all moments to “the news that is always arriving out of silence.”
    Slowly, you will become a master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and movement.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Glimpse After Glimpse

Fourteen years ago, on a hot and humid August day, I stood at Leadbetter Beach with my hands hanging limp at my sides and threw up a prayer to the cosmos asking, “Where did the wonder go? I miss the wonder of it all!” I remembered happier times when I first came to Santa Barbara… I watched young people frolicking in the surf… young men and women in love walking hand in hand as I had so long ago. I remembered playing with my daughter making sand castles and holding her to my breast as we waded in the waters for her first experiences with the ocean. My joy was with hers and my future was bright.

    This all came about in my mind like it was yesterday. I could still see the beauty and grace of it but I couldn’t feel a thing. I rushed back to my hovel and sat at my desk and poured three fingers of Jack Daniels in a mug topped with beer, I tossed it down for relief hoping to dissolve the lump in my throat… It worked… It always did…. But it didn’t erase the memory or the sickly feeling of sad nostalgia that haunted me. I didn’t know then what I was in for in the next twenty-seven days. I wrote in my journal: I prayed to God to give me back my soul and remembered Christ’s response to Satan, “What gain is it for a man to win the whole world and lose his soul?” Good question… without a soul there is no wonder to the world. I feel profoundly sad at the notion. I have no sense of wonder. I am lost to love --- what ever happened to my soul?

    I realize now that my bottom wasn’t the times I went to jail or the hospital, the lost of career or love. It was the slow separation and alienation of despair and longing that did me in. I saw joy leave my heart. I felt abandoned by God; and for good reason. I had turned my back on the Heart of Compassion. Yes, I remember that day so clearly because that was the place I came to where the spirit of renewal began its miracle in my heart. That was the altar of sacrifice required of me to shake the grip alcohol and drugs had on me. Prayers from the heart do get answered. "There are all sorts of remedies at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and movement." 

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