spiritual life | The Direction of Intention

Beyond Words [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 29, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes the obvious is hard to write about. A heart path. A heart on the path. My mind jumped to the easiest association: a heart path is a metaphor for a spiritual life. Despite the countless tomes written across cultures and through the ages, including the current river of memes flowing across our screens, a spiritual life is impossible to wrap in words. Yet we have a long and complex history of trying.

I have friends who are Buddhist, friends who are Christian, friends who are Jewish, friends who are Muslim. I’ve spent time with Hindu priests and I’ve been introduced to the Tao. As they say, many paths, one destination. Heart paths, all. It is worth remembering that no single path is better or worse than any other. As Joseph Campbell suggested, religions are vehicles. A ride share.

A spiritual path need not require a deity or a book of rules. As Kerri says, “If it’s not about kindness it’s not about anything.” Kindness is an expression of the heart. Kind-heartedness. Warm-heartedness. Tender-heartedness. A heart path invokes this quality: selflessness. Deities and rulebooks can be twisted, human-made as they are, to serve un-kind, selfish intentions. Stoke divisions. Division is the opposite of a heart path. Kindness is an expression of unity.

A heart is a good symbol for the path because we all have one – every single one of us. Skin color, cultural orientation, systems of belief, sexual identity…do not alter the simple fact: we have hearts in common. Many hearts (plural) reaching for the single shared heart. One heart (singular).

Transcendent.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEART ON THE PATH

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Understand That Little Is More Than Enough [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 1, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I think that maybe\ I will be surer\ of being a little nearer.\ That’s all. Eternity\ is in the understanding\ that that little is more than enough.” ~ R.S. Thomas [via Anam Cara by John O’Donohue]

And so our dear H is gone. I have written about him before, about how I learned from him how to age well. To “have a wonderful urgency to live life to the full” [John O’Donohue]. H was a study in wonderful urgency. He did not grow cranky as he grew old. He did not darken his sight with what he could no longer do. He gently pushed the edges of what he could do. He was a master of focus-placement.

I have known many people who proclaim a spiritual life. They are quick to advertise their illumination. They live to stand on the mountain top and call attention to their heights. H was not one of those. He simply lived his faith as he lived his life – without need for acknowledgment or recognition. No trumpet necessary. I suspect that his why I was drawn to him. He was simon-pure. Genuine.

“We’re afraid you’re going to take her from us,” H said to me, more warning than salutation, when I sat next to him in choir. It was my first rehearsal in my first choir and, as an avowed non-singer, I was intimidated. Kerri was the director. She’d recently asked H, at 87 years old, to rap Via Dolorosa. He’d jumped at the challenge and, as I heard the story, performed brilliantly, complete with costume and bling. He and Kerri were thick as thieves.

He guided me through that first rehearsal, laughed when I honked a bad note – which was often, and, by sweet example over time, steered me through my confusion until I found more joy than fear in singing. At the end, as he was moving into his 94th year, just before the pandemic made rehearsals impossible, it was my joy to help him find his place in the music. A perfect circle.

This morning, just before we received the news of his passing, I spent some time in the final pages of Anam Cara. The last words are a Blessing for Death and this phrase struck me: May you live compassionately and creatively and transfigure\ everything that is negative within you and about you. When the news came of his passing, I was certain it was H who’d tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Pay attention to this phrase.” It describes him perfectly. It encapsulates what I believe, H, without words, was trying to teach me. Through compassion and creativity, transfigure everything that is negative within you and about you. That is how to live well and age with wonderful urgency. No trumpet necessary.

read Kerri’s blog post about H