Wilderness Wonderings...

After way too long, I’m back. In the last three years, I pretty much exchanged the world of words, ideas and thoughts for a world of pictures, memes, pithy sayings and ‘likes.’ No more. There is no less. The world in which I wish to live is a world of words and ideas, of thoughts and musings. I want to live in a more meaningful world, a thoughtful world, a purposefully expressed world. If there are pictures, I want to share pictures that have meaning, that capture more than breakfast omelets, that will have meaning and purpose and arouse feelings and thoughts long after I am gone. I want what I write to be accessible again and again…and to have meaning, to invite people to think, to capture moments, ideas and events that merit remembrance. May I find myself a part of a growing community of like-minded, mindful, mind-enriching men and women who want their lives to matter, who want their thoughts to be heard and remembered, who live beyond ‘8hrs ago.’ So, I return to t...

I feel it all around me.  When I’m at the college, I feel it.  When I’m at the grocery store, I feel it.  When I’m at church, I feel it.  I speak of that underlying sense of urgency that seems to permeate so many parts of our lives, that subsonic, subliminal message of “hurry, hurry; do it now; let’s get it done….”  Perhaps I show my West Indian hand here.  But, if that is the case, then we here in North America have something to learn from the West Indies…and much of Latin America, Africa and Asia.  Okay…we have something to learn from most of the rest of the world! Why the urgency?  Perhaps it has something to do with our American perception that we must be “first” in the world.  Biggest, best, fastest, strongest…pick the superlative adjective, and we want to apply it to ourselves here in the US.  On a local level, apply these same superlatives to individual companies, schools, etc.  And, if we’re going to be the best, first...

An empty cup sits before me, a gift from friends…given to me when I was in Prague, Czech Republic, in October 2008, a small token of remembrance on my birthday while I was away from home. That cup is now my espresso cup, filled and drained daily…much to my mind’s content. I keep learning that the greatest joy and contentment usually comes from the simple things in life. I think back to the really expensive gifts I’ve received or even the expensive things I’ve bought…and I struggle to bring them to mind; they’re all but forgotten. But those simple things that brought and bring such joy? They are there at the mere thought: My espresso cup. A small fire on a cool, Fall evening. Sitting on a beach, shore or rocky edge overlooking a bay or the sea. The smell of cookies in the oven. Reading through “The Sermon on the Mount”…again. My old copies of Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton) and Mere Christianity (C.S.Lewis). My children laughing together as they tell a tale from days past....