As  a good friend kept telling me,  circumstances alter things.  And as birthdays gather behind one, one seeks the comfort places.  And at the keyboard with the mind in long conversations with compatriots, companions, in conference and in prayer, it is a comfortable place for me.

I asked Jon Katz of BedlamFarm.com to recommend a book on Kabbalah since he quoted the religion often.  What I did not remember ever reading and did not know was that Kabbalah was the religion or practice long before the conforming Jews were praying.

It was a form where what we call Sages were gathering and chasing down their thoughts and giving gratitude for life.  One sees the connection in the first chapter of Genesis.  Upon their death they were able then to enter what was home.

The Sages when they died would be thought to be as in the next room.  They were as close as thinking could be and were visited.  Part of the Sages’ knowledge was that they could be visited in graves and could be spoken to and they would answer.

And I too, now sit and converse and religions call it praying as easily as I do right now.  The Divine Within is the I Am of the each.  We are in conference.

The Road to Damascus. . .

And Paul,
on the road to Damascus, unaware
of forces pulling at his thought,
was none the less surprised.

In the privacy of mind, how could
an invasion of thought not his own
be in conference?
So it is,  in the wars of the visible

and invisible worlds, the
supremacy for power does not stop.
Our worlds!  Claim the gods. . .
My world!  Claims the pilgrim. . .

One in partnership till man
tasted the lust for power.
Lest we lose this,
the best of all classrooms,

brotherhood is still the dream
and our hearts still too unripe
to embrace its benevolence.
But its power of magnetism

still attracts
what prompted this dream,
that catapults us
to give search to the meaning

to the why of us. . . .