I have delayed posting because of ill health.  Also because I wondered if what I have been involved in has been so much busy work.  At times we have to confront and reassess.  And because I am heavy with verbiage,  there is much verification.  Not all bad and some even passable.  I have written on this subject of thought before but feel it necessary to repeat.  To think is a real gift given and work it is.   It is a practice most avoid.

I remember three compliments given taken to heart.  My brother in law, who said he liked asking me questions because he knew I researched and young friend Mark who said he saw me with only one face, never changing from private to public and our David who when he received his phi beta kappa key turned and gave it to me because he said I earned it because I never closed the books.

Since I am in the decade leading to a hundred years, I take stock in reading journal entries.  I have to because I cannot believe this life.

January 7, 1988   journal . . . I write,  Cannot sleep after reading Albert Schweitzer and the section on parallel lives, and Buddha with no satisfaction.  I read what others were thinking but nothing new.  I left the book with the feeling that not a one of those learned men spoke with any authority.  This is not to dismiss the good that they did in life at all.

But none had experienced anything to have them think other than what was rote.  Nothing original. No one said that when he experienced what was written resulted in new thought. Or if disagreeing, why?   What if anything rocked the brain’s marbles into new thought.  It amounted to compilation of thought as a lump of clay and dead.

The rote delivered was that Jesus was not influenced by Buddha.  Even considering the times and their own progression among humans, we learned  we are the sum of who has gone before us.  Just as Buddha also had something happen in his enlightenment under the Bo tree.   Who is self made?

How could Jesus not be influenced, whether by having an open mind at birth or whether at baptism his head or mind was opened?  Or as a young man making his way from place to place where Sages puzzled the sacred arguments with no closure, he must have concluded causes for man’s lack of progress? 

What I hunger for is someone to say because of this happening, my thinking changed and so my life.  I do not wish to dismantle illusions for many are legitimate and necessary.  I have come to conclusions wrought by footwork, muscle and heart and cosmic intervention to have my body and limbs seize on me. 

I see also those in power were not even vetted for common sense.  Who play on the fears of common man who have not been encouraged to think on their own.    All that is required is for their hard earned dollars to line the pockets of fear mongers who promise to take care of them so they pocket more workers’ dollars.

Questions we should always ask of ourselves and others.  And take the time necessary to think them through.    Is it life giving or life taking.?  There is no argument with the answers, now is there?  As complicated or simple as we are able to think.  But listen carefully to how you answer. 

May you walk in good conscience, deeply rooted.  In whatever world you walk in.

photo taken by
Kathy Qualiana of my brother,
her father, Stanley