{"id":708,"date":"2007-05-16T23:50:28","date_gmt":"2007-05-17T03:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/2007\/05\/16\/alone-with-him-alone\/"},"modified":"2022-03-30T14:19:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T18:19:05","slug":"alone-with-him-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/archives\/708","title":{"rendered":"Alone… with Him alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything felt rotten today. Terie went to the ER with severe spinal pain, and Bruce almost ended up there, too. I was stressed out anyway, because I\u2019ve been trying to get the Band Festival poster to the printer for the past three days. There were last-minute revisions to the sponsor list, plus I’ve had pressing commercial deadlines rubbing my nerves raw. A local reporter keeps calling about doing a feature on my painting, Spellbound By Brass.<\/em> In a momentary lapse of discipline I say, \u201cIf I don\u2019t get this poster right, there will be nothing to toot my horn about.\u201d <\/p>\n

Damn… tripped up again by an illusion of chaos and the sense of disorder. Ralph Waldo reminds me that, \u201cThere is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation.\u201d I must believe it’s true, even on days like today. I must have full faith in a divine order\u2014the reality and foundation that underlies this \u201ckingdom of illusions.\u201d I must never think I\u2019m too busy not to keep this reality before me, hour by hour. \u201cWhatever games are played with us,\u201d Emerson writes, \u201cwe must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth… and taste the real quality of existence, as in our employments, which only differ in the manipulations, but express the same laws; or in our thoughts, which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams.\u201d Why is it so difficult for me to \u201csee God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature\u201d when in the jaws of masticating days such as these\u2014not on a day when it\u2019s easy, but on a day when it matters?<\/p>\n

This line of thinking takes me back to my birthday, flying from Dallas to Detroit, unable to pull my eyes away from the images far below my window\u2019s point of view. I was expecting to review my notes from three days of high-intensity exposure to powerful speakers, significant motivators all, but I couldn\u2019t ignore the sights under the speeding craft, the living plains and wooded river bottoms as we crossed the heart of my beloved motherland. I could see the hand of Nature in the centuries-old patterns of meandering watercourses and how the farmers had endeavored to exploit the riches of her fertile, changing designs\u2014everywhere, the evidence of God\u2019s magnificent Kosmos,<\/em> and it caused my soul to sing. It triggered previous experiences of knowing what is real, in contrast to what I\u2019ve conditioned myself over my life to think is real. I wanted to have that profound knowledge stay with me always, but I recognized it would pass, so I tried to hold on to one point of reality that might \u201cstick\u201d with me\u2014that I am loved, that I can love in return, and that I can be in that reality no matter what is going on around me, no matter what conditions or circumstances challenge my thoughts or emotions. I wondered if I could hold on to that idea, and not fail to safeguard it, as Tolstoy\u2019s Olenin had failed when he returned from nature to the Cossack village. And so I prayed, as I watched America sliding by, knowing there would be times like now, when my resilience to illusion would be shallow in the face of daily influences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything felt rotten today. Terie went to the ER with severe spinal pain, and Bruce almost ended up there, too. I was stressed out anyway, because I\u2019ve been trying to get the Band Festival poster to the printer for the past three days. There were last-minute revisions to the sponsor list, plus I’ve had pressing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,42,40,44,25,6,67,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3096,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/3096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}