The excerpt from Paul Tillich’s book, “On Boundaries” I shared recently is a prophetic word for us.  And in pointing out what “ails us” a prophet is “doom preaching” in some manner and one of my readers definitely took it that way.  I appreciate his “like” of the post and his “bothering” to share with me his take on the Tillich shared there, though I disagreed with its tenor.

Tillich lived and spoke with hope as did many Germans of his day, Dietrich Bonnhoeffer and Hannah Arendt for example. Tillich, Bonhoeffer, and Arendt were seers, prophets in a very real sense as they were keenly “aware of the present moment,” this “awareness” a gift to one with a prophetic voice.The gifted historian William Irwin Thompson noted that a prophet, “is not so much having the ability to foretell the future but the ability to be aware of the implications of the present.”  We have them in our world today in the art and literary fields as well as with spiritually astute individuals like Richard Rohr, Marriane Williamson, and the Reverend William Barber, to name but a few.

But the reader’s response made me aware of the “tenor” of what I think, say, do, and “write” in this venue.  Even the very profound excerpt from the Tillich book, “Boundaries” makes a statement about the one who was writing and is sharing.  Someone once said, “Give a kid a hammer and everything is a nail.” Yes, the post of yesterday is another example of a “kid with a hammer” in a very real sense.  Yes, “in a sense,”  I am a very judgemental person and occasionally realize that in the formative years of my life, I would even say early moments, I “felt” judged and thus became a “judge” in a sense.  But mercifully I see this on occasion and “tone it down” a bit, look around for a moment and see the beauty of the world that surrounds me.  

For example, let me share with you a visit from Beauty which I was blessed with on Sunday morning last.  Shortly after awakening, I walked into the living room and noticed the bird-storm outside my windows, the flurry of birds delighting in the feeders I have out to win their favor.  This alone always quietens the din of heavy-handed, ponderous, pontificating that is always so ready to lure me from the Grace of simply “being here.”  There was a warm fire crackling in the wood stove to my left, a cup of hot coffee before me, and my beautiful little dachshund, Petey, curled up beside me.  Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” was playing on the Dish-satellite music channel. In a few moments my lovely wife began to rehearse on her Grand Piano for the music program at a nearby little Methodist church a bit later, via Zoom.  The old hymns from my youth stirred my soul as she played them and sang along, Petey joined occasionally when he deemed the key in tune with his musically sensitive ears.  (Admittedly, Petey’s “singing” would be dismissed by less refined listeners as a lot of barking and whining!)  In an hour or so, Petey and l shifted venues in our house to the sunroom as my wife joined her church service.  Petey and I call the lovely sunroom on this occasion, “the penalty box” as it keeps his highly-skilled and sophisticated voice from interfering with the church service. There Petey and I are delighted with the view of a sun-filled desert behind our house, the back-splash of which is the stunning Taos Mountain Range, snow-covered from recent snow-fall.  According to local lore, these mountains are sacred and their “call” leads some people to move here and take root which we did seven years ago.  We are honored because these mountains did not “kick us out” as, per local lore, will happen to some who move here but who don’t last long.  We passed the ancient test of these mountains and are honored.

Whatever out thoughts, whatever their tenor, they will pass.  As someone said, “We are not our thoughts. are the ones having them.”  Therefore, “Don’t believe everything you think!!!”