The Blog

The Blog

©2016 Rolland G. Smith

I did not do a blog today

A blog I did not do.

I really should have done a blog

So not to worry you.

Tomorrow is another day

Of thought and things like that.

Perhaps a spark of something great

Will start a lasting chat.

But if tomorrow is a blank

And I take off the day.

Please know that I am thinking hard

To find some thing to say.

And then again, if I’m not here

To write a note profound.

I’ll leave this post just where it is

Till new thoughts come around.

Looking Up

I did something recently that not too many people do, either because they live in cities where it is more difficult because of ambient artificial light or they live in rural areas, but are not aware of the profound experience that awaits them in a few short steps in the darkness from the door.

I walked out of the house, got clear of the trees, and looked up. I used to do this as a kid, but we adults don’t often take the time.

It was a picture window clear night. Speckled tiny dots of stars peppered the cosmos. Galaxies swirled emitting their small pins of brilliant light. The Milky Way shone a path to the universe that only a mind of wonder can appreciate.

Emerson once wrote: “If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.”

I did.

Easter

For Christians, this past weekend culminated the solemn and holy conclusion of Lent and the joyous time of Easter Sunday.

The truths, of a teaching Jesus, amplify the redemptive belief of the crucifixion and remind us that choosing joy is also part of daily living.

His death on the cross was a Divine choice of unconditional love, not an action to engender sorrow or retribution.

In these times of fear and protection, let us not forget the many lessons of the Cross.

Jesus died teaching forgiveness. He preached that we should look at our world with compassion and love in our hearts, not with the narrowness of a blinded and dispassionate ego mired in retribution.
Through his suffering, the Anointed One asked that we choose to love as the celebration of life and the way to honor the Divine within ourselves and others.

It is often hard to embrace the centuries-old message of Easter when we are mired in seeming fear and worry from terrorist’s threats. When we are occupied with concern for our servicemen and women and their safety in so many fields of harm.

Easter for Christians around the world is a time of renewal and rebirth, not only of one’s faith but also of the joy and peace that is supposed to come from the practice of that faith.

There is good in all faiths, all religions, and in all beliefs. It is man who creates the differences and the conflicts, believing that is the way to worship the one God of many names.

I hope your Easter experience and earthly renewal was and is sacred and amplifies your hopes and wishes.

A Simpler Time

I remember a number of things that the young people of today have never heard of, or remember only in stories from family conversations.

When I was fourteen, I joined the Junior Ground Observer Corps. This was in the middle 1950’s, and America struggled in the cold war fear that Russian bombers could attack us.

My Father built a fallout shelter in the basement It wasn't much. I wouldn't have worked, but it was there. I joined the Junior Ground Observer Corps in my community. A bunch of us kids would volunteer to take a shift of time in a tall tower on a high point in our town calling in the altitude and direction of any plane we could observe with binoculars. We were sort of citizen radars using our eyes instead of electronic beams.

I was given a wallet-size plastic card with little transparent circles on it. The circles ranged in size from just smaller than a dime to about a quarter inch in diameter. When a plane would fly over, I would hold the plastic card at arms length and fit the plane’s silhouette into one of the circles. Depending on what circle the plane fit into, I could determine the approximate altitude.

Then I’d pick up the phone, there were no dials on it, and an operator would say, “number please” and I’d say, “Aircraft flash” and be immediately connected to some distant military voice.

I’d give my location, and then the approximate altitude, the direction of travel and the type of plane I observed, prop or jet, how many engines it had if I could determine it and then hang up.

Eventually, radar got better, and the Ground Observer Corps was no longer needed. The towers vanished, but not the memories of a simpler time.

Staying in the positive

My thought wanderings this morning are motivated by the current climate of fear that seems to permeate the daily realms of our magnificent world.

I have come to realize that fear and trust are inimical. They cannot co-exist. You cannot tie one to the other for trust is real, and fear is an illusion. No matter how we let fear manifest in the mind, it is still fiction, a false emotion precipitated by fear mongers and sustained by the ego. Trust, however, is a freeing gift from the benevolent and infinite Source that allows us to accept that things are as they are and as we create them on our path to enlightenment.

Throughout history humankind has been using fear as the great motivator, the great blindness not to see the serendipitous joy in living. Individuals, groups, societies and countries have used fear as the reason to react. I have come to believe that once we acknowledge the genesis of fear, and trace it honestly to its creator, the ego, it can no longer instigate or be the catalyst for adverse action. When fear does not exist, sacred and unconditional trust emerges.

In my 74 years of shared emotions and blended tears in just the living of life, I have come to realize the importance of the truth of living in the moment, the “Now.”

I have always felt truth’s power, but its slamming reality is always brought home through a crisis, through experience, through meditation, through prayer and especially through joy. I believe we are eternal, and each life is not only a physical construct but a spiritual reality as we merge into the mystical Oneness of the inner universe.

So much for wanderings this Thursday morning. Have a perfect day.

Once Again

Once Again

©2016 Rolland G. Smith

And once again, a hatred came to kill.

Once again the innocent lay and die.

Once again, ICIS, the scourge of Islam

Embraced the bomb to make Earth's children cry.

Noble Belgium we share your painful loss.

Your pain and fear reminds us of our past,

When planes destroyed our trading towers high.

We hope the Brussels blasts will be the last.

Oh, ICIS you are not Mohammad's kin!

The Prophet weeps and aches within his grave

For what you do in Islam's name and shame,

And all the world calls you Satan's slave.

Once again, Lord, please, never once again.

Let the carnage, the pain, and sorrow end.

We are all spirits of the same love's gift.

Please show the way for conflicts to transcend.

Let all the candles of the world ignite,

And let the flames of love embrace the hate

And end the cause of pain with Source’s light

So human kind can be its sacred fate.

Spring Snow

I wrote this little poem for a friend who sent me a wonderful photograph, on the first day of spring, of a room with flowers on the table, a fire in a stove and snow outside through the windows. I titled it differently for my friend, but “Spring Snow” for the rest of us.

Spring Snow

©2016 Rolland G. Smith

Spring Lilies on the table

And a fire in its place,

Mark the season’s change to spring

Despite the snow’s embrace.

The white beyond the window

And the warmth from hearth and heart

Comforts all who nestle here

As snow and cold depart.