We’ve got blinders on

We’ve got blinders on, and they're four layers thick!

1.  Let’s admit it, we all have those times when its hard to tell the difference

Between our sense of ourselves and who we really might be
We have a psychological duality between what our senses tell us and what our heart tells us

2.  Moreover, we can often find it difficult to keep straight the difference

Between our inner models of the world and the world as it is out there
We have an empirical duality between subjective and objective ways of knowing things

3.  And gol dern it when we fail to navigate the difference

Between what it means to know and love another’s soul and still to love them bodily
We have a metaphysical duality competing between the values of matter and mind

4.  To top it all off we can’t ever really be sure the difference

Between your worldview and mine, no matter how same or different our expressions
We have a social duality of 'us' and 'them', and it's compounded by these prior dualities

What a four-fold pickle!  What a four-cornered cage!  How ever can we see?!

Luckily it seems we’ve poked a few pin holes in these blinders

And if we can just find the faith to peer around a bit

We might be able to connect a few daring dots

Let’s see if we can:

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1.  Psychology has shown us our unconscious selves
We have seen an interdependence between our awareness and our being

Alas we are who we are in spite of how partially we see our own reflections

2.  Science has shown us a verifiably consistent universe
We have found an interdependence between stones and stories, between data and theory

Alas the world is what it is in spite of all the ways we experience it

3.  Love has shown us a more excellent way
We have witnessed an incarnate interdependence between heaven and earth

Alas love is the only thing which ever remains in spite of all our fears and failures

4.  And myth has revealed our collective souls
We have identified an interdependence between the worlds of Self and Other
Alas from ancient times till now, miracles and myths have stirred and stilled our hearts

In spite of the existential expanse between our souls

For what else do we ultimately have to see and share with one another but

1.  A transcendent twinkle of an eye
2.  The grit between our teeth
3.  The healing touch of a hand
4.  Or a whispered word of wonder?

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The cosmos it seems, as best we can tell, is alive and burning

All things are moving out, mixing up, coursing and coming to pass

Our selves, our world, our loved ones, even our precious paradigms are entropic

All is like smoke

And yet in spite of this, something remains, and this is the realest miracle of all

That what remains is that very something without which

We could not even stand here to witness these flickering flames

What is this something?!  What is it that lasts in spite of all which comes to pass?!

Well I’m sorry to bring you this far

If only to say the answer I may not truly tell

That is, given our collectively compounded blind-fold condition

I dare not try to speak it with my sorely split and sutchered tongue

Yet, given our shared pin holes, perhaps all we may say for now

Is that it is right here, right now, piercing this present darkness

Right here, passing by our four-fold cleft

Right now, continually incarnating at hand

Can you feel it?  Can you stand it?

If you can

Can you find a way

1.  To see it in your self

2.  To see it in your world

3.  To see it in others

4.  To see it even through a stranger’s eyes?

If you can, if we can

Then I believe we already know what God is

And we need not necessarily talk about particular theologisms

Instead

Let us go break bread together my friends

For it is the evening of our human condition

And we’ve got a lot of life to bear in the morning.