I sat on the back deck this evening, listening to the sounds of the crickets singing, feeling the soft breeze fragrant with the magnolia blossoms of the tree I planted a few years ago, seeing the stars peeking through wide holes in the drifting clouds, and seeing reflections of lightning way off in the distance… All of it put me into a bit of an altered state…

I wish everyone could Know the God I Know.. How I wish everyone could feel the way IT ruffles my hair with the wind, and breezes into my ear, “I am IN LOVE with you!” I wish everyone could see the magnificent love that I see in the stars and fireflies twinkling at each other, the munificent smile in the soft roundness of the rising moon, how my God wraps ITS arms around me and kisses my face with the great golden warmth of the sun…

I see my God reflected in every pair of eyes, ablaze in every heart, radiant in every smile… In the voices of mothers kissing their babies goodnight, the soft voices of lovers talking in bed in the darkness before sleep, the way the light lays across the land… I hear IT in the songs of crickets, running water, the shouting of the sea and thunder and music…

This is the God that I know… All loving, all forgiving, supremely detached and at once, deeply personal and reflected in every atom and molecule of the universes! God speaks!! Everywhere! In everything!! In me! In you!

Love and longing and eternity and distance and death and birth… That voice, the Logos, is in every sound, that love reflected in every love. So far beyond mere words and great hymns and the greatest feats of architecture and art and beauty, and reflected in all of it and shining and shouting and whispering and speaking from everywhere!

This God that I know… So far beyond religions and denominations and systems and techniques… The very spark that animates every living creature. It all grows pale with the clumsiness of mere words. It is Knowing.

And IT is far beyond my paltry skills of articulation, but I was inspired to try, just the same. I recognize and respect that this may not be the God that anyone else believes in, and that peoples’ theologies and systems differ, and that a lot of people simply don’t believe in God at all. For me, this is something that supersedes belief. I am a born skeptic. But this Knowing… I can’t remember a time when I didn’t Know this.

So… This is my attempt at supplying some kind of introduction to this God that I Know, however wholly inadequate, tho’ it may be…

The moon dropped her clothes into
the garden pond, and utterly enchanted with
love for her
I swallowed the sky.
It tasted like rain
and wine
and dandelions
and babies
and made my heart
smile like the sun.

I burn for you

On fire in sweetest agony and begging for mercy to be utterly consumed enraptured filled and the sum of my being rearranged flayed from my bones and molded under your hands against your flesh against mine around you around me to the peaks of triumphant cumulus clouds exploding in waves of fire ice and sweat breaking beading washing in luminous tides to drown us in oceans of violet desire and wafting us on swelling fragrant updrafts to soar as eagles on the dawn and through silvery seas of the Milky Way to sip the nectar of the Big Dipper and inscribe our confident arch across the universe as we are launched from the bow of Orion to plummet into rippling seas of golden barley and warm wildflowers.

I burn for you

Her breath stirring expectant leaves that
whisper sweetly under warm
hymns of the cicadas

Building higher and more majestic her
voluptuous cumulus rises in a shuddering sigh
her face growing dusky with growing ardor
her ragged gasps ringing hot against my cheek

Thunderclap of her climax and silver rain laughing down
on this withered land, quenching my parched lips.
I turn my face to the sky and laugh against her humid thigh.

-Frank H. Weeden

Look at how kids finger-paint. This is the secret, I’ve found, to doing anything… Kids just spill the paint all over the place, play around, smear it all over the place, and never give a thought to whether or not they are making a mess, making mistakes, or anything else. They do it for the simple joy of doing it! I think the key is not to grade yourself. If you make a mistake, hit a sour note, or whatever… So what? It’s not the end of the world. Try and try again…

I was at a piano recital, years ago, and there was a 10-year old boy on stage. He started playing and botched it badly. He threw his head back and just laughed and laughed. It was infectious… Pretty soon, everyone in the audience was crackin’ up. Then he went on to just NAIL the performance. The simple, beautiful joy and laughing at his own mistakes… That’s something that’s really stuck with me.

It’s not such serious business… In this hyper-critical age, we find ourselves becoming rigid. We pick one thing and pour ourselves into it, and if we paint, maybe we secretly would love to be able to play the guitar. If we play the guitar, maybe we would secretly love to sculpt or throw pottery or try our hand at sketching, weaving, playing the piano, or woodworking.

Get some books, gather the materials, and just DO IT! Allow yourself to make mistakes, and know that with patience, humor, and tenacity, anyone can do anything! There are no limits but those we place on ourselves!

Oh, but we don’t have time, we’re too old, we’ll never be any good, people will laugh, blah blah blah… A thousand excuses we come up with to cover our fear. It’s never too late! As long as you can move your body and draw breath into your lungs, it’s never ever too late to begin. It doesn’t matter where you end up, whether you become a professional musician, an artist with accolades and fan mail pouring in… It is you, and it is expressing you and your own unique voice in the most masterful way you possibly can, at your current level of skill, and within yourself, you have to KNOW that it’s enough, has always been enough, and will always be enough, no matter what anyone else ever thinks or says.