I used to say, it ain't no thing

 I'll walk until I stop

Just like all things must end.

We've had our Infinities

We've known what it means to be immortal.

We've walked in the valley and spoken with the ones we find there.

In sadness we linger at the end.

Fellowship with our kin

And God, just keeps on shining, because the end is why we started.

You who read/hear this. 

You are Buddha, you are Trump, and you are me, and we are all together. (sing it!)

If I have more moments to be 

More encounters with God staring back, 

Who am I to complain?

There are universes where I died on a Tuesday

Universes where Sofia now sleeps alone.

All I know is that this Universe is enough for you and me.

I'm just a guy who sees a person who awoke and looked at the world and thought, “I'll save who I can, until there is no one left to save.” 

For all of you are me 

and eventually we

Learn there is enough for everyone to

Be 

Queen of the May

The one on the cross

The star of the show

The center of it all

and it ain't no thing.

You can chase those waterfalls until water stops falling.

All will be well, she said. 

And all manner of things will be well.

We change our lives. It's what we do.

The world comes too

In passages of words 

Like the walls of an expressive cave

The world speaks to you.

Don't be afraid.

It's going to continue, in all its pain and in life's glory, and when it's finally over, you’ll rise again like I always have. 

There's room for us all, there's room to fall, there's a point where we can all

Say the madness doesn't have to be this way

And maybe, just maybe, this 

All of this

is a thing. 

• Andrew Birden, August 9, 2024

There I was, covered in flies, still on the dirt, a compost heap yet to compost. 

And the flies argued over my bones, and maggots burrowed into my flesh, 

And I asked myself, 

Is God here?

Am I here looking out through the history of this being and staring at the universe and knowing myself?

God allows much of the world clock to move on a setting of automatic. 

No attention, and just allowing the medium to do what the medium does when God leaves 10,000 things alone. 

Attention of a deity is a precarious thing. 

You can stare through your life and see only decay and corruption, 

Or you can stare through your life and see care and redemption. 

These divisions mean nothing to the fly, but the universe has flies regardless. 

The Creator, in the original causation, created flies, writ them whole to manifest at some point in the future or past or whatever time is.

I am trying to understand. 

I know that this life will end, and I know it never ends well when it comes to most of us. 

In fact, we don’t know what “ending well” even means. 

Truth be told, I’d rather it not end at all, and that is how I would call it ending well. 

But it does. End I mean.

This old body will be gone eventually. 

This old mind will lose its ability

To sense the universe.

It will happen to us all, eventually. 

The mind continues on, perhaps chugging along 

Until kablooie, it ends. 

Or it runs down like an engine running out of fuel, 

Puttering to a stop until the Creator breathes life into that expression once more. 

It’s funny how this I-ness wears an engram like the clothing for a video game character. 

This engram is the overlay on the common I-ness we all feel. 

It is difficult to change, for the world engraves that sense of self through DNA and circumstance. 

Yet once a child laughs, the soul is there. 

A being that can see the universe now residing in their body. 

The truth is, that personhood, this sense of the innate value of existence is not there for many beings.

This sense of I-ness might not emerge, like wanna-be astronomers never learning to use a telescope. 

They just stare at the night sky on occasion and know they missed something.

If we are to understand what it means to be in the universe, we must allow the creator to make a better self, make a graveside engram that is better than it was. 

This means allowing the universe to move forward and attempting to do the work you are meant to do.

If I could understand, If I could write the proper words, I would. I’d have done it in 1970 when I learned the purpose of writing. 

But I will never get it right. I will always be off, either through error from my broken self, or through error of other I-nesses misaligning with my words. 

But there is me, at least one, and I suspect there are others, who see the world through their actions to create balance and beauty, peace and conflict, silly and serious. 

In these parts, in these times, that is the best we can ask.

I am a seeker and a teacher, like the prophets of old, like the redeemers of the past, like the saints and the angels. 

And that “I” that seeks and teaches is able to do so because of the circumstances and resources I-the-Creator passed to it when that vessel came to be. 

The wonder of self examination is the recognition that the self is most important when it can see how common it is. 

• Andrew Birden, August 6, 2024