Transcript for January 10, 2010 by Bob Kleinheksel

We pause and sit in the stream of life, rooted, grounded – now unfolding, opening to the sound of silence. We are soft as cotton fluff; we are hardened like sun-baked roads. All temperaments abide and abound. All personalities, persnickety and patient. Together, we make up the human tapestry – a patch-work diversified in color and character, age and pattern. We are guided by new inspiration this day: This snow-shrouded day, a winter-wrapped day full of possibility and fresh-eyed beauty.

Be aware of the beating of your heart and the warm presence of those to your right and to your left.

We celebrate infinite life. We celebrate life after life and all life that emerges and continues in mystery and beauty – known and unknown, seen and unseen, from birth, through death. We see the beauty of red births in infants and agonize over red deaths through war and treachery. In between it all, we contemplate our flash of existence, stardust masquerading and manifesting as human flesh and blood, mortal and raw, bloody and real. The universe in human form; God, the divine, Life in human forms. What a wonder. What a daily miracle occurring again and again and again….

We admit the focus upon dwelling on the hereafter, knowing full well many are frightened of an earthly end, of death and dying. Whether it be a cult of eternal certainty, a comfort for ego immortality, or simple relief and hope that we are not done, we cannot help but wonder. We abide in honest questions about what may continue, in memory and mystery, in heaven or hydrogen. Might there be a state with no more suffering, no more pain, sadness and discouragement – a new heaven and new earth – as spoken about of old? We join with Jewish brothers and sisters and all people in bold inquiry, gentle relinquishing and daring determination to live now, to be amply aware of what is and how this leads to what is yet to come. Perhaps it is our words that echo on, our actions and habits that linger through the hands, embrace and gaze of those left; our character that lives on and on and is made real through those remaining.

Whether we experience a grim line of subsistence, or animal fat excess, callousness or compassion – let us live out now the rituals of our flesh and bones to satisfy and even subvert our deeper yearnings for the beyond – to be alive and to be known by our fellows. To be seen and heard. Let us live out now the keepsakes of this time beyond hunger and death; let us resist any preoccupation that violates life and the living. For this earth may be our tomb, but it is also our cradle of hope.

On we march, clasping hands with those despairing, all those struggling, all healing, neighbors, those anxious, those alone, those unemployed, those hungry and war torn. And we remember the rest of our blistered, blessed, beautiful human journey mates that join with all of nature in bundles of grief and in exuberant shouts of delight…onward, marching, living, wondering, wandering…and always asking, Where to and what next? Amen.