growing

I am reading a new book, one recommended by a wonderful artist friend of mine – hmmmm – it is unlike anything I’ve ever read and having an impact on me – something a good book should do. To kinda get off the track here, once, I wrote something in my newspaper column that was “different” from the things I had written before and I was hesitant to go with it here in this small town, so I asked the editor to read and approve it – he went with it and told me that it’s a good thing to put controversy out there – tactfully – it rattles people a bit and causes them to evaluate their own opinions. Well, this book would follow that thinking, for me anyway.

 I have just read the first 2 chapters but I’m captured with the out of the box thinking. I am not making a recommendation until I finish it, but I will say, just the first few pages have given me a healthy perspective on my life and the things that matter. The jest of it is that this material world is quiet incidental and certainly temporal, what matters is the spiritual world. Funny, but just this week end at my aunt’s funeral I had a conversation with someone, much older, who had those same words to speak – explaining his effort to be more spiritual (not making reference to religious) and far less material. I think about the pharaohs and their elaborate efforts to hoard all of their stuff to bring with them in the afterlife – the lives lost, the time spent to satisfy ego – hopefully we’re smarter today.

I find it so freeing to discount the physical world and focus more on spirit. I have little or no control over one and total control over the other. When I reference the material/physical world I don’t mean just materialism, for me, it also encompasses happenings, not just things. It all goes under that umbrella of “what was I worrying about or upset about last month”? Who knows – who cares – it’s temporal and gone. I find more sense in assessing my spiritual growth from last month to this month – how have I contributed, how have I grown more tolerant of others, and patient with myself. Anyway, I hope to make a recommendation of this “mystery” book later, but so far, it’s got my attention.

B kind

p s