simplicity

What seems to most attract me is the shape, beauty and service of a simple bowl. My favorite pottery form is a tea bowl, but these bowls I also find attractive. I like the way they turn in at the top. It makes mixing in them easier because the liquid does not flop out while the whisk is doing its work. I like the oval shape because it keeps warm things warmer longer by not having such an open mouth. But mostly I like how uncomplicated the shape is. These bowls just sit there ready to do their job, but when the food gets to the table, all they do is present the nourishing food.

I long to live a simpler life so that I am that way. I want to offer my friends warm, nutritious food and friendship without being anything more than the conveyor of the nourishment and warmth. I believe that all love and all generativity comes from God. And I believe that we humans and the rest of all creation are simply the conveyors of that which God would lavish on God's creation.

As I look at creation and look at the universe which is available to me and look at life as I see it here on this tiny planet I am amazed by people who cannot see the existence of a creator and loving nurturer of life. This earth with is complexity of interaction and beauty could no less have happened by an accidental explosion than a car could be left having been assembled and purring with the engine running and the seat warmers warming after a tornado whipped through a car factory.

But what is hard is not to be too greedy and not to let life get too complicated and not to miss the love and friendhip which seems to have been the point of all of this.

Alone versus lonely

"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; ... if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free." [Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Idea," 1818]


Solitude is a wonderful thing when one is centered and feeling well about oneself. Solitude allows time to reflect and to sit with feelings - even the unpleasant ones - so that healing and integration can occur. But solitude's joy can, in my life at least, so easily turn to loneliness like milk turning in the refrigerator so that something that was wonderful becomes something that is hard to choke down.


I wonder about being alone and being lonely. Being alone does not bother me and sometimes I need it. Being lonely is a very different thing and can happen just as easily when I feel isolated in my farmhouse as when I am in a group - but unhappy being there.

The Rublev Icon (above) reminds me that I am never alone and that loneliness is something which I bring to the table of life and that when I do, it rarely goes well for me. Loneliness is a choice even if that "choice" is the sum of many choices which repell the people in our lives.


It can be hard living out in the countryside as I do. My dog makes it possible as do my friends. Friends visit and they call and that keeps my living "alone" feeling serene while keeping "loneliness" at bay - most days.

God lives in a constant state of joyful and loving community as three in one - three persons in one God. As hard a concept as that is to understand, it is comforting to me to be invited into the love and life of a God whose existence is at a table with a chair welcoming me and all of humanity to it. Even when I feel lonely, this image reminds me that the feeling is just a feeling and will go as fast as it came.

The presence of a dog

I share this farm house with my English black lab named "Kai." The name comes from "kairos" which is a Greek term for "the time in which God lives." There are two kinds of time in theological terms. One kind of time is chronos time - chronos - like chronology - the clicking of seconds and minutes and hours of human clock time. This kind of time in which humans live on earth, based on the movement of the planets, did not become much of a big deal until the early 1800's when time became "money" in our western culture as factories became prevalent and clocking-in for work became the way people were managed and - soon - the way humanity was judged by itself.

Kairos time, on the other hand, is not linear like chronos time is. Kairos time does not move from second to second to minute to hour to day and to year in a line moving forward in one direction with the past lost and the future unknown. Kairos time is less like a line on a page with notches moving relentlessly in one direction. Kairos time is not an advancement of a commodity which is lost as it moves forward. Kairos time is a way of being.

Kairos time, that "time" in which God lives is not linear but is three-dimensional. Kairos time is a time of constant love, playfulness and creativity. kairos time is not gained or lost. It is not used up or spent. Kairos time is a way of being rather than the being itself. If chronos time is seen as a line with notches in it then Kairos time is "laughter at a dinner table" or "two fiends sharing their lives with each other" or "sex" or "one's favorite food."

God lives in the midst of three persons, as three persons - and God's only experience of "alone" was very brief and still, was in the context of a simultaneous experience of not being alone. God lives in a constant kaleidoscope of love and playfulness and joyful self-expression and a bit of silliness (take , for example, the platypus, the blue-footed booboe or a puppy chasing his tail!).

I named my silly, goofie, loving lab "Kai" because he draws me out of chronos time and into Kairos time. He draws me out of a time of post-industrial revolution time-cards and day-timers and into the silly, loving playfulness to which we are all called every moment and into which we may dive with reckless abandon if we give ourselves the counter-cultural permission to do so.