We really have to give up the notion of being in control. It’s never going to happen and it keeps us from enjoying the profound Mystery (Mysteries?) of Life.

We’re so busy being in control that we can’t pay attention. The fog creeps in from the river and spreads out across the land and all we can think about is interference with our drive to work. We know that there’s fog (at least in this season) because the earth is warmer than the air and so when the cold air meets the warm earth sprites dance, I mean mist happens.

If we miss the Mystery, we miss the incredible privilege and responsibility of living. Not that list of responsibilities, but the honor of meeting life face to face and then working to protect and enrich it. The realization that what is here took millions of years to develop and that we are merely witnesses and not the destination of that work.

Control is about fear and the fear leads us no place good. It puts us behind barricades and separates us from each other… It makes our work and existence so wildly important and forgets how incredibly transient our lives are, in the end.

Stop, look at the mist. Find the creatures in the clouds, wonder at the beauty of the river, teach your children to do the same. And while you’re at it, sign the petitions, and show up and protest the actions that will despoil the world (ours only in the sense that we are bound to protect it). Here’s a great place for you to do that… they want to build a tire burner on the river… (the oldest river in the world!) by a school… (our children!). Complain fight struggle against the culture of violence that pervades our schools and allows our children to believe that killing people is a way to deal with our problems. Oh, it’s a sad morning with more children engaged in violence and death, even here in our privileged  country.

The Mystery must be observed with wonder. And Peace pursued gently and with great determination.