The story is as follows: A group of Geography students studied the Seven Wonders of the World. At the end of that section, the students were asked to list what they considered to be the Seven Wonders of the World. Though there was some disagreement, the following got the most votes:

1. Egypt’s Great Pyramids
2. Taj Mahal
3. Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter’s Basilica
7. China’s Great Wall

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student, a quiet girl, hadn’t turned in her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list. The girl replied, ‘Yes, a little. I couldn’t quite make up my mind because there were so many.’ The Teacher said, ‘Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help.’ The girl hesitated, then read aloud, ‘I think the Seven Wonders of the World are:

1. To touch
2. To taste
3. To see
4. To hear

…hesitating she continued…

     5.  To run

     6.  To laugh

     7.  And to Love’

 I guess the point is that this weekend all of us have access to some of the greatest wonders the world has to offer – and they didn’t come from our peers, either. If we choose to be attuned to these things, I’m thinking that no matter how our week has been, we will experience delight, gratitude, love, empathy and compassion in ways often not recovered by living rote lives given to the tyranny of the good – but in the present moment something much greater than good extends itself to us all.

Have a great weekend!

     I have a thousand brilliant lies

                For the question:

                  How are you?

      I have a thousand brilliant lies

                For the question:

                  What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known

                    From words,

  If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

     Can pass through that tiny opening

                Called the mouth,

     O someone should start laughing!

Someone should start wildly laughing –

                        Now!

I love this poem because it is something I have lived – something I believe all of us have lived. In contrast to assemblies and seminars and meetings and spiritual gatherings of all sorts where mounts of information is heaped upon us and all sorts of admonishment is coming fast and furious, it only takes one trip to the ocean to hear the voice of creation and know it is here that our Beloved sings.

I do my best to make it to the Caribbean at least once a year just to unwind, release and embrace that primal energy resonating at the waters’ edge. Even as I type these words, with little reflection I can feel the breeze – part air, part vapor – much heavier than the mountain air I’m accustomed to breathing. As I close my eyes and enter into stillness even now I can hear the waves lapping the shoreline, I can picture the rising or setting sun and hear the sounds of the gulls singing that all is well. And it is. All is very well. In the midst of ‘what is,’ all is perfect.

Mine is often a world filled with conversation; struggling for words to bridge transformative concepts between disparate nations, people-groups and sometimes the greatest of adversaries. It is a world of endless dialogue and attempts to mine beneath the surface of the ego and false self. It is here that the true self might be invited out to play.

And while all this talking is going on, all around creation sings. If we would just be ‘still,’ maybe we would discover that the answer to peace and abundance for all humankind is whistling in the wind or found tapping us on the shoulder in the drip, drip, dripping of the falling rain. Maybe we could all just use a dose of lying in the sun, allowing it to warm us in its embrace.

There are days I just want to say ‘enough with words and meetings and memories over past grievances!’ Would it not be more productive and appropriate to stop and look around; to feel our smallness and to regain our life’s rhythm by sensing the flow of nature? Could we not gain from sitting in anticipatory stillness and allowing our meditation to flood our souls with ecstatic realizations rising from the deepest parts of who we are as we’re immersed with the realization that Presence is both within and beyond all things?

Sometimes it is laughable that we, humanity, believe there is such power in our words. It is laughable how often we gather to praise and speak and plan and plot the good things of tomorrow while not taking time to notice that everything within and round-about-us is singing the song of the One, the One who said “Let there be…” and everything changed.

Whatever you do this weekend, be sure you make time for stillness… for there, creation sings.