God is not a being among other beings, but the ground of being itself.— after Paul Tillich, 1951
[audio]
1
Morning comes slowly.
Mist lifts from the wet ground in thin, unraveling threads,
as if the earth were exhaling after a long night.
The trees stand still. Bare branches hold the early light the way open hands hold water—briefly, without trying to keep it.
2
You sit where you always sit.
The chair. The cup. The quiet.
3
A sparrow lands on the feeder, then another.
They do not hesitate.
They do not plan.
They arrive, eat, leave.
Nothing in them reaches into the next hour.
Nothing looks back.
4
Something releases.
The boundary of self softens.
The thought arises: This life I have called mine—what is it?
Not the name,
not the history,
not the body that no longer obeys.
These now feel like clothes left draped over a chair in another room.
5
There is breath.
There is light.
There is the sound of water moving over stone.
And there is awareness.
Nothing stands apart.
6
A breeze moves through the trees. For a moment, the entire hillside shimmers—not in parts, but as one movement: branch and young leaf, air and light and shadow, inseparable.
You try, gently, to divide it:
here is the wind,
here is the tree,
here is the one who sees.
But the effort feels artificial—something learned, not something true.
7
A memory surfaces:
of striving,
of building,
of holding things together by sheer force of will;
of believing, without question, that there was a self inside you
that had to be protected, defended, carried forward.
It feels distant now. Not wrong. Incomplete.
Like mistaking the surface of a stream for its depth.
8
A crow calls from somewhere beyond the ridge. The sound cuts cleanly through the morning, then dissolves.
No trace remains.
No echo held.
No attempt to make it last.
9
The mind does not move like this.
It gathers, stores, replays. It reaches for what has already passed and leans toward what has not yet come. It builds a self from gathered moments—until the structure feels solid, unquestionable.
And yet, sitting here, it does not hold.
10
It flickers.
A thought arises: I am this.
Then another: I am that.
Each fades before it can settle.
What remains does not need the story.
11
The sun lifts higher, catching droplets of dew in the grass.
Small flashes of light pulse with color: yellow, orange, blue, violet.
Winking, vanishing, reappearing in quick succession.
None held. None lost.
Just this continuous unfolding.
12
What you spent years trying to secure and name—you feel it now not as an idea, but like living tree bark beneath bare hands. It was never something that could be held.
And this is not a loss.
There is a softness in it. A release.
The kind that does not come from solving anything, but from no longer needing to.
13
The sparrow returns. Or perhaps it is another bird. It is impossible to tell.
It lands, pauses, tilts its head, and is gone.
Nothing lingers.
Nothing owed.
No self carried forward from one moment to the next.
14
You take a breath.
Not as something you are doing, but as something happening.
The body rises slightly, then falls.
Air moves in, then out. No boundary holds.
Just movement.
Just life.
15
The ground brightens.
Shadows shorten.
The mist lifts.
What was obscured becomes visible—nothing new has been added.
Nothing taken away.
It was all there, waiting for the light.
16
You see,
with quiet certainty,
that what you have called your life is not separate from any of this.
Not the grass.
Not the trees.
Not the birds arriving and leaving without hesitation.
There is no place where you end and the rest begins.
Only this.
17
And in this—without effort, without reaching—
a peace
that does not depend on what happens next.
Not because things will last,
but because they do not need to.
18
You sit a while longer, watching the light move.
Nothing to hold. Nothing to improve. Nothing missing.
Just this, already complete.