Crossing Nebraska

Spring cleaning seems to be on everyone’s mind these days. Yard sales and garage sales have blossomed forth here and there in residential neighborhoods alongside the abundance of azaleas, peonies, and irises that nature has given us this year. Where once neat little garbage cans stood at solitary attention in front of the houses on trash pickup day, amorphous piles of household detritus now accumulate where driveways meet the street – patiently awaiting the trash fairy’s arrival. Yes, spring cleaning has become a yearly ritual of modern suburban living. All hail special trash pickup day! I’ve been an especially dutiful observer of the ritual this year – given the cosmic coincidence in my life of a deep urge to simplify, a church whose work I respect preparing for its annual second-hand sale, and a pastor friend with a van big enough to haul my stuff from here to there. And so it is that I’ve been thinking a lot these days about stuff: why we accumulate it, what it means t...

Perhaps you’ve heard of voluntary simplicity: choosing to live a simpler and more intentional life for the sake of greater personal fulfillment, richer community, and a healthier environment. The voluntary simplicity movement was bolstered immensely by the 1981 publication of Duane Elgin’s groundbreaking book of the same name. Unfortunately, we’re now more than forty years down the road, and human civilization is more complex than ever. It’s no longer hyperbole to speak of our being just one economic shock, one viral pandemic, one-degree Celsius increase in average temperature, or one war away from chaotic global disruption. Given that so many of the world’s problems are either directly or indirectly tied to an excessively complex and materialistic human lifestyle, why hasn’t the embrace of simplicity taken hold and become the prevailing aesthetic? Our problems would be nowhere near as intractable if we could just be content with a simpler version of all that is materially available ...

For most of this week I’ve been working on a poem intended for submission to the Austin Zen Center's ongoing Just This blog journal – the most recent topic being ‘crossing the stream’. Of course, crossing the stream is an oft-used Buddhist metaphor, one encompassing some kind of difficult movement from a place of unaware existence to one of awakening. Within this metaphor the Buddha’s teachings are frequently thought of as a raft that may be used for safe passage from one side to the other. At first I thought this poem wouldn’t nest very well with my previous post. Upon reflection, however, I see that they make a perfect pair. I’ll talk about why further on, but for now let me just introduce my submission:       Crossing the Stream I set out to cross the stream once long ago. Or maybe it was yesterday. Funny, time can be like that. I remember gazing at the other side – The grassy lowlands beckoning, The cool green fore...