WINDOWS AND DOORS

i've found that the pace of life in a city often is not conducive to living a contemplative life. there is always pressure, from without as well as from within, to be doing more with life, to be "living life more fully." Yet, a life lived without reflection is mere living, but it is not life. it is perhaps existing with greater zest, but it is not a fullness of life.

contemplation does not come easily, though, to minds that are used to being entertained and stimulated without much effort on our part. it is as though we are a generation that is slowly attempting to walk again after our muscles have atrophied from our consumer culture. our joints creak, our limbs protest loudly, our bones groan under the weight, but there seems to be a newfound determination to be conscious again.

but consciousness without hope can be a depressing and dangerous thing. to enter into the philosophical wasteland without an anchor in a world of firm, unshaking, objective hope is to be lost in the darkness of the abyss we call the human heart. fortunately for us, there is a world alive and teeming with hope. and our world, in its paradoxes and contradictions, afford us, in fleeting moments of awareness, windows into that world which is not yet here, and yet already is.

if we'd only believe enough to peer through those windows we'd find that the world outside is much more colorful and lively than the drab, gray world that we find ourselves in today. and while the windows to this world are many, the door is but One.