Sunday, and summertime is unusually busy. Who doesn’t desire to fill warm days with as much outdoor activity as possible…

As it happened my morning session at Starbucks was occupied with conversation with friends. It was time well spent, even without the writing. No one is alone in the madcap adventure of life, unless he/she chooses to be. Without assistance from others, we’d be stuck in a rut. I mean the endless loop of attitudes and habits, some ramshackle and even long practiced for years. Habits of so long ago that I have no idea where or when I picked “that” up. Others are unlike me in taste, in viewpoint, — and difference is what I need.

I trimmed a largish maple hedge around our deck this afternoon.

Music often serves as a therapeutic envelope for repetitious work, especially a hot and somewhat risky job. I listened to one of my Spotify playlists, the bluetooth speaker was “blasting” over the metallic chatter of the hedge trimmer. This one came up on the playlist.

Hallelujah is perhaps Leonard Cohen’s most famous compositions. The tune has “knocked me out” since the very first time I heard it. The lyric derives from a story originating in the Hebrew scriptures, the book of Samuel. A tawdry tale detailing egregious abuse of power, improvident exercise of sexuality, murder, and a redemption of sorts. CLICK HERE if you are interested to read the entire story. Cohen extends this myth, a bronze age morality tale with a durable lesson of the risks, and the consequences of violating a social and natural norm. We cannot structure life without mythos. Moreover, actions have consequences beyond the orbit of money and power.

To say it again as attributed to the Buddha, “You cannot pick up just one end of a stick.”

Perhaps love, and life for that matter cannot be a “victory march”. To think so, sadly is to kid myself…

Here is Pentatonix 2016 rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.