5

The Tao doesn’t take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn’t take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.

The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the center.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

It is a Sunday morning in summer. There’s no telling what the day will being, what will unfold. I know my wife and I are to host our five year old grand daughter at breakfast. The restaurant is nearby. Food, novel tastes are the ‘cutting-edge’ of learning for Finlea. She has mastered lessons of comportment in public spaces well enough by now. She and we move on as experience dictates. What novel experience and lesson will be encountered today?

Right behavior, and odd, ill suited behavior arises, is defined by a context. There is no rule book on file anywhere. Who are saints? Who are sinners? That’s to be discovered, you must find out for yourself. And discovery demands courage to go anywhere, open to experience anything. Finlea has courage in spades!

Practice is key. Using my engagement more and more. Blathering on and on, (writing too) isn’t advancement. Doing matters.

     Hold on to the center…

A newsflash-like ending to verse 5. Some of us only gradually recognized that we possess a center, a nexus of creativity, of life-authority/force that merits respect and development.

Hold on indeed!

What tune is a fit for such thoughts! This by Dennis DeYoung and Styx is spot-on.