A narrow forest path, barely more than a suggestion through moss and fallen leaves, winds between tall, dark tree trunks streaked with lichen. Along the right side of the path, small stone cairns of different heights appear intermittently, each one carefully balanced, some with a single leaf or acorn resting on top. Mist hangs low among the trees, softening the distance and catching pale shafts of overcast light from an unseen opening in the canopy. Photographic realism with a slightly wide-angle lens, composed using leading lines guiding the eye deeper into the frame. The mood is hushed and otherworldly, a gentle invitation to follow intuition into the unknown, with cool, muted greens and grays giving a sophisticated, meditative tone.

Everyday Practice

The Practice is different forms of silence. Silence is the Practice. Silence is three things that are one. Emptiness. Stillness and Silence. Emptiness is emptying the noise, the complexity, the distractions.. . Allowing it all to drop away as we drop into the silence. We can do that while playing the drums. Stillness is being centered and grounded. Still. At one with ourselves. We can practice these three elements any it works for us. Being quiet means being focused. Here, now. At peace. Awake. Aware. Alive. Just watching. Just waiting. Breathing. Disengaged. Disconnected. Without a care in the world. Free. What Jesus meant when he said, “Pray without ceasing.” A state of mind that is the Buddha’s “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” Wherever we are.

Practices Are Nothing Special.

Short, gentle ways of being for meeting Tao in ordinary life—prompts, reflections, and experiments to help us notice, trust, and live from our own quiet intuition, realization, one small step at a time.

Nothing to it but to do it.
A smooth river stone, worn almost oval and the color of wet charcoal, rests at the exact center of a low wooden table made from pale, unfinished ash. Around it, three loose circles of dried autumn leaves, feathers, and small twigs form an understated mandala, each object slightly imperfect and unique. Late afternoon light filters through a nearby window, creating soft, elongated shadows and a gentle highlight along the stone’s curved surface. The background is softly out of focus, revealing only hints of bookshelves and plants. Photographic realism, shot at eye level with a shallow depth of field, composed with quiet negative space. The mood is contemplative, serene, and slightly mysterious, evoking Tao, psyche, and intuition without using any symbols directly.

If we set formal theology aside for a moment, what would we really know of God? “God,” as we usually speak of God, is largely a collection of our thoughts, questions, and traditions—what we call “theology.” In that sense, the reality of God lives in our imagination and in our language. We often call that “faith.” After 40.5 years as a minister, I’ve become as interested in how these questions live in real lives as I am in the answers themselves.

Articulation is a path to realization. We see by saying. We talk our way into waking up, into knowing. But mostly we are interested in having our way and getting what we want. Living aligned with the Tao, at one with Psyche, in the service of Intuition never enters our corporate (or out individual) mind. It is time it becomes the most important thing.

Thinking alone rarely takes us there. Thinking is rational, intellectual, left-brain activity. Our relationship with Tao, Psyche, and Intuition lives more in the right brain, where the life is.

So we speak what we notice—what’s here, what’s being asked for now—in order to know it. Often we discover what to do in a situation not by thinking about it, but by hearing ourselves say it.

The practice, then, is simply to begin talking, trusting your intuition to lead you toward the words you most need to hear.