Wake Up Caller ID

Have you noticed? There are teachers everywhere. The grocery store is full of them, the gym, the library, the mall, the bank, the gas station, the office, north of here, south of here, in state, out of state, everywhere. It's strange how I had not noticed them before. In all fairness I was so busy, so much to work out in my head all the time, how could I possibly be expected to pay close attention to everything around me? When I first started noticing them, probably in a moment I had inadvertently and imperceptibly dropped below the radar of my constantly vigilant mind, I was intrigued. That's when I started seeing teachers everywhere. I don't remember who they all were. There were, there continue to be, so many. I wonder if they are aware they are my teachers? Some of them definitely don't seem to know but then I see the occasional twinkling eye that tells me they are all not as clueless as I might guess.

The morning buzzer goes off, I awaken and the day begins. I do not carry the buzzer around with me to keep me awake, I am already wide-eyed. Buzzers are forgotten as soon as they awaken us. Their job is done and the rest is up to us. Good teachers are the same. And they are everywhere. You'll see.

A New and Improved Bucket List

I have somehow misplaced all my bucket list items. There is no reward offered for them. You can keep them if you find them. I have been working on a new list of things to do before I die. It's short. Not because I think I will die soon, although there is always that possibility. Not because I sell myself short, although I have done that at times. Not because I lack imagination or don't dare to dream or have caved in to my fears. No, it's short because I have come to that fork in the road where I must make a decision which way to go. Down one path are endless desires and wants and needs, ceaseless dream chasing, relentless restlessness and craving for more. I have been on that road and I have tired of it. Besides, it just keeps leading me back to this same fork in the road.

I don't really know where the other path leads. Oh, some will tell you they know where it leads. They tell you all about it, give sermons, write books about it, give you guidance and pointers and tips to help you on your journey. But no one knows. Not really. Nobody knows anything. I can no longer resist the unfathomable pull of that mysterious path because I have come close enough to it to know that it is permeated by, absolutely saturated with what I can only call Love, yet the full expression of its atmosphere could never be contained in something so flimsy as a word.

The new bucket list is short and simple. But it feels right. It feels so right. 

1.   Take the Other Path and go wherever it leads me.

2.   Pay attention to whatever is in front of me at every moment.

3.   When given a choice always choose Love.

Finding Leonardo

In the Palazzo Vecchio's Grand Ceremonial Chamber in Florence, Italy there is a mural which was commissioned by the ruling Medici family and painted by architect and painter Giorgio Vasari during a remodeling of the hall in 1563. In one of the battle scenes depicted in the mural there is a tiny flag with the words "Cerca Trova", seek and ye shall find. This small flag, to a San Diego engineering professor by the name of Mauricio Seracini, has been taken as a clue, a cryptic message from the 16th century as to the whereabouts of one of Leonardo da Vinci's legendary masterpieces, "The Battle of Anghiari", which had adorned a long wall of the hall but disappeared after the remodeling. For decades, painters such as Raphael were said to have traveled to the hall to study the mural, which was Leonardo's largest painting, three times the width of "The Last Supper", but then it vanished. Sercini postulates that Vasari, known to have admired da Vinci's work, found a way to preserve the mural behind his own, leaving a clue on the small flag as to it's whereabouts. A scientific team, led by Sercini, has already found evidence to support this theory and, after obtaining permission from the government of Florence, intends to spend the next year using sophisticated high tech equipment to prove it definitively. It is then hoped that the Vasari fresco can be carefully removed to extract Leonardo's masterpiece and then replaced. How astounding that this missing masterpiece could have been so very close over all these centuries, hidden by the masterful fresco which covered it. 

I can't help but point out the analogy here to our own personal quests to be a human version of a "masterpiece", whatever that may mean to any of us individually in terms of success, intellect, beauty, wealth, spirituality or altruistic qualities. We consistently and doggedly search outward, never quite finding that masterpiece we look for. Perhaps, though, we are looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps, right beneath the surface of our astoundingly complex human exteriors, in the stillness of inner space, our masterpiece waits to be discovered.

Cerca Trova.