Aiming High

(I'll be preaching on the themes of my book, HITCHHIKING TO ALASKA, and signing books this Sunday 4/21 at Fairfax Community Church in Marin  County CA at 10:30 am - hope to see some of you there!  I'll be doing the same in Torrance, CA, at Seaside Community United Church of Christ at 9:30 am on PLURALISM SUNDAY, May 5.)

I'm attending a conference at Esalen Institute near Big Sur this week. It's hosted by Esalen's Center for
Theory and Research.  It's focused on peacemaking among the Abrahamic faiths. After the first day of the meeting, I got into a rich conversation with Esalen's co-founder, Michael Murphy, two rabbis, and a medical doctor with Talmudic training.  For hours we talked about resurrection, reincarnation, and the far reaches of human spiritual and physical capacities.  Then I went alone for a walk, gazing over the ocean into the brilliant night sky, and this poem came to me:

Aiming High
While leaping to catch the moon,

    Orion tripped, his right foot caught
       on a silvered cloud

        hovering over the shivering Pacific

             beyond the high dark bluffs
                of Big Sur.

If he fell on Esalen Institute,

    would that be such a bad end

       to his reach for his full human potential?

 
JIM BURKLO
Website: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter:
@jtburklo      See my GUIDE to my books, "musings", and other writings
Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California