Plastic Brain in the Crumbling Cabin

"Enlightenment consists of not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, [meditating and studying] but in making the darkness visible. The latter is more difficult, and therefore unpopular."
Carl Jung

In our couple’s group last night we spoke about the “Plastic Brain”. We discussed how the mind can become more flexible with its choices and patterns of decisions. The neurons rewire themselves through being open to repeated novel experience, work and visioning. Life can deal blows and joys with circumstance. We have choices of becoming malleable or rigid. Perhaps wisdom resides somewhere in the middle.

Talk about “plastic brain”, Mine is down right molten.

How did it come to be so soft?

Maybe it was God beating on me with expert deadly hands,
the hands that sing as they swing the hammer above
anvil and flames. My metallic heart in between.
A tune: “Return again. Return to the land of your soul.”
drifting in the ink.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
Pieces falling off into the inferno.
The work in the Beloved’s hands bends and burns
in protest. Becoming round, from angular.

~

At this window. In this pile of sawdust and broken beams, fused circuits I’m not sure if I am dead or alive. Wondering what the difference really is.

Whatever the dream is, live it
until the next dream. Sleeping or
waking, it’s all life.

This rustling field like the sea song of earth.
The tides of islands… what difference, truly?
The hammer falls either way.
Turning solid into plastic.
Then in the resting becoming solid again.
A few impurities knocked away.
Becoming more than a beautiful lump of ore.
Becoming a tool for the soul’s work.
Perhaps even something pleasurable for the sad world.
Maybe becoming shiny as a mirror.

~

I woke from a cool night of a farm dog’s song drifting into our windows.

The cold eye of the moon.
The moaning waves of grass.
The memories of sea lions calling
from the flotsam of islands.

What I know now is
the summer morning is streaming
into the broken window pane,
warming my hand and my wavy hair
slowly, steadily.

Soon the heat of the day will breathe
deep.
Soon the in-between be reached
by the rough mercy
of a hard edge.
Soon the fire of the sun will
this dreamy grass gazing into something solid.

~

Remodeling: Today I want to frame the new window and wall for the shelf of shiny treasures in this cabin. Perhaps I’ll dig the hole for the willow saplings before I drive to work for the night. Perhaps on the way I’ll hear my future self praying for me, telling me about the soft heart of what is to come, singing with God in a field that was once ocean… and will be ocean again.

Rick