Miraculously, the stub, long dormant, begins to live. Tiny swellings appear at its tip, and at every joint along its length — and these became nubbins, and their surfaces stretch and swell, popping and releasing more tiny things that burst forth fully formed. New things that arrive like leaves, creased and crammed into microscopic packages, and when released to the light and the air, unfurl. Things that open themselves up, just by continuing. Things that must open when they grow too large to remain folded.

Just because naming things is your prerogative doesn’t mean you know enough yet to do so.

Just another bit of everyday magic.

To call them “ideas” is to acknowledge your own limitations, to admit that sometimes exactly the right word is beyond your reach, but you can always find something close enough, and faith in the interest and intelligence of readers is not ill-founded. Like leaves, spreading in sunshine, gathering light, feeding the whole, pushing themselves open just by growing.

All that long winter, when those who might have minded were instead asleep, and ignorant, or dead, or renewing and repairing themselves, their guard let down, receptive to dreams, drawing closer to sympathy — All that cold dark time, they ignored me and I grew, unmolested. And just by continuing, I improved. Just by letting my injured parts find their own way. A certain amount of disinterest on the part of the guardian was essential to my success here.

"...it is best to set new promise on a high shelf, out of easy sight and reach, but
 where it still may receive sunshine and fresh breezes. It is best, if you care for
 it at all, not to burden its fragile novelty with too much attention. A certain
 amount of disinterest is essential to its success here..."

For it has a heavy task: it must open itself to the world. It must discover its fit; its soft parts must negotiate with the verities, and it must cede a portion of its own will. Obviously, this is a very delicate business. Too overwhelming a surround will distort its free expression, will press those soft bits into artificial angles and flatten its particulars into smooth planes, and snuff out some of its embryonic destinies.

A certain amount of disinterest is essential to its success here.

Which is not to say that great beauty cannot arise from this kind (or any kind) of difficulty. Or that any destiny is irredeemable — at least as long as promise lives. Not at all. Just that it may take much longer.

So, really…it would be better just to step back. Let it emerge, like a crammed leaf. Let it come out, unfurl itself, spread out in sunshine, begin to feed itself on sunlight and mild rain, and begin to shuttle its excess/abundance back to the main trunk, the root. Let it just be.

Wait for it to reveal itself. Resist the urge to name it. Just because naming things is your prerogative doesn’t mean you know enough yet to do so.

Do these things in memory of the First Example. The Prototype. The original extension of the godhead. Honor the Pattern, laid down in the Beginning, in which you now emerge. The next, the latest realization of creation, which is not a static otherness, but is truly alive as we are alive. The Larger Thing, the Process we are part of, and that we replicate. Are Becoming and will/be Become.

Also, get used to ending your prayers with, “I don’t know what that is.”

I have found a holy place where truth comes together. Thick with leaves, leaves shaped like coins, or communion wafers. Copper colored, mauve, blue-grey, chocolate.

A hard time befell the people, and they learned what a conflict is. How it 
presents itself -- not merely as a clash of hopes or wishes, but a clash of 
necessities, a contest with genuine costs -- costs of entry, of loss, of victory. 

This woodsy place is shadowy, with wavering light; and carpeted with the fallen, deep and soft, so that the footfalls of all who come after are silenced. The very path they walk mutes their passage.

The place is rich with sounds and smells, and zephyrs that carry the lightest hint of warm amber, the taste of toasted sugar, on warm, humid air. But its features are subtle. Too muscular an appreciation extinguishes them. One learns, therefore to rest, open to what is available. That’s when it drifts over you, wells up in you, reveals itself as the world you’ve been moving around in all this time. Always and forever. It shows you it has always been just this close at hand, forever. And this is both a vast relief and a heartbreak for which you no longer have the time.

A sneak, a spy, a covert operator with a growling stomach, 
making loud assertions with gut juices, and blowing his own cover.

You take what presents itself when it comes.