Christmas Time

The following is an excert from my book, "Footprints Along the Shore of an Incoming Tide." I wrote it years ago when I was living in the wild swirling energy of Los Angeles. When I returned from my work with the Peace Corps in Cameroon and subsequent travels around the world, I arrived in America just around Christmas time. The culture shock I experienced, as I watched my fellow Americans run around in the frenzy of buying, was overwhelming. And I left again and went traveling some more in search of a sane place. Of course I never found a sane place until I found the sanity within me, the realization that happiness only comes from within our Divine Nature. Still there are some places on this planet where the simplicity of living is perhaps more conducive to that realization of inner happiness.

So while the pull here in America is to buy, buy, buy and rush around in traffic and add to the stress of completing the shopping list, give yourself some moments of quiet, away from everyone, and just listen to the Silence that awaits in the darkness of this time. And be Present.

Christmas Time

Outside in this city of images of Los Angeles, the world swirls about in madness in this time of celebrating the birth of Spirit and inner Peace. All of Nature, in this time of the longest night, reminds the humans to quiet one’s life and look inside, to make room for contemplation. But in this city, and all the cities of this land, the bright lights of advertisement signs pull us away from traveling upon our breath into the cradle of our souls. And to the malls we run.


O fools, run you hither and tither
To buy things that will only fade away.
With smiles and bright packages
You give gifts that will last
As long as a thought.

You scurry around
Like rats on a warehouse floor,
Cursing and fighting each other
Over crumbs you plan to give with love.

Review your gifts
And see what you wish to get.

What promotion might you receive?
What appeasement of a familial should?

What does the Master give
At this time of celebrating
The birth of the Master?

Nothing more important
Than the blessing of a smile.

Why does the Master smile?
For he sees things as they really are.

He smiles at himself.

Under the heavy foot of time,
As gifts break
Or are torn asunder
Or crumple into tangled shapes,
The smile of the Master never fades.

Why should it fade
When the Master is safe from time?

Smile.

Smile with the knowing of who you are
In the Peace of the Spirit
Of this day.

Go into the quietude
Of the cavern of the Self
And know the Truth.

There is no one to give a gift to;
No one from whom to receive.

Be your Self.
Free from the rampage of time.

And smile.

Smile upon your Self.
And thus smile upon the world.