You’re young. It’s all still opening up to you.
The world is shy and God’s even shyer yet.
None of your beliefs hopes or fears are true–
save one: The Love that chooses all, that forgets
no one. And so slowly Joy develops there,
along the back of the watchful space where
you are nothing and everything
where everything melts down
like chocolate
in the brownie batter,
where everything swirls and fades into the sky sea air
In time you collect moments outside of time

A moment there before any of you could ever begin to be
Under the thick heavy scratchy overbearing branches
of a Christmas tree shaped pine
in a big square field where later we’d practice soccer
Looking out from the safety of this secret fort
at the light green and brown grasses in the cool fall air with a sky somber with tired sun and ready white fluff clouds

Riding my green bicycle with the curved silver handlebars and the black diamond seat
Why had I strayed up onto that walkway towards some house I didn’t know?
It was in the town that was just a street and nothing more, except that you could go down the hill and be at houses that faced another street a street I can’t remember but that I suppose must have been
It was in the town where Mark lived down the street one day and Ricky the other way and Ricky was closer but you had to cross a street to get there and he wasn’t your best friend anyway
Anyway, somewhere between your house and Mark’s there was some house full of people you didn’t know and somehow you had rode your bike up along their cement walkway towards their cement stoop, but then you think to stop and so you slow and the bike rolls all so slowly forward and you struggle to turn the handle and stabilize the bike at the same time but soon enough the whole operation falls apart and you fall forward just as the handlebar–jerked around by the front tire being spun the contrariwise–races at your young soft belly. Wham! The handlebar goes into your gut and in one violent jab pushes all the air out of your body. Time seems to freeze as you drift towards the ground like a disembodied ghost caught outside of time and space, observing only, no longer a participant in the general illusion.

Moments out of time
Moments that last forever
And Heraclitus said
The many stuff themselves like cattle
The best sacrifice all for one thing, the immortal fame of mortals.
But like Plato after him
He forgot that we are all everyone

The three-part soul:
Appetites, Courage, Reason
Plato said only Reason had any idea what was going on, and so only Reason should rule.
And likewise, only the Philosopher Kings, able to follow Reason up to the Form of the Good, and then journey down, with the imprint of that Perfect Knowledge fresh in their minds, should rule.
And everyone else—the greedy merchants, ruled as they are by their appetites; and the fiery warriors, caught up in the passion of their own bravery—should let the philosopher kings tell them what to do.

But Reason is also a mindless force unless led by the Love that chooses everyone.
And so the Form of the Good alone should rule.
And we all partake of the Form of the Good to the degree we empty ourselves of all fantasies about who we are, what we do, why we count, why we’re worth bothering with

Let us, children,
Dedicate ourselves
to a true Democracy—
one where we all work together to grow in individual and shared wisdom.

You’re young. It’s all still coalescing around you
You might think when you get older you’ll know more.
You will and you won’t. You’re bound to
grow wiser as you shed the infinite doors
that belong to childhood
but God alone is wise and Good
and grown-ups are small children compared with
the Love that only laughs, sparkles, joys, and gives

You’re young.
The haze is slowly lifting from your hearts and minds
But youth and innocence are never done
And wisdom is a place only fools pretend to find
And yet
We all know that we should feel, think, and act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind and joyfully sharing; we all know that we should be gentle with ourselves and others; we all know that we should center ourselves better and better around the Love that chooses everyone; we all know that the Light is infinite and we are finite and so we’ll never perfectly interpret the Light into our words and deeds, and yet we must try to sink deeper and deeper into and sync ourselves up better and better with the Light so that there is less and less space between the Light and our lives as we live them out each day.

You’re young.
Everyone you meet
is or was also young
No one speaks for God
But we all know how to do a better or worse job of listening to Godlight,
to the Love that chooses everyone—
with which everything is okay
and without which everything tastes like soap

Nothing is real but everything is Real

Author: Too soon old too late wise
Editor and driver with brown splotches on and hairs sprouting from ancient ears: Amble Whistletown
If I was farming now, I’d focus on peaches, that’s where the steady money is: Bartleby Willard