A story I’ve been working on over the last few days

The Boundary and the Boundlessness

In a quiet valley nestled between two mountains, there lived an old gardener named Zahir who tended two gardens.
The first garden was enclosed by a low stone wall. Inside, herbs and vegetables grew in neat rows. Zahir watered them daily, pulled weeds, and spoke to each plant by name. He knew which ones needed shade, which ones needed space, and which ones thrived with a little neglect. Visitors often came to admire the order and health of this garden.

The second garden lay beyond the wall, wild and boundless. Flowers bloomed in unexpected places, vines curled around ancient trees, and the wind carried seeds from faraway lands. Zahir never planted here. He only walked, listened, and sometimes sat for hours beneath the sky. Few visited this garden, for it had no path, no gate, and no map.

Sometimes, the mist would settle over the gardens like a veil, softening every edge. And sometimes, when Zahir sat still enough, he could feel the pulse of the earth beneath him like a heartbeat, slow and steady, reminding him that life moved even when nothing seemed to change.

One day, a young traveler named Layla arrived. She had heard of Zahir’s wisdom and asked to learn the secret of compassion.

Zahir smiled and handed her two seeds. “Plant one in the walled garden,” he said, “and one in the wild.”

Layla did as she was told. The seed in the walled garden grew strong and straight, nourished by care and protected from harm. The seed in the wild garden grew crooked and luminous, touched by moonlight and mystery.

After many seasons, Layla returned, confused.

“Master Zahir,” she said, “the first seed grew because I tended it. The second grew without me. One needed boundaries, the other needed freedom. Which is compassion?”

Zahir looked at her gently. “Both,” he said. “Compassion is the gardener, not the garden. It knows when to build walls and when to walk beyond them. It speaks the language of care in many dialects.”

Layla frowned. “But the wild garden has no rules. Doesn’t compassion dissolve boundaries?”

Zahir picked up a fallen leaf and held it to the light. “This leaf,” he said, “was once part of a tree. It fell, not because the tree rejected it, but because the wind called it elsewhere. Boundaries are not prisons. They are invitations to know where you begin, so you may know where you end… and then forget both.”

Layla sat in silence, watching the wind stir both gardens.

And in that silence, she understood: Compassion is not the absence of boundaries, nor the presence of them, this not a contradiction, only different petals of the same flower.

Zahir smiled, “It is the gardener who listens to the seed, not the wind of old words that tries to shape its bloom.”

She pondered this, and three voices rose beneath the Silence.

The first came as a breeze brushing the soil, asking gently, “Which seed will rise, and which will sleep?” And the soil did not answer. It only held.

The second shimmered like mist over the wild garden, whispering, “Do not seek to name the dance. Just feel its rhythm.” And the mist did not explain. It only embraced.

The third pulsed like a heartbeat beneath her ribs, murmuring, “The path is chosen before the mind draws its map.” And the heart did not argue. It only opened.

Synchronicity reading this mornings CAC meditation on ‘Torn as a Gift’ I would add a third voice

The CAC Reflection: The Thorn and the Mercy
Paul begged for his thorn to be removed.
God said no.
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
The thorn remained.
So did the mercy.
So did the love.
And Paul learned to give thanks for the thorn.

Sitting in the tension of the questions I wonder…
Can we sit with discomfort long enough to see what it reveals?
Can we search in the dark even if it scares us?
Can we stop searching for perfect and start cooperating with grace?

Hi Everyone

On the question of shame, I’ve found L.B. Smedes book ‘Shame and Grace’ one of the best I read on the subject. He emphasizes that much of our shame is undeserved, arising not from true moral failings but from internalized judgments, social conditioning, and the illusion of separation.

Shame not just a product of society or human nature, but a complex interplay of both. I wonder if a path to healing might begin by dissolving the boundary. Applying the metaphor of the blank canvas, not a Chicken or the egg, but chicken and the egg, both brush strokes on the Canvas.

I’ve been reading up on Sufism and they might speak of shame as something woven into the fabric of being human. ‘The heart must be polished until it reflects only the Beloved’. But the dust on the mirror, that too is part of the path. Even Shame, deserved and undeserved and ancient, can become a polish.

In Buddhism, we are taught that suffering arises from clinging to identity, to judgment, to the illusion of separation. But when we sit with what is, without pushing it away or pulling it close, we begin to see shame is not a flaw in us, but a misunderstanding in the world.

“Let us hold our stories lightly, and each other gently. Not to erase the shame, but to see through it to the light that was never lost.”

Radical acceptance of who we are, a reclaiming of Eden. I wonder, is Eden a destination or rhythm of a breath brushing its edge?

This morning I feel a desire to return to Eden as escape but flaming swords block the way marking the boundary between innocence and a world of words. The cost of consciousness, the turbulence of shame and guilt deserved and undeserved. We cannot go back as we are but perhaps if transformed, purified by the swords flame.

Last night I reflected on being surprised that Camus came to mind as I tried to engage in the questions asked and that the confusion I felt was similar to what I feel when engaged in conversation with family members on the topic of God.

My family would be troubled with the association of the word ‘absurd’ and the word God. Than it occurred to me that in conversation we were using the word God differently. My family relates to a personal God while I relate to a non-personal G_d. With that in mind I would rewrite what I posted about Camus:

Albert Camus famously rejected the “leap” the turn to a personal God or transcendent meaning as a response to the absurd. For Camus, the absurd arises from the tension between our deep longing for meaning and the universe’s indifferent silence. To leap toward a personal God, one who explains, redeems, or consoles, is to escape this tension. Camus called this philosophical suicide: a refusal to face the absurd honestly.

This notion of a personal God was the one I was the taught which I internalized as God as a Father who would make everything better, all I had to do was trust, follow the rules.. and above all avoid a feeling that such a God could only be a puppet master at best, a monster at worse. In the end I was not able to hold that tension or the mental gymnastics to justify such a relationship. Here I enter my ‘dark night’ of the soul.

Rejecting the personal God as Camus suggests, I feel clears a space for a different kind of relationship. Not a being who ‘watches’ over us but Being itself. Not a voice that answers, but a presence that holds. This is the realm of the non-personal G_d, the canvas beneath the painting, the silence beneath the story, the ground of being that doesn’t resolve the absurd but embraces it.

In this light, Camus’s refusal becomes a kind of spiritual integrity. He doesn’t leap, but he also doesn’t turn away. He stays with the tension. And in doing so, he points, perhaps unknowingly, toward a sacredness that doesn’t require belief, only presence.

Here the words of a ‘we must lose God to find G_d’ come to mind.

In this non-dual space, theologies of law and language begin to fade. What rises in their place is compassion, not as a commandment, but as a natural expression of being. In that compassion, “law” is not imposed but embodied. It is not followed out of fear or duty but lived from a place of deep remembering.

The absurd remains. This kind of G_d doesn’t answer the cry for meaning with a tidy explanation. Instead, it holds the questions not as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be lived. The world is still what it is: beautiful, brutal, unresolved. But in refusing to escape it, we may find ourselves more deeply in it. And in that, something softens. Not because the world has changed, but because we have.

Paradoxically, the refusal to leap has helped me see that the path of the leap is also valid. What I once saw as escape, I now recognize as another form of devotion. All wisdom traditions whether they speak of a personal God, an impersonal ground, or no God at all are trying to name the unnameable, to touch the mystery, and that is so very human.

Each path, in its own way, invites us to hold the tension.
Each path, in its own way, returns to the canvas – the shore beyond.
Every path, in its own way, pathless.

Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā
Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond the other shore, awaken.
Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond the other shore, return.

Just a note: the serenity prayer is always good advice. One can hold the tension and take that advice but the the tension remains as it was and is.