ILLOGICAL LOVE The great loves of my life have almost all been illogical. They were relationships that had I listened to my head I would have talked myself out of. I guess that is the nature of true and lasting love. Love does not make sense. At least it does not for me. The most significant people in my life have arrived in surprising ways and remained despite the odds being against them. The really great loves have had an element of mystery around them. They have all been unanticipated surprises. When the love really landed, I stepped back from each with a sense of “I didn’t see that coming.” I believe that is what made them the really great loves. I would have never dreamed that

EVERYONE DESERVES A MARY It ended the way it began. No one could point an index finger quite like Mary. I met her in a small coffee shop across the way from the spiritual center in which I was then employed. I entered midmorning to get a cup of tea and was cheerily greeted by name by the owner and barista. A small yet mighty woman stepped out from behind a bookcase and asked of me” so you are Taylor?” I replied in the affirmative. “You are the reason I moved here.” After a brief explanatory conversation, she pointed her index finger right at me and declared “you should teach a class on The Seven Spiritual Laws.” I took a moment or two to stare down the

A MATTER OF TRUST It has become painfully clear to me that I taught myself not to trust myself. I grew up in a home where we were not allowed to have our own opinions. Self-referral was not encouraged or even allowed. Parental opinion was law. And so, my parents would proclaim something to be true or right or just. The proclamations frequently landed heavily in my solar plexus, and I knew deeply that what was being stated was not true. At least not for me. And so, I would question. >br> And my questions landed heavily inside my parents. Then they landed heavily on me. The same was true in schools, church, and various organizations in which I became affiliated. Doctrine was declared. It did not

I wish I had gotten madder, sooner. I grew up in a family in which anger was unacceptable. With a mother prone to rage and a father with dementia-related outbursts the context was at best confounding. There was a small and constricting zone of what was acceptable to feel and express. Anger was outside of that zone. So, not being allowed to be angry really pissed me off. I became masterful at suppressing that concentric anger. At school we were punished if we displayed anger. At church we were taught that the Righteous do not get mad. If they did, an angry and wrathful God would cast you into hell. What? Those teachings really ticked me off. I graduated school and church and began to forge my

TAKING A KNEE I saw it only briefly, yet I cannot get the image out of my mind. I guess I am not meant to get it out my mind. Or out of my heart. His name was George Floyd. He was not another black man being murdered. He was not a statistic. He was a man with a name and a history and a family and a future. Except that future was taken away. Brutally. Violently. Senselessly. Shamefully. Amid disempowered bystanders crying for mercy for the suffocating man. George Floyd. The image of that white officers knee firmly in place on George Floyd's neck haunts me. I cannot get it out of my mind. I guess I am not supposed to. What do I do with

HORSES, WATER, AND SACRED SERVICE “You can lead a horse to water…” Well, you know the rest. I was never easily led to water, or anywhere else for that matter. I have always been cautious about what the water had really done for the one seeking to lead me. If it appeared that the proverbial water had done something beneficial for you, I may well follow you and take a drink. If you speak about the water as being helpful in one way, yet how you live exhibits something entirely different, I am not interested in being led. Not by you. Not by anyone. It does not matter how many others may be sipping or gulping. I want to literally test the waters before I will follow

Who is Dying? I’m dying. I am not. That distinction has set me free. In a time of veracious global illness and vast dying there is an invitation to open into the inescapable truth that I’m dying. Most likely not today. In all probability not anytime soon. And yet even that is questionable. The only thing that is beyond question is that it will happen. Equally beyond question is that I am will never die. There is a tension of sorts between those two unquestionable truths. One day the who of me will release its final exhalation and this incarnation will be ended. The what of I am will remain unaffected. The what may well carry on becoming another who. Unlearned lessons will move with that final

JOGGING WHILE BLACK I guess it is the price you pay for jogging while black. I am not in any way making a joke. I at first felt as if typing those words was making me sick. Then I realized I was typing the words from a deep sick feeling down inside of me. News reposts tell me that a young black man was hunted and gunned down for basically being black. For jogging while being black. How could that be? When I was in my early teens a high school senior in my home congregation decided to bring a friend of hers to church. I recall vividly looking down the hallway as Jennifer and her friend approached from the opposite end of the hall. It is

Crying, Not Sorry I am crying, and I am not sorry. I am admittedly rationing the amount of news coverage I am currently ingesting. I am accessing, to the best of my ability, the least biased reporting as is possible. I want to remain aware of what is happening, without allowing myself to become saturated or politicized. As I am consciously participating in the news coverage my heart and my body are responding with incredible waves of both excruciating pain and exhilarating celebration. I am seeing before me and feeling within me what seem to be the broadest ranges of human experience. I am watching, in real time, as precious souls are leaving the planet in unprecedented numbers. I am witnessing as health care professionals deliver not

HUMAN BEING We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Are we? My question refers to the latter, not the former. It has oft been quoted. So often I am not sure it holds much meaning. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. It took me decades to realize the last thing I wanted was to have a human experience. I was clearly a not-so-human being trying every way I could to have a spiritual experience. Trying to get rid of this bothersome humanity in order to hover over this body and earth as a purely transcendent being of only Light. I longed for the perceived perfection that books and teachers pointed to. I lived a life divided against myself. I thought that if I was