cobbling together the artist's life…coaching, acting, photography, writing, and music…
My reading in the Bible’s Psalms this morning contained passages in which the writer described our lives as smoke, and, whether rich or poor, our years as a breath. Believer and atheist alike can accept this as ancient wisdom, an exercise in perspective. Our experience sets us in the middle of things, as if we …
Continue reading "100 Things I Know #2 – There Must Be Something Larger Than Us"
Grace is necessary. We can achieve by ourselves, thank you very much. If we’re in need of repair (which we are, given that Something Is Wrong), we can also fix ourselves. We have capacities to control both positive and negative energy, and for good or ill, most of the time, we are the responsible party. …
Continue reading "100 Things I Know #13 – Grace is Necessary, Present, and Uncontrollable"
Though we stumble upon moments when our lives cohere and suddenly all the our experiences make sense, and these moments often feel as if we’ve discovered an empirical reality that was there all along, the truth is that these moments are moments of our own story-telling, moments we have made. There are facts, and then …
Continue reading "100 Things I Know #5 – Meaning Will Not Be Found. It Must Be Made."
"Since sensationalism, power, and wealth dominate our cultural imaginations, we may not be willing to journey to the ephemeral, as the Japanese poets of old have, to see beauty in the disappearing lines or to see poetry in a drying puddle of water." - Mako Fujimura, Refractions.
I mean –ness as in “a suffix denoting a state or condition. An instance of this.” Darkness. Likeness. Kindness. Lightness. Flower-ness. Jeff-ness. You-ness. The particular quality of a thing or person. This is my way of saying each of us has been crafted uniquely. Our particular mixture of DNA, circumstance and environment, cultural expression, personality …
Continue reading "100 Things I Know #14 – You and I Have A “Ness”"
JEFF BERRYMAN 