As kids some fifty years ago, my brother, sister, and I spent hours playing a game of our own invention that we called, “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch.” We used small blocks and Lincoln Logs to build ranch houses and had little rubber cows and chickens, and some furniture from doll house use. Sister Sandy, as the oldest, always got to be our best and most elegant, plastic figure, Roy Rogers. I, as middle child, was the more roughly crafted, turd-brown, bronco buster, yee-haw guy. And Andy, as the youngest, got stuck with one of the generic, very bow-legged, blue cavalry soldiers. By way of compensation he insisted that his fellow fly everywhere, rather than ride a horse as others did - a behavior I found most irritating.
I am not sure how we came up with “meanwhile, back at the ranch.” It was probably something Mom suggested. But, I think that even then I understood it to represent taking a break from the major drama running to disaster before your eyes - a reprieve invoked during Saturday matinee tensions.
This morning coming to the lab I felt very much in need of just such a break. So I decided to check out a poetry/sacred text website I’d bookmarked awhile ago, yet never gotten to.
I liked what I found, and just thought that I would share.
Because, from time to time we all could use a break back at the ranch – to a time when our buddies could fly.
The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don't know others,
Others don't know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature's course.
Roykan
Never put anyone out of your heart...
Neem Karoli Baba
People will do anything, no matter how absurd,
in order to avoid facing their own soul.
Carl Gustav Jung
You must understand the whole of life, not just
one little part of it. That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies, that is
why you must sing and dance, and write poems,
and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
J. Krishnamurti
Outside ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is
a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi
And then, I was simply amazed. They were offering the words of Louis L’Amour:
There will come a time when you believe everything is
finished. That will be the beginning.
So, there I was, full circle.
Happy trails and tales to you.
… til we meet again.
Namaste.
(Don’t know Louis? Go here.)
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