Blog #7: Crossroads Creed and an Equinox Joke

“I come ever to the crossroads of my life.

I am ever choosing and ever being chosen.

This is my journey: engaged and affirmed.

This is my life: mysterious, exhilarating, taxing, joyous….”

Try saying or thinking this Tefist statement about life.  Does it truly reflect your own life?  If not, choose some different adjectives, ones that really do match your own experience.  This Crossroads Creed can be spoken at many places:  at the crisscrossing of hiking paths, or where busy hallways cross, or at roadway intersections.  Or use it at any time or  place where you can pause to reflect on a choice made, a decision finalized, the initiation of a new path in life, or even the preparation for dying.

***

The Vernal Equinox arrives (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) in a few days.  For this event (as for the Autumnal Equinox in September) the following joke may be shared.

Q.  When is a cow more like a horse?

A.  When it’s an equine ox!

(If you wish to celebrate the Equinoxes, my brief liturgies for these Festivals may be useful.  These can be found on this website by simply going to the Tefistry page, downloading Tefist Paths to Nature, and scrolling down to page 138 and beyond.  May you have a joyous Equinox!)

May Harmony Prevail:  Love Thy Tef!

MEMORIES

(By Vern Crawford, November, 2013.)

Memories are rather like the things they never were.
People, places, colors, scents–all were similar to our memories.
For an instant or a day these memories persist,
Even offering recollections of distant decades past.
But what is it that preserves our memories, saves them at all?
Though they are never perfect, yet not wholly false,
What remains that is subject to our recall?
Yes, memories are rather like the things they never were:
Mirror/mimics of vanished nows.  They also grant us time.

FIVE SOFTNESSES

(By Vern Crawford, October, 2013, edited March, 2018.)

This silky milkweed fluff,
With a tiny puff of air,
Becomes a weightless drifter:
It softly lofts above my hand.

Heeding Autumn’s cooler nights and frost,
We plush ourselves in fleece,
Our arms and backs and bellies
Softer now to tender, touchy fingers.

Quilted bathroom tissues
(The expensive ones at least)
Caress us, on tender eyelids and warm cheeks,
And kindly smooth the body clean.

I love my well-used feather pillow;
Its down receives my heavy head,
Cupping, cuddling, yielding,
Submerging me in soft sleep.

Loved ones’ knowing touch,
Plus caring words–in times of pain–
Can heal and comfort many hurts,
So very, very, very soft:  cumuli of love.

A CALLOSAL CONTEST

(By Vern Crawford, September, 2013)

 

This callosal contest
Of strength and skill
(Or maybe simply single-mindedness)
Appears, from a higher perch, to be a tug-of-war.

The Left Team pulls against the Right
(Or is it the New against the Old?),
A Nerdy Team connected by a fibrous cord
To the other bunch, a Rowdy Team.

Back and forth the contestants go,
One side’s heels digging into turf,
The other’s voices bellowing need or greed,
Yet neither one willing to concede.

Oh, I know, sometimes they do time-out:
One team may get distracted–
Lusting after cheerleaders–
While the other strategizes heedless in a huddle.

Even though they claim to be separate teams,
Left and Right, New or Old,
Both sides do appear–from a higher perch–
As home teams of just this one Arena.

HIGHER MATH

(By Vern Crawford, September, 2013)

 

There are only three ways to go from here:

Go back; Stop; or Move On.

Yet they say I really can’t Go Back.

And I’ve tried Stopping, only to regret it.

So, how many choices do I have left?

Hmm:  Three, minus one, minus one…

Higher math strongly suggests Moving On.