Look around you.

Or better yet follow me outside and let us take a look around together. Outside my back door and down the four steps from the deck is an overgrown lilac bush, no longer in flower. Birds alight in its branches and the squirrels use it to climb on to the neighbor’s house. A spotty patch of grass lies beneath this bush, running the length of the yard. Weeds mar it, if you choose to view it in terms of a well-maintained lawn that is.

Moving into the back yard there’s a gnarled old apple tree whose branches overhang the deck. Caterpillars inch their way up the trunk and along the boughs to the leafy ends. Again, the grass beneath it competes with the weedy clover and annoying dandelions. Ants and worms make their homes in the soil, and the birds make meals of the ants and worms.

Gardens ring the yard round, tangled messes my wife and I are forever shaking our heads over. Our cat, a fat friendly old tabby, stalks the odd mouse through the thick shin-high foliage.

Ducks and rabbits and a skunk or two, plus countless other tiny critters have passed through this modest little piece of nature. Bees, mosquitoes, flies, butterflies and no doubt so much more have visited, foraged, mated and died here.

Let me tell you what I see: It is all part of the Great Passing Through that is Life. Everywhere I look that is what I see. Every creature, plant or animal, is fully engaged in this grand pageantry of flow. Probably from time immemorial this river of Life has been coursing down through the ages. Generation after generation after generation, each species achieving this flow-through in it’s own unique way.

And here finally is the Great Secret as it relates to us humans, but then again it is really no secret: Life is merely passing through us too! Right there is the key to the most profound mysteries we muddle-headedly pose for ourselves. It is all a Great Passing Through!

Is it joy and happiness you seek? Attune yourself to the Life as it passes through you. Aid and abet this flow and you will experience Life in it’s fullest. Oppose it, fixate on yourself and not what is flowing through you, and unhappiness, misery, despair will result.

Like dancing to music. Do you strive to stop the beat, halt the flow of sound when moving to the rhythm? By stuttering or halting abruptly do you attempt to freeze the notes in their tracks? Of course not.

Alright, comprehending Life is slightly more complicated than this, but not much. How do we humans accomplish this Passing Through? You probably think through sex and procreation, but you’d only partially have it.

We human’s accomplish the Great Passing Through in community. And therein lies many a tale. Indeed, all tales. Community, whether large or small, and therein lies many more a tale, is the vehicle through which we bring about the magisterial  Flowing Through of Life. And let me say one more thing, with a twinge of reserve: the Life of a community, large or small and in every corner of the globe throughout the ages, we comprehend, visualize, personify… as some form of God or another.

Participate fully, that is, be one with the Passing Through in both yourself and a healthy living community and we experience fullness and joy through belonging; feel outside of the group and unhappiness clouds our days.

So there it is. Like I said, in that whole community thing lies a multitude of tales. Perhaps all tales.

Let us celebrate the tales here at the Omphalos Cafe.

Life is ALL there is!