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When we spell, we are casting. Words are incantations, spells, blessings, curses, predictions, interpretations, conjecture, questions even when they are not in a question. Words are one of our most fundamental magics. I rest my case, recently, and frequently lately in this line from a poem: “Words are icebergs, concealing more than they reveal.”

My love for words is one of my most fundamental. I am, then, very fortunate that they cast spells, though my words have not always been the most salubrious, even now. Rest assured, I’m working on it. I can say my tone alone has become softer, less shrill, and more matter of fact. Even when the matter of fact falls flat, and expresses to itself its own disappointments, it has great advantages over those tones that are needy, desperate, frustrated, confused beyond recognition.

I could even go so far to say that words have saved me. In my tradition, we take refuge in words, taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. It is a great wisdom of those who put this altogether, and it is difficult to believe the Buddha did it all himself in one lifetime with earth as his witness, after all the earth is very old, and holds all the secrets of all the humans in its bosom. But is the genius of those who put this altogether that those words are icebergs, and that we can trace them not only into water, deeper and deeper, but into air fire and earth as well. There is no limit, the words can be as big and beneficent as our minds can hold. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha means something so very different to me now, than they did when the scales fell from my eyes in 1993. Who knew it only takes tears to melt scales, and they become your hot wet witness to holding back from living this life in some sort of spiritual dimension.
I am coming to see that these commitments are not restrictions on some path of austere disciplines, but rather, just place holder icebergs, waiting for me to melt them, perhaps with more tears, into a greater body of beings.

It would be easy to fault myself for all the times before the first homecoming, and also those times of these most recent homecomings that are dissolving all notions of home in may senses, but it is, of course, a great privilege. Had I died prior to 1993, or even 2023, there would have been so much I never would have known because I was hanging on to a particular kind of knowing. Ran into a phrase in a holy book today: “When the current of thoughts is self-liberated, and the essence of Dharma is known everything is understood.”

It’s a little like that; letting go of knowing, and allowing that melted ice, called understanding to flow in and take its place, even if its quite chilly, unexpected, and not yet entirely welcome. There is little need to be comfortable with the truth, there is simply a great need to accept it. It laps upon the shore of all experience, so often in the dark; and sometimes, also in the light it reflects as infinite diamondry.