I love dogs. JoAnn’s daughter Sherrie says I am “dog-deprived.” Since, for various reasons, it’s not practical for JoAnn and me to keep a dog, I found my own way around this problem.

I go to the beautiful Benson Park Sculpture Garden here in Loveland, where most days I can be reasonably sure that I will meet up with a friendly dog owner and, hopefully, a friendly dog also.

So it was the other day when I went to the park for a walk. Just as I was getting out of the car, I saw a woman walking nearby with a most remarkable looking animal. It was a large white dog of a kind I hadn’t seen before. I noticed, as I jumped smartly out of the car and began walking briskly toward the dog, that the owner had a thick leash wrapped tightly wrapped around her wrist. It seemed a good idea to me.

“Hi,” I said. “What kind of dog is that, please?”

The woman stopped, and with a friendly smile — most dog owners are friendly — replied, “He’s a Great Pyrenee.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cashmere.”

“Is he friendly?”

“Yes, he’s very friendly, very gentle,” the woman said, as I bent down and patted Cashmere’s head and admired his humongously thick white coat. “In fact I’m training him as a therapy dog. But they are guard dogs primarily – they can be strong and fearless when necessary.”

Cashmere accepted my petting, and enjoyed it – a little bit. He kept his poise, in other words. I could see a gentle and calm demeanor expressing through every pore of his being – though I was in no doubt at all that he would be a very formidable force if necessary

Sherrie, who knows about dogs, told me later on the phone that the Great Pyrenee can face a mountain lion. She said two friends keep Great Pyrenees to guard their llamas. And indeed, I read on the Internet, “Against coyotes, foxes, and even wolves the Pyrenean Mountain Dog can overpower multiple opponents and hold even larger numbers at bay. With larger predators such as the mountain lion they have been known to hold their own one-on-one.”

Elsewhere on the internet I read: “His general demeanor is one of quiet composure, both patient and tolerant. He is strong willed, independent and somewhat reserved, yet attentive, fearless and loyal.”

There is a story of a “Pyr” giving her life to successfully protect “her” child from a bear.

Ultimately, of course, real strength has little to do with size, and everything to do with character — a gracious, fearless quality of character.

True strength does not need to tell the world how strong it is. It knows it is strong, and so can afford to be gentle.

What a pleasure it was to meet Cashmere and see a remarkable illustration of this ancient truth that is surely very important to our times.

The truly strong can afford to be gentle is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

What a beautiful thing it is when something happens that reminds us we are loved.

Love is the supreme power of this universe, and when we touch that magical, indescribable power, even in the simplest of circumstances, we feel it in every fiber of our being.

But love is not love unless truth is present also.

Joanne and I like to relax with a cup of tea and a newspaper first thing in the morning. As she sat down in her chair this morning and picked up the Denver Post, I thought she looked tired, and asked if she slept okay.

She said she didn’t have a very good night, but she left it at that, didn’t say anything more. I was going to leave it at that too, but I felt a little nudge that something was wrong. “Was there any particular reason?” I asked.

JoAnn went very quiet. She put down her newspaper. “Actually, there was,” she said. “The truth is, I’ve been worried about you the last two or three days. I think you’ve been trying to do too much, getting yourself overtired.

“When you came back from your last hike on Saturday you could hardly walk into the kitchen, and I was worried because I had no idea where you had gone.

“I know things always look worse at night. But please let me know where you’re going if you’re heading out for a hike. I wouldn’t know where to begin if something happened to you or you got in trouble of some kind.

“I’ve mentioned before I think there’s some kind of insurance you can buy so that if the Ranger has to come and rescue you, you are covered. And please – don’t forget to take the cell phone when you go, I saw you left it behind Saturday.”

My mentor used to say that love is characterized by truth and truth is characterized by love. Love is the very nature and power of the universe – it has little to do with the romantic notions and fascinations that consume so much energy and attention in our society.

I don’t always like it at first when JoAnn speaks her truth to me. She is a very succinct person, and if she has something to say, she says it in a direct and straight-forward manner without a lot of preamble (unlike me).

But I’ve learned how important it is to let our process keep working, and not allow myself to get side-tracked by feelings of resentment or defensiveness. I’ve learned that both of us really do want to get at the truth, and every time we let that happen, our relationship gets stronger. The truth, as it was said long ago, makes us free.

In this particular case, of course, it was a no-brainer. Things got blown up a bit out of proportion in JoAnn’s mind during the night, perhaps, and I’m sorry for that. But I saw the truth and common sense of what she was saying. I felt her love for me, and I was both chastened and deeply touched.

I checked up and found I can get an inexpensive waiver that will cover me if I do run into trouble on a hike and need help from authorities. You may be sure I will have that — and a cell phone — next time I go out.

What’s your experience in these more delicate aspects of a relationship? How is your love life working?

Are there areas that are a bit murky, that you don’t want to get into for fear of what may happen, what may be revealed?

We have a choice: we can hang on to the status quo, and watch our relationship stagnate or wither on the vine. Or we can face the truth and let our relationship grow and blossom, take on new sparkle and luster.

Personally, I think we are in a time when truth is coming to the surface all across the globe in every conceivable area and situation whether we like it or not. We may call it change. But what’s causing the change?

Truth is what is causing the change. And though it’s not always comfortable, truth ultimately has only one concern: it wants to set us free. It wants us to remember the beauty and timelessness of our true being.

Top tips for a good relationship #1 is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Ryan Hreljac was a 6-year-old first grader in a small Ontario town when he learned that there were people in Africa who didn’t have clean drinking water — and $70 would build a well that would give them that good water. Ryan began a campaign to raise the necessary money. Now, 10 years later, his message has reached around the globe and he continues to work towards his dream of clean water through the work of the Ryan’s Well Foundation at www.ryanswell.ca.

This remarkable story dramatically illustrates the potential that is in each one of us to make a radical difference in our world by reason of our presence.

However, what comes to my mind is that it is not only clean, pure water that is in such desperate need. There is also a critical need for truth itself — the symbol that water has so long represented for humankind.

Truth has something to do with love. It has something to do with integrity, and freedom. Truth is characterized by an open heart, fairness, and compassion and respect for others.

The debate that has been raging in the United States this summer about health care reform vividly underlines the great need there is for truth in our world. How sickening the lies and misinformation. How sickening the anger and even hatred revealed.

We cannot all be about the business of helping to provide clean water for people who lack this most essential of commodities.

But we can, if we will, do something about making some truth available — a continuous, dependable supply of purifying, life-giving, soul-saving truth.

We do not need to go anywhere. We do not need to wait for some future time, when perhaps the omens will be more propitious, or we will be more wise, or more holy.

We can drink at the well of truth any time. We can do it right now in this very moment — because truth is what we are, and when we are still, we sense the beautiful presence of that truth with us.

And we can reveal that truth in our everyday living, in our words, actions, and thoughts.

We can have an attitude of respect for other people, and for Nature, and for ourselves. We can be fair. We can allow a little bit of trust to come into the picture. We can stop seeing other people as demons.

As I say, probably the work that Ryan is doing won’t be for us. It won’t be for me, anyway.

But this is the beauty of truth. It will find its own form of expression in us if we let it – a form that is unique to each one of us.

Pure, clean water is essential to our survival. But Truth is essential to our survival also, let alone our happiness — and it flows ceaselessly from the eternal spring of our own being.

Water and truth — how much you are needed is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet of India, who died in Calcutta in 1941 at age 80, has been a constant companion and inspiration ever since I first visited India many years ago. A new friend gave me a copy of one of Tagore’s best-known works, Gitanjali, “Song offerings to the creator.”

One of the poems I love best opens in this manner: “The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

“We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.”

The poem describes how after a while the traveler grows weary and lies down to rest, while his companions laugh at him in scorn and hurry on their way, crossing “many meadows and hills” and passing through “strange, faraway countries .“

“All honor to you, heroic host of the interminable path,” the poem continues. It ends with this glorious verse: “At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!”

What I love here is the simple but eloquent reminder that the bliss of eternal love, the bliss of God, the bliss of being is not something for which we have to struggle, nor is it something that takes a long time to reach. Not at all. We can touch it and know it in a moment.

This moment. Any moment.

I have been having a few troubled feelings the last day or two. “Is my blog really going to work? Will enough people be interested in what I have to say so that it will succeed?”

I thank God that somehow, during the past two or three years of a rather unusual, but blessed life, I began to realize, as the traveler in Tagore’s poem realized, that what I had been seeking all my life is already present with me. It is the truth of my own true nature. It is the stillness of my own being, already perfect, already free, “standing by me, flooding my sleep with its smile.”

This stillness that I can feel in my physical flesh is my own stillness. It is my own true presence, not affected by time, and not worried by any troubled thoughts and feelings that are part of our present human experience.

The idea that it is hard and difficult to find “enlightenment,” whatever that might mean to us, is deep-seated, but it is a delusion. It condemns us to the “interminable path” that Tagore described. Of course, those who chase material comfort and well-being also tend to find themselves on a search that never ends.

Being is timeless. Being is endless.  It is who we are, and it is with us through all the tribulations of our lives. As the warrior-poet David wrote in Psalm 23, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”

In her lovely book, The Diamond in your Pocket, the American-born teacher Gangaji, http://www.gangaji.org, puts it this way, “The ever-present possibility in any moment is to wake up to the truth of yourself as consciousness. That waking up occurs in the mind’s surrender to silence.”

Get off “the endless path” — and be free is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

I was sitting in the coffee shop yesterday afternoon, reading a good book. I have a pair of bifocals for reading and computer work, so of course I had my glasses on while I was reading.

I have a little pouch in my shirt pocket where I keep my glasses when I’m not using them, so when it was time to head for home I put my glasses back in their pouch. An hour or two later, I went to my computer to check my e-mails, and naturally put my glasses on. Shock and dismay. One of the lenses was missing. My spectacles were broken and I hadn’t even realized it.

JoAnn, always a good ally when something untoward happens, confirmed my thought that a screw had come loose in the glasses. But the big question was — where on earth was the lens?

I called the coffee shop, and asked them if they could look for it. JoAnn and I looked everywhere. No sign of a missing lens.

Finally, after the assistant at the coffee shop reported she hadn’t been able to find anything, I gave up my search, and resigned myself to the fact I’d have to buy a new lens. Around eight o’clock in the evening, I sat down in my chair in the living room to relax and watch a little TV.

I took off my shoes to relax my feet, and put my orthotics into my house shoes. I picked up one of the house shoes, and started to put it on, but something wasn’t right.

I looked down. What did I see?

My missing lens was sitting, or I suppose I should say lying on the orthotic in the back of the house shoe. How did it get there? I have absolutely no idea. I cannot begin to conceive how it got there. But that is where it was.

“Seek, and ye shall find,” the Bible tells us, and it is perfectly true. They are beautiful words. If we do not seek, we will not find. But there’s a catch in the ancient Scripture, I have found. A paradox, if you will.

When I stopped seeking my missing lens — I found it.

When JoAnn stopped searching for a good relationships some years back — there I was! (Oh dear, how self-righteous and self-important can you get?)

When I stopped searching for truth and happiness — it appeared.

It’s as if at a certain point we have to relax our grip, our intensity, our yearning — our wanting — and simply surrender.   When we are still, it opens a door to magic. The creative process which wants to bring to us what is right for us is free to do so.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” someone said. I’d say life works in mysterious ways too.

Changing gears here, before I go, I’d like to express deep thanks to some fellow bloggers who have been kind enough to include posts of mine in their blog carnivals. A blog carnival, by the way, according to Wikipedia, “is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly.”

Lila Jirel has included my post, “A path of true joy and strength beckons you,” in her Carnival of Inspiration and Motivation, at www.cultivatepositivity.com.

James Wortz has included “A prayer of gratitude for my body” in his Living an Intuited Life Carnival at www.intuitedlife.com.

And Christina has included “Old husband finally learns new trick,” at her Everything Worth Reading Carnival at www.Everythingworthreading.blogspot.com.

These are great websites. Hop on over. I know you’ll enjoy visiting them and perusing the many excellent posts they have to offer.

When I gave up the search — it appeared is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age