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Luminaries & Black Holes

The most brilliant minds on the planet will tell you that the universe is expanding. We invent telescopes and we create science fiction to "boldly go where no one has gone before," but we never really reach the edges or the explanations. Erwin McManus suggests that the space inside each person is even more vast and complicated. From his latest book, Soul Cravings:
"There is as much mystery inside as there is outside -- maybe more. If you look carefully inside people, you'll find both luminaries and black holes. And if you choose to walk with someone for a lifetime, you'll find that no matter how well you know him or her, there's still so much you don't know. [Unfortunately], some people seem to live in a very small universe. Their world has room only for themselves. While their souls have every potential to be ever expanding, they seem instead to be the center of a collapsing universe -- no room for dreams, for hope, for laughter, for love, for others -- room only for themselves."
I desperately want to work with Luminaries, and I am making it my goal to un-surrounded myself of the Black Holes who have no desire to ever become Stars. Individuals who strive to absorb the sun from everyone else on their path to obscurity are not welcome here; life is just too short. I need the light. //

Don’t Forget Your Green Apron

Every once in a great while I have these random moments of clarity; like suddenly everything makes sense and I have this peaceful, beautiful perspective of all that's in existence. They're always brief -- like a flash of lightening that burns a shadow on my mind's retina, leaving an imprint, a sense, much more lingering than the moment itself. They come and then they go, usually at strange times, and I'm left trying to stay in that moment -- or, rather, go back to it, because it was over almost before I realized it was happening. All I know is that somewhere inside that Presence is the way I want to live. Well, maybe you know what I'm talking about and maybe you don't, but I had one of those moments today when I was taking out the trash at Starbucks -- a fairly hideous job (particularly on a wet, snowy, cold day like today), just below cleaning the bathrooms and just above cleaning the floor drains -- and as I was was dragging the heavy cart with two huge garbage cans filled to the brim with empty cups, leftover coffee, used napkins, and assorted pastry shards a strange thought entered my ever-brooding head: "Don't forget." "Don't forget," it said again. And I said, "Huh?" And then it made sense. "When you move on to a new job where you don't have to get dirty or serve coffee to bratty customers or drag two hundred pounds of waste a hundred yards to a stinky dumpster, don't forget what it was like when you did." "Don't forget that there are people that still do this. And when you someday stand in line as a customer at the Green Empire with no employee discount, don't forget that some of the people behind the counter have Master's degrees. That some of them have kids and families. And that for one reason or another, they are all here because they need to be." "So be kind to them. Appreciate them when they do a good job. When they give you coffee and make you smile, love them back because they are going out of their way to make your day a bit more special, in spite of the fact that nobody is paying them much of anything to do it." I won't forget. //