Sunday, October 28, 2012

What’s Your Unpretentious Best?


What’s Your Unpretentious Best?


            1.   Where do you come from? That’s the central question
                  posed by the Tao Te Ching.

            2.   From ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust, where are you in 
                  between?

            3.   I read once that a famous Hollywood director instructed
                  his dry cleaner to return his suits clean and rumpled.

            4.   Was that a contrivance? Yes, I suppose, but I sure like
                  the message.

            5.   Care to wait till we’re on our death-beds to ask if we’ve
                  been real to people closest to us, with imploring eyes,
                  not knowing the answer?

            6.   Proud of where you are in life? That’s OK, if you’ll take
                  time to remember your close calls. They might have gone
                  the other way.

            7.   Just be grateful at all times. That will deliver you.






Hat

She donned that
old rumpled straw hat,
the one with the
broad brim and faded
wide brown ribbon.
Here she was at
her unpretentious best,
her climbing warmth
spread over me and our
partners—a mother-friend
and young married son
sauntering the beach
on an early
Sunday afternoon—
a convenience of
caring company, a
lesson in simplicity,
an ease seldom matched.
We stop, they want
a picture, done,
and we move on.
She sends us a print
from Chicago, now
sitting on our dresser
for six years.
Love that memory.
Love that hat.


© 2012 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
____________________________________________________


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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Tell Me About It


Tell Me About It


            1.   We all know we can learn by being good listeners.

            2.   A key self-initiated way to listen is to ask a sincere
                  question.

            3.   What do you sincerely want to know? How affirming it
                  is to the one who can provide the answer!

            4.   How about that associate, friend or relative you admire
                  so much? Have you asked her how she’s come into her 
                  own?

            5.   Do so, and as you learn something you didn’t know
                  you’ll also discover you’ve strengthened your bond.

            6.   True masters are good in ways beyond their own
                  awareness.

            7.   Your warm heart and well-formed question will light a
                  candle between you.






Craftsman

That thing you do so well—
about which you’re silent,
do you take it for granted?
I think not;
were I to ask,
you could speak
at length about it,
how you came
to learn and love it.
Isn’t that so?
You’re respected,
that’s clear, and
people are better off
for your efforts.
And so let us rejoice
in the gift.
But, come now,
tell me about it.
Still, there
will be secrets
even you don’t know.



© 2012 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
______________________________________________________





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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Here’s What You Owe Others


Here’s What You Owe Others


            1.   Sometimes I wait when there’s no reason.

            2.   Perhaps I’m fearful I’m really not good enough to deliver
                  the goods.

            3.   But then somebody pushes me or asks me or even
                  demands that I give what I have.

            4.   So then I do.

            5.   I take my know-how or my experience or my gift in some
                  way and lay it on the line.

            6.   The results blow us away, the recipients grateful, and I’m
                  clearly a contributor.

            7.   OK, next time, no hesitating attitude! What else am I
                  here for?






Showing

“Let me show you,”
She said.
It lit me up—
her saying those
words—
and I wonder why.
It wasn’t the stuff.
It wasn’t the trick.
So I took her lead.
I offered
to show people.

Same thing!



© 2012 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
____________________________________________________




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Sunday, October 7, 2012

Be Present at the Creation


Be Present at the Creation


            1.   As grade-schoolers a few of us could report with delight
                  and big wide eyes events that were stranger than fiction.

            2.   We hadn’t been there, but had heard of them from
                  others and could relay them in small club-like gatherings.

            3.   Some adults say they’ve taken a leap of faith with no
                  assurances and are astounded at the bounty, spiritually
                  and temporally.

            4.   There’s the calling for each one of us—I believe that
                  surely—but we can refuse.

            5.   Not availing ourselves of the risk, to not step into the
                  mystery when it’s presented, is the grinding down of a
                  counterfeit safety.

            6.   A toe in the water is kindergarten, perhaps a start or
                  merely a sop.

            7.   What is the world showing you?






There

It’s one thing
to have a curiosity
and satisfy it—
say, how massive
construction machinery
gets built.
What, though, to make
of bolts from the blue?
A long absent friend appears
in your thoughts
and one day soon,
on the street before you.
A piece of work—
that fits your gifts—
leaps forward
from a phone call.
A last minute idea
wriggles free
at the moment
of delivery,
sprinkling fairy dust.
A casual question you raise
opens a new world.
            So, truth told,
            you’ve been there . . .
            what do you
            make of it,
            really.

            this time?



© 2012 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
____________________________________________________




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