Gene Logsdon's father-in-law had tried his hand at making bootleg whiskey on his Kentucky farm. He washed the leftover runny mash down a sinkhole, thereby destroying the evidence. Or so he thought. One evening at milking time, the cows came in from the pasture wobbling and swaying in a most ludicrous manner. At first, the father-in-law feared that they had some strange disease or maybe had gotten into some locoweed (white snakeroot), but they seemed in good enough spirits. In fact, they acted exactly as if they were drunk. Hmmmmmmm. Investigation prove that the whiskey slop had finally worked its way down through the hilltop sinkhole and was oozing out of a cleft in the rocks at the bottom of the hill. The cows had bellied up to the bar and sucked the mother lode dry.

I love this story. One... it's a reminder of what happens when we receive the freedom to live outside "the box"--which means any predetermined set of conditions.   And two... you never know what will happen when you let go of the encumbering need for control. (You know, the obligation to pretend that there is nothing out of place--say... heaven forbid, messy emotions and pesky doubts and fault-lines.) I smile, knowing that even with permission we still will want to know the "instructions for letting go." There must be a checklist somewhere, and if we're going to do this--living outside the box--we might as well do it right! As if there's a test, or a contest. (Speaking of tests... why is it that every time I take one of those magazine quizzes on happiness, I need more Prozac?)

It's not surprising really. Here's the deal: We live in a world that reminds us every single day about what we lack, and what we need to add to our life to be somebody we are not.

Yes. We are a culture big on resolutions--you know, making ourselves better. (Just as long as they fit into our plans.) A man had resisted efforts to run with a jogging group until his doctor told him he had to exercise. Soon thereafter, he reluctantly joined the group for 5:30 a.m. jogs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. After a month of running, it was decided that he might be hooked, especially when he said he had discovered "runner's euphoria." "Runner's euphoria," he explained, "is what I feel at 5:30 on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays."    

Which reminds me of a third reason I like Logsdon's story. What if that which we so frantically seek is already inside of us?

There is a bad car accident on a busy street. A woman, from one of the vehicles, lay in the street, in need of medical assistance. A young woman bends over the body. A man rushes over. "Move away please," he tells the woman. "I've had CPR training. Let me handle this." He pulls out his training manual. After a minute, the young woman taps him on the shoulder and says, "When you get to the part about calling a doctor, I'm already here."

It could be why Jesus rocked the status quo when he told everyone that kingdom of heaven is within. Now. Say what?

In one encounter with a teacher in India, Donald Hall asks him to define "contentment." 
"Absorbedness," the teacher replies. 

Now, I can't find absorbedness in any dictionary.  But here's my best guess -- "Let life in."  

Which may be. . .this moment. Or, as Jane Kenyon wrote, in her final days, "Trust God and be where you are."

It looks so easy on paper.

And as a result, we commit ourselves to try even harder.

"You don't trust the goodness inside you," a friend tells me. "You think you're telling me something I don't know," I yell, affectionately, while Googling for resources on tapping the power within.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. Henry Miller

Yes, Logsdon's story could be about how easy it is to live naïve or gullible, but I prefer to use GK Chesterton's metaphor about "digging for the sunrise of wonder."

I've been in my house for almost 10 years. And the garden took its time, which meant that for years, behind my house was a large hole. "It's going to be a pond. You know, someday," I would explain.

When people visited my garden, I directed traffic so that we enjoyed the charming areas, making sure that no one would notice the eyesore. On one visit, a young woman broke from the pack, and stood at the abyss... now, from years of neglect, a hole filled with dandelions. An amphitheater of dandelions. As if a five gallon bucket of butter yellow paint were poured, creating a river to where the waterfall will begin, 140 feet away. She stood mesmerized. "What a remarkably creative idea, to make a river and pond of dandelions. I never would have thought of that. It's peaceful and beautiful! Genius! What ever made you think of it?" "Oh," I said (modestly), "It just came to me."

What I saw as blight or indictment or shortcoming or deficiency or scarcity, she saw as genius. Go figure.

And that is where spirituality and spiritual growth begins; with acceptance: I never noticed that before. In other words, I begin here. In this moment. I am not a pawn or victim or puppet. And in beginning here, I accept my imperfection--my brokenness, my divided and fractured being (what William James called my "torn-to-pieces-hood"). That here, even with the untidy parts, the untidy emotions, I can embrace the Sacrament of the blessed present... in this conversation, this conundrum, this moment of grace, this dandelioned pond, this serendipity, this relationship.

Outside my window, the weather can't make up its mind; stay mercurial or make way for spring. There are rain showers followed by pockets of sun and calm. And when the clouds do break, the butter yellow tête-à-tête daffodils beam.   

What's this got to do with the farmer's cows?

Absorbedness.
Let life in.
To belly up to the bar--of this day--with all of our senses, with the full permission to be, literally, drunk on life.