One Third There

The point of my practice was to write about 60 poems by the end of this last CPE unit. I'm one third there and two thirds done with the unit. This is not good.

I've learned that I'm still very bad at scheduled practice. Nothing magic has happened since last time I tried this to make it go easier or more naturally.

If I look at the practice as The Practice, as a whole, then one third is just nonsense. What is one third of a life, or one third true, or one third lovely, or one third of love? So whatever point I find myself at, there I am, and it is a good place to be. That feels like something I'd want to continue.

If I look at the practice as a bean-counting exercise where I am supposed to produce the beans, then one third makes too much sense. You're behind. You won't likely catch up. You failed to achieve, or missed the mark. This sounds like something I'll be happy to be done with, to put it behind me.

Not really what I'm going for in spiritual practices.

It makes me think, in this stream-of consciousness way, of sin. Of missing the mark.

We see our lives as a bean-counter would. We miss the mark. We do not add up. We amount to little.

God sees - or I believe that God sees - us as whole, so what sense does missing the mark make to God? It just ends up falling down to a proportionality, God the Ultimate Bean Counter, finding homosexuals or liberals or Muslims or whomever to be Lacking Sufficient Beans, whereas conservatives and heteros and the orthodox have Just Enough Beans.

I don't buy it. I don't think that God makes bean-counter sense.

At the very least, I hope that I do not let my practices make bean-counter sense of me.

I understand if this post only makes sense to me.