The Dog That Went to Law School

Also, who really invented the printing press and the bullshit we learn in college, plus a cool story about divinity at the coffee shop and the divergent perspectives in families.

It turns out, that it wasn’t Gutenberg and we don’t know who it was. The first on-record printed text is the Diamond Sutra. According to Smithsonianmag,

No one is sure who Wang Jie was or why he had The Diamond Sutra printed. But we do know that on this day in 868 A.D.—or the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong in Jie’s time—he commissioned a block printer to create a 17-and-a-half-foot-long scroll of the sacred Buddhist text, including an inscription on the lower right hand side reading, “Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents.” Today, that scroll is housed at the British Library and is acknowledged as the oldest dated printed book in existence.

I learned this not in school but because my son was asking questions about Protestantism and Catholicism and I remembered from college learning that Protestantism was greatly fueled by the invention of the printing press. I took it for granted that it was an invention that happened right around the time of Luther’s 95 thesis, and that guy Gutenberg was the one who invented it, because that’s what you do in college: People tell you things that you didn’t get to learn until higher education and because you are privileged enough to get to be told them, you assume they are true. It’s bullshit of course. All of it. Imagine Han Solo saying that with his sparkly blue eyes. Of course not ALL of it was bullshit. I remember learning about the idea of EMPIRE in a critical way at my Brethren in Christ undergraduate institution. I remember sitting in my uncomfortable seat thinking, “That’s us, we’re about to fall.” And I said so and everyone shook their head and scoffed at me. The next year 9/11 happened.

I’ve never read the Diamond Sutra, but I’d like to…and I’ve been thinking about how water and light and magnetism might create a kind of prism of perspectives that are liquid compassion, that might, if somehow solidified because a diamond not through pressure but through it’s release in tears and subsequent tribute in memories that honor the different ways that light refracts when we allow different angles to congeal into a wholeness.

I invite and open to receive with great gratitude, joy and abundance, a world where, even before angles dissolve back into liquid light and empty space filled with love unspeakable, the dance of object and subject known fully as mere play, that we will be diamond people, whether through the crushing of our carbon through the pressures that transform us or whether, we let go of that pressure altogether, and simply cry into the light and let that liquid light eventually solidify in a crystal, multifaceted in its angles, yet with clarity and abundance of light in every perspective.

If synergy is the convergence of opposites, this diamond might be seen as what composition does with the energy of polygonal opposition, which is what we have in the world. We may have it in our own selves. In our own divergent perspectives within perspectives that differ from friends or families, or reflect the light slightly differently, or see what has happened in a totally different way.

Sara and Hagar. Ishmael and Isaac. This story also came up during conversation today. Islam and Judaism have the same family story, but in Islam, Ishmael’s mother is the real wife. In Judaism, it is Isaac’s mother.

When my father was growing up, he clearly remembers that his sister shot him with a beebee gun. Decades after I heard that from him I had Thanksgiving at his sisters house. She clearly remembers that he shot her with a beebee gun. He felt, deeply that she was the favored child. I told her this and she was shocked. She was always absolutely sure he was the favored child.

Can we laugh, even though it’s tragic? Yes, yes we can, because there is a whole genre devoted to comedic tragedy. Can we warmly embrace both perspectives without having access to knowing who is right from an arbitrator with any real objectivity? Both children wanted to be loved. Neither wanted to be shot with a beebee gun. Both felt real the insecurity of experiencing less parental love, which felt real to them. Is it possible their parents were just compensating in different ways for unresolved grief from the baby who died before either of them was born?

Someday we won’t have war over angles that have generated grief. We will have self-compassion and compassion for others. Someday we’ll have diamonds of congealed liquid light of compassion and light that honors the diversity of perspectives and refuses to move from the center of our compassion for the One Self, expressed in many sovereign individuals. Through love, we will cry our tears together, instead of as enemies, even if we do not see things the same way.

In the morning, at coffee I met a woman who is just finishing up law school. I also met her dog, Theodora, a little white miniature who has accompanied her everyday to law school. She wants to go into trauma-informed law - she really wants to help people. She doesn’t know where she’ll find her niche. She hopes she won’t burn out too soon. I have a feeling we might have some differences of opinion on some issues, though they never came up. But who cares? We don’t have to know how each other feels about x y or z triggering issue to sense our good hearts, our good energy.

At second coffee, the barista was young woman with a glowing vibration and a turquoise-ish necklace, which I was drawn to compliment. She in turn complimented my Joan of Arc pendant from the Kaia Ra collection. “You were born for this,” it says. I told her it’s one of the jewelry pieces infused with the energy of the ascended masters. She said, “I love that!”

Glancing at the line, she then asked, “What can I get for you?”

Me: “Love joy and world peace.”

Her: “Okay! Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Me: “Awesome.”

Her: “Anything else?”

Me: “All of humanity awakening to it’s sovereign divinity, how about THAT?”

Her: “I’ll do what I can.”

She looked more daunted over that one that world peace, love or joy. But the truth is, sovereign divinity in an attitude of unity is the key to love joy and world peace.

Of course, if you’ve read my recent pieces, you know that as much as I would like to skip to the end of the chapter where we are all dancing in our sovereign divine loving joyful peaceful world, I am also simultaneously processing an immense amount of personal grief. Divergent perceptions run in my family.

I cannot control theirs. But I can have self-compassion and compassion for them. I can cry my tears into the light. I can allow liquid light to congeal multiple, contradictory perspectives into something beautiful through which the light can shine through.

And I can tip. After telling my barista, “You transmit to alot of people just by being here, being yourself, radiating your light int this coffee shop. People come for the coffee. Give them sovereignty. Put in their coffee. Then they will drink their sovereign divinity with every cup,” I dropped a ten in the glass jar. “Here’s to your sovereign divinity.”

What are some divergent perspectives you are holding within yourself? How about your family? How can you have more compassion for yourself and others?

Here’s to your sovereignty within your humanity

Here’s to your divinity arising within you, reminding you there is nothing to be ashamed of, either in your human experience of imperfection, nor in the perfection of your divinity.

Here’s to living openly with unanswered questions about what really happened, and doing so compassionately.

And here’s to whoever first printed the Diamond Sutra.