enshrined

It seems a pity, but par for the course, when the shrine ascends to a position once reserved for what anyone imagined could be enshrined in the first place.

Take "help" for example. It seems to me there is a trick to it.

"Help" is wonderful stuff and it's easy to imagine why anyone might enshrine it. The world is filled with cruel winds so "help" can don a lustrous glow and an intricately delicious catechism. The walls of the shrine rise up. This is good-good-good ... brick by brick, intention and encouragement take shape... a holy and defended hiding place.

The trick is this ... at least from where I sit: No one can help anyone else. The world of "other" is a world of shrines and cruel winds are unimpressed by goodness and safety. No matter what the mortar and how impressive the brick, winds are just winds much as help is just help.

So maybe it's OK to visit and pay homage at a local shrine, to build intention and assume that encouragement has been offered. But in the end ...

Do not mewl and genuflect within the sacred shrine. Do not imagine you could help. That is just extra shrine-building weight on an already-freighted path. Surrender this shrine to the level, lovely ground.

Do not imagine you could help.

Just help.

This is the way of the wind.