I love the way flora and fauna audition across Spring, each bursting onto Nature’s stage for 15 minutes of fame. Call it American “Idyll” as they flash their colors, sing their song, or do their courtship dance! My Golden Pass to the next round goes to the dragonflies. I am the Father of Dragonflies, and I guess that’s my audition (which way to “Game of Thrones”).

There is green, green everywhere, distilled in rain and lightning, kissed and caressed by the sun, tended by the silken wind, and guarded by stars twinkling from midnight velvet watchtowers! Still to come on American Idyll: Summer’s competition rounds for survival and supremacy (golden magic), and Autumn’s elimination rounds (diminishing echoes but vivid memories), followed by white Winter’s healing sleep until Spring awakens again. What goes around comes around.

Whatever season you are in, there is comfort in knowing that life repeats its cycles. How much would you miss, if it didn’t? Hope you deny yourself nothing this time around. The one thing inner truth won’t tolerate is regret.

Thought I was going to regret answering the question last month about what I believe in, but I’m happy to say that the huge amount of profound response was gratifying – especially from those readers whose spiritual lives are conflicted and who found direction or new ways to think about institutionalized religion and God in what I said [ 2015 04-16 Thomas Sullivan Stubbing my TOE ]. As you might expect, there was bitterness between faiths expressed as well. And while I’m holding to not creating a debate, I will further my autobio answer a little by quoting from a reply I sent someone else:

“…it’s too easy to lose track of the many broad-minded and ever-searching Christians, Muslims, Jews etc. I include many clerics among the open-minded, having had three ministers call me their best friend and find sanctuary in honest conversations with me. Don’t even know how that happened. … So I try not to let my ire grow over the fact that organized religion has been, is now, and probably always will be the number one source of intolerance, inhumanity, injustice and horror in the world. It’s too easy for me to simplify the vast complexity of religion down to that abuse and misuse (and when you think about it, most of the denominational offshoots come about expressly because of disenchantment with same). But to forever parse and divide is no solution either. I try to look within and to be generic. Why would God care about deeds to houses, laws about land ownership, covenants between people that outlive the truths in their hearts – all the things that so preoccupy us as humans? Hard for me to picture a Supreme Being hanging around law libraries and registrar offices across ages and cultures on a small planet in a vast universe in order to figure out justice. Much easier to believe that we are judged directly from our minds and hearts. The moral measure then is how faithfully we follow inner truths in a world that demands lip service and façades. So I try to live by my inner truths as much as is practical, while freely admitting that I want and need the rule of law just to keep social order. The difference is that the truths of the heart are the real morality, while the rule of law is only associated with morality and may just as easily reflect ‘might makes right,’ servitude, control, tangible ownership, customs and appearances.”

So easy to get that backwards under the pressure of our daily lives, which is why I search out the freedom of sanctuaries!

June’s photos below are a mix from a few such sanctuaries that I’ve recently enjoyed. The venues include biking, kayaking, hiking, running (in the rain), alternating with selfies taken while I was doing them (#1-8). #9-11 include my friend Ami on a dragonfly hunt. I call Ami the Mother of Dragonflies because she does field research toward her Doctorate, gently netting the aerial acrobats and putting iridescent magic marker on their transparent wings. #12 is a Blast from the Past photo taken in Dearborn, Michigan, from l. to r. my children Sean & Colleen, my niece Nora, my sister Merry and my ex.

This month’s archived column features more of your always interesting and sometimes daunting questions! Here’s a link to the Q&A: 2015 05-16 Thomas Sullivan OLYMPIC TIN & AVATAR GOLD

When Spring whispers your name, I hope you’ll find warmth under the sun, peace among the flowers, and newness when you lift your face to the rain! Or as I put it in another FB post, when the whole Earth around you is being purified, and the hiss of holy water on trembling leaves rises to your ears like applause, surrender with joy!

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