Sailing semantic seas can so easily leave us adrift somewhere behind our forehead, riding plastic waves, dreaming that we are not dreaming, unless we let ourselves be transported across the gap between language and what language represents.

This, of course, asks much of us. Sometimes what we are reading invites us to thus leap, perhaps even accompanying us in our crossing, holding us without holding us back. Through the words and between the lines, we may at such times feel the kinship, the steps, the pulse and spirit of the author, whose differences from us only make more vividly compelling the similarities.

In our passage to the essential -- our journey into what we never really left but only dreamt we did -- we eventually begin to recognize ourselves in and through each other, intuiting our collective condition and opportunity, knowing ourselves to be more than we can imagine, grateful for, among other things, the word-boats that helped get us out on the open sea.

Each journey, however strange, is our journey. We are all, all dying to live. Each life, however short or mundane, uniquely and eloquently expresses this. Each note enriches the music. The music we make makes us. Everything passes, but the music goes on. Thus do we outlive ourselves.

All our possible pasts don’t add up to us. In leaving their warp and weave, keeping only their necessary teachings, their essential kernel of reminder, we pass through Eternity’s grinder, dying into the Real, finding freedom through becoming intimate with all that we are, and therefore with all that is.

Divine Dynamite is a community of writings held together by a stubborn passion for a deeper life, a life of full-blooded awaring and integration, a life in which everything -- everything -- is permitted to awaken us.

Much of Divine Dynamite is a turning toward what is typically turned away from. Its embrace of the One does not separate it from the Many. Its spirituality requires no distance from the raw, difficult, dirty, disreputable, or stuck. Hence it leans more toward intimacy than transcendence.

The Awakening process can be very fiery. In its flames what gets consumed, what dies, makes room for a deeper life. Until that fire is but light, we have work to do, work that these writings are devoted to exploring and honoring. Such work is the ultimate labor of love. It is what we were born to do. It is our gift to all.

Some of Divine Dynamite’s writings sing, some bleed, some rant, some attempt to say what is probably better left unsaid, but all are invitations, however roughly wrapped, to more fully enter Awakening’s heartland, whether done like an eagle riding a wave of everlasting morning, or, more likely, on our hands and knees.

Greetings to the you who has already arrived, and greetings to the you who is still arriving. Both are equally welcome. Have a seat; the table is set, the wine uncorked, the food and company ready.

Robert Augustus Masters
Crescent Beach, British Columbia, July 2004