Issue 72 | The Sun Magazine

November 1981

Readers Write

Living Alone

Freedom, growth, silence

By Our Readers
Quotations

Sunbeams

What does “car” mean? A car in a showroom, a car heading straight toward me, a car needing constant repair, all have such isolated meanings that the name “car” cannot be said to stand for any one thing. That too is true of Scott or John or Gayle. God is in them only when God is in my mind. Only love can see steadily, consistently. Love makes one thing of all that it sees.

Hugh Prather, There is a Place Where You Are Not Alone

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The High Diving Board

The man in the silk swimsuit stood on the edge of the diving board — now motionless. An unusual silence weighed in the air. Everyone turned to look at this figure balanced on the end of the board. A collective gasp pulled the air from the board as the old man bent his legs and in slow motion sprang into the air.

By Ron Jones
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Kali Comes Home

It is a short-term hurt for a long-term heal; I suddenly understand, not through some feat of logic but through living alone with the only thing I have ever had or will ever have — the pearl of my Isness. I am not alone, I am the beloved, I am understood, and there is nothing I need ever change.

By Elizabeth Rose Campbell
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

As Beautiful As A Tree

I sat down Sunday to draw a tree. I had been thinking about it for awhile, and wanted to slow myself down so I could see it well enough to create it on paper. I also needed a “tree” to put on my business card — a symbol of what I am about. So, finally, after having seen “the” tree many times on my way home from work, I took along the pens and paper and sat down to draw.

By Tobin Quereau
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

An Evening With Ram Dass

When you finally want to become free, because you’re tired of getting high and coming down, then you become appreciative of everything in your life. And then you’re going towards hotter and hotter fires. You’re looking for those things that catch you. You’re actually looking to find out where your anger and lust and greed and doubt are, because you want to clean up your act. Not because you’re a goody-goody gumshoes. Not even because you ought to. Not even because you better or else! Just because you’ve got to.

By Ram Dass
Fiction

A Neighbor At The Door

Then leo is saying listen, why don’t you come home with us for a cup of coffee, so I say really, like I have heard wifey-hostesses say all my life, and there is a flash of some kind of remembering across judas’s face that when people are being social this is the kind of thing they say and do.

By Pat Ellis Taylor
Fiction

Two Stories

The Lord Shantih found himself at the Temple of Rahla where the statues of the gods are kept. Pilgrims journey from distant lands to touch these statues, believing that one touch will cure them of their ills.

By Thomas Wiloch