A short excerpt from Ch. 1, "Spirit of the Trust", from my newly published book Feather in the Dust: Traditional Essays on the Human Condition, available at www.amazon.com

SPIRIT OF THE TRUST

Trust is free-willingly given, costs nothing to extend to another, requires two entities to come to life, and represents a presumption to confidence, openness, intimacy, and reliance on the good will of others to match the open hand of one’s own good will. Trust forms the absolute underpinnings and foundation among the assortment of human relationships, whether they be among siblings, families and extended families, between people and their governments, their society, or their civilization. Trust forms the root and main trunk of the tree of life, whereas other things, such as obedience, honor, love, and respect come to represent the branches as they develop and flourish through the behavior and actions within the course of a person’s life. Trust is manifest in the way light wraps itself around every object and gives color to the world. The miracles of nature lend of their trust and gave freely of their true nature. The color of the sky at dawn, the cry of the birds in the trees, the turning of the tide, all bespeak the glories of intimacy in the free license of their giving and the spirit of interconnectedness and unity that their message conveys.

The trust of wood is the fire that lies sequestered within its texture and grain. The trust of the rose and the pine lies in the distinctive and uplifting quality of their aromatic presence. We trust that the rain will shower us with its nourishing wetness and that the sun will shine forth its absorbing dryness. Trust takes the vibrations of a church bell and passes them through the human heart on waves of longing and loss for the true spirit of our time. Trust makes another’s self interest as precious as my own, just as the trust within a precious diamond lies in the purity of its crystalline shape and form. Every created thing expresses a form of trust that makes itself manifest through physical form, and if betrayed, will then compromise that very form. The trust of the bud and the seedling lies in the growth of the bloom that it will become. The trust of the pearl lies in the perfection of its form and substance. The trust of the rainbow appears fleetingly in the true colors of the universal spectrum of light. The trust of the wave lies in its crest, while the trust of the air and the wind lies in its promise of breath and of life. The trust of every created thing can be found in the intimacy of its giving.

The trust of the stars lies in the latent message of their twinkle, while the trust of the mirror lies in the reflection of true likeness, faithfully giving back to the world what it has received in kind. The trust of the horizon lies in its mysterious and beckoning edge, while the trust of the clock lies in the finality of its stroke, making its way down through the ages with the insistence of a metronome. There is trust in the intricacy of a snow crystal, the fragility of a spider’s web, the beauty of butterfly wings, and the delicacy of feathers, a trust that no duplication can occur to their distinctive creation, and they are forever new and unique. There is a trust in the universal law of motion that the sun will rise in the East and set in the West. There is trust that the winter solstice will last only a breathless moment on its journey away from the sun, a wondrous trust that the earth will immediately begin its journey of return, bringing with it the renewing seasons of spring and summer, until six months later when it meets the summer solstice and makes the return journey on the downward slope toward the dark winter night of possible no return, but for the sublime forces of the sacred trust.