And, And, And

Such a wonder the circling ride of the Great Mandala!

You go round and round and you think you're coming to the same spot. You think you're stuck, just as in the song from which I take this space's new title.

Everyone I knew who heard "The House Song" always seemed to break out into a nostalgic sigh the minute Paul Stookey called out the first two lines:

This house goes on sale ev'ry Wednesday morning
And taken off the market in the afternoon.

What was so great about that? They couldn't make up their minds? Or break out of their pasts? The house was rickety? Yes, yes, yes and more. One definition of insanity is to repeat the same old thing, over and over again, expecting different results. We get seemingly stuck in the Mandala's circling motion.

Then we figure it out ... it's really a spiral, like the slinkies with which we used to play long ago. Each turn takes us to another level. Each return goes to a similar place. But we're really on a different plane.