December 7--Transparency

Let things taste of what they are.  --Alice Waters 

    I've been doing a lot of tasting lately! We've had four nights in a row of sit-down dinners lasting 2-3 hours. The food is wonderful, but I'd just as soon not sit around eating for that length of time. 

    The Waters quote expresses a desire that a person/situation/thing is true to its nature. It's another way, possibly, of saying "what you see is what you get." No subterfuge, manipulation or conniving. 

    I share these words of Alan Watts regarding the difference between belief and faith:

We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

    Happy birthday to my father-in-law!

        Leta

These shrubs are just blooming now,
red & green for Christmas!