When appended to ordinary words, the prefix (“trans”) can invoke a spirit of transcendence. Translations of wisdom teachings from distant lands can bring new knowledge and tools for transformation—allowing us to penetrate confusion, and bringing new freedom into our lives.
The human yearning to cross over to the other side, and thereby become free of our daily frustrations, runs deep in our dreams, our literature, and our language.
Many words—transmigrate, transubstantiate, translucent—signal our hope that something greater resides beyond our anxieties and confusions. But it seems that one transient has fallen off the bridge to beyond.
The word “transact” could so readily celebrate the power of “action” to bring our deepest visions into life (just as transparency brings light into darkness). But instead, “transact” refers to the secular transfer of material: buying, selling, acquiring, paying, exchanging, and conducting business.
Perhaps this week we can remember that our “actions” build the vehicle through which we express understanding and intention, and thereby transmit the light of the eternal into ordinary life. It’s not that we don’t know how to act, but that our actions fail to conduct a vision from beyond the run-down tenements of self-preoccupation. Lending a helping hand, we ourselves cross over to a greater wholeness, where we can discover an open space of shared interests, wider perspectives and greater freedom.
When our actions come from a deep caring, they transact a spirit of accommodation which melts the confining walls of our encrusted certainties.
Life is everywhere, and in every when and everywhere, everything is connected. Welcome aboard, fellow passengers on the bridge to nowhere. No transfers necessary.
-
Dracula in Transit.
While transporting his luggage
From Transylvania to America
Trans-Air lost Dracula’s coffin.
Transubstantiated and transmigrated,
He’s now a born-again budgie,
Living in Philadelphia.
(Tune in next week for: “Waltie Goes to Washington”)