The Matter with Things is more than a book. It is an intellectual foundation for a world that can value truth, beauty, and goodness. Using neuroscience, physics, metaphysics, evolution, an understanding of consciousness, intuition, imagination, reason, science, philosophy and the sacred, the work is wonderful and wise but also long and complex. It asks the questions – How do we know what is true? What account of reality emerges? And who are we as individual beings and as a species? It does this in part by examining Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (the book’s subtitle). The book comes in 3 parts, with an introduction, 28 chapters, an epilogue, 8 appendices, and a 200-page bibliography. It may be helpful to take notes and perhaps to view the chapter videos on the McGilchrist website. These one hour videos are records of conversations between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin on topics in the book’s chapters. I found them helpful in developing my own understanding of the material when reviewing my notes though they would probably only be marginally helpful without reading the chapters first.My aim in the rest of this review is to make them about us, about our common humanity, and the gift that is The Matter with Things. We can be manipulative and attentive, selfish and generous, fearful and courageous, callous and compassionate. We more easily see these things in others. My hope is that these three meditations will perhaps provide an opportunity to see them in ourselves as well as to see them in the whole human enterprise. The first two meditations have taken their themes from The Matter with Things. The Left and Right in their titles refer both to our asymmetric brain hemispheres, that is to our neuroanatomy, as well as what’s left to us plus what we get right.Two notes may be helpful before you read the poems. The simile “like fools with a map” is in the first poem. The point here is that the fools have the map but miss the experience and reality that the map, whether graphics, words, ideas, just represents. In the third line of the final meditation, “My humanity is caught up in yours,” is Desmond Tutu’s translation of the Zulu word Ubuntu.We Are What Is LeftLions and tigers and bears, oh myLanguage and logic and liesFictions seem to last longer than the truthwhich is always derivative in this worldof either/or and the land of certainty,built on shifting sand. It is the home of egosand some of survival’s necessities.Like a vision with blinders,we just name things – this is…You are…They will…Nouns name; that’s all.These little thoughts are in fast company.Easy are these directions without depth.Though many voices speak,one voice says – this way –mistaking representation for reality.We might get comfortable living herein this place where our home is not,where all seems locally linear.The time measured here eats his children,and this servant can control the master.Love can sometimes find a space,and perhaps fear always does.Do we believe stardust can always start over?We Are What Is RightMoving and fishing and flow, oh myIntegration is both more difficult for usthan deriving and is a softer presencein this, our home of both/and.It is at first liminal, then shared,and then renewed, for a time whole and healed.Presence and the integral are related to thatand that to the flow. Waiting at the gatesof heaven, may we find dancing and laughter and joy.The beginning of wisdom is awe at God’s presence.(or as it is written, the fear of the Lord)We can take time and take our place tooas well as taking only what we needwhile queing up to be integrated.Space is connected and will be made whole.May we find the fullness to growin word and grow in silence,in the light and in the dark,in waves of rainbows, music, and time.Waters of LifeWill a time of compassion begin?Stand or sit or kneel and be forgiven.My humanity is caught up in yours.Let us find Shalom.May you live in the grace,whose path is looking informed by love.though love is not a thing but a verb.May you find your peace with uncertaintyand also with the feeling of fullnessthat is prayer.Be free to stumble and rise again.Find yourself at home.Let all judgments take into accountthe many others in these experimentswith seeing and thought,with language and intuition and imagination.Our long journeys toward wholeness are similarMay they be safe placesfor souls to show up.