I Find No Peace

I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not--yet can I scape no wise--
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.
I love another, and thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both life and death,
And my delight is causer of this strife.



 

(Sir Thomas Wyatt,October 11, 1542)

 

Autumn Musings . . .

In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan
Is fragrant in the wake of summer hence,
'Tis sweet to sit entranced, and muse thereon
In melancholy and godlike indolence:
When the proud spirit, lull'd by mortal prime
To fond pretence of immortality,
Vieweth all moments from the birth of time,
All things whate'er have been or yet shall be.
And like the garden, where the year is spent,
The ruin of old life is full of yearning,
Mingling poetic rapture of lament
With flowers and sunshine of spring's sure returning;
Only in visions of the white air wan
By godlike fancy seized and dwelt upon.

(Robert Bridges, 1844-1930)

Forgetfulness . . .

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessèd the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone,

(George Santayana)

Nursery Rhymes

The Owl & The Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

(Edward Lear)

The funny thing about nursery rhymes is that they have core collective wisdom that almost sneaks up on you at times.  They seem non-sensical at first but then a slow understanding begins to creep through . . . that pretty things are delighful; that our differences are nothing compared to our capacities for love and friendship; that sacrificing for our friends benefit is noble, that sensual treats like food and song and dancing by the light of the moon are really what life is about . . .

Words have Power

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around" (Leo Buscaglia)

Our existence is literally defined by the words we choose to use . . . the restriction of language,by poor education, or by cultural and/or political negation steals the experience of life from us, because it cannot be verbalized and thus shared.

Think about George Orwell's book 1984 where "Newspeak" seeks to eliminate language in the deliberate effort to end "thought crime" i.e., resistance to authority, by destroying any way of conceptualizing anything other than rigid orthodoxy.

The English language is the most expressive language on the planet, by far nearly a quarter of a million words, although 20,000 to 40,000 is the upper usage range (Shakespeare, who invented quite a few words himself, used around 25,000 in his works) Other modern languages have at best a quarter of that.  So we have variety and near endless options to illustrate our world with.

Now consider the words you use to describe your life, your day to day experiences . . . when someone asks you how your day has been,was it "fine" or "okay?"  Even if it wasn't a great day, mightn't it still be interesting or mundane or insiped, or pehaps it was better than that; exhilirating, exceptional, rewarding?

The power of our words can transform; how we see ourselves, our world, and how we can effect, or even infect, that world, hopefully for the better.

Vocabulary then isn't just some little mind teaser; it is our fundamental expression and our self-definition, it is thus life itself and how you choose to create it . . .

 

New Mornings . . .

Still quiet climb the burning vermilion rays,

Hailing anew; as wonder of ancient time
Earnest with uprais'd hands, priests chanted praise
Rich with awe, poured out in sacred mime
Red oblations of holy wine to greet
Yon ascending god, Phoebus glorified;
Myself, obeisant, here pay homage meet,
Ere the pallid moon set, and starry skied
Night betake herself to triumphant dreams

Such light discovered in thy brilliant eyes;

Aurora's passion now so sallow seems
To their lavish spirit; contented sighs
That fill me quite; bid my heart wake the day;
In thy thought, dawns delight, and here I pray.

Old Wounds . . .

Ay as from dreams of some old glorious fight,

Flags flying, and shaken steel, and mounds of slain,
A soldier starts, and feels his old wound pain
His tossing side: anon he sits upright
And rubs his lonely eyes in the dim night,
The glorious vision fading from his brain:
Only the sullen-throbbing pangs remain,
The unforgetful wound, the tear-dimmed sight.
So oft times having wandered in my sleep
By those loved lanes and hedgerows to our tryst,
I press the lids of thy great eyes, and weep
To feel against my heart thy wild heart leap
Once more--Night yawns--Where are the eyes I kissed?
The heart-aches and the tears are all I keep.
(John Barlas)

Roman Afterlife

Catullus’ farewell poem to his dead brother;

By strangers’ coasts and waters, many days at sea

I come here for the rites of your unworldling,
Bringing for you, the dead, these last gifts of the living
And my words – vain sounds for the man of dust.
Alas, my brother,
You have been taken from me. You have been taken from me,
By cold chance turned a shadow, and my pain.
Here are the foods of the old ceremony, appointed
Long ago for the starvelings under the earth:
Take them: your brother’s tears have made them wet; and take
Into eternity my hail and my farewell.

A unique and fascinating art form are the Faiyum mummy portraits. A type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden board attached to the mummified dead found in Roman Egypt.

Some authors suggest that the idea of such portraits may be related to the custom among the Roman nobility of displaying images of their ancestors, in the atrium of their house. In funeral processions, these wax masks were worn by professional mourners to emphasize the continuity of an illustrious family line, but originally perhaps to represent a deeper evocation of the presence of the dead.

The images depict the heads or busts of men, women and children. They probably date from c. 30 BC to the 3rd century AD. Done with delicacy and detail, the portraits appear highly individualistic. Therefore, it has been assumed for a long time that they were produced during the lifetime of their subjects and displayed as "salon paintings" within their houses, to be added to their mummy wrapping after their death.

The Royal museum of Scotland compared one such portrait to the reconstructed head, made from a copy of the skull found in the same mummy the results were uncanny;

Affinity

“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.” (Kahlil Gibran)

There are instances in life that punctuate and illuminate our existence beyond our normal understanding; call them what you will . . . revelation, inspiration, deja vu, love at first sight, etc. Of a sudden something turns on our brain and we glimpse the wonderful.  This happened to me recently, totally unexpectedly, as it always is, and from an odd agency at that . . .

Whether it is an amazing sunset or sunrise (but they all are, aren't they?) or a painting of such beauty and grace; or the words of an author two hudred years removed who spoke and wrote in an language undecipherable to us yet who knew the deepest feelings of our hearts.  Or the glance and sparkle of a strangers eyes that somehow reveal, like the starry summer night sky, whole worlds to us.

How could this be? Limited by time and space perhaps we tend to think too much within those limits.

Now there are philosophies about the shared life force of the universe and the continuing existence of all that is living and has ever lived; possible, certainly if we assume a closed system and Newton's laws of energy, matter and thermodynamics.  

But what about thoughts and feelings, can they be explained merely as the chance recombination of electro-chemical processes that we theorize is thought?  Carl Jung postulated that all humanity had a collective consciousness, a communal intellectual set of understandings, unspoken yet understoood.

“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

Freud called these "archaic remnants" - thoughts which could not be explained by anything in the individual's own life and which seem to be "aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind.'

Are we experiencing then the power of shared experience (which is after all always the best kind)? Maybe . . .

I understand "affinity" (my word of definition) more in the form of Vibratory Physics or wave resonace if you will, e.g., Keely's laws of harmonics. Briefly two vibrations at the same  frequency can under certain circumstances reinforce each other and create synchronous or sympathetic harmonics.  It is a synergystic effect.  Postulating that since we all have energy fields, then we all resonate at a certain wavelength and there could be times when we overlap with external energies (and there could be infinite sources for these which would account for variety) that, well, touch us . . . and we respond to it, in a sense by becoming more of ourselves.

It's as good an explanation as any . . . at any rate it is often quite wonderful!

Know Thyself

"What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all of eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves." (Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate)
 

"We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us." (Jean-Paul Sartre)
 

"Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life." (Herbert Otto)
 

"He soon realized that he was not overly intelligent so much as overly sensitive.  The impressions of life, filled both his mind and emotions to unimaginable depths, overflowing with thoughts and sensations each analyzed and explored over and over again.  The problem was in organizing such data into a meaningful philosophy.  The catastrophism of the world re-created an equal and frustrating chaos internally. But at grasping at these millions of impressions he began to glimpse the truth that, unlike others, living, for him was a complex and wholly different experience from the majority of humanity.  By understanding this contrast he could at last free himself from the contraints of the social normative and finally be, of all things, unique"

The difficulty of originality is in creating a new language of definition.  Instinctively we measure ourselves by the standards (of behavior, character, morality, etc.) of society that we know and too often try to fit ourseves into.  Well that doesn't work too well does it?  At least not for the thoughtful individualist. 

We have then the opportunity of creating an entirely new existence, simply by choosing different words with which we may define and express it. The words we use have infinite power in this way . . . more on that in another post.
 

The Precious Few

"Among the innumerable mortifications which waylay human arrogance on every side may well be reckoned our ignorance of the most common objects and effects, a defect of which we become more sensible by every attempt to supply it. Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity, and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less." (Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1758)

It is obvious that throughout history a majority of the earth's population has been illiterate or, which is much worse, willfully ignorant; and despite the initiation of public education and the availabilty of so called higher education, mostly in the West, it remains so.  Sadly it seems to remain so as a percentage of population.  Think of the ubiquitous bell curve for a minute;

As philosophers, managers, sociologists, etc., repeatedly tell us only a small fraction of the population actually accomplishes, discovers, dreams, innovates or improves things. Horace Walpole commented that "Ninety percent of the population, makes you want to be with the other ten percent." and with ongoing experience and observation I beleive his witticism is probably an accurate reflection of the reality of humanity.

It's those few restless individuals all the way on the right, crammed into the front of the angle that keep life vibrant. It may be, too that the world owes its continued existence to them.  Think of the story of Lot bargaining with God, pushing the envelope really, (Genesis 19) if he could only have found a handful of decent people, Sodom & Gommorrah would still be popular seaside resort towns.

Think on that. It may well be that at some point if there are too few kind, intelligent, individualistic, responsibly insane people on the planet, it will all go up the spout . . . literally the world keeps turning because these unique people exist

If you are reading this you may very well be one of these statistical wonders, for which you have my sincere appreciation, and affection.

 

Theory

I think it must be that a man live,

As it were, a hermit inside himself;
A caricature show to all without;
Of dignity, strength or courteous calm,
And all torments and anger lock within                           
His soul, a purgatorial fury.                               
Only this shall keep his true heart alive.
For none can know, most surely none shall care;           
Of what or who or whence his dreams have come,
Nor will love e’er find him worthy of joy;
And this is why that bloody wars, and drink,
Books, and darkness are his habitation
And that inwardly he bitterly weeps
At the dirty infant haply at play.

Honour . . .

Me let the world disparage and despise --
As one unfettered with its gilded chains,
As one untempted by its sordid gains,
Its pleasant vice, its profitable lies;
Let Justice, blind and halt and maimed, chastise
The rebel spirit surging in my veins,
Let the Law deal me penalties and pains
And make me hideous in my neighbours' eyes.
But let me fall not in mine own esteem,
By poor deceit or selfish greed debased.
Let me be clean from secret stain and shame,
Know myself true, though false as hell I seem --
Know myself worthy, howsoe'er disgraced --
Know myself right, though every tongue should blame.

(Ada Cambridge, 1844-1926)

Philosophy of War

According to Lawrence Keeley, "90-95% of known societies engage in war". Why? What compels Homo sapiens to kill each other en masse? Why do we as nations fight? These are a few of the hypotheses that have been developed throughout history to explain the phenomena of war;

War as Rational:

Sun Tzu argued that political struggles would eventually lead to armed conflict. Clausewitz took this one step further by saying that "war is a mere continuation of (political) policy by other means". Machiavelli completed this entire line of thought by saying that war was the most efficient means of attaining any political goal.

War as Inevitable:

Hobbes argued that humans are inherently violent. Raymond Dart and Robert Ardrey found a scientific basis for this by claiming that homo sapiens became the dominant humanoid through their martial prowess (and we have kept this prowess ever since). Another group of philosophers believe that war can be attributed to the reckless aggression caused by testosterone in males.

War as Logical:

Using Darwin's logic, mankind continues to fight wars because it is the means through which our species survives. Thomas Malthus adapted this into a population argument, stating that humans fight wars in order to keep populations small and manageable. Samuel Huntington took this one step further by saying that war negates massive youth bulges. Lastly, John Nash (the economist) proved, through game theory, that war is a more logical choice than peace.

War as Accidental:

AJP Taylor argued that all wars are unintended and unhappy escalations of smaller conflicts. Warmongering is neither inherent nor unavoidable. Taylor's ideas link closely to the pacifistic ideas of Tolstoy and Gandhi.

 

Perhaps we just enjoy it too much

From Whence Does Evil Come?

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes” (Gene Rodenberry)
 
"You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition." (Carl Sagan) [Sol Hadden, "Contact"]

"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."(Robert Heinlein)

 

It would seem that Science writers have some difficulty with the standard definition of god. Is this because they see the Universe from a more cosmic perspective and/or is it an issue of imaginative creativity?

Humans are purported to be reasoning beings and this is what sets us apart from the rest of nature as we currently understand it. Yet we are adjured by almost all religions to forego rationalism and live by faith and or rote obedience, generally based on unknowable or at best shadowy revelation. One is never to question the work of God.
Yet, Thomas Jefferson once wrote; "Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." It seems logical that as reasoning beings we ought to be able to use that unique asset to understand the world and its creator; unless we were not meant to be this way. The story of the Tree of Knowledge, is an allegorical explanation that there is a fly in the ointment of creation . . . somehow creation has run amok.

An artist (as one example of a creative being) in the act of creation executes a conceived plan to create a work. The finished product is a totality that is completely his, and he/she during the intimacy of its creation knows it's every brush stroke or pencil smudge and why it is there and what it was meant it to be and convey. Is this is not true of the handiwork of God, the supreme creator?

How can our imagining of God as omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc., possibly be true, at least for us in our experience of linear time? (Which presumably God transcends having created time in the first place) If God exists, then either he started something that he is totally univolved in or he lacks the powers we ascribe to him, or is it that he enjoys the chaos?

He Is out of Heart with His Time . . .

If any man would know the very cause
Which makes me to forget my speech in rhyme,
All the sweet songs I sang in other time,--
I'll tell it in a sonnet's simple clause.
I hourly have beheld how good withdraws
To nothing, and how evil mounts the while:
Until my heart is gnawed as with a file,
Nor aught of this world's worth is what it was.
At last there is no other remedy
But to behold the universal end;
And so upon this hope my thoughts are urged:
To whom, since truth is sunk and dead at sea,
There has no other part or prayer remain'd
Except of seeing the world's self submerged.

{Guerzo di Montecanti, 13th century)

He Remembers Forgotten Beauty . . .

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God’s eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew.
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.

(William Butler Yeats)

We are NOT all equal

Equal protection under the law, the ideal of opportunity for all, are noble and right values.

But they must not be confused with equal capacities and talents in all. Ability and achievement are not universal possessions, nor should the rewards stemming from them be. Only by an obtuse confusion of human nature, morality, and dignity, could one assume that all deserve equal results in life.

Failure is inevitable, unless there is no attempt at all (which is a failure by abdication). Error, though not irrevocable, will occur.  Fundamentals must be absorbed and effort and energy must be applied in correct ways to gain success in any endeavor.

We inherently understand these concepts through sports, in any team there are multiple functions performed by those with the athleticism best suited to them.  Rules apply, scores are kept.  Some participants by dint of their attributes, talents, and drive rise to the top and are rewarded richly.  Others get sent down to the farm team or wash out all-together.  That is the nature of human competition.  And life is and always has been competition; no matter how technology may facilitate it.

So from whence comes this idea that anyone who puts on a team jersey, (and they may never even play on the team) deserves the great regard and rewards of the star?  How absurd, you may say. 

But, that is exactly the philosophy of social contract being advocated in the world today.  That differences are destructive, that competition favors the talented and creates envy and hurt feelings among the losers, which causes conflict; And conflict is the great bug-a-boo that must be avoided at all costs. 

Such thinking can only result in reducing all to the lowest common denominator.

Words . . .

"Words are the coin of fools," so spake the sage;

"But tables of the wise, whereon they count
The golden gems of thought, and keep the page
Of reckoning." So, brother, be the amount
Of all thou sayest or shalt say to men
The product of a pure, true-seeking mind,
And symbols of deep thought, tried and refined,
Won from the mine of rich experience; then
Shall all thy words be gold, and will outlast
The eating rust of Time, and men will say,
When thou art dead--looking upon thy past--
"This man hath earned him a fair name for aye!"
And in the inmost shrine of memory
They'll rear a precious monument for thee.

("Kappa")

Indifference . . .

What is indifference, do you ask of me?

O well I know the meaning of the phrase.
It is to find grey ash instead of blaze
That warmed you once; to lose, alas! the key
Which turned in friendship's wards; to sometime see
The eyes that shone for you in other days
Now coldly meet your own in passing gaze;
To know that what has been no more shall be.
It is to find that you in naught believe,
To know that youth has fled far down the past,
To feel that hope will ne'er again be born,
And love is but a poor worn cheat at last.
It is all this, yet not for this to grieve,--
To live and heed not that one lives forlorn!

(Oscar Fay Adams, 1855-1919)

When I’m Gone

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”  (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

The ancient Egyptians thought that to speak the name of the dead was to bring them to life again in the after-world.  So for them, and it would seem the majority of humankind, creating a lasting memory in this life was rather essential to your continued spiritual existence in the next.

Certainly we leave behind us, most of us, memories in the hearts of those whom we have come in contact with.  But such personal memory can only survive for a few generations at best.  Eternal memory is something else, an attainment much more elusive and rare.

There seem to be really only two ways of doing this; by Creation or Destruction, i.e., Love or Hate

We have the evidence that it is accomplishable; philosophers, writers, dictators, artists, assassins; all the assorted peopling of history and humanities.  But really, how many of us can reasonably aspire to such?

And ought we to? The remembrance we aspire too may not be what we get. After all, we know memory changes with the telling and retelling of the tale until the persona of the after-life may be unrecognizable compared to the living and breathing being that once existed.  So even a good life can be vilified in death, and a bad one made noble. Such a life after death then, if it does exist, may not be anything like what we imagine it.

It seems to me, living now in this world, that all we can strive to do is honor the work of our hands by giving the best possible effort we have, share in some form the thoughts we acquire and create as a responsibility to those that follow, and to never fail to passionately and verbally acknowledge the love we bear to the few in our lives accepting of it.  These are the gifts we can give, that will have lasting relevance.

The alternative is to kill and destroy as much and as violently as possible, and/or to consume every possible asset of nature and man as widely and flamboyantly as we can. i.e., “Live wild, die young, leave a pretty corpse” (Too late for that now, anyway)

By continuously encouraging the growth and happiness of those we come in contact with, even in the everyday interactions with strangers, perhaps we may pique, albeit a short, but hopefully a fond, memory. That, for me would seem enough.  With that accomplishment I would be content to accept a nameless eternity . . .

Sweet Night . . .

Night

Home of the pure in heart and tranquil mind,

Temple of love's white silence, holy Night;
Greater than splendid thought or iron might,
Thy lofty peace unswept by any wind
Of human sorrow, leaves all care behind.
Uplifted to the zenith of thy height,
My world-worn spirit drinks thy calm delight,
And, chrysalis-like, lets slip its earthly rind.
The blinded feuds, base passions, and fierce guilt,
Vain pride and falseness that enslaved the day,
Here dwindle and fade with all that mocks and mars;
Where wisdom, awed, walks hushed with lips that pray.
'Neath this high minster, dim, invisible, built,
Vast, walled with deeps of space and roofed with stars.

(William Wilfred Campbell,1858?-1918)

 

The Divine Spark

“It is by responding to the call of God contained in the being of things that man becomes aware of his transcendent dignity. Every individual must give this response, which constitutes the apex of his humanity, and no social mechanism or collective subject can substitute for it. The denial of God deprives the person of his foundation, and consequently leads to a reorganization of the social order without reference to the person's dignity and responsibility.” ( John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991)

It needn't be "their" God, mind you; but in the absence of god(s) In what do we find the value of human life?

If it is not in essence "divine" then value can only be judged by utility. And who will judge? Why, everyone of course, and in varying opinion of worth (since we cannot be all things to all people) and so we have situational ethics and moral relativism . . . a world of fear and power.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." (Karl Marx,Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)

I believe, perhaps for different reasons, in what Marx says here; insomuch as religion is a human construct, and such constructs are corrupted by human nature.  We do not need to be religious, which too often requiires we grovel in a abatoir of guilt and abasement. We merely must recognize that we are extraordinary, and live up to that ideal. Or you could put it this way;

"Do good, for Good is good to do: Spurn bribe of Heaven and threat of Hell." (Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, Kasidah)

 

Of Poetry . . .

Poetry is among the nobler passions I believe, this is todays offering . . .

He that has grown to wisdom hurries not,
But thinks and weighs what Reason bids him do
And after thinking he retains his thought
Until as he conceived the fact ensue.
Let no man to o'erweening pride be wrought,
But count his state as Fortune's gift and due.
He is a fool who deems that none has sought
The truth, save he alone, or knows it true.
Many strange birds are on the air abroad,
Nor all are of one flight or of one force,
But each after his kind dissimilar:
To each was portioned of the breath of God,
Who gave them divers instincts from one source.
Then judge not thou thy fellows what they are.
(Guido Guinicelli --13th century)

Conversation

"There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to." (Michel de Montaigne)

Conversation it was once said, was not just verbal exchange but "the sociable sifting of opinion for pleasure" (Jacques Barzun) Thus, it requires not only a lively intellect, but also the willingness to listen and if occassion serves, to be persuaded. Openess to ideas is what filled the commonplaces of the past. 

I welcome your ideas, comments, and thoughts here . . .

Commonplaces

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge in the days before digital memories . . . Essentially these were journals or more acuurately perhaps scrapbooks filled with the daily findings of their authors whether quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas or whatnot. Commonplaces were used  as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts learned. Each commonplace book therfore was unique to its creator's particular interests.

They became significant in Europe during the 15th through 18th centuries.

"Commonplace" comes from Latin: locus communis i.e., "a theme or argument of general application" Basically something to keep and that could be possibly useful someday.

This is my commonplace then . . .