Good Morning Friends & Digital neighbors! Happy Tuesday and more goodness from -e h, Erin Hanson, this young Australian poet has some very creative words and images. To boot she is so young, at 26 I was just starting to figure out what I ought to do as a recently ordained priest.
Age is a funny thing, and I tend to notice age in about the same micro-second that I guessing your gender/sex (they are the same) and your possible ethnic background. None of that matters in terms of your personality, character and attitude, time and interaction will reveal the potential friend, associate or neighbor you might be. I try my best to resist the generational assumptions that get made about the Silent, Boomers, Gen X (My homies)😉, Millennials and Gen Z. I prefer not to pile on about the lousy work ethic of the young'ns, the fragile feelings of young adults, the cynicism of my generation, the ruined landscape of Boomerville and the frustrations of the Silent's who fought for one world and now to leave something far different behind.
I know those are stereotypes and unkind generalizations, but we should admit that they exist sometimes from experience, often from humor and sadly as a form of soft othering that feeds the heart of bigotry. I tend to think we all suffer from unquestioned assumptions, presumed generalizations and unaddressed bigotry. I try my best to self monitor those weeds in the world of thoughts and relationships when they are brought to my attention. I also try not to go ape-shit wild (think of the gorilla beating on the American Tourist luggage commercials) when such trespasses happen by others in causal conversations. Repeated trespasses among friends & family can be addressed with direct kindness, rather than militant rage and punitive lecturing.
So all this morning rambling has been really a setup for the love of the individual, the person before me, the personalism that serves as a compass in my own way of being Tom and relating to others. I so appreciate the exception (or perhaps it isn't an exception and I just don't know enough such souls for it to be normative) when I come across them. Thank you Erin Hanson for the girl in the sunshine dress, I hope I appreciate the ones I meet along the path. I have met so many and they have inspired to do more to bring joy and laughter, understanding and empathy to a world growing more impersonal in its consumption and self-obsession. Thank you Local's friends for some of the new sunshine your have brought into my life. Happy Tuesday Friends!
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
