Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Wednesday-Tuesday, yeah it that sort of week for many of us who live in a normal work week world. For all you retirees, enjoy Infinity-Tuesday+ 😉 More quotes & commentary from William James.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
"My truth." Few dumber things have been said by a person, and probably all of us at some time or another have said it in our life pilgrimage. Some clarity before the mob with torches & pitchforks decide that such statements are insensitive.
"My truth" - When you mean my experience, I think that is reasonable. This is what happened and what you think about it. Personal truth-experience are part of understanding self and our place in the world, but it is only your perspective on your experience rightly or poorly understood. "My truth" as a sharing of one's own story is a great thing, the bonds of communion, the growth of friendship all happen when we take an interest in another. Few things are more important than to who or what we give our time. We give our time to what we love. More on this later.😉
"MY TRUTH" as your unassailable attitude or thought is the beginning of your trip away from community and friendship. It is the statement of your prejudice as described by William James. You have turned an experience and its varied meanings into an absolute that cannot be questioned, criticized or doubted. Thus far in my pilgrimage, nothing is beyond question, free from criticism or above doubt. The inability to question should be a alarm to all of us. You are not free to think __________.
"MY TRUTH-ers" seems to be a variation on the victimology spectrum. I'm a victim, I can't be questioned, to do so is to discount my experience. Isn't that the opposite of what questioning does? It doesn't discount experience but rather open it up. Without the questioning, the criticisms, the doubts and wonder, my truth becomes a dead end experience that will not allow me to connect to another person and develop an "our truth." The bridge to "our truth" is a way back to the first meaning of my truth and a healthier integration of experience. It troubles me that we don't talk about mental illness but instead seems to validate it as someone's "truth".
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
I used to have a sign in my office - Attitude is everything. While it is not everything, it does account for much of your interaction with the world. It is the one thing that is solely yours. My life often runs between an attitude of gratitude and you've got to be freaking kidding me. Everyday is a spin on that wheel of fortune to see where it lands.
In my daily life - I experience an abundance of gratitude. God or good fortune has blessed me immensely. I favor God blessing me, but not everyone is sure of the Divine reality of life. When I look beyond my little acre of reality I tend to experience more of the YGTBFKM. You've got to be freaking kidding me is usually accompanied by some laughter and head shaking. If I were living in an urban neo-necropolis I would be more worried since a mostly friendly protest could be paying me a renovation visit.
Discover the power of mastering your attitude and your life will change for the better. Never perfect, but gradually better. The number one thing to question is your experience, your feelings, your assumptions, biases and unquestioned givens. What has life taught you, continues to teach you, invites you to discover? That I could be wrong, mistaken or misinformed is rarely far from my thoughts. I don't walk around paralyzed by doubt, but I know that something new might come along as a surprise visit from enlightenment.
Well enough rambling for the morning post. I pray your acre is as abundant as mine and that your perch on the world provides some laughter and questions about the dumpster fire being fed by rage, mental illness and wokeness (aren't all virtually the same?)
Sunflower landscape near Poggibonsi, Italy
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.”
