Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Monday ADD Irregulars and all inhabitants of the Weird Shit Niche'. I thought I would share some quotes about friendship this week. Back in my seminary days I did a term paper on friendship and morality. It was a fun paper to research, especially since Paul Wadell built upon the ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas to explore friendship as the school of virtue. On to the quotes!!
The influence of each human being on others is a kind of immortality. - John Quincy Adams
I think of Paul Gilbert, one of my first childhood friends when we moved to Elsberry from St. Louis. I was four years old when we left the city for the countryside and the house on the lake. I was in the world of army men, old block Legos, various cartoons and bugs. Paul introduced me to dinosaurs and old movie monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula. I suppose I would have eventually discovered such things on my own, but it was great that Paul shared his enjoyment of them with me. He knew as much about dinosaurs as I knew about bugs. Going to the country exploded my interest in bugs and nature as a whole. It was a win-win on loving life and finding creation so amazing.
During junior high Paul moved away from Elsberry. I saw him in high school one time during the summer and have never seen him since. I can't see the old classic movie monsters or toy dinosaurs and wonder how he is doing, if he is doing or what path his life took.
Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannot congeal in winter. - James Fenimore Cooper
Friendships worth having are worth maintaining. Sounds so simple, and yet in our disposable world and ready to be offended culture, they can disappear quickly. You can't be friends with everyone, but to be friends with no one is to live in exile with someone insane, yourself. The absence of a voice other that your own is the making of all kinds of misfortune. "I don't need anyone." Very true, you may not need anyone, but you ought to desire someone to share the adventure of living.
Understanding, forgiveness, appreciated differences, curious discussion of ideas and disagreements without nullification, laughter, sorrow and the joy of discovery of whole worlds or experiences foreign and familiar can flourish in the garden of friendship. We know this, but the saying of things makes us more mindful and hopefully thankful. Happy Monday my friends.
Hot July sky - dunno who or where, but it is a beautiful scene.
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.”
