LONGING
Longing is divine discontent; the unendurable present, finding a physical doorway to awe and discovery that frightens and emboldens, humiliates and beckons, makes us into pilgrim souls and sets us on a road that starts in the centre of the body and then leads out, like an uncaring invitation, like a comet’s tail, felt like both an unrelenting ache and a tidal pull at one and the same time, making us willing to give up our perfect house, our paid-for home and our accumulated belongings.
Longing is nothing without its dangerous edge, which cuts and wounds us while setting us free, and beckons us exactly because of the human need to invite the right kind of peril. The foundational instinct that we are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world, that we are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, that we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work, or for a gift given against all the odds. In longing we move, and are moving, from a known but abstracted elsewhere to a beautiful, about-to-be-reached someone, something, or somewhere we want to call our own.
He had me at pilgrim souls. I have known this reality for such a long time. To have brushed up aside the Mysterium and experience the slightest touch of awe and discovery is enough to keep me going, as long as I remember. The forgetfulness of life, the distractions of this age of distraction, the petty preoccupations that I allow to cling to my mind or heart make me lose sight to having sensed the "Something more" of life. That curious question of the something or Someone more than lies at the edge of my perceptions, that plays with my mind to question my sanity and reality. Call it the Divine or the Mind, there is something more than the confused Me that I know too well and hardly know at all. I vote for the Divine, the Mysterium, others would probably vote for the delusional and wishful.
The dangerous edge - that cuts and wounds while setting us free. I often think the right kind of men & women in the military and first responders know this instinctively. They have found a greater something to give themselves to. The right kind of peril awakens the soul like nothing else. Anyone who stumbles across their vocation - there calling, the gifting of their personal uniqueness find the treasure in the field that is worth the cost of everything because it is more than everything. It is more than you could have hope or imagined. I am an invitation to others and otherness. That quest for the beautiful, about to be reached someone and something to call my own, and yet that "owning" is free of all desire to possess and full of the surrender to the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
Happy Thursday Digital Neighbors! Mr. Whyte has a lot more to say about longing, those are the first and last paragraphs of his goldmine of meaning. My ramblings are just a little something to stir our minds, awaken our hearts and opens my eyes just a little bit more. Have a great day my friends.
Vermont Barn Autumn by Edward Fielding
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 ...
They fold it thirteen times. 🇺🇸
Not to make it smaller.
To make it mean something.
The first fold is life.
The second is the life that does not end.
The third is the veteran — the one who gave years so the rest of us could keep ours. 🎖️
The fourth is trust.
A nation handing its weaker hours to people willing to be strong.
The fifth is the country they swore to.
The sixth is the heart. ❤️
Where the oath lives when the cameras are gone.
The seventh is the uniform.
Every branch. Every name.
The eighth is the valley.
The dark they walked into so morning could still find us.
The ninth is the mother.
The first person who ever taught them what it meant to
protect someone.
The tenth is the father
who watched a child leave and learned how long a driveway can feel.
The eleventh is the ancient seal.
The twelfth is forever. ✨
Then the last fold.
Stars on top. ⭐
No stripe left showing.
Only the field they fought under.
A triangle like the old hats of Washington’s men.
A ...
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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.”
