BETWEEN YOU AND ME
You are here inside my laughter.
Thoughts of you are on my mind and wrapped around my heart.
You empower me to love with all I have, and to enjoy all that is good.
As I embrace each day with the promise of you,
I can’t imagine a day that is not filled with your smiles.
My life has been kissed by many blessings,
and because of you each day is a gift filled with grace, mercy and love.
I cherish the moments that bring us together,
and it is inside this space I realize I am home.
LORI EBERHARDY
Good Morning Digital Neighbors!!! Happy Monday ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, Friends & Refugees at the Report, Misfits & Pham at Phetasy and all your Conversants, Lurkers, Seekers and Wanderers on Locals!
I think this morning's musing especially applies to most of you couples out there, but is not limited to couple relationships. Many of the good couples that I know come to mind, I see them embody the life described by Lori. As I have said often, after faith few things compares to good hearty laughter and humor shared among others. Victor Borge says the shortest distance between two people is either a smile or laughter. I guess it depends on who is quoting him.
Built upon that shared joy one is capable of finding deep connection, vulnerability, understanding, trust and a silence that bespeaks a level of comfort that does not rely on a constant stream of words. The real invitation is the arrive at the shores of actual listening to another and not constantly obsessing about what you want to say next. I know there are multiple fears of a pause that goes too long: "What if I forget the reality changing statement I was just going to make?" "I had something ready to comment, confirm or contradict that person mid-sentence, and now it is gone." "What if someone else says what I was just going to say?" The struggle is real. I am easily distracted, so things come and go before I often have a chance to say what I wanted to say. I do my best to trust if it was actually relevant and not just a desire to hear myself, it will come back around at some point.
While couples can exemplify what Lori is saying, good friends can come pretty close and some may say arrive at those shores more often than couples. Personal intimacy can get sidelined by physical intimacy. You wouldn't think so, but I suspect that happens more often than we want to acknowledge as a culture since sex is what it is all about. Assuming you can identify yours and find the proper medical treatment to get there. 😉
The "kissed with many blessings" makes one think of a more physical relationship, but I have many friends who have showered their love and life upon me. They have blessed me with their person and the gifts of their character. Friend, like love, has been used so readily and so frequently that its meaning have become somewhat threadbare. Call them what you will, but I hope you life has a few (there are never an abundance, and life makes it impossible to have too many) boon companions, kindred spirits, soul mates in your life. These are the persons who would suffer readily for you and for whom you would readily suffer. While they might be put out by your idiosyncrasies that raise their ugly little heads from time to time, in the end they are in your corner and at your side when challenges come a calling. Those rare souls make every place a home by their presence. More than a handful is probably impossible given time and the nature of vulnerability, but just one can make all the difference between a life that is lonely walk to the grave or a pilgrimage of discovery. Peace my Digitial Neighbors, know of my prayers for you known and unknown colleagues at Locals.
Autumn Barn curtesy of Vickie Ketch
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.”
