Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Yesterdays morning musing prompted some conversation over on Phetasy with @Cwaves and @Emilyjoy . It is always good to chat with our digital neighbors and the question was asked if the dichotomy between life as gift or given doesn't leave room for the experiences, trials, hills and valleys of life. I think in the formative years of life it does not, but I think as we age we tilt towards some mixture of gift and given as our attitudinal compass.
A bit of morning perspective from Jean Bass below with a few follow up thought of mine.
BEGIN
Begin on the path, even if it winds.
Even if you do not know at first where it is going
and if it appears as a maze, a puzzle, a bewilderment.
The geese that fly south in winter,
north in spring, know their journey innately,
yet still use the stars to guide them.
Follow your very own star.
The one you have always wished upon.
You can find your way home. —Jean Nicole Bass
I think follow you own star is sound advice as long as the star is not limited to your own reflection or feelings. It needs to be something outside of yourself and clearly larger than yourself. It is a someone or something to which you strive. Your star can be God, some other Higher Power, your muse or ideal but it has to be something great than the perceived self and some imaginings of what you might become or where you might be. It shouldn't discount the good that might already be present in your life, but the pondering that there might be more to pursue, more to discover, more to find in surprise and delight. It doesn't discount the trials or hardships, they are all part of the story after all and often the most interesting part after we have lived through them.
Happy Wednesday ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, Friends & Refugees, PHAM and Misfits and all the rest of you fine souls on Locals. This final quote came to mind in my morning thoughts and reflections.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T. S. Eliot
Winter path photo from the interweb.
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.”
