Replying to LO27556 --
For Juan and Family
John Dicus wrote appreciatively of Richard "Doc" Holloway,
> . I couldn't help but think of the all the people -- men, women, children --
> in our country during the month of September. People rushing into
> difficult spots because they cared about something greater.
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." Martin
Luther King. Jr
In a most beautiful account of America's 'present' Jeff Gates speaks of,
"too many Americans being shoved into jobs that are too small for their
spirits." That is something I often sense as being present and absent in
varying degrees in all forms of communications all around. Personal
visions can take prosaic forms, as when with a small group of young
business people I noted the talk at lunch being all about glass extensions
to their homes...now they may have been talking about conservatories but I
was hearing something very different. --So I am always pleased when people
'change their walls', or knock a few down;-) Soft words and hard ideas,
hard ideas in soft words..." (we may in our traditions) have a view that
we are going on to a better world. This view allows us to treat this world
as though it were merely a handy backdrop for our moral battles, making
our behaviour akin to that of a traveller who plans never to pass this way
again." Joanna Macy, "World as Lover, World as Self."
Let me take a few words from Gate's book again, they worth it. " The
destructive trends -- need to be not just restrained but steadily
reversed. The ownership patterns that now accompany the spread of
democracy mock democracy, particularly when considered against the
historical backdrop of what this nation's founders endured to ensure
refuge from the economic royalists of their day. Of the fifty six men who
signed the Constitution, fiver were captured and tortured before they
dies, another nine perished from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary
War. Many others lost their homes, their fortunes, and their families. All
of them were British subjects who pledged to fight their own government so
that their descendents might be free from forces remarkably similar to
those at work today."
What goes around comes around.
A river vision from Tom Johnson, " When you start to study ecology, and
you abstract yourself from the mess we've created in the world, and think
about what nature has done for four billion years on this earth, it's a
pretty remarkable accomplishment. You start with water born chains of
carbon molecules about four billion years ago and you end up with dolphins
dancing in the sunset and human beings. I think that's a pretty remarkable
set of accomplishments. That's results. If we can work like that system,
we don't need to worry about where the results will come from."
What would it take to work like that? Crystal homes of glass? A hero?
Workers with jobs and tasks that truly fit their spirits? Love, respect,
listening to the Whole World? A world of dream (implicate involutes) made
into a new garment (explicate evolution) offering a web in constantly
changing patterns.
[ Who Learns my Lesson Complete]
"Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss and journeyman and apprentice...churchman and atheist?
The stupid and the wise thinker....parents and offspring....
merchant and clerk and porter and customer....editor,
author, artist and schoolboy?
Draw nigh and commence,
It is no lesson....it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another....and everyone to another still.
The great laws take and effuse without argument,
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits....I do not halt and make salaams.
I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of
things,
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
I cannot say to any person what I hear....I cannot say it to myself
....it is very wonderful.
It is no little matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt or the
untruth of a single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,
nor ten decillions of years,
Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans
and builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman
Nor that seventy million of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me or anyone else.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? As every one is immortal,
I know it is wonderful....but my eyesight is equally wonderful
and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally
wonderful
And how I was once not palpable but am now....and was born on the
last day of may 1819...and passed from a babe in the creeping trance of three
summers and three winters to
articulate and walk....are all equally wonderful.
And that I grew six feet high...and that I have become a man
thirty six years old in 1855....and that I am here anyhow --
all are equally wonderful;
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each
other, is every bit as wonderful,
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth is
equally wonderful
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
wonderful.
Come I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that
is not just as wonderful,
And I should like to hear the name of anything in-between Sunday
morning and saturday night that is not just as wonderful."
Walt Whitman.
Doc liked this citation from Marcus Aurelius, " And you will give yourself
relief, if you perform every act of your life as if it were your last."
....And you know;-) John that dear Richard 'Doc' Holloway seems right
now, like some metaphysical bell on some far hill, to be reverberating and
calling us, bring us a remindful relief. You, especially, will know what I
mean.
Love,
Andrew
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