Replying to LO27922 --
Dear Organlearners,
Barry Mallis <theorgtrainer@earthlink.net> write:
>One aspect of the becoming of sacredness
>comprises the linkage between our soul/sole
>presence and and our personal reality.
Greetings dear Barry,
It is for this very reason that I have decided to write the essay "How do
things become sacred?" Here in South Africa people of a certain ilk
consider certain things as sacred to them. From this premiss they begin to
argue that other things considered to be sacred by people of any different
ilk cannot also be actually sacred.
The next step is to denounce what is sacred to others. With
that the fat falls into the embers so as to burst out in flames.
I found in the "Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf" the following most
striking to my own experiences, especially of lately.
>....
>Used up by the years, my memory
>loses its grip on words that I have vainly
>repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
>weaves and unweaves its weary history.
>....
as well as
>...
>Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
>the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.
Like for you these words also brought tears to my eyes.
A friend of mine (and a linguist) insists that the primary purpose of a
language is not to write which the writer has to do alone, but to talk
with someone else which both have to do. I agree with him. It is in this
sense that I find Internet too restrictive, even on our LO-dialogue in
learning-org.com. Furthermore, I immediately have to add that I even find
talking on a phone too restrictive. I will always try my best to talk with
somebody else in person.
>Now, sometimes I think that my inattentiveness
>and poor intention prevent me from grasping the
>intricacies of your and others' profound thinking;
>that I look for an "easier" translation into the heart
>and soul of life learning, and such a translation derives
>from the less scientific, vaguer, less describable
>connections I make with life.
Dear Barry, your looking for that "easier" translation tells much what
authentic learning is about. Nothing is easy until you have experienced it
self. No translation will even work for you if it does not take your
personal experiences into account. To have less of the scientific we
should add more of the artistic rather than taking away from the
scientific so as to become spiritually richer rather than poorer.
I like your "less describable connections". It reminds me of an incident
some 15 years ago. I was in the Bushmanland desert, about a dozen
kilometers west of a small town Pofadder. To the north-west a vast basin
stretches as if into infinity. Some fifty kilometers away the ridges of
ragged mountains can be seen, enclosing the Gariep River, the only
"artery" in that desert. Beyond those ridges some other 50 kilometers of a
vast expansion into the desert of Namibia can be seen.
On a previous occasion at that place, I took a colour slide of the scene.
Great was my disappointment back at home after I have seen the developed
slide. It told nothing of the awe which I experienced while taking it. So
when I stood once again at that place, feeling once again the awe rising
in my like a fountain so that I shivered despite the ambient temperature
of over 40 degrees Centigrade, I made a firm decision. Never again would I
make a photograph of any desert scene. It just misleads people who want to
know more about the desert. Only their direct connections with the desert
can "describe" the desert authentically.
Only afterwards will they be able to see in a picture of some desert all
the things which the picture does not show clearly.
About a year ago, when lying in hospital, a nurse gave me a magazine to
read. On its front it had a picture of some place along the Fish River
canyon in the south of Namibia called the Great Namaqualand desert. Some
time later when she came back to my bed, I asked her if she likes the
picture. She said yes, but she also said that the place seemed to be
lifeless and that makes her very afraid.
I then invited her to come and sit next to me. I began to point at various
tiny, unrecognisable blotches on the picture. One was a Crassula
columnaris, a tiny white succulent. I described it in words while also
using my hands to give shape to that words. Another was a Trichocaulon
dinterii, a tiny drak grey succulent. Again I descibed it in the same
manner.
After some ten blotches she suddenly asked me -- "How do you know what
each blotch is because it is impossible to see on the picture what it is".
I first pointed out to her that because of my descriptions and her
perceptions formed from it, she is now able to ask such a question. I then
told her that each of these descriptions was based on personal
observations of the plants involved. I then admitted that it is not the
blotch which told me what it represent, but where that blotch is found in
its immediate surroundings. A tiny white blotch close to a rock in a
gravel will be something far different to a white blotch in a patch of
sand over a solid rock bed.
Then she said what I wanted to hear her saying all the time
"This place is not lifeless as I first had thought".
>There is an octave leading to a heaven of
>indescribable light/enlightenment. Play your
>notes, At. They are sacred in their own write.
Barry, my writings cannot be made sacred because then people would easily
either become too afraind to question these writings or to denounce them
without even questioning them.. It is those things which I write about
which have become sacred to me. I merely tried to tell how this "sacred
becoming" happens for me.
When I think about all the sacrilege which I have commited self, I must
admit that most of it began in my mind. The mind has the capacity to
destroy or to create. It may later use the body to accomplish such a
destruction or creation. It took me a long time to get rid of the mental
model that it is the individual alone who is responsible for the becoming
of his/her mind. Since then I am able to appreciate the wise words of
Benjamin Franklin which I cannot remember exactly:-
If we do not hang together, then we will become hung individually.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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