Daily Archives: November 27, 2010

Faith and Spirituality

A Few Notes

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Samhain                                             Waning Thanksgiving Moon

In no particular order, though there must be one, at some point, here a few notes I’ve taken from reading, living.

1.  Death happens.  To all of us.  Whether we fear it or welcome it.

therefore, it’s best to befriend death, to live with it as a counselor on your left shoulder, keeping you honest, authentic, true.

2.  Love beats everything else that comes before death.

therefore, it’s best to live a life loving as many and as much  you can.

3.  Certain things get in the way of love:

attachment to money, to particular things

a need for power

an unwillingness to be vulnerable

untrustworthy behavior

therefore,

it’s best to clean up your act.

4. Passion is the next best thing after love.

passion requires clarity about self

clarity about self requires self-knowledge

self-knowledge undergirds both passion and love and allows an unblinking relationship with death

5.  Therefore,

It’s best to get your butt to the Temple of Apollo,

Cross under the lintel with gnothi seauton written above it

And get to know who you are.  No, who you really are.

6.  When you know who you are, your passions become obvious.

7.  With passion your life before death has value, vigor, oomph.

8.  With passion love retains its edge, its ability to cut through any thing left and carve your true you out of it

9.  This all may be hard, but it doesn’t have to be.  You can do it.

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Writing

Night Talk

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Samhain                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Though the pain has subsided, it still keeps me awake without medication.  So, I’m up at 6 am, a rarity for me these days.  When Kate shifts off regular work, no longer comes home around 10 pm, then I’ll go back to an earlier bed time and 6 might not be so unusual.

I understand the attraction of the night.  I feel it myself.  The quiet, the dark has a friendly feel to it, a time when the home becomes a hermitage or a studio or a writing garret, far off from the demands of mundane life.  Reading late has an appeal, the book, the words float up and occupy the whole, not reading anymore, but traveling along, carried on a river of narrative.  Writing has the same free, anchors away momentum.  The ship sails away from the dock, following the rhythm of an ocean current, one that runs just along the border between the conscious and unconscious realm, between the warmer, busier, lighter waters near the surface and the benthic deeps, unvisited, stygian, fecund, down there the ocean reaches its source, the collective unconscious, yet deeper and universally expansive, the holy well from which archetypes, genetic memory, forces creative enough to bring life itself into existence make their slow way.

Night talk.  Or, rather, very early morning talk.