Well, here is the essence of His game plan for this humility.
Wanta Be More Like Jesus For Christmas?
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Category Archives: poetry
Wisdom From Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey was a brilliant, wry, “demonic” (in a good way) comedian; and he still is though he now is increasingly appreciated as a spiritually-gifted man. His sense of the comic, often absurd or even dark, has now matured to the point that he offers wisdom such as this:
“After knowing Eckhart Tolle for a while and studying the books, I woke up and suddenly got it. I understood suddenly how thought is just illusory, and that thought is responsible for most, if not all of the suffering we experience. And then I suddenly felt like I was looking at thoughts from another perspective, and I wondered, who is it that is aware that ‘I’ am thinking? And suddenly I was thrown into this expansive amazing feeling of freedom – from myself, from my problems. I saw that I am bigger than what I do, bigger than my body. I am everything and everyone. I am no longer a fragment of the universe. I am the universe.” ~ Jim Carrey
His observation about perspective is very powerful, as he realizes the wisdom of Paul Ricoeur, “To have a perspective on one’s perspective is to somehow escape it.” Jesus understood this, being born into perspectival certainty of his day, said with his words and his behavior, “Boys and girls, there is another way of looking at things; there always is.” And he concluded his life with a graphic illustration of how painful this ego-crushing experience is.
A Prophetic Word Offered in Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Eureka Springs, Arkansas is one of my favorite spots on the map of our world. I lived for twenty years only a stone’s throw from this lovely Victorian Era village and visited it often. Here is a post from Facebook by a man who offered a prophetic for our world in 2013, Paul DeFatta:
Transfusions: (based on a disturbing dream that I had in Eureka Springs, Arkansas on 11/27/2013) Everything of genuine value, it would seem, must be earned and not stolen. Stolen goods come back to wreak vengeance upon their stealers. When precious gifts and persons come to us, stolen or unearned, we usually do not know how to properly receive them or even how to open them. To earn something—a lofty or profound insight, the heart of a rare and exceptional lover, a magnificent artistic creation—is to STRETCH to (or into) that gift, idea, heart, work of art, etc. Where there is no stretching and no earning, a human life begins slowly to wither, to ossify, to dry up, or to decompose. In short, there are countless ways to end our lives long before we actually die. Dying, withering souls that never bothered to learn how to stretch and to earn often become psychic parasites that feed off the morsels and crumbs they can filch from those around them—those whose hearts beat with even a slightly stronger pulse than their own does. When the psychic parasites in a society begin to significantly outnumber the dwindling number of vital “earners” and “stretchers,” things really begin to go downhill at a galloping pace. It becomes increasingly dangerous for healthy persons to venture out into the streets, where, as likely as not, they will be greeted by a blood-sucking, prattling army of the walking dead. They will suck the life out them with empty blather, each word of which hits the skin like a syringe or a gibbering little vampire bat. With every syllable, the host’s life blood trickles through a network of invisible tubes into tiny mouths that have gathered in the surrounding shadows. (from Facebook page, “Carl Jung and the Creative Bridge)
“Religious Exemptions, Huh?
Many in my country are asking for “religious exemptions” re the Covid 19 restrictions. For those who are merely lying about this matter, read the following:
President Joe Biden Is Offering Us A “Profile In Courage.”
When Joe Biden was sworn in as our President last January, I felt such a sense of relief. Hope had returned. In his inauguration address, he voiced hope and optimism and avoided denigrating his predecessor. He demonstrated that he could see beyond the end of his nose, that “this is not about me” but about this wonderful nation that had given him this honor. In his speech, he demonstrated a faint tic here and there in speech, reflecting the speech impediment that he struggled with as a child. I think that this impediment was, and is, an essential part of his character as he had to struggle with it and learn to “rein in” that passion that led to this stuttering problem. (See afterthought, on the neurological dimension of this problem.)J
Joe, and I think he would appreciate that I call him “Joe,” is a good man and part of that goodness is that he is aware of his “not-so-good” qualities; and I think his Catholic faith is an essential dimension of this goodness. His faith has instilled in him the value of life, not only his own but that of the entire nation and world. This helps him endure the “slings and arrows” that those who hate him toss his way daily.
The stuttering issue of his puts on my table the childhood fear of being “different”; in our early childhood, the fear of this “difference” is terrifying and we go to great effort to fit in and be allowed to “play in the reindeer games” that Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer felt excluded from. But this need to “fit in” can be crippling and shred any potential for individuality, thereby selling one’s own soul. But young Joe knew that he had a problem and deliberately addressed it, learning adaptations that would allow him to not stutter any more… more or less. This courage allowed him to accept that he still, and always will, have a verbal slip here and there and he is ok nevertheless. The core issue for him on that matter was accepting human frailty. If someone in the Oval Office can not be humble enough to accept that, woe is country!
Here I must clarify my early insinuation that stuttering is not neurological. It is neurological, as is everything about us, including this moment in my life when I am sitting here by an early-morning crackling fire, sipping coffee, Petey at my side, and delighted with this moment of Grace that I have been afforded. This Grace comforts me as I “gird up my loins” for another Autumn day in the beautiful High Desert of New Mexico. Synapses are firing away “up there” up there in my head. But this marvelous neurological dimension of human experience lends itself to poetry, giving us the poetry of Edgar Simmons who likened stuttering to the childhood predicament of having more to say than words can contain. (Remember Cordelia’s response to her father, King Lear, who posed the question, ‘How much do you love me?’” His lovely young daughter responded, “More than words can wield the matter.”) Biden has tremendous passion which has led verbally slip here and there and to stumble with words also. Here is this compelling poem by Simmons:
BOW DOWN TO STUTTERERS
By Edgar Simmons
The stutter’s hesitation
Is a procrastination crackle,
Redress to hot force,
Flight from ancient flame.
The bow, the handclasp, the sign of the cross
Say, “Sh-sh-sheathe the savage sword.”
If there is greatness in sacrifice
Lay on me the blue stigmata of saints;
Let me not fly to kill in unthought.
Prufrock has been maligned
And Hamlet should have waived revenge,
Walked with Ophelia domestic corridors
Absorbing the tick, the bothersome twitch.
Let me stutter with the non-objective painters
Let my stars cool to bare lighted civilities.
Another Arkansas Poetry Lover…Who Could Write Poetry!
Arkansas produced another wordsmith to the world in 1949, C. D. Wright. But she was more than a wordsmith, she wrote poetry and became very successful in the literary world. She loved words, as do I, and one of her poems is prefaced with the simple prefatory title, “I Love Words.” And please note the very bizarre title of this book of poetry inclosed in parenthesis at the end.
I love that a handful, a mouthful, gets you by, a satchelful can land you a job, a well-chosen clutch of them could get you laid, and that a solitary word can initiate a stampede, and therefore can be formally outlawed—even by a liberal court bent on defending a constitution guaranteeing unimpeded utterances. I love that the Argentine gaucho has over 200 words for the coloration of horses and the Sami language of Scandinavia has over a thousand words for reindeer based on age, sex, and appearance, e.g. a “busat” has big balls or only one big ball. More than the pristine, I’ll love the filthy ones for their descriptive talent as well as transgressive nature. I love the dirty ones more than the minced, in that I respect extravagant expression more than reserved. I admire reserve, especially when taken to an nth. I love the particular expressions of particular occupations. The substrate of those activities. The nomenclatures within nomenclatures. I am of the unaccredited school that believes animals did not exist until Adam assigned them names. My relationship to the word is anything but scientific; it is a matter of faith on my part, that the word endows material substance, by setting the thing named apart from all else. Horse, then, unhorses what is not horse. (C.D. Wright, “The poet, The Lion, Talking pictures, El Farolito, A wedding in St. Roch, The big box store, The warp in the mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire and all.)
“Hunkerin” Down Calls for Humility
I just read an article by Finton O’Toole in the Irish Times in which he put on the table what I call a “hunkering down” dimension of politics. He portrays a political impasse underway in his corner of the world in which diametrically-opposites are “duking it out” on the world stage. This can best be described as an “us vs them” moment in which one side says to the other, “I got it…and you don’t.” This is the story of Adam and Eve writ large, two voices speaking a primordial word that still reverberates through our world today, two lonely little souls demanding supremacy. Yes, Eve lost that initial skirmish….but not really as “She” is screaming at us today as our political machinery and socio-cultural are being shaken. This is the Feminine dimension Life.
So much “hunkering down” is taking place around our world. People are dug in so deeply to their ideology that they can’t offer even a miniscule of respect to those who have “different” ideas. “I’ve got it, and you don’t,” they quietly say to themselves. There is no escape from this predicament unless a bolt of lightning takes place and we are capable of the humility of seeing our arrogance. TS. Eliot summed this up in The Four Quartets:
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”
“Us” vs “Them…Visually!
Here is a cartoon about one of my many hobby horses, division where there could be unity. This cartoonist humorously but pointedly puts on the table our current national…and species-wide death-knell. If we never find the humility to appreciate the wisdom of T.S. Eliot who told us we, “are united by the strife which divided them” or, divides “us” in this occasion, we are doomed. As always I am again frustrated with everyone who sees the world differently than I, when I’m again trying to convince them of the ‘right way” of seeing things. With that last statement I am wryly and ironically admitting that I have the same problem!
With this bit of wisdom that is always teasing me I can admit that it applies everywhere, even with my frustration and anger about the obstinate conservatism of Trump and his minions. Yes, even with that spiritual malady present in our world we all must realize the obstinacy of what seems to us as our “right” way of seeing things. I am learning to see, understand, and experience the extent to which I “hunker down” with my literary and erudite grasp of that fiction we call “reality” and fail to look deeper and see a “Reality” which undergirds the daily life of us all. I am so old-fashioned to call it “god”; and at this moment I’m so free of that intellectual and philosophical rigor that has characterized my life that I will not try to define that term!
“Relativity of Truth is More Complex than Light”; Sandeep Bhalla
Early in my blogging life, I discovered Sandeep Bhalla, an Indian gentleman who has profound wisdom and courage. His country, like mine, is festering with torment; Afghanistan is doing the same. This always happens when a tribe, or some part of it, mistakes “truth” for the “Truth” and knows without any doubt that its viewpoint is “the” viewpoint and the “Truth.”
As I give a capital letter to “Truth” I practice one of those “complexities” for I too am a “knowing” creature. I “know” what I am putting forth here, but realize that so does the Taliban and its offspring in my country. That rigid certainty that they are displaying always has, “offspring.” Ideology always risks toxicity for it can easily prey on ideologues within its tribe but also other “tribes” such as my country. Certainty is a deadly toxin and will continue to wreak havoc on our world without the “deux ec machina” of ancient Greece intervening. When this conflict emerges on the stage of world history, the “simple thing” is to seek to destroy the “other.” This is because of the human tendency to “know I am right” and must obliterate the other side, the “Other” which in my arrogantly humble estimation is, “Wrong.” The only hope is that a “gap” might appear between the two contrary forces, two powers basking in the unquestioned assumptions, that each side will accept a bit of humility, acknowledging that, “Hey, they have a viewpoint also.” That “gap” was described by T.S. Eliot as, “costing not less than everything.” But metastasized “certainty” is a lethal poison regardless of how sure you are.
https://sandeepbhalla.com/author/sandeepbhalla/
Plato’s Cave Analogy, Via an Intrauterine Dialogue
Things are not as they seem. They never are; for we only can “see through a glass darkly.” But if darkness is accepted as our reality, and not subject to a mite of critical reasoning, then we will never see the light, i.e. “the Light.” Plato’s cave analogy put this on the table of human consciousness 2500 years ago. Here, I will share the same primordial truth from a dialogue between two children in the womb:
In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other:
“Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover if there is life, then why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”
Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
– Útmutató a Léleknek
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