'At dawn there is a clarity of vision that is reflected in the subtle contrasts between sea and sky. The land itself emerges from both and is the offspring of their union' – M Uren
Yes. The oceans blend with the ocean bed, unseen, adjusting silently, naturally to the forces of the earth's movement, without thought. Certain. There is no need for thought. The surface is open, exposed, and vulnerable to the wild wind, the pull of the moon, the tidal waves. Sometimes calm, reflecting the deep and reflecting the sky. All is one. We stand on our land and are connected to every being. When your feet delight in the sand it is the ocean delighting in its bed, so close, so completely at one with each other.
We are the sailor, the swimmer, the mountaineer, the explorer, the actor, the thinker and the thought, the lover and the loved.
M U - "My heart to-day is filled with remembrances of St Sophia. Not far from the Basilica there's a fountain and the following inscription is written on the base of the structure.
"Open it in the name of God and drink the water and then pray for the soul of Khan Ahmet III." There is an English translation beside the Arabic.
Its a strange request in some ways..."open what?" Perhaps that is left to the imagination. Certainly the water was issuing from the fountain head in great profusion."
Open the fountain of life that is your own soul, drink of love and pour that love back into the river of life, loving and lifting all those who drown...
It is odd that although this response to the inscription emerged, the word 'drown' excluded all other feeling for a while, but is that not an illustration of how the eye sees only a reflection of the contents of the soul?
This morning, you see, became a mourning for the feeling of being alive that accompanies the oh so brief harmonic exchanges of life that was yesterday. There is an impulse to share that abides in human nature, despite the hurt it may cause.
Solitude in nature and contemplation bequeaths a deep sensation that isn't necessarily of pleasure, yet is always somehow fulfilling. Small oases in the desert would describe the feeling that largely pervades the present moment.
Yet now, I see with surprise the significance of this -
Open the fountain of life that is your own soul, drink of love and pour that love back into the river of life, loving and lifting all those who drown...
It is as if someone else other than myself wrote that, because I see now that it was exactly the prescription, the comfort that was needed.
It was there, but I couldn't see it, because it is hard to acknowledge need, as if it were something only reserved for others. Do we really think we are immune to need?
I think yes, or it wouldn't be so hard to accept - if indeed it is even visible - the healing and comfort that is there..
Is this pride? I keep suspecting so.
I have never thought it wrong that people have need, it seems human. The danger is, perhaps, that in giving one can forget, deny, or ignore one's own humanity, and thus lose contact with it, and thus one's ability to help becomes limited.
"No: true happiness is not vague and fluid: it is an unchanging state.
To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside
virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul's expression is not in action
but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself; and this,
this alone, is Happiness.
Then again, all the virtues are a beauty of the soul, a beauty authentic
beyond any of these others; but how does symmetry enter here?
The soul, it is true, is not a simple unity, but still its virtue cannot
have the symmetry of size or of number: what standard of measurement
could preside over the compromise or the coalescence of the soul's
faculties or purposes?
Undoubtedly this Principle exists; it is something that is perceived at the first glance, something which the soul names as from an ancient knowledge and, recognising, welcomes it, enters into unison with it. But let the soul fall in with the Ugly and at once it shrinks within itself, denies the thing, turns away from it, not accordant, resenting it.
Our interpretation is that the soul - by the very truth of its nature, by its affiliation to the noblest Existents in the hierarchy of Being- when it sees anything of that kin, or any trace of that kinship, thrills with an immediate delight, takes its own to itself, and thus stirs anew to the sense of its nature and of all its affinity."
Plotinus
~
"Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And certainty? And quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
from 'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester'
Rupert Brooke
[written in Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912]
Open the fountain of life that is your own soul, drink of love and pour that love back into the river of life, loving and lifting all those who drown...
Adding your comment:
