Og and Moog. Travel with me back many thousands of years to early humans, or their ancestors. Imagine two of them, hunter gatherers Og and Moog, walking around hungry and seeing some wheat blowing in the breeze in a clearing they've come across. Imagine this is a day before anyone has ever thought of baking anything, except maybe wild boar on an open fire. Og stops and stares and has a creative moment, saying, and I translate here from cave man talk, "You know, some of that would make a nice loaf of bread." Moog replies, "Loof! Loof!" Then a cow walks by and Og says, "Yeah, a hot loaf smeared with ... butter." And Moog just looks at him, puzzled. My point of course is a simple one. We need in our time to be able to do the equivalent of looking at wheat grains and seeing for the first time bread, or at a cow and envisioning butter. It's much more than seeing an oak in an acorn, by a big leap. It involves the mystery of our own alchemy, the transformative creativity, the ability to make beyond what anyone else has ever imagined, that's sleeping deep in our souls most of the time. We need to awaken it in our day, more of us than ever before, and see the world around us not just as it is, but as it could be. And then get to work baking the bread we need. We need to be like Og. Amen?
Remember: Don't mistake a frame in the film for the film itself, a chapter of the story for the whole tale, or a moment in your life for more than it is. We're all in some way the co-creators of what comes next and can make a positive difference to the outcome in the overall flow of things.
In many great stories, the hardest things happen before the most wonderful things come to be. And we tell such stories and love to hear them because they reflect the strange movements of our world in a way that we need to be reminded of, time and again. It’s always darkest at some point before the dawn. Things look hopeless for the hero when he’s down, and then there’s a great turnaround.
Courage. Faith. Hope. Love. Creativity. Openness. Peace. Positive Action. Many things can float our boat well.
The Vicar of Wakefield. Today's Great Book was amazing! I found a hard copy at a used book sale and had no idea the treasure I had discovered! Written by Oliver Goldsmith and first published in 1766, it's chock full of lessons and encouragements for us today.
There may be no better and more entertaining novel about appearances and realities, along with the ups and downs of fortune, and how a proper worldview can sustain us through anything. The Reverend Charles Primrose and his family seem to have a wonderful life. Then something bad happens. Something worse follows and they are greatly reduced in their means. And yet, their happiness translates well into their new and much more modest circumstances. Until something else bad occurs and something worse follows yet again, but it's just the prelude of the truly disastrous, which serves as mere prologue to the unspeakably awful. And so it goes. If you have read Phil Knight's account of trying to create the shoe company Nike, in his book Shoe Dog, and have gone away thinking "No one ever had such a string of bad luck as that poor man," then you haven't read The Vicar of Wakefield.
I promise it will surprise you many times and in the end bless you deeply. And more than that. Some excerpts:
It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view, are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first case, we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, Nature cooks it for us. (48)
Conscience is a coward; and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse. (67)
(Ok a longish one)
‘Both wit and understanding,’ cried I, ‘are trifles, without integrity: it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without an heart? An honest man is the noblest work of God.
‘I always held that hackney’d maxim of Pope,’ returned Mr Burchell, ‘as very unworthy a man of genius, and a base desertion of his own superiority. As the reputation of books is raised not by their freedom from defect, but the greatness of their beauties; so should that of men be prized not for their exemption from fault, but the size of those virtues they are possessed of. The scholar may want prudence, the statesman may have pride, and the champion ferocity; but shall we prefer to these the low mechanic, who laboriously plods on through life, without censure or applause? We might as well prefer the tame correct paintings of the Flemish school to the erroneous, but sublime animations of the Roman pencil.’
‘Sir,’ replied I, ‘your present observation is just, when there are shining virtues and minute defects; but when it appears that great vices are opposed in the same mind to as extraordinary virtues, such a character deserves contempt.’
‘Perhaps,’ cried he, ‘there may be some such monsters as you describe, of great vices joined to great virtues; yet in my progress through life, I never yet found one instance of their existence: on the contrary, I have ever perceived, that where the mind was capacious, the affections were good. And indeed Providence seems kindly our friend in this particular, thus to debilitate the understanding where the heart is corrupt, and diminish the power where there is the will to do mischief. This rule seems to extend even to other animals: the little vermin race are ever treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, whilst those endowed with strength and power are generous, brave, and gentle.’ (77, 78)
The less kind I found Fortune at one time, the most I expected from her another; and now being at the bottom of the wheel, every new revolution might lift, but could not depress me. (111)
“I ask pardon, my darling,” returned I; “but I was going to observe, that wisdom makes but a slow defense against trouble, though at last a sure one.” (130)
“Our happiness, my dear,” I would say, “is in the power of One who can bring it about in a thousand unforeseen ways, that mock our foresight.” (140)
“Oh, my children, if you could but learn to commune with your own hearts and know what noble company you can make them, you would little regard the elegance and splendor of the worthless. (143)
“Almost all men have been taught to call life a passage, and themselves the travellers. The similitude still may be improved when we observe that the good are joyful and serene, like travellers that are going towards home; the wicked but by intervals happy, like travellers that are going into exile.” (143)
“With such reflections I laboured to become chearful; but cheerfulness was never yet produced by effort, which is itself painful.” (152)
The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man that comes to relieve it. (186)
For the book, click HERE.
Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. - Paul, getting it right. First Corinthians, 13:13.
I had a professor in college who talked a lot about seeing with the eyes of faith. We need more of that. Not the talking part. The seeing.
We also need to see with the eyes of hope. And that's hard sometimes. But to the degree it's hard, it's necessary.
And we most of all need to see with the eyes of love. View the people and things around you from the best and highest divine perspective. Appropriate a sliver of God's Love for us. Let it reflect and refract through your own interpretations, infusing them and lifting them up. See others in such a way as to lift them up. See yourself that way.
Seeing through the eyes of faith, hope, and love is definitely better for those who manage it. It's better for the world whenever any of us does it. And it gives a wonderful example to others. The eyes of faith. The eyes of hope. The eyes of love.
Happy New Eyes.
I just finished my second reading of a wondrous and even numinous book, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. I loved it in 2004. I got much more out of it on this second time through.
An older minister in the small town of Gilead, Iowa has a young son through an unexpected second marriage. His first wife died in childbirth, and the baby also passed shortly afterwards. Decades later, in his sixties, he unexpectedly married a younger woman and then had a child, a son, when he was about the age of seventy. The book is a long letter he’s writing this boy in his sixth year, sharing his life and insights in a way that he is sure time will prevent his doing in person. He has serious heart trouble and may be in his last days. So it’s important to him, even urgent, to get into this letter anything he’d want to share with his son when the boy is older and can use some guidance about the deeper things in life, as well as on some of the simpler and most magical things.
Our writer, the Reverend John Ames is worried about a younger man who has come back to town after many years away. He is the son of the reverend's best friend, and as such begins to visit Ames' home, play with his son, and talk with his younger wife in overtly friendly ways. The wife and son seem utterly charmed by this charismatic guest. But Ames knows that in the man's adolescence, he displayed terribly bad behavior and morally irresponsible ways. And now our writer wonders what his intentions are toward his young wife and new son. This inner struggle intrudes itself into the overall flow of the work in fascinating ways, and ends up giving us one of the biggest revelations of the book that may be needed in our own lives. But so as not to ruin the suspense, I won’t mention what it is, except to say that it took me back to a theme in many of Jane Austin’s stories, and in the New Testament, and in a vivid and powerful way.
I’ll share some other sample passages, while recommending the book to you strongly, as a joy and potentially transformative read.
On writing:
“For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I was often enough.” (19)
On Ego:
When the Lord says “You must become as one of these little ones,” I take him to mean you must be stripped of all the accretions of smugness and pretense and triviality. (30)
On Making the Most of Life:
When my father found his father at Mount Pleasant after the war ended, he was shocked at first to see how he had been wounded. In fact, he was speechless. So my grandfather’s first words to his son were, “I am confident that I will find great blessing in it.” And that was what he said about everything that happened to him for the rest of his life, all of which tended to be more or less drastic. (35-36)
On Philosophy:
I got pretty good at pretending I understood more than I did, a skill which has served me throughout life. … I get much more respect than I deserve. (39)
On the Luminous Reality of People:
When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned. (44-45)
On the Human Face:
Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. (66)
On Our Flaws:
These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you’re making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice. (98)
On What We Now Call Covetousness:
I believe the sin of covetise is that pang of resentment you may feel when even the people you love best have what you want and don’t have. (134)
And later:
I don’t know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else’s virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it. (188)
On Forgiveness and the Parable of the Prodigal Son:
It says Jesus puts His hearer in the role of the father, or of the one who forgives. Because if we are, so to speak, the debtor (and of course we are that, too), that suggests no graciousness in us. And grace is the great gift. So to be forgiven is only half the gift. The other half is that we can also forgive, restore, and liberate, and therefore we can feel the will of God enacted through us, which is the great restoration of ourselves to ourselves.
On Adulthood and Enjoyment:
Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts. (166)
For the amazing book click HERE.
I just finished reading Ernest Hemingway’s little book The Old Man and the Sea for the first time in my adult life. I’m sure I had to read it in high school but remember nothing of the experience. I can imagine, however, the average student of that age saying, “We had to read this stupid story about this stupid old man and his stupid fish. It was all so stupid.”
And maybe for the young, it is. But not for those of us who have lived a bit more. It’s of course a story about a poor old fisherman in Cuba that was first published as a book in 1952 and won a Pulitzer Prize, as well as being cited in Hemingway’s Nobel Prize for Literature citation awarded two years later. First printed as a magazine article in Esquire many years before, it has haunted readers for each decade since.
The old man, Santiago, seems to have run out of luck. He’s in a dry patch. He has not caught a fish in 84 days. But he’s determined to go out and catch a big one. So he ventures out in his little boat much farther than is normal, out to where the biggest fish may be found. And after a time, he eventually hooks a huge Marlin who pulls him and his small boat farther away from land for three dqys. They fight and struggle and all the old man’s knowledge and skill are put to the test. Can he have the success of which he has dreamed? Can he endure all that is required? It's hugely difficult, but the answer is yes. The fish finally succumbs and is lashed to the boat and the old man heads back toward land with dreams of the glory and the needed practical income that will result from such a huge and perfect specimen, bigger than anyone has ever seen. It may even be a life changing accomplishment.
But the old man is out on the water alone. He has not brought along the strong boy who is his friend and who often accompanies him on fishing trips. During the extended struggle with the giant fish, he often wishes he had brought the boy with him to help. Another pair of hands could have been so useful. But he struggles mightily and prevails all alone and is glad. Yet, his solitary success is quickly followed by a new challenge. Sharks descend on the huge Marlin he has caught and the old man is limited in what he has with him to use to defend the catch. Thinking of something he could have brought with him, and should have brought along, he finally says to himself words that flow down the decades and into all of our lives:
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is. (83)
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Or if you forgot to prepare for your adventure with sugar and water, is there at least some vodka around that you could use?
Santiago fights the first shark that attacks with a harpoon. After losing it, he lashes a knife to an oar and does battle with the next sharks who come. When that’s also gone, he begins to club at the predators. And eventually he is out of options. The thieves of the sea take more and more chunks out of his magnificent catch until there is nothing left but the spectacular spine and bones as a trophy of success and testimony of subsequent failure. He has lost what he had fought so hard to gain.
When he returns, exhausted, demoralized, bruised and cut up, he sleeps and the boy takes care of him. After they talk, the boy says: “Now we fish together again.”
The old man replies, “No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore.”
“The hell with luck,” the boy said. “I’ll bring the luck with me.” (92)
And then they begin to discuss what they will need to bring along with them to be properly prepared for anything they might face together.
And that’s a perspective and trajectory we all need. Great effort is sometimes followed by failure. Even great success can wither on the vine. Don’t let disappointment stop you, however deep and desperate it might be. And never just wait for luck. Bring the luck with you. Take action. Partner up with someone who can help boost your spirits and aid your cause. Prepare. Move forward once more. Remember: There is always a new dream and a new chance and many fish in the sea.
For the book, click HERE.
I've been away from blogging for a couple of months. I first took a break in honor of the holidays. And then I got busy editing my new series of novels for a quicker than normal schedule of publication. I hope you've already seen the prologue to the series, the book The Oasis Within. It's been out for a few months. And just this week, the first numbered volume in the series Walid and the Mysteries of Phi, The Golden Palace, appeared on Amazon. In two or three months, I hope to have volume two out as well, The Stone of Giza.
I'm almost done in my editing of the eight books I've already written for the series. And today, Sunday, I want to share a passage I just edited. Even though the books are set mainly in Egypt, certain things happen in faraway places, like Tunisia, or Berlin, or New York City. This passage comes from a story line in numbered Book Seven, The Ancient Scroll. The setting is New York City in 1935 at a Methodist Church. The minister, Bob Archdale, is working on a sermon. We get a chance to see into his head and heart as he makes notes. I hope you enjoy this passage.
Bob at the moment was in his office preparing his sermon for the next morning. He was planning to talk on the nature of faith and how it’s more about perception and values and commitment than just belief. He had decided to use as his biblical text the famous meeting at night between Jesus and the Jewish Rabbinical leader Nicodemus, as reported in the Gospel of John, chapter three. At a time when most of the religious establishment either disliked or feared Jesus, this prominent teacher had gone to see him at night, when, presumably his visit would not be public knowledge. He approached the controversial figure and actually said, “Teacher, some of us know that you were sent by God, because no one could do the things you do without divine support.” And then Jesus, rather than acknowledging the scholar’s rare open-minded reasoning and remarkable belief, says something instead that can be very puzzling on more than one level. His words in response were: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus is of course perplexed and says, “How can anyone return to the womb and be born a second time?” And then Jesus answers in such a way as to indicate that his entire ministry and mission aren’t primarily about reasoning and belief, but personal transformation into what’s really a new life, with new perceptions, values, and commitments.
Bob knew that, at almost any time, many of the people in his church were showing up, week-to-week, to make a deal with God. They would believe whatever they needed to believe, and do whatever they needed to do, in order to gain divine favor and everlasting life. Some were likely just hedging their bets and maybe living out the famous Agnostic’s Prayer: “Oh God, if there is a God, please save my soul, if there is a soul.” They were there in an effort to perhaps improve their lot and maybe defeat death. But God wanted them there to defeat spiritual blindness and deafness and idolatry and selfishness. He wanted to see them born anew, raised from the death of alienation and separation and selfishness to a new life of union with him and each other. He wanted an eternal life for them now, which was more about quality than it was about quantity.
He really wanted to get this point across to everyone who showed up for the service. The faith they were being called to embrace is about new life, new values, and new commitments lived all day, every day. He wanted them to understand that when the insistent felt needs of the untutored ego can be released, its real needs can be met. And then, we can experience the genuine power of humility, compassion, and deep faith. The reverend was hoping to get all this across in a persuasive and illuminating way, so that at least many of the members of his congregation could perhaps see the issues of faith in a new and richer light.
When people approach religion for what they can get out of it, they ironically make it nearly impossible to get the most out of it. It becomes a tool—an instrument the ego is merely using to enhance its own interests, whether those interests are healthy or not. That’s why we’ve had so much war and violence and oppression in the name of religion throughout history. These things have nothing to do with true spirituality, but are perversions or deformations of what faith and the quest of the spirit are supposed to be all about. We often come across people pursuing their own greed, with their own ambitions, and superstitiously seeking to assuage their worst fears under a false patina of religious language, ritual, and sentiment. And this wasn’t just a danger for other times and places, Archdale knew, but it’s a temptation for any of us unless we can come to a true understanding of spiritual things.
Years ago, someone said to me, "People love your talks so much because you don't just give them philosophical insights and practical ideas, you give them hope." That's stayed with me ever since. I hope it's true.
We all need hope. And yet, we often find ourselves without it, in some context. Things go badly. A difficult situation arises. And we feel helpless to do anything about it. When we feel helpless, we soon begin to feel hopeless, as well. And there's a reason for this.
In a psychological experiment which makes me glad I'm not a psychologist, a thermostat, or climate control mechanism, was installed in a factory. People for the first time could walk over and set the device, raising or lowering it. Finally, they felt a sense of control over their environment for the first time. Morale went up. And if I'm remembering this well, so did their work performance. People felt better about their jobs. And yet what they didn't know is that the control wasn't connected to anything but the wall. Yeah. A philosopher wouldn't do that. But here was the conclusion: Even a false belief that we have a measure of control improved our emotions and performance. When we don't feel any sense of control, or even influence over a challenging situation, we lose a measure of hope.
I prefer to give people hope through truth, not illusion. But what exactly am I giving, and how can I be in a position to do this at all?
Hope is not the same thing as belief. When we hope for a better future, we're not necessarily believing that the future will be better, only that it can be. But the state of hope goes beyond that. The possibility conviction is joined to an attitude of positive expectation, again, different from actual belief, but closely aligned to it. Like belief, hope can be rational or irrational. And like belief, its status as such is connected with matters of evidence. But hope looks beyond actual belief, and beyond the existing evidence, to wait expectantly for a better future.
The New Testament speaks of Faith, Hope, and Love. Faith is about trust. Love is about commitment. Hope is about patient expectation and positive values. We're told that love is the greatest of these things, because with the right commitments, faith and hope can flourish. And when you think about it deeply enough, you quickly realize that we can't do great and creative work without faith, hope, and love.
How then do I give hope to people? By bringing them the wisdom of the ages for how they can improve their lives and business endeavors. I give people tools - old tools, and great ones that have proved their worth over centuries of use. And I show people how to use them. Then, they expect more strongly than ever the better future that can be theirs, in personal or professional things.
And their response - and for some of you readers, I know I can say "your response" - loops back to undergird my own hope for the future that we all need. Thanks, as always, for reading. And thanks for any comments.
"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." David Lloyd George.
This is a nice image that I've long loved. You can't cross a broad chasm in two small jumps. Sometimes, you have to take a huge step, and sometimes a giant leap.
If you're normally a small stepper, that can be hard. But some things can't be accomplished any other way.
There are some big leaps in life that don't make sense. And there are others that do.
How can we know the difference? Discernment. Wisdom. Intuition. Listening.
What are your values? What do you love? What matters to you?
What do your dreams tell you? What is your heart saying?
If you're led to the edge of something new, and it's something very good, and a leap needs to be made, and your heart is nudging you forward, then leap!
