What will you die for?

I died for beauty, but was scarce

Adjusted in the tomb,

When one who died for truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?

“For beauty,” I replied.

“And I for truth – the two are one;

We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,

We talked between the rooms,

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names.

                          Emily Dickinson

A Dose of Wisdom Revisited

I want to revisit the words of Martin Luther King on dealing with evil triumphant.  I want to remember that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the "final words in reality" and that the strength of right is seen in grace and beauty, qualities eternal and indestructible, world without end. 

Birthday Reflections: The Best Is Yet To Be

"Grow Old Along with Me, the Best Is Yet to Be"

                                                        Robert Browning

Tomorrow is my birthday and the first Sunday in Advent which is the liturgical church's new year.  If you are like me, birthdays are mile markers that make you reflect on where you have been and where you want to go.  Birthday reflections are a joyous and pleasant custom during good times; during bad times birthday reflections might resemble emotional housecleaning for those who wish to survive to see another birthday come around. 

It is a marvelous day today.  The sky is clear, the temperature moderate and the sun brilliant.  While listening to NPR and blowing leaves off the roof  I  reflected on the previous year of my life, clearly the worst year of my life, and despite it all and an irreverent sense of humor, I came to some joyous conclusions concerning what I hope for the coming year. 

What I hope for is nothing short of truth, beauty and love. 

Truth:  My mother taught me that I should say nothing if I could not say something nice and to worry about what others think.  This principle has its appropriate time and place, but, more importantly, my father taught me that saying nothing in the face of cruelty and hypocrisy is tacit approval of same.  They both taught me that truth is an objective standard that exceeds whatever I want or what makes me feel good.  AA teaches that those who are incapable of being honest with themselves cannot and will not acquire sobriety with or without drinking, and those who do acquire sobriety can maintain that blessed state only through rigorous (scrupulously accurate) honesty in their dealings. 

Beauty:  My mother taught me to be practical and clean.  My father taught me to marvel in the joy of the senses.  It took me a lifetime of defending sensual beauty to finally be able to vocalize a response to self-righteous moral pricks who don't get it.  Beauty is not materialism; it is but a reflection of God's twinkling, swelling, radiating glory - an hors d'oeuvre of our heaven home, a ray of pure brilliance breaking free of the eternal energy to touch the earthly dimension and show us, in mosaic form, bits and pieces of the final image.  Beauty is an accumulation of small pieces of Truth that makes us feel good.  Beauty is found in more than sight.  It can be perceived by any of our senses and found in any of our values or principles.    

Love:  Love is as indefinable a word and concept as obscenity and it is commonly a word used in vain .  In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio struggled to define "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, and in so doing came up with one of the Supreme Court's most famous standards: I Know It When I See.  Love is like this.  Hideous cruelty occurs under the guise of love; control is coerced; freedom is denied; people are used and destroyed like disposable objects - even the very object of  love is destroyed by actions we have the nerve to call love.  Even Love's sisters, Truth and Beauty, are betrayed and denied.  Religious bullies routinely talk about loving their neighbors as themselves while they wait in the bushes to ambush.  So it seems that in reality love has routinely become "what I want right now, damn it".  But real love...well, I know it when I see it.          

In the coming year I hope to view the interactions of this life I am given through the lens of what matters and try to speak and hear the truth, seek and find beauty, give and accept love while exposing myself to positive energy sources.  I hope to ask and receive, knock and have the door open so I can go inside and find the best that is yet to be. 

Green Woman

The Rose That Never Fades

Oft as summer closes when thine eye reposes on its lingering roses once so loved by thee

Think of her who wove them, her who made thee love them

Oh, then remember me.

From Go Where Glory Waits Thee

by Thomas Moore

December at Emmanuel

The postcard for December events at my parish was finished tonight.  Here it is. 

Veracity

"Trust and integrity are precious resources easily squandered, hard to regain.  They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity."

Sissela Bokin, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life

Same Church; New Image

As anyone who reads this journal knows, I am an Episcopalian.  Last year this time I created symbols for use by The Episcopal Church USA in the Image Shop offered at no charge for parishes to use for local publications.   My symbols are offered along with those of three other artists selected to provide images. 

I worked mainly on symbols for the sacraments of the church, but my favorite designs were Episcopal Shields.  I had a great deal of fun imagining different textures and edgier images to represent the church.  I am pleased that a church in Washington State wants to use the "Old Paint Shield" for t-shirts, and a Delaware church planter wants to use the "Stone Shield" for church signs.  The image used here is "Shiney Plastic Shield" which somehow reminds me of old toys,

I will be posting the other shields and am working on a new "Neon Sign Shield". 

Friendship

Aristotle defined three types of friendship:  friendships of good people with similar virtue, friendships based on utility and friendships based on pleasure.  Of these, only friendships of good people with similar virtue are enduring and complete because, in addition to being useful and pleasant, the parties "wish goods to each other for each other’s own sake". 

Friendships based on utility alone (what's in it for me?) are motivated by short-term considerations and may change according to circumstances. 

Friendships based on pleasure alone (I enjoy his sense of humor or good looks) are based only on feelings and are capable of change according to circumstances.  

But friendships of good people of similar virtue who wish good to each other for each other's own sake are complete and enduring.  Aristotle did not say so, but the category of friendships of good people of similar virtue sounds like unselfish (though not unconditional) love.  

It is an interesting proposition that we use the term friendship so frequently as an admirable term chocked full of virtue - loyalty, love, understanding, support, and so on -  when the odds appear to be in favor of a friendship being temporary, motivated by what the participant can take from it,  caring not about the soul of the "friend".  It would also seem that enduring friendship is incredibly rare - the blue rose of human relationships (?) - and the fortunate are those who manage to face death with even one enduring friendship made on earth.  

Ah, but when a friend does enter your life he will wish your soul to soar by means of grace and for hope of glory giving more than lip service to the fact that even though life on earth is temporary, friendship need not be.  

Fall

"Fall" copyright by Jan Neal, all rights reserved