"Where I lived and what I lived for" Thoreau
I start with the title from the 2nd chapter of "Walden" because it says it all. (Not literally, of course. Otherwise, why blog?) It says in "A Course in Miracles" in Chapter 6 "You can't be anywhere God does not put you." It also says in Chapter 4 and others "Where you look to find yourself is up to you." WTF does that mean? How can everything be both preordained and a matter of choice?
Emerson pulls it all together quite nicely in "Self-Reliance:" "There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the whole wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his own toil bestowed upon that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It maybe safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it may be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved gay when h has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."
This blog is my effort to testify of my particular ray. Even if no one else ever reads this, I will have forced myself to arrange my thoughts in a coherent manner, and arrange my thoughts around that which has the most meaning to my being, rather than frittering away my precious brain molecules on "stuff."
Wish me luck.
Emerson pulls it all together quite nicely in "Self-Reliance:" "There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the whole wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his own toil bestowed upon that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It maybe safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it may be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved gay when h has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."
This blog is my effort to testify of my particular ray. Even if no one else ever reads this, I will have forced myself to arrange my thoughts in a coherent manner, and arrange my thoughts around that which has the most meaning to my being, rather than frittering away my precious brain molecules on "stuff."
Wish me luck.
posted by NancyWH @ 6:26 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home