From an Upper Floor

Dear Dr. . . . .

I presume it is Dr. though I did not see the title,  I feel it is richly deserved.  If you would please excuse me for not offering my gratitude for your perusal and comments on my work.  Life has a way of intervening and commitments cannot wait.

The work I refer to,  just to refresh memory,  was the poetry and the essays that my friend. . . so kindly asked you to look at.   The material reviewed you said was challenging and intriguing and I thank you.  Challenging and intriguing nowadays is not the stuffs of the marketplace.  In fact,  what can be easily identified, especially the familiar, is what is marketable.  This is not to put the onus on people,  though it seems that to massage the brain into greater activity is not thought of as fun.   That is too bad.   To my thinking, the purpose of this physical life is to learn but from the observation of the majority,  its purpose is to entertain.   The gods,  I understand,  even hide the lessons in toys.

With the challenges of earning a living,  there is little energy left to try and change much of anything.  To inject new thought or old thought spoken in today’s language,  puts one on the defensive.  The old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’  seems to be what is propelling everyone.  Except things are broken, old ideas, old habits and a first rate intelligence is not required to see that the results are no longer sufficient.  Ideas and values must expand to fit the larger scope, not abandoned altogether.

Physical and mental boundaries are not finite.   We often speak disparagingly of primitive religions.  Simple observation tells us that as a technological society we have lost the spirituality that once united the simpler life with the cosmos.  And we are the loser.   We speak of life everlasting and yet are afraid to die.  We speak of the resurrection and buy cemetery plots so we will be remembered.  We send crossed signals.

When I wrote the essay, Concerning:  Creation 101 I wished to bring forth several ideas to show we are Creationists.  Individually and en masse we create the climate for what happens in our world.  I came upon a book by Robert Nozick called The Examined Life.   He wrote this while on sabbatical from Harvard and in it, to my surprise,  he announces that perhaps we are in the creation business and are discovering one way it can be done.   And he brings forth the idea that we are apprentices and perhaps will be in charge of something else, anon.

This again says that mental boundaries no longer exist.   There is a Spirit afoot that will speak and to ears and hearts that are open , they will hear.   There are those whose brains are open albeit a tiny percentage more than the average and to them will be given messages transformed  into ideas that will be grounded in this world.   To those whose eyes are open,  they will interpret the writings on the walls.

I realize that my ideas are not new ones but I try to speak in the vernacular.  All life is simultaneous.   When a philosopher like Robert Nozick comes up with creation apprenticeship, someone like me, or maybe many someones also pick up the idea at the same time.  Eden was Earth,  everywhere.   According to where one stood.   Maverick thinking?  Possibly but I think not.   My scope had to broaden to contain my commitments.

Thank you for your time and effort.   I did want to explain myself further.   Whether my lifetime will bear me out, I leave to the heavens.   They still hold the sparklers, contrary to what Man thinks.  I bless,

(I came across this copy of a letter to a Professor of Theology and Philosophy of a large university who was a friend of a friend.   It was in a journal entry of 1991.  The mills of the gods grind slowly.)

To know when one demeans one’s own value system, is to debase the Spirit within.   It is all a value system.   And a value system worth its salt will not be maligned in any manner, not even by systems beyond what one knows.  The value system of behavior based on high premises will be honored.   But the source of the system so designed must be investigated and must be researched.   You cannot adopt a belief system based on an others’  work.  It must be within the frame of reference of the individual who espouses the system.

At what point do we decide on a value system?   We can decide at any point whether we be patrons of the library  or of religious conviction.  Do we need a boundary or do we think that we are innately good and require no other to tell us when we do wrong?   It should always be a choice and understood will be the consequences.   When we decide on a value system we are pointedly within a system we have adopted and are living with it or by it.  We simply have not named it.   Is it necessary for us to name the system or are we happy simply to live it?  These kinds of questions we answer as we move from day to day.   It is the dailyness of living that prods us to abide by what we consider to be good or not.   The normal day to day living already comes with its own set of lesson plans.   The heavens note the bright thoughts that are moving within the Earth boundaries and here we are surprised when heaven’s thoughts match ours.   And it is then we shout revelation!  It is interesting as we march into our tomorrows we find that our steps lend themselves to our own adopted behavior.   We are already living our beliefs by our actions and our thinking.  And those who gravitate toward us are already responding to our belief system or our philosophy.   They say the apple does not fall far from the tree.   Here it can also be said that the friends of one’s walk in life are like us and if we find that there is a one who holds different ideas,  we are then free to either walk along or subtly dismiss the one from our circle.   What we do will be very telling about us.   Should we embrace the one whose thoughts differ we might find at first to be frightened.   If terror compounds our fright we will lose the friendship quickly but we might see, if we try to incorporate different ideas, that our boundaries move apart and our premises broaden in scope.

This is about growth.   It is about evolution and it is about being human.   Life is exciting and it is an adventure.   It is about growing up and growing old and wise and a leaning post for the young.   And it is about losing our focus on this world at the end of this life and focusing on a new one.   It is still about growth and evolution and about being other than human that our vocabulary has no words for.   But it will still be exciting and an adventure because life is sweet in any dimension.

“ Do you wear the rose perfume?” she asked.   Yes I said and then she said that every time she caught the scent she wondered from where it comes and who walks with a bouquet of roses.  I wish it were so.   I would give you a rose.  . . . .thorns to be sure, but a rose with petals of baby skin and a scent reminding you of a place long buried in memory.

And coupled with the stringent passion of evergreen. . . both are the true measure of this woman pilgrim in journey.   The evergreen stands as a fulcrum of entry into a forest of refuge.   We belong here it says.   The rose for its scent of love and the evergreen, its passion.  Both marshaling the heart and mind unto the place I know best.

So we must paint roses in the cheeks of the newborn to remind them of the place from which they come.   And with the roses will come the scent they remember.  The evergreen will remind them also of what it is they hold as memory.   Remember the sabers were put across each other at the foot of the evergreen.   A constant reminder that peaceful skills must be honed each day and that they must be taught from the very first breath.  These memories will be sufficient to carry them to the end of their days.  They will remember and know the place that held their hearts and  that with these  they will find peace with understanding.   They need not speak of it but they will know each other by their actions and the love in their hearts.  Their hands will grasp each other and they will know then how much they were loved.