From an Upper Floor

Quantum, sumus, scimus. . . you are what you know. . .

Sometime in my history,  someone touched my life with their example and I learned to love books.  It was in reading that I became aware that the Talmud taught that the only reason for Being was learning.  Learning became the end in itself.  Not to prove anything, but to improve life.  To answer my own eternal why.  To take the log out of my eye I could then venture to help take the splinter out of the Others’ eye.

With the continuing events of the previous weeks escaping our abilities to harness our emotions,  questions need to be asked.  If there are no questions concerning our behaviors, then events are repeated with no progress, even minutely.  And the first question must be directed toward ourselves.  Since attitudes are contagious,  our first question should be how do I contribute to what happens?

During a fearful time a young man said to me,  I know how I am supposed to think and feel and I will continue to try, but right now I am scared.  I told him with that statement, he was close to the kingdom.  Enough times told, even the self begins to change its habits, to match the words the mouth spills.  Lessons are called lessons because the word suggests that a morsel of knowledge is to be found, something not known to the individual.  If the knowledge was truly part of our fabric,  it would be a known and not something to be learned.

We ask ourselves the question,  what have we learned?  And if it is learned, if dailyness suggests that we have integrated knowledge, or integrated a once unknown,  then we have learned something.  That something.  If only the one something.  If it is in the head, learned only by rote,  and our lives do not proclaim it, then it is not knowledge, it is still an unknown.

It is by example that we teach.  Example is still the best teacher.  What do our daily actions announce about us?  Are we sending crossed signals?  Perhaps we need to take time and do some deep thinking.  To see what messages we send out as we approach an Other.   Body language speaks our intention before our words do, so what are we saying?

We must be the good example.

As I See It . . . .

There are no more answers anywhere except those written within the individual on his heart.  It is all there for him to discover and what he discovers will be adequate for this time.  It works to cover tracks and to discover just one more truth which will enlighten what has already been learned.  For one it will be fine.  For another, it is nothing but a way station.

Everyone has a piece of the rock.  A piece of the truth.  The justification for each life is in the person and no place else.  Not in the life of their god or their spouse or their children.  But in themselves.  There is no other place than the place of the individual heart.

To be able to ensnare all knowledge in one fell swoop would be to discourage and dismantle the psyche.  It can be done but it would undo us all.  The psychological trauma would put the psyche on the shelf forever.  For who would have the courage to attempt another  journey?

Our need determines our intent.  And the caliber of teacher we require.  To strive toward the highest and best we can be will of itself bring to our side those who also strive to do best and those who yearn to touch the highest.  The divine within is called into conference and the work begins.  The journey only begins when the present becomes unbearable and the future unthinkable.

I hold two views within me.  That the universe is benign and at the same time it is ultimately good.  Benign because the rain falls on the just and the unjust and ultimately good because if it were not,  it would long ago have self destructed.  Can one hold two opposing views and live?  I hold the two at the core of me and at 85 I still breathe.

What can be born and borne in this world?  The knowledge that all reality is a preferential viewpoint.  That all reality is a preferred judgement and yet so incredibly real and so compatible that it all works.  Painful?  Of course.  Worthwhile?  We get to know the awesome power of individual thought.   That we can make Peace on Earth an actuality and not just a hope.

photo by John Holmes

The Mind set to turn a particular way
is already bent. . .
The Teacher

It is a benign universe in which we are, always just, always fair to the extreme.  If it does not appear so, our view of it may be  in need of adjustment.  Perhaps, just perhaps our focus is too narrow.

The divinity which resides in man puts him in the driver’s seat.  What happens in this lush planet will have recourse in universal seas.  What happens on one hearth,  happens on all hearths giving warmth or not.  What happens in one market place,  happens in all marketplaces.

What man does or undoes, will rebound.  Every act must be one of holy obligation.

The erstwhile professors claim their inadequacy and who are we not to believe them?  The clerics proclaim their great faith in a just God and yet bridle at the injustices and claim their humanity in not knowing the answers.  Can we not believe them?  Who knows them better than they do themselves?

When one proclaims his ignorance, he also proclaims his negligence in the obligation of thinking.  Thinking is a 24/7 work.  Hard work.  And this was not meant to be Paradise.   Wars and catastrophes are started by thought.  One man and one thought.  Think Holocaust.  Can we not think Peace?  Think on it.  And start on ourselves.

When we settle in for the night and put the light out, we are reminded  that night class is down the hall to the right.  The class is Ethics and Man.   The last class was cancelled.  No one showed up.  What is wanted is the heart to carry the argument of the right thing to do, complete with commitment, to put priority on what will sustain humankind, what will give life and not take life.

Do we qualify?

Photo by
Kathy Qualiana

A Matter Of Heart. . .

The terminal was unbearably hot.  The crowd was gathered ready to embark the train for points East.  The luggage crowded the children who were crowding the legs of the adults.  Handbags swayed menacingly as little children strayed too close.  It was a hot and sweaty atmosphere and not at all pleasant.  The air conditioning would be overworked long into the night, even as the number of people decreased.

The wait was interrupted by the loudspeaker intoning that begging our pardons of course, there would be a slight delay in embarking because the train had not arrived.  But as soon as it was in the depot and unloaded, we would be granted status as passengers.

The groans were echoed throughout the caverns of the terminal tracks and it was one groan.

In front of me a relatively young man, perhaps nearing forty and dressed in shorts, polo shirt and typical running shoes, stood by the ruby velvet rope, the only sign of elegance in a scene showing none.  Until that moment.

A young boy child, estimated to be six or so, came to the young man and leaned against him.  This was a husky one, but possibly was younger that what I thought.  He looked though to be in training for some contact sport.

The young man bent down and in one gesture, obviously long practiced, gathered the child up.  I watched in amazement, fully expecting to hear, ‘stand on your own two feet, you’re big enough!’

But what I saw was an act of love, obviously also not universal, because it was not what I expected.

I saw the child put his arms around the young man’s neck with such sureness that I knew it too was long practiced.  And the young man buried his face in the neck of the child and pressed his lips close to the child’s ear.  The look on the older face I could see for he was not 2 full feet away.  And the look was one of unadulterated love, the purest measure of devotion.

As the larger arms held the child effortlessly, I heard the Teacher’s voice saying again, ‘only a father can make a son but other men make brothers just like themselves.’

And I saw what for these two was evident.  At some point in time in the older man’s history, however far back each man’s history goes, this father had known a father’s love and had been a son.

And whether or not this young boy-child would choose to father, he could, because he was truly a son.

And this particular element, so often divisive in the lives of men, was forever in these two, reconciled.  It was lovingly demonstrated.  And no word passed between them.

artwork by Claudia Hallissey