Showing posts with label fire and spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fire and spirit. Show all posts

October 11, 2013

Sincerity and Love

“We make ourselves real by telling the truth.” Thomas Merton

Duran Duran
Come Undone

Mine, immaculate dream made breath and skin
I've been waiting for you
Signed, with a home tattoo,
Happy birthday to you was created for you...

Oh, it'll take a little time,
Might take a little crime
To come undone now

We'll try to stay blind
To the hope and fear outside
Hey child, stay wilder than the wind
And blow me into cry

refrain:
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone?
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone?

Words, playing me deja vu
Like a radio tune I swear I've heard before
Chill, is it something real
Or the magic I'm feeding off your fingers?

Lost, in a snow filled sky,
we'll make it alright
To come undone now

refrain:
(can not forgive from falling apart)
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone?
(can not forgive from falling apart)
Who do you need, who do you love?
(can not forgive from falling apart)
Who do you love
When you come undone?
(can not forgive from falling apart) 



We all very much need to know the truth as a function of living in the real world. Cold makes snow; water makes rain, and wind makes tornadoes. These simple truths we know as facts.
But when dealing with the myriad other aspects of a human life, we can very often forget how very badly we need to tell the truth. It is not possible for a person to be in harmony with a truth that he does not yet possess.
So it seems that we must be true inside, with our self, before we can know a truth that is outside us. We make ourselves true when we manifest what we see.

Sincerity is still something to admire, be it in ignorance, humor, understanding or joy. Yet many times, upon meeting with truth, we refuse it, crucifying that which is before our own eyes. Transformed into a grotesque caricature of its former self, sincere truth, now stripped of harmony, wreaks vengeance. It seems the need for truth is inescapable. I deeply need to know wherein to place my confidence, my joy.
The whole package of truth consists in the trite phrase of “talk the talk, walk the walk.” There is a sort of homage to the world which we pay by truth.
Without this, there is left the specter of mental instability or chaos in the form of illness. The classic feature of psychosis is the inability to distinguish reality from fantastic pretense.

Despite this potentiality, men seem often consumed in idle gossip, scurrilous malignment and scandalous calumnies. There is, in their actions contempt, a lack of respect for reality. Some say the base of this issue rests in the will.
We refuse many times to conform with what we know true. We refuse it, fight it; our will plunges into false values, false views. The restless wagging of our tongues is evidence of this state.
Does a spring send out both sweet water to drink, and poison from the exact same source? Can unquiet evil be tamed, filled full, with its own poison?

We are still, despite it all, free in our will to value what we know to be true, or not. And to speak the truth in sincerity is more than frankness. It is a manifestation of a spirit to be simple, to be real, to observe an obligation to the truth about one self.
When we rake the truth, it is our soul we make foul. Heaped with dirt until we recognize it no more. So without a personal commitment to honest self-justice, lying and double dealing become unavoidable. Fear is possibly the greatest obstacle to candor. Others have no authority to demand that I be other than I rightly am.
And when they arrested and beat me, they could not take me down. It was a test of love. When fully myself, my life becomes its own fulfillment and completion.
So in the end, while a surge of pride may devour and destroy, sincerity remains a question of love. In love a person may see the true, and offer love for beauty in its own soul.
'Truth makes us real', as Merton said.

January 27, 2011

Godspeed Your Love to Me

Unchained Melody
 
sung by Sarah Mclachlan,
lyrics/music by Hy Zaret and Alex North
Listen Here

Oh,  my love
My darling
I hunger for your touch
Long and lonely tonight

And time goes by so slowly

And time can do so much
Are you still mine?

I need our love

I need our love
Godspeed our love
Oh, into me

Lonely river flow to the sea, to the sea

Lonely river flow to the sea
Lonely riverside wait for me, wait for me
I'll be coming home, wait for me

Time goes by so slowly

And time can do so much
Are you still mine
I need our love

Godspeed our love

Godspeed your love to me
I need your love
I need your love

Godspeed your love to me


"Return to me, and I will return to you," Malachi 3:7: some have heard these words, 'return to me... ' and maybe thought they were from the script of a movie that played in theaters not so long ago. I did not, myself, connect the source. To my surprise they are from the Torah; while the words are thought to have been written by a person, a Jewish priest in antiquity about the time of Nehemiah's arrival in Jerusalem, circa 445 B.C.E., little else is known about the writer. Yet his wisdom struck a chord with the Hebrew people of the Babylonian post-exile period. Many had lost faith with the G-d of Abraham. Their experiences of exile had not sustained them.

They returned home looking for life, for divine love. Looking, like the above lyrics so dolefully record, for the sea, for water, for life itself. It is a message that, when from the mouth of the prophet Malachi, many today refuse to hear. We pray for unity. During the tumultuous period of the Christian Reformation about 1450-1660C.E.  Malachi was, along with at least eight others, simply written out of the script. Gone. Banished. Today many Protestant Christians, non-catholic, non-orthodox Christians have never heard his message. In other words, the bibles that millions and millions read contain no mention of these prophets at all.  Faith without wisdom is a curious thing indeed.

"My covenant with him was one of life and peace; fear I put in him, and he feared me, and stood in awe of my name." Malachi 2:5
Reminding the people of G-d, Malachi, whose name means, "G-d's messenger," sought a priest to teach, to instruct so that they might find salvation and healing from the uncertainty and confusion of the times. The word 'fear' used here as in other places often means 'respect.'
"Do you still love me? Wait for me. Lonely river. Time goes by so slowly." Some see these types of prophetic writings to be oracles of the future One, who is to come into the world. A new world order is then to be created, cleansed with the fire and water of the Spirit.

"I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him.
I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the holy Spirit." John 1:33


"Godspeed your love to me."