tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-282640782024-03-04T23:59:31.499-06:00Goddess of LoveWelcome, beautiful traveler. This page is a devotion to the numinous and perfect goddess of love.
Stay and learn if you wish, but have a good life regardless.Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-21839236383564500722015-06-25T07:41:00.001-05:002015-06-25T07:52:52.039-05:00Giving Until It HurtsWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a word of caution: beware the temptation to give until it hurts.<div><br></div><div>We are taught, in our culture, that many things worth having require sacrifice, and that is true. There's little that can be accomplished if we do not learn the value of delayed gratification, and even the most harmonious of relationships cannot endure without some degree of compromise. Then too, circumstances sometimes offer us the opportunity to improve the world at some significant personal cost.</div><div><br></div><div>But the necessity of sacrifice does not in any way make sacrifice good in and of itself. To deny our own needs and desires, to give something up, to suffer harm to our body, mind, or soul -- these things may result in goodness, but they themselves are never a positive good.</div><div><br></div><div>It's critical to remember this as we make life's hard choices.</div><div><br></div><div>Real goodness lies in the amount of happiness we bring to the world, the amount of healing we can work upon its wounds, the amount of damage we can forestall or prevent. If we can do more good through a particular sacrifice than we could without it, then the choice to do more good is worthy and noble. But the sacrifice itself is only a tool, not an accomplishment.</div><div><br></div><div>All too often, we accept harm to ourselves under the mistaken notion that sacrifice is good. But in harming ourselves now, we can easily reduce the energy and capacity we have to do good later. So if a sacrifice brings about less good than we might have done with that energy elsewhere, then the choice to deny ourselves actually becomes a net loss for the world, in addition to being detrimental to us as individuals. </div><div><br></div><div>We should, therefore, never look for ways to sacrifice. We should only look for the way to do the most good, and be prepared to make sacrifices when they become necessary -- when we can weigh them against what they accomplish and know that we are truly making the most beneficial choice.</div><div><br></div><div>A martyr whose self-sacrifice brings little or no improvement to the world has only cheated us of a source of beauty and generosity.</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the will to do right ... and the wisdom to do right by ourselves in the process.</div><div><br></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br></div><div>A devotee </div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-44406869609537243422015-06-18T07:02:00.001-05:002015-06-18T07:02:54.809-05:00Good DaysWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a wish that this day will be good for you, and a thought on how to nurture that outcome. It is simply this:<div><br></div><div>A good day begins with the understanding that you deserve one. </div><div><br></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to value ourselves and be receptive to happiness.</div><div><br></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-80334855694274710992015-06-06T20:38:00.001-05:002015-06-06T21:09:54.367-05:00True LoveWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with one grandiose idea and another more pragmatic one. Here they are:<div><br></div><div>The nature of True Love is this: to know that this person exists, and have the fact of his or her existence free you from having to be sad, anymore, ever.</div><div><br></div><div>Anything less is mere human love, and requires a ton of work to maintain.</div><div><br></div><div>A followup thought occurs to me now that I've spelled those out:</div><div><br></div><div>Only one of the two can ever be prepared for.</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for glimpses into your perfection and the strength to build and steady our bright-hearted imitations of it.</div><div><br></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-23087496545121386432015-05-31T12:02:00.001-05:002015-05-31T12:45:33.354-05:00What We Can Be for Each OtherWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a suggestion
to encourage the linking of hearts.
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Many failed relationships, I think, fail out of unmet
expectations. </div>
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We human beings, all of us, are annoying or aggravating or
boring at times. We all have our flaws, and with prolonged exposure, flaws can so easily magnify
themselves in the eyes of others. So as we move through the cycles
of a relationship, it’s easy for the negatives we possess and the negatives of
our partner to grow more obvious and less tolerable. </div>
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And we all have our unique hungers, the needs and wants that
help make us who we are, that drive us in the directions our lives are destined
to go. Unless romantic fate is exceedingly kind to us, no partner will ever
fulfill all of those needs. So again, over time, we often find greater and
greater frustration in the portions of ourselves that our partners are unable
to satisfy.</div>
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In combination, these two trends can
easily turn a pinnacle of affection and attraction into a downward slope of
irritation, resentment, and anger – until we find ourselves standing before
a hungry void, the void of our neglected wants.</div>
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Once there, even a small unpleasantness can topple us over
the edge.</div>
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But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can take our
awareness of this phenomenon and make a few simple adjustments to avert that
tumbling decline.</div>
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First, we must be honest with ourselves and know the
importance of each yearning that drives us. How important is hand-holding,
religion, political conversation, travel, sex, or bowling? There are things that we like
but can do without, and there are things we must have to remain the people we
are. Only by knowing which is which can we judge the real success of our
partner in supporting our needs.</div>
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Next, we must communicate with one another. Our partner must
be made aware of just how important any given need is to us, how critical its
fulfillment is to our happiness. Without that awareness, she can’t be expected
to read the cause of our discontent; he can’t be expected to make his greatest
effort to satisfy our wants.</div>
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With that shared knowledge, two partners can know the limits
of the bond they share – and can compromise around those limits. Most
importantly, they can discard the misery of unmet expectations, because they
will have openly agreed on what can and can’t be expected.</div>
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Having eliminated from our relationships the dead weight of
pointless wanting, we can then focus on all the things we gain from the
person we love, instead of all the ways we think they have failed us. In place
of voids and holes, we can see strengths and supports. In place of resentment,
we can feel appreciation.</div>
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By removing the power of hopeless expectations, we free
ourselves to do what we can do for one another, to be what we can be for each
other.</div>
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A crucial final element in this equation is what to do when one partner has a need that can’t be compromised and the other has a true
inability to fulfill it. If love is to survive, it’s the obligation
of both partners to make sure that need is being met outside of the
relationship.</div>
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We should not expect our loved ones to suffer in hunger just
because we do not have the particular food they need.</div>
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If one partner burns to share the great outdoors while the
other is an agoraphobe ...</div>
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If one must dance and the other hates crowds and music ...</div>
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If one needs passionate arguments of the mind but the other
can’t stand intellectualizing ...</div>
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Then it is our duty not just to offer but to insist on giving
our partner the freedom to exercise their wants, their needs, their dreams. If
it can’t happen within the bounds of the relationship, we must encourage it
beyond ... and we must be happy to see our partner enjoy that freedom when they
take it, knowing that our insistence on their liberty is the best means we have
of giving them joy.<br />
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Real love is not a binding that restricts. It is the devotion to bestowing delight. It is the desire to free one's beloved from want. And it is the appreciation of all that one's beloved is, including all of his or her needs, both those we can meet and even – or especially – those we cannot.<br />
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Thank you, goddess of love, for the opportunity to be what
we can, and the generosity to let go where we must.</div>
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Lovingly yours,</div>
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A devotee
</div>
</div>
Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-4631483343323866692013-08-03T20:15:00.000-05:002013-08-03T20:16:41.657-05:00DifferencesWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an appreciation of how unlike me you are.<br />
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In all probability, we have some number of things in common. Clearly, we're both fluent in English and both denizens of the Internet. You seem to have some curiosity about matters of religion and/or tolerance for unusual religious viewpoints, or I would have expected you to click away after reading the banner of this blog and the opening lines of the post. We're thoughtful, I believe, you and I. By this point in my musings, all the non-contemplative types have almost certainly gone elsewhere. And if this is not your first visit to my blog, then we probably share some common attitudes and wishes for what the world could be like.<br />
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But we're different, too, and if we were to converse our way through a few dozen topics, we would undoubtedly find many points of disagreement and perhaps even conflict.<br />
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And there is nothing wrong with that.<br />
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I recently encountered, for the first time in many years, a classmate of mine from high school. There was a time (possibly almost the entire time I knew her) when I thought this person was the most beautiful girl in the school -- maybe even in the world, at least for a moment or two. She was very sharp, a keen and clever mind with a rich, intelligent smile and the kind of happy laugh that made you feel very accomplished if you managed to evoke it. But we were on a different wavelength, this girl and I. We were both honors students, both writers, both middle-class suburban children at the outer edges of popular culture and some social norms. Both intellectuals. The same age. In most of the same classes. Yet she didn't understand my writing at all. She once told me something along the lines of, "You're a really good writer. I just wish you would write something serious."<br />
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Meanwhile, I dismissed her as a stuffy, narrow-visioned aesthete who looked down on entertainment and was only interested in rarefied, cerebral, self-indulgent explorations of form or technique and dreary, reality-centered themes on human existence.<br />
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As the years after high school passed and I widened the scope of my acquaintances, developed a greater appreciation for people whose interest diverged from mine, I often thought of this girl. What if, instead of shrugging her off as my diametric creative opposite, I had been willing to engage her on the basis of our kindred talents, had perhaps explored what it was that so interested her in higher literature, had attempted to make her understand the value I found in fantasy and satire? Might we both have been enlarged? Become fast friends? Dated?<br />
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Over time, I grew convinced that I should have connected with her, not just passed through the same halls and classes. That we should have been more to each other than we were. That perhaps our lives should have remained deeply interwoven through all the years since we last saw one another.<br />
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And then a few months ago, I ran across her online. She is a regular contributor to a website where she reviews films, and I read a number of her articles, and discovered ... we're still just as different as we were in high school. She likes movies, I like movies, but our responses to them are very far apart. Her reviews are dismissive of films I found entertaining, or, if she gives a thumbs-up to a movie I liked, she singles out for criticism things that I thought were the best parts of the show.<br />
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All of which is actually terrific.<br />
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It turns out I was wrong about the possibility of us connecting more strongly in high school. I simply wasn't prepared, at that point in my life, to engage someone with an interpretive framework so contrary to mine. Perhaps she was more mature and might have been willing to engage me, but clearly, neither of us would have changed the other's mind in any significant way. It would have required me to be a different person than I was at that time.<br />
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In contrast, today I could easily be friends with someone whose aesthetic sensibilities conflict with mine. I enjoy comparative discussions involving disparate viewpoints, so long as they are respectful and good-humored. I got a kick out of reading her reviews and remembering fondly this likable person who happened to disagree with me on some subjects I considered central to my identity.<br />
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That we were different then annoyed me. That we are different today cheers me, both because it reminds me that I was actually a pretty good judge of people as a teenager (though not necessarily as good a judge of myself), and also because I now value variety, which tells me how much I have grown.<br />
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Thank you, goddess of love, for the crossing of paths unlike our own, and for what it tells us about ourselves and about the world.<br />
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Lovingly yours,<br />
<br />
A devotee<br />
<br />
<br />Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-8749171622340497752013-07-26T12:17:00.003-05:002015-05-31T12:09:23.859-05:00ScheherazadeWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a story.</div>
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My favorite piece of classical music is Rimsky-Korsakov's
<i>Scheherazade</i>. I have loved it since long before I knew what it meant, since its
passionate Eastern melodies seeped into my consciousness from a phonograph
record played by my parents when I was a child. As with many beautiful things,
the music all but overwhelms me physically. </div>
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It grabs at something inside my chest, sends tides of energy
surging through my nerves or my veins, and pulls tears from my eyes every time
I listen to it.</div>
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Not least among the many wonderful aspects of this composition is its
subject matter: the story of Scheherazade, perhaps the most gifted storyteller ever to be
written of or imagined.</div>
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Scheherazade's tale forms the narrative frame for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1001 Arabian Nights</i>. As the legend goes,
the Sultan of Persia (having been betrayed by his unfaithful wife) took a new
virgin to be his conquest every night, and then had her beheaded the next day. When
this tradition had gone on for some time, Scheherazade, a brilliant and finely
educated girl just entering womanhood, came forward and volunteered to be the
Sultan's next consort. But she was able to postpone her execution by telling
the misogynistic ruler a story that kept him spellbound through the night, and which she
left unfinished at the break of dawn, so that he allowed her to live to finish
it the next evening.</div>
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For each of 1001 nights, Scheherazade repeated this feat,
until at last she told the Sultan she had no more stories remaining. Having
fallen in love with her, he set aside his vengeful obsession and made her his queen.</div>
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Like all of the best stories, this one presents us with a marvelous, idealized hero and asks something of us by way of her example. To
know exactly <i>what </i>it asks of us, we must consider two crucial parts of the narrative.</div>
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First, Scheherazade is not chosen by the Sultan as a consort
– she <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">volunteers</i>. She sees something
terrible happening, forms a plan, and steps forward at the risk of her own life
to stop a ghastly chain of suffering. </div>
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She makes the choice to care for others first, to try to
save them even if it means her destruction.</div>
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She loves her fellow women, and in loving, finds that she must act. </div>
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The second thing we must consider is a question: Does this
story end happily for Scheherazade?</div>
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She winds up as the queen of all Persia, with a devoted husband who adores her.
She has saved the lives of countless other women through her bravery and
intelligence and talent. She will for the rest of her life have wealth and
servants and luxury beyond asking. There is no denying that the story ends <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">triumphantly</i> for Scheherazade … but will
she be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happy</i>?</div>
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She is, after all, married to a man who was a monster.
Perhaps if we shrug and say, "That's just how kings were, back in the
day," or "Well, it's just a fable," we can conclude that it
doesn't really matter that the Sultan chose, in his rage, to use the faithlessness
of one woman as justification for a life of perpetual serial rape and murder. But
<i>Scheherazade </i>does not say, "That's just how sultans are," nor does she
know that she is living in a fable.</div>
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This woman chooses a course that, in its best possible outcome,
will bind the remainder of her life to a man who, when he might have said,
"Women are treacherous, so I now abandon all contact with them," instead
decided to sate himself nightly and order habitual butchery for his innocent
victims.</div>
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Can she be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happy</i>,
knowing what he has done?</div>
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Here, the story forces us to ask another question. When
Scheherazade conceived her plan, did she only set out to save her fellow women?</div>
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<i>Or did she set out to save the Sultan as well?</i></div>
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If her goal was merely to prevent further carnage, then she
ends the story in victory and affluence, but facing what will probably be a
long life of melancholy or even revulsion at her continued intimate submission
to a beast, albeit a reformed one.</div>
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But if she said to herself, "I can draw this man back
from the depths into which he has descended. I can make him whole and good
again," then the story ends not just in triumph but in joy.</div>
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Scheherazade asks us to put others before ourselves. What we
must decide is whether it also asks us to believe wholeheartedly in the
possibility of redemption. </div>
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No one can make that decision for us – the decision to
attempt to tame evil and then forgive it. </div>
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But it bears minding that the only way the story ends
happily is if Scheherazade believed that she could do just that.</div>
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Only in risking her life <i>at least in part for the sake of a
madman</i> does she earn the truest possible reward.</div>
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Thank you, goddess of love, for challenges, for heroism, and
for the absolute, pure wonder of real beauty.</div>
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Lovingly yours,</div>
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A devotee
Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-65745521559886812952013-07-22T17:33:00.000-05:002013-07-27T18:09:00.205-05:00Embrace LoveWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a suggestion: do not wish for love or yearn for love. Instead, look around you and welcome it.<br />
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For me, at least, there is no other way to believe in a world moving forward. If I wait for the good, I simply will not notice when it comes, because the wide profile of the bad will obscure it. Too long I have scraped by and turned inward, nursed a variety of alienations, resented the obvious need for acts of giving. At every turn, I have let ugliness get the better of me, let it turn me away from relationships, society, the world.<br />
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I cannot force extroversion upon myself, but I can and must acknowledge that I need others, and that needing them necessitates loving them, and giving of myself to them <i>without</i> expectation of a return. This giving will never be fully reciprocated by 100% of its beneficiaries, but love is about appreciation, not expectation, and if you do not give, as a natural response to appreciating someone, how can you really be said to appreciate them at all?<br />
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The only reasonable expectation of others is that they should be beautiful. And there is beauty in all of us if only we look.<br />
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Find it.<br />
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<i>Appreciate</i> it.<br />
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Love it.<br />
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And shrug your way through the rest.<br />
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Thank you, goddess of love, for the love that can spring from me, if I simply make the effort to allow it.<br />
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Lovingly yours,<br />
<br />
A devoteeDevoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-22453480294074048562013-02-01T22:48:00.002-06:002013-07-27T18:09:00.203-05:00Keeping It SimpleWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a simple thought:<br />
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Small things are sometimes enough.<br />
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Thank you, Goddess of Love, for that which is at once compact and enormous.<br />
<br />
Lovingly yours,<br />
<br />
A devoteeDevoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-1426742087811566592012-05-01T22:40:00.000-05:002013-07-27T18:09:00.201-05:00What Is Love?Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a thought that has closed out my evening.<br />
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Love does not consist of finding that one person who completes you. Love is the greater understanding that you are larger than the thoughts and feelings rattling around inside your head, and that to find your larger self, you must connect to others.<br />
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In other words, love is not the process of filling a hole within yourself, but the act of embracing your incompletenes and accepting that it can never be solved, because only in your incompleteness are you able to bridge the divides that lie between yourself and your fellow human beings.<br />
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Only because you are not whole do you have any reason to touch them. Only because you are not whole are they a blessing for you to delight in. Only because you are not whole are others worthwhile.<br />
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Love is the recognition that your own emptiness enables all friendship, all mutuality, all romance, all loyalty, all empathy, all communication -- every bond that we as people may share.<br />
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Thank you, goddess of love, for the blank slate with which we may invite you to write your stories upon our hearts.<br />
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Lovingly yours,<br />
<br />
A devoteeDevoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-71247191934555354932011-09-07T18:34:00.002-05:002013-07-27T18:09:00.206-05:00A ThoughtWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a simple notion:<div><br /></div><div>Love is possible only for those who believe in it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for belief.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-72963681866043975122011-08-04T22:10:00.004-05:002011-08-04T22:40:13.740-05:00Question Those Whose Livelihoods Are Built Upon AngerWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a note of caution.<div><br /></div><div>We live in an age of media figures, and many of those figures have developed as their stock in trade a certain manufactured outrage. Their harangues are visible nightly on the television and audible at all hours on talk radio, and while I personally perceive them to be tilted heavily to one side of the political spectrum, there are certainly examples on both the left and the right.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's no wonder that they deal in anger. It's a potent fare, and one that can be cultivated with relatively little expense or effort. And because it naturally disengages our ability to reason clearly, its inclusion in any messaging product makes the quality of that product much less critical. If I can succeed in making you angry about a topic, I can sway your opinion more easily than if you remain dispassionate. An unmoved listener requires more evidence to be convinced than an enflamed one does.</div><div><br /></div><div>I bring this up not to dissuade you from one political position or another, but merely to point out that a state of anger, while potentially very motivating, ultimately undermines the impulse toward peace, the impulse toward love. The merchants of anger therefore cannot move our world in a more peaceful direction, and do not have the interests of a more loving universe in their hearts. They may actually be well intentioned, in a misled way. But they cannot inspire us to greatness -- only to rash action or impotent frustration.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next time something on television or radio angers you, ask yourself whether you are angry at the information itself, or if the person delivering the information is purposefully phrasing it with the intention of making you angry. If the information is what rouses your ire, take that emotion and find a way to act constructively on it. On the other hand, if it is the messenger who is goading you to fury, consider whether he or she has your best interests at heart.</div><div><br /></div><div>In any event, remember that anger is most suitable when it is a response to injustice, and that justice requires both reason and compassion. Then cool your thoughts and contemplate what can be done in a way that will better and brighten the world for those around you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to temper one's temper.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-36561583601013707472011-05-14T23:17:00.002-05:002011-05-14T23:29:47.064-05:00Make a Habit of LivingWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with advice that I have long known yet somehow dropped of late from my routine.<div><br /></div><div>The state of joy is only very rarely one that is delivered to us. More often by far, it is fought for, won, and earned through effort. When we long for joy, when we languish wearily awaiting a state of delight, we should not be surprised at its failure to appear.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are times when the doing of things does not seem worthwhile. We all experience that feeling, the lassitude that says, "What is the point?" But the sensation of ennui, of purposelessness, is an illusion. It is a mask that creeps across the world because we have allowed ourselves to disconnect from that which fundamentally drives us.</div><div><br /></div><div>The more we act, the more we work toward dreams, toward desires -- the more we <i>do</i> -- then in return, the more we are alive.</div><div><br /></div><div>Weekly, daily, hourly, we should make effort.</div><div><br /></div><div>We should undertake.</div><div><br /></div><div>We should habituate ourselves to action.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because when the doing of things is reflexive, the accomplishing of things is guaranteed -- even if not every accomplishment goes as expected.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for good habits.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-46139294244848795382010-09-24T16:59:00.003-05:002010-09-24T17:04:56.671-05:00Where We AreWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with this:<div><br /></div><div>There.</div><div>A point in space, surrounded by infinity.</div><div>That's important: <i>surrounded by infinity</i>.</div><div>Too easily, we think of what is missing, what we lack.</div><div>But infinity allows for no true void. <i>Everything</i> is there. <i>Everyone</i>.</div><div>She. He. You.</div><div>We long for that touch.</div><div>Where is it?</div><div>There.</div><div>In the sea of all that enfolds us.</div><div>55</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for everything.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-10991370989441260632010-09-07T07:17:00.002-05:002010-09-07T07:27:00.223-05:00BirthdaysWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with wishes of happiness and joy.<div><br /></div><div>Although we should not need any special occasion to celebrate our love for those in our lives who are particularly special to us, it is nonetheless a gift that tradition tells us to commemorate birthdays. We get busy, we get neglectful, and we sometimes forget, in the course of days or weeks, to speak of and show our affection with the frequency we ought to. Birthdays give us a nice prod, which is something that we as human beings often need.</div><div><br /></div><div>Today is my most exceptionally excellent friend Strumpet's birthday, and I hope that it is the absolute best that it can be, because she is a blessing upon my life.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for friends and birthdays, and the chance to share with others the warmth that they both make us feel.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-41918811510588928522010-09-06T20:16:00.002-05:002013-07-27T18:10:39.748-05:00A Brief Time in a GardenWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a scene.<div><br /></div><div>I am on a bench in an enormous garden. A stream moves and speaks through the greenery behind me, speaks of the blue overhead, streaked with fragile white clouds. It speaks of beauty hurrying past me, from so far away to yet farther still. Its voice hangs there, constant and quick -- a small cousin to the mighty river a few miles distant, somehow louder in tone for all its lesser size. The air is cool. The only noise is the stream, although murmurs of birds and distant park-goers can also be heard.</div><div><br /></div><div>Noisy, rushing, alive, vibrant -- how is a stream so peaceful when it is also all these things?</div><div><br /></div><div>The answer must be that peace is not stillness. Peace is not quiet.</div><div><br /></div><div>Peace is the calm that comes of doing what is your nature while the world moves on around you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the subtly spoken words of a brook on its way to the sea.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-67553641368686982182010-07-20T19:03:00.003-05:002010-07-20T19:20:33.004-05:00Brightness and AirWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with an allegory.<div><br /></div><div>Along a mountain pathway, I came to a place where the trail split. I had been climbing some time already, across rocky ground, sharp and ugly. Away in the distance, when I paused to look up, the sky and horizon showed me unreachable beauty. But close at hand, the terrain had only scrapes and exhaustion to give me.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the split in the trail, I faced a choice. To one side the way became even steeper, but led up past boulders and jagged outcrops toward a sunlit summit, where I knew from the guidebook that green trees and a bubbling spring could be found, along with a quaint little hiker's refuge that had been built there long ago. The other path led down, straighter and easier -- into the mouth of a cave. The shadows inside had an unhealthy cast, as though even light found the air of the cave stale ... debilitating.</div><div><br /></div><div>Who makes the choice to descend into darkness, to be shut off from any offer of comfort, just because the pull of gravity makes that direction less an investment in effort? Who picks cold, blanketing blackness over a strenuous push toward achievement, toward the splendor of all the world? </div><div><br /></div><div>The proper choice seems so obvious, does it not?</div><div><br /></div><div>Climb the mountain. It is <i>gorgeous</i> up there. You will be able to see so far.</div><div><br /></div><div>Climb the mountain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the path that should so plainly be taken.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-48276855633966261332010-06-16T22:00:00.002-05:002010-06-16T22:08:24.874-05:00Selfish or Selfless?Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a need to help.<div><br /></div><div>It's some years now since I started this blog, and while I did so mainly in an attempt at self-administered therapy, I've also always had a hope that my thoughts here would make themselves useful to others as well. This may be selflessness or it may be egotism -- most likely a combination of both.</div><div><br /></div><div>Whatever it is, the desire has gotten stronger of late. As I ask myself why, the answer I come up with is that I yearn to know that my thoughts are important to others.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is different than knowing that <i><b>I</b></i> am important to others. I have friends and family to whom, clearly, I am indispensable. But I also have this interior world, which is constantly churning and only occasionally given voice to those around me.</div><div><br /></div><div>And this place within that I think of as my self wishes to be useful -- wishes to matter.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have something inside me that finds less expression than it wants, that receives less recognition than it hungers for.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is this impulse in some way the exact opposite of what it wants to be? It desires to help, yet that desire seems to be quite self-centered, does it not?</div><div><br /></div><div>Recognition.</div><div><br /></div><div>Importance.</div><div><br /></div><div>Do we really give only so that we may in turn receive these things?</div><div><br /></div><div>Or do we give because it feels good -- and because all too many things in this world do the reverse?</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't have a ready answer.</div><div><br /></div><div>If we do the best that we can, if we strive to be the best that we can, and if what we get in return does not make us sufficiently happy -- then how are we to retain any sense of worth?</div><div><br /></div><div>And without that sense of worth, how do we go on?</div><div><br /></div><div>Hope can sustain us, but what can sustain hope?</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps a better question to ask, instead of these bleak and unanswerable ones, is, "Do others feel as I do?"</div><div><br /></div><div>For if the answer is "yes" then the course becomes clear: find those others, and find a way to make them feel worthwhile.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sooner or later, someone will do the same for you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to think things through.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-28334050087596934062010-06-14T21:45:00.003-05:002013-07-27T18:11:12.392-05:00The Sigh of a Breeze Through Green Boughs, andWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with two sensations that began and ended my day.<div><br /></div><div>A number of less pleasant things happened in between, but I had the good luck of at least two moments of beauty, each far more worthy of being focused upon than the annoyances and aggravations that separated them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for the veil of clouds that parts just long enough to reveal our crescent moon, backlit with Earthshine and hanging just under one achingly bright planet.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-81817954445488289922010-05-20T21:53:00.002-05:002010-05-20T22:00:37.998-05:00My goal of the momentWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a kernel of purpose: to try to make things better.<div><br /></div><div>This is what I do, and all I can do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Try to make things better.</div><div><br /></div><div>Try to encourage people to be nicer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Try to have a sense of humor.</div><div><br /></div><div>Look for smiles.</div><div><br /></div><div>Defuse anger.</div><div><br /></div><div>Plead the case of hope.</div><div><br /></div><div>Remember the deepness and the breadth of love.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is what I do, and all I can do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for meaning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee<br /><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-20018062838416388872010-03-08T21:48:00.003-06:002010-03-08T21:52:15.447-06:00RequestWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a request for hope.<div><br /></div><div>If you can spare a moment to pray to whatever deity you hold dear, I'd appreciate your asking, "Please let there be good news for Devotee's friend who has cancer."</div><div><br /></div><div>Longtime readers of this blog will recognize that I have no expectations that prayers will or won't be answered.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I'm assuming they can't hurt.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for friends -- however long we have them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-90870219397342547292010-02-14T10:30:00.006-06:002010-02-14T10:35:57.631-06:00Valentine's Day 55Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a poem for you on Valentine's Day.<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">May pure desire</div><div style="text-align: center;">stride through your door</div><div style="text-align: center;">tall and dark </div><div style="text-align: center;">or with flame-red hair</div><div style="text-align: center;">looking through eyes</div><div style="text-align: center;">that see only you</div><div style="text-align: center;">speaking with lips</div><div style="text-align: center;">that tell true</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">May you know</div><div style="text-align: center;">within a single glance</div><div style="text-align: center;">that Fate has spoke</div><div style="text-align: center;">and not mere chance</div><div style="text-align: center;">that Cupid's bow has sweetly sung</div><div style="text-align: center;">and your heart,</div><div style="text-align: center;">however old,</div><div style="text-align: center;">is young</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">55</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love, for this day celebrating all your work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-14012990810644060362010-01-10T11:06:00.003-06:002010-01-10T11:10:14.660-06:00A bit of a lecture. Listen in if you care to.<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a brief and simple message.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">If you wish to be cared for, you must first care.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">If you wish to be loved, you must first love yourself, and then be willing to extend that love to others.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">If you wish for a hero to ride in and save you, you must first be willing to become a hero yourself.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">You and I -- we are the best this world has to offer. If we wait to be saved, instead of acting ourselves, then we deserve whatever disappointments that we get.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Thank you, goddess of love, for reflections -- they show us where the work must begin.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Lovingly yours,</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">A devotee</span></p>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-49877870440944731282009-12-27T10:07:00.002-06:002009-12-27T10:10:26.512-06:00Rinse and Repeat<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a sense being on a too-familiar path.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I conceived of this religion from a point of desperation, a borderland where hope for humanity and the expectation of happiness seemed in danger of falling behind me, while ahead lay only desolation.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Have you been to this place? Have you seen too clearly the warts and wickedness that people choose to show the world, while joy and decency appear only as far-off heat shimmers in a desert? Having reached and been disappointed by too many mirages, do you now doubt that the desert itself has any end at all?</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Well, if you are reading this, then you have proof that things are not so bad as you fear.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I am no mirage. I am real. I care about people -- I care about how the world turns out. If you feel the same way, then we have cause for jubilation. This life is not all carelessness and hurtfulness and callous disregard for others.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">You are there, and I am here, and between us, I assure you there are a thousand like us, a legion caught by our own ability to imagine a world much better than this one.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">What we must do, you and I, is to stop seeing that imagination as a curse that holds us in a place ever-inferior to our mind’s green landscapes, and see it instead as a gift and a tool.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">For without those who can imagine a better world, how can the world ever improve itself?</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Let us step off the path that leads into the desert -- because the desert, too, is just a figment of our imaginations.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Stand with me, clear-eyed, in the real world, and remember that all our imaginings have been spurred by true things, by things we have actually seen. Having seen good, we can create better. We must simply have the will to try.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Thank you, goddess of love, for the ability to recognize, to remember -- to rededicate.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Lovingly yours,</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">A devotee</span></p>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-52037487375774116362009-10-17T09:21:00.003-05:002009-10-17T09:41:19.491-05:00Philosophy from a 1914 Pulp 55<div style="text-align: left;">Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a not-so-literary reference to a book that I have not actually read. Nonetheless, it is a source of wonder to me.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Pellucidar:</div><div style="text-align: center;">The interior world</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Vivid ever with its unsetting sun</div><div style="text-align: center;">a realm of eternal day</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">untameable</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">wild with life of every imagined sort</div><div style="text-align: center;">and with those too</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">that have yet to be dreamed</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Vastness</div><div style="text-align: center;">gloried and mysterious</div><div style="text-align: center;">shrouded in stone</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">A sky inside - impossibilities made real</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Fear not</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Doubt not</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Find your way ...</div><div style="text-align: center;">to Pellucidar</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">55</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you, goddess of love, for Edgar Rice Burroughs, a man who walked a fascinating path between the real and the fantastic -- perhaps because he understood that what is real is also fantastic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lovingly yours,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28264078.post-8201688883554618202009-09-08T19:14:00.003-05:002009-09-08T19:32:04.942-05:00LessonsWelcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you with a bit of the spring taken out of my step.<div><br /></div><div>A few days ago, in another forum, I let myself be egged into saying a mean thing. I knew as I said it that it was a mistake, and yet I somehow bought into the delusion that expressing my frustrations in a mean way would make me feel better. Other people had been saying plenty of mean things, and crazy things as well, and I let myself get dragged into it, trying to show them what was what.</div><div><br /></div><div>Predictably, the whole thing ended up with me feeling even more frustrated, disgusted, and angry than ever, but with the added benefit of feeling guilty and entirely foolish as well.</div><div><br /></div><div>I relearn this lesson every once in a while: that it is the particular talent of real evil to suck even well-intentioned people into a vortex of anger until they find themselves infuriated with one another even though there's no good reason for it. It's a stupid thing, once you're in that vortex, to swim deeper into it. But at least in that instance, you have the excuse of already having your judgment clouded.</div><div><br /></div><div>Far stupider is to stand outside that vortex, see the raging blatherers within it, and then dive in to tell them how ridiculous they're being.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, goddess of love -- not for the first time and probably not for the last -- for humbling lessons.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lovingly yours,</div><div><br /></div><div>A devotee</div>Devoteehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10132417730218562356noreply@blogger.com0