Surviving Solstice Period Holidays: A List That Refuses to Pretend

I don’t pretend this is what anyone wants more of: yet another list in the exponentially growing blob of lists of pretend wisdom that promise to make your solstice period holiday easier, wealthier, cheaper, more fun, healthier, less stressful, less devoid of central religious figures and beliefs.

I do invite you to consider, however, whatever it is you really might want from this time of the year, no matter how invested you might or might not be in any of its more mundanely celebratory or religiously-based streams of events and customs. No matter how much you hate them or love them.

Let’s face it. We’re stuck with a plethora of feelings about the season whether we like it or not. Let’s stop pretending we can escape it or make it something it’s not or cannot be.

Let’s stop pretending we can get away from the constant dome of bad music in every public place we walk into, or that we can quit trying to find the one version of that one song we haven’t heard yet that makes us cry because mom or dad liked it and they are gone now.

This is a list about not pretending.

It is a list that does not pretend that buying or giving material gifts is wholly satisfying when what one wants, in a more and more fractured and anti-intimate world, are more opportunities to be intimate… to know more love.

Nor does this list imagine that somehow our list of gatherings of friends and family will be without dread, without pain, without too-small portions of unmitigated and unqualified joy and love the way it is portrayed by every blessed advertisement for everything from electric shavers to the hoards of plastic doodads and hoozits that come parading across our consciousness every time we open a magazine, a book, newspaper, email or internet site.

This list imagines that life goes on and that, during the holidays, there are opportunities to make it more livable, more understood and understanding, more truly connecting and more accepting of what cannot be connected, understood or livable.

So are you ready? No? Well, give it try anyway. Something might work… even a little. And if it does, I’d sure like to know!

1. Say no to events and people that drain you and have drained you every year for the past three years or more. Do this especially in regard to family gatherings you dread and have always dreaded. Can you afford to sacrifice yours and perhaps your significant others’ holiday by trying yet another time to make your Uncle-in-law into something other than a fat Nazi drunk? Say you have other plans, and then don’t waste time feeling guilty. Try the next thing on the list.

2. Schedule one-to-one face or phone time with someone who nourishes you. At the end of the initial time together, schedule the next time. Don’t leave it at “We’ll get together soon” Mark it on your calendar. A variation on this would be to make a face or phone time “date” with someone whom you’ve only ever communicated with via the internet. Try it, hetero, bi-, or homo, with a same sex friend, or, as a couple, try it with another couple.

3. Charmingly corner someone you think you might like at a holiday function. Ask them an open-ended question that demands more than a yes or no answer.

4. At a party tell the truth about a complicated way you feel about something to someone you inherently trust and do not know well but would like to know better; someone you haven’t connected with in a long time, or have had a long past misunderstanding that has never cleared. In the last case purposely avoid making a statement about that misunderstanding. Make an opportunity for meaningful conversation first.

5. Make an agreement with yourself to quickly end your part of any conversation that revolves around “dissing” someone who isn’t there. Change the conversation to one about the moon last night. If that doesn’t work, walk away complaining of urinary urgency.

6. Make a list of open-ended questions (see #3) that have the potential to start in-depth and rich conversations. Take the list with you to gatherings that you aren’t sure you will enjoy. Review the list in the bathroom in-between mingling. Practice them before you use them and don’t expect success every time. Remember, people are hungry for this kind of talk… and don’t worry about excluding politics or religion. You’ll find out soon enough what isn’t acceptable, or you might make a joyous connection with others who agree with you and each other more than disagree.

7. Make time for great, memorable sex with someone you love.

8. If you end up at some gathering of people and it is turning out as badly as it has every other year, try responding in a way you have never responded before. Be silly and loud. Laugh loudly and run from the room, taking someone with you and then look out a window and call everyone’s attention to the stars, or the snow. Stage a fake fight with someone you came with who is also having a bad time. Say: “I told you to use the rubber", loudly but not too loud… then "now look at the trouble we’re in” as you walk angrily from the room. Try anything… including going upstairs and visiting with the children who aren’t really asleep. They’ll love it.

9. Make your grief and sorrow over the deaths and/or absences of lovers, family members, beloved friends, spouses or parents a part of how you observe your holiday. It does no good to repress such things. And feeling badly about feeling badly becomes an exercise for sleeplessness, a bad drunk, or panic attacks. Find ways to give yourself and others time to remember. Feel good about tears even when it hurts… and it mostly does. It matters not how long ago the loss was. I always suggest a place in amongst the decorations with remembrance candles and/or pictures of loved ones lovingly and frequently tended to. Regularly start conversations with others who knew the person who is gone.

10. Don’t expect that bad family/friend relations can be mended or made better by doing the same things that have always been done. If you want to reconcile, you must invent new places and ways to attempt this. Start a conversation, not a solution. Be ready to forgive yourself and let go of the way you have been hurt so it does not continue to hurt you.

A Poem For Knowing Place and Gratitude

Waking to Birdsong


Wild in the first light, catchments
of dreams, choruses
of the dawn star

cast out of the darkness
flails the new near shadows
where even the moon

has failed to crease the trees.
Cedars, river, beech,
old hemlock, stumps from beavers,

birdsong all
a chorus from the spinning
uterus of our stars. Galaxy,

whole mountains
of little winged things flying
that bring us day.

Awake
the paths between the tops
of trees. Awake

the calliope
in the near new sky. Awake
the grass by the golden rivers

where beavers
and the other nocturnal workers
hear those bells of slumber

and the rest of the blue-eyed
brown-eyed,
furless and furry world comes to. Waking

to birdsong all hallelujah
to the sun.
We arrive in another circle

another twist
in the molten membrane
of these beds of stars, oh

these little winged harbingers
of going on.
Even suicidals rise

and for just a few moments
are busted into
by joy.

The paymasters of the cheats
of the kings
close their eyes

on their ledgers of blood
and remember the children
they must have been,

once. The blasted kingpins
of the ugliest secrets and torture
cannot out sing these cherubs

of dawn. My dreams
as elevated as they have been
cannot compete

with this chorus.
I walk to the river.
They dip and rise and follow me

one after another over
the miracles of water. Darkness yes
will soon be shattered.

Gifted Child = Gifted Adult

Gifted child pre-occupation = gifted adult occupation

by Christopher J. Coulson

(from the blog "The Gifted Way" http://www.thegiftedway.com/)

Who was I?

This is a recurring question for gifted adults because the intensity of our childhood experiencing has a direct bearing on our adult gifted success. It also offers valuable clues to understanding those things that don’t work so well for us.

In particular, the question: “What fascinated me when I was three years old?” seems of special significance. This is because the passionate preoccupations of three-year olds so often seem to form the foundation of success in a wide range of gifted adults.

The number of gifted and creative artists who recall their passion from their very early years is legion.

"I danced myself out of the womb.Is it strange to dance so soon?"Marc Bolan. "Cosmic Dancer".

At three or less, musicians pick up violins or start hammering on drums; dancers shake their booties; painters discover negative space without realizing there was ever anything else.

As an example, if you enter: “I started drawing when I was three.” as a single statement on Google you will get nearly 150,000 responses from illustrators, artists and so on. Substituting “playing piano” brings up 3,000. “Writing” only gives rise to 9, but includes one of my favorites: “I started writing when I was three years old, but it wasn’t until I was seven that I was first published.”

If you simply enter: “I started when I was three.” you’re greeted with nearly a million dancers, skiers, stamp-collectors, violinists, riders, soccer players etc. And these are only the people who feel compelled to commit their biographies to the Internet.
Pre-occupation to Occupation

Given that three is an age that has great significance for our future, how can we use the lessons to be learned from it?

Unconsciously building a gifted future.

Lucky the child whose obvious interests attracted parental support. S/he would all-unconsciously have started on the path to mastery and clarity.

But what about those of us whose creativity didn’t manifest through a musical instrument or box of crayons? We have to look harder to see where we come from.

The effort involved in this considered examination is highly worthwhile. Through it our uniqueness becomes apparent by revealing our own history and balance of preoccupations.

I hope you’ll take the time to uncover your own. As a process it can reinforce some affectionate self-recognition as well as open the doors to greater self-understanding.

As a guide to what I mean, here are some of my early qualities:

I was very clumsy at drawing.
I read a great deal.
I took every opportunity to go exploring on my own.
I built complex houses and towns from building blocks.
I focused a great deal of attention on my mother’s welfare, not least because we moved every six months or so, sometimes halfway round the globe.

How does that translate into today?

I still read a great deal. And, as reading is practice for writing, I write a great deal.
I’m very independent, an explorer in thought and in location.
I have always worked with complex systems demanding deconstruction, re-architecture and re-construction. This applies to my work in computing, in writing, and of course in the ongoing task of understanding and re-framing human nature.
My “taking care of mom” shows itself in dozens of ways, from a tendency to be over-solicitous in personal relationships to volunteering my time on committees. Many a professional or non-profit organization has reason to be grateful to my mother!
I’m still very clumsy at drawing.

Your mind is an iceberg

If your present life is more or less in accord with your three-year old preoccupations then you’re probably reasonably happy.

Out of sight but in the mind. What's concealed can slow you to a crawl.

However, if you’re finding it hard to follow through on your early enthusiasms, it could be due to your unconscious mind. Like the lower part of an iceberg, this is the hidden power that dominates your actions.

Brain research has made it clear that it is the unconscious, not the conscious, that rules our decision-making and thus our lives. (Check out Jonah Lehrer’s book: “How We Decide” for confirmation of this.)

Experts of all kinds have contributed their estimates as to when the development of our unconscious mind is ‘finished’. Such estimates typically fall in an age range between two and seven.

So where does that leave us?

Where does that leave us? Perhaps shockingly, it leaves us being managed by the assumptions and beliefs of – let’s average it – a five-year old. With our mind like an iceberg, our consciousness is the ten percent above water while the real weight and power lies massively beneath the surface.

This explains so much of what we find challenging. Our conscious mind says: “Let’s go to New York and look at some art,” but our unconscious wants to go surfing. With nine tenths of us pulling one way we are bound to end up in some compromise situation.

In this case, rather than New York it might be a trip to Malibu. There you can spend the days at

Surfrider Beach while taking side trips to the Getty Museum.

That kind of compromise might seem harmless enough but supposing your conscious mind is saying: “I need to save for a rainy day,” while your unconscious is saying: “There’s no point saving. Someone will just steal it from you.”?

The inevitable – yes, inevitable – consequence is that you will effect a compromise between these two positions. And it’s unlikely that it will meet all your conscious self’s need to save. So you will fret . . . and fret . . . and fret.

I want to correct any impression that I assume that the childhood unconscious tends to be irresponsible. It often isn’t. There are plenty of people who consciously think: “I ought to have more fun,” while their five-year old unconscious is nudging them to keep working “just in case.”

What to do about it

When our early preoccupations work for us, life is grand. But what happens when they don’t?

Gifted and creative individuals are highly sensitive. We feel conflict intensely and will take great steps to try to resolve it. The sense of going where we don’t want to – under the control of something hidden - is thus very painful and discouraging for us.

It’s never going to be easy, but the key to tolerating such apparent conflict and inability to achieve our objectives is first of all to make our five-year old selves real. Picture yourself back in that tiny body, mentally recreate a room in which you spent a lot of time, and allow these questions to pass across your mind:

Who were you then? How did you experience yourself?
Where were you? What events and family dynamics were determining your life?
Where did you go to be yourself and what would you do there?
What were the actions of your parents/caretakers showing you about their belief systems?
Did they all send the same message? Were you able to reconcile any conflicting messages and if so, how?

You can call for reinforcements when you know what you need to overcome.

The more clearly you are able to re-experience yourself at that time, the more understandable your current conflicts will become. And, much more importantly, the more you’ll be able to work with them rather against them.

This is because by revealing your most counter-productive beliefs to yourself you discover where your conscious will needs reinforcement.

You can use this information to help you find the appropriate assistance to tug you in your preferred direction. This assistance might come in the form of a person, a book, or some other form of external energy. You’ll recognize it when you need it.

And now . . .

I’d love to hear how your fascinations as a three-year old reveal themselves today. Just add your comments below and tell us your story.

Thanks.

Genius and Eccentricity

Actually, I think the idea that genius automatically carries with it the price tag of eccentricity or a kind of insanity is over-stated and under-supported by what ever kinds of research could be done to prove it.

That we are more interested in the lives of geniuses may only mean that we tend to be attracted and entertained by the eccentricities of history’s most examined, scrutinized characters. We are less likely to be interested in more mundane lives of those others who are just as integral to the full spectrum of human inventiveness and genius.

We are also less likely to scrutinize in so personal a way individuals in the rest of the population that are not considered genius, and so really have no way of comparing which “sample” has a greater degree/proportion of insanity/eccentricity.

We are also attracted by the eccentric on one level because, I think, it reminds us of our selves, our community of friends and family, our relationships, our inner lives and our own potential participation and desire to participate in the genius of the species.

I work in the mental health field so I have some background in this. The fact that we tend to know more about the lives of those who are considered to possess genius may throw off any untested theory that there are a greater proportion of eccentrics and/or a greater degree of insanity among those who are considered genius than those who are not.

As my work involves a much, much larger proportion of people who are not considered genius than people who are (although I might petition that rather arbitrary application of the definition for a definition that recognizes that everyone has, at least, the potential for genius in their own lives and community and may apply it in their own way), and as I am privy to the deepest life quandaries and pathologies of these people, of which there are numerous and frequent examples, even among the many who look to be quite "normal" to those who are not privy to their inner, more private and secret, lives, I am skeptical about any claims that the proportion of eccentrics and/or level of insanity among those who possess genius are any higher or lower than among the general population.

Though I would be glad to change my own theory if someone could fashion and implement a far-reaching enough study, I am not sure how that could be done, if one considers the enormous barriers of subjectivity that all this naturally calls into play.

How would we measure genius? Certainly not by IQ alone. How would we measure eccentricity or insanity? Certainly the behaviors and intelligences of any one culture, historical time frame, or social milieu can only be defined along a continuum from harmfully insane or eccentric to mind-numbingly dull and normal if each is left to be defined within its own sets of relative norms and abnormalities.

What system could we devise to compare these various and potentially innumerable sets of norms? Would we say that Moses was crazy for hearing a burning bush speak in the voice of his god if we are willing, at the same time, to continue to put much weight into the commonly held idea that artists like VanGogh or Sylvia Plath were insane because they heard voices? What is our system of measurements and how do we determine a manner of implementation of a system of measure that is absent our own set of assumed norms?

It could be that it only appears that the "genius" segment of the human community has more than its share of eccentricity because we know more about them than even our own “normal” neighbors and, in addition, we are attracted to genius, love the stories of their struggles, loves, pathologies, failures and successes simply because they DO reflect our own lives, families and communities of loved ones so well. Their stories are ours.

Another reason we may like to focus on geniuses’ foibles has something to do with our own deep feelings that our lives lack the kind of meaning and import that the lives and accomplishments of geniuses have and we are, on some levels, envious. So we like to balance their accomplishments against our own by diminishing their lives against our own lives.

Oddly enough, if my own theory holds true, we would be better off seeing their lives as comparable to ours in that they have the same struggles, heartbreak and victories, on very personal levels, that any of the rest of us do. Then, perhaps, we would also be more able to recognize and catalyze our own potential for genius.

Anger Worksheet and Anger Log

Anger is normal and a healthy response. It is the way we manage anger that becomes problematic.

Healthy shows and uses of anger are misunderstood, stigmatized and often vary by culture and family. Some displays and uses of anger are useful and lead to healing and motivation, others become repetitive patterns of avoidance or aggression, passive or otherwise.

Passion and variances in affect are often interpreted wrongly as anger, just as passive-aggressive or aggressive, harmful, anger displays are sometimes excused as normal or to-be-expected in certain groups and genders or are stereotyped as a part of some activities, sports or roles.

The following is a good anger worksheet and anger log that can help you understand your own anger and how to begin to modify how you use and display it. Thanks to Pine Rest Christian Hospital and The 10th Annual Michigan Substance Abuse Convention for some of this information.

Anger Worksheet

1. What things, persons or events, over which you have no control, do you keep trying to control?


2. What do you do to try and control this person/situation?


3. What is the consequence of your struggle to control the uncontrollable?


4. The one situation that frequently resulted in my becoming angry was:


5. List at least 3 factors or conditions that seem to influence your anger.


6. List 5 anger cues or signals. These are the warning signs that tell you, or others, that you are beginning to “lose it”.


7. What are the Physical Signs?
   Clenched jaw, fists
   Raising your voice
   Sweating
   Feeling hot
   Rapid heartbeat
   Rapid breathing
   Pacing
   Becoming quiet, withdrawing
   Cravings


8. What Else?
   


9. Remember: Anger causes 178 chemical changes in the brain.
   Adrenaline numbs the frontal lobe of the brain-the seat of our thinking capacities

***


Anger Log

Use to track individual anger display episodes.

• What Happened?
• Why did you get angry?
• Rate anger on scale from 1 – 10
• What body signals did you notice?
• What thoughts did you have?
• What were you feeling?
• What were your actions?
• What were your choices?
• What, if anything, would you do different next time?
  

The Effectiveness of Phone Sessions: Testimonial From Client

Not being able to meet with Bob in person, left us skeptical as to whether coaching would work for us. After our first phone session and a few awkward minutes, Bob was able to take control and put all our fears to rest. Bob has a unique ability to really listen. You don’t have to be sitting across from him to know that you have his complete attention. Equally important to us was his fairness and sincerity and respect. With Bob’s help, he dissolved a stressful and tense situation and shifted our focus back to each other. Bob never chose sides, he only led us to rediscover the things within ourselves to improve upon. We were so lucky to find such a compassionate and experienced professional. Anyone who has the pleasure of working with Bob will take his lessons and apply them throughout their lives. We thank you Bob for all that you have done for us.

Larry & Penny Everett

35 Inspirational Quotes

“All the old bindings are broken. Cosmological centers now are any- and everywhere. The earth is a heavenly body, most beautiful of all, and all poetry now is archaic that fails to match the wonder of this view.”

Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By



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“…it would be plain that this is what everybody wants, and everybody would regard it as the precise expression of the desire which he had long felt but had been unable to formulate, that he should melt into his beloved, and henceforth they would be one instead of two. The reason is that this was our primitive condition when we were wholes, and love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.”

Plato, The Symposium


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“The smell of coffee had been like a spider web in the house. It had not been an easy smell. It had not lent itself to religious contemplation…”

Richard Brautigan, “Trout Fishing in America”

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“But the reason Jefferson, throughout his long life, was carried away by such impracticabilities was that he knew, however dimly, that the Revolution, while it had given freedom to the people, had failed to provide a space where this freedom could be exercised. Only the representatives of the people, not the people themselves, had an opportunity to engage in those activities of “expressing, discussing and deciding” which in a positive sense are the activities of freedom.”

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution


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“What of the future of rare native wildflowers?... …Birds are mobile; they can return easily to their niche. And some seeds have parachutes or are carried by birds. But what about the others? Can seeds remain viable in the soil for half a century or more, until succession renders their habitat suitable again? We know little about this.”

Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny, A Field Guide to Wildflowers


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“But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of a wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers.”

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse


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“Rather than speak of my certainties – I have so few and they are of so personal a nature – I prefer to tell you of my efforts to acquire them. I write to understand as much as to be understood. Reflected in all my characters and their mirror games, it is always the Jew in me trying to find himself.”

Elie Wiesel, One Generation After


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“Time, within him, had become as small as a heartbeat, as large as death. He was no longer hungry or thirsty; he no longer desired children and a wife. His whole soul squeezed into his eyes. He saw – that was all: he saw.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ


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“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”

e.e. cummings, Love and Its Mysteries


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“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave”

Milan Kundera, The Incredible Lightness of Being



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“Our mothers, unlike their white counterparts, had to try and make a home in the midst of a racist world that had already sealed our fate, an unequal world waiting to tell us we were inferior, not smart enough, unworthy of love. Against this backdrop where blackness was not loved, our mothers had the task of making a home.”

Bell Hooks, Salvation


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“All creatures are involved in the life of all others, consequently every species… all nature is in a perpetual state of flux. Every animal is more or less a human being, every mineral more or less a plant, every plant more or less an animal… There is nothing clearly defined in nature. “

Denis Diderot, D’Alembert’s Nephew


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“Probabilistically speaking, it is mind-bogglingly more likely that everything we now see in the universe arose from a rare but every-so-often expectable statistical aberration away from total disorder, rather than having slowly evolved from the even more unlikely, the incredibly more ordered, the astoundingly low-entropy starting point required by the big bang.

Yet, when we went with the odds and imagined that everything popped into existence by a statistical fluke, we found ourselves in a quagmire: that route called into question the laws of physics themselves. And so we are inclined to buck the bookies and go with a low-entropy big bang as the explanation of the arrow of time. The puzzle then is to explain how the universe began in such an unlikely, highly ordered configuration. That is the question to which the arrow of time points.”

Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos


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“Needless to say, not one dime has been spent conducting research or medical follow up on any of the 458,290 Americans that the Department of Energy lists as having been present at one or more of the atmospheric bomb tests.”

Michel Uhl and Tod Ensign, GI Guinea Pigs


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“Today I mourn him, as I can,
By leaving in their golden leaves
Some luscious apples overhead.
Now may my abstinence restore
Peace to the orchard and the dead.
We shall not nag them anymore.”

James Wright, An Offering for Mr. Bluehart


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“From having all these and other feelings I noted that the interior prayer bears fruit in three ways: in the Spirit, in the feelings, and in revelations.”

The Way of a Pilgrim (translated by RM French)


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“We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.”

Emma Goldman, Patriotism


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“Those that desire the life of this world with all its frippery shall be rewarded for their deeds in their own lifetime and nothing shall be denied them. These are the men who in the world to come shall be rewarded with hell-fire. Fruitless are their deeds, and vain are their works.””

The Koran


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“I think it is imperative that feminists dismantle the institutions that foster the exploitation and abuse of women. The family, conventional sexuality, and gender are at the tops of my hit list. These institutions control the emotional, intimate lives of every one of us, and they have done incalculable damage to women.”

Pat Califia, Feminism and Sadomasochism


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“Ah, demoniac madness! He rages most of all at the thought that eternity might get it into its head to take his misery away from him”

Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death


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“This is like rejecting the notion that a Heaven lies someplace beyond the end of the path of life. Heaven, so to speak, lies waiting for us through life, ready to step into for a time and to enjoy before we have to come back to our ordinary life of striving. And once we have been in It, we can remember it forever, and feed ourselves on this memory and be sustained in time of stress.”

Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being



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“Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than a flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon. The first lesson for the artist is, therefore, to learn how to overcome such barbarism and animality, to follow nature, to be one with nature.”

Basho, The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel


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“The otter is agile, fluid in its movements as the water that is its favorite element. Yet on land it is not as light on its feet as the weasel or marten and seems almost to plow through the snow. This is revealed by its tracks, which sometimes appear in a snowy trough. Characteristic too, is the long mark in the snow where the otter has slid. Coasting is enjoyed occasionally by the mink, but the sport is developed to the extreme by the otter.”

Olaus J. Murie, A Field Guide to Animal Tracks


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“A genuine old-fashioned barbecue is as fascinating and as gay as a strawberry festival. The big ones seem to be getting more and more scarce, just as the strawberry social with Japanese lanterns and pink crepe paper seems to be giving way to more exciting refreshments and boogie woogie.”

James Beard, Cook it Outdoors



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“There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing.”

Arundhati Roy, War Talk


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“Many, again, having observed in others or experienced in themselves elevated feelings which they imagine incapable of emanating from any other source than religion, have an honest aversion to anything tending, as they think, to dry up the fountain of such feelings. They, therefore, either dislike and disparage all philosophy or addict themselves with intolerant zeal to those forms of it in which intuition usurps the place of evidence and internal feeling is made the test of objective truth”

John Stuart Mill, The Nature and Utility of Religion



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“Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph, being lack’d, to hope.”

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 52



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“Look, I admit I find this man’s supposed bisexuality confusing and I don’t quite believe it. But what are my options? A two-minute roll in the hay with you, where you make no distinction between sexual intercourse and push-ups; and then a happy evening of admiring your underarm hair and your belt buckles?”

Christopher Durang; Prudence, from the play “Beyond Therapy”



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“Dogmatism reveals itself not only by its inability to conceive the inward or implicit illimitability of the symbol, the universality that resolves all outward oppositions, but also by its inability to recognize, when faced with two apparently contradictory truths, the inward connection they implicitly affirm, a connection that makes them complimentary aspects of the same truth.”

Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions




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“A Jewish Merchant, on a ship off the coast, observed the Crusader siege of Acre and described it to his mother in a letter: ‘I arrived in Palestine before Acre was conquered and therefore witnessed the vicissitudes of the siege. We constantly faced the danger of death, for we were near [the Crusaders] day and night, hearing their talk as they heard ours, and our bread was colored with blood’”

from Joel Kraemer’s “Maimonides; The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Great Minds”



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“It grieved Whitman – as it did Lawrence – that there was no open, legitimate way to express love for a man, but it makes no difference to our understanding of him to know whether or not he went to bed with men. The secret shameful things that he feared in himself were incorporated in his store of sensual delights. Outwardly they seemed unexpressed. The blossom of his body’s shamefulness was a terrible beauty to him, part of his revolutionary inner life. “

Philip Callow, From Noon to Starry Night; a Life of Walt Whitman


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“Through the thin red silk my cool flesh glistens
lustrous as snow fresh with fragrance.
With a smile I say to my beloved:
‘Tonight, inside the mesh curtains, the pillow and mat are cool.’”

Li Ch’ing-chao, Tune: Song of Picking Mulberry (Translated by Eugene Eoyang)


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“The world was divided into two parties which were trying to destroy each other because they both wanted the same thing, the liberation of the oppressed, the abolition of violence, and the establishment of lasting peace. On both sides there was strong sentiment against any peace that might not last forever – if eternal peace was not to be had, both parties were committed to eternal war, and the insouciance with which the military balloons rained their blessings from prodigious heights on just and unjust alike reflected the inner spirit of this war to perfection. In other respects, however, it was being waged in the old way, with enormous but inadequate resources… …for in the meantime the intellectuals, visionaries, poets and dreamers had gradually lost interest in the war, and with only soldiers and technicians to count on, the military art made little progress.”

Hermann Hesse, If the War Goes On Another Two Years



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“I have been thinking of the difference
between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water’s still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?”

Kabir, Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir; Versions by Robert Bly


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“I like my life and I am satisfied with it. I am not in need of any additional gilding of it. Life without privacy and without obscurity, life reflected in the splendor of a plate glass show case is inconceivable to me.”

Boris Pasternak; I Remember

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