Prayer for the World

I watched some news videos. There were threats of violence in one place and tears and unfairness in another. Prayer to the gods for this country, my home country, and this precious world we live in, on this day in early February 2014.

Beautiful, touching piano performance of Ode to Joy.

Vestal Virgins in Richmond

This is a clipping from the Richmond Dispatch, dated April 7, 1901. It describes an upcoming performance of a play or musical about the last Vestal Virgins. 

"Delsarte" seems to refer to an eponymous acting method popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Tannhauser is an opera by Richard Wagner. La Rusticanna seems to be another opera, from 1890. The Holy City is a Christian song originating in the nineteenth century.

Unfortunately, the last Vestal Virgin really did convert to Christianity, after the Temple of Vesta was closed by Theodosius I in 391.

To Stay Purehearted

Marcus Aurelius in Book VIII, Section L, of Meditations, on staying purehearted:

"They kill me. They cut my flesh. They persecute my person with curses." What then? May not thy mind for all this continue pure, prudent, temperate, just? As a fountain of sweet and clear water, though she be cursed by some stander by, yet do her springs nevertheless still run as sweet and clear as before; yea though either dirt or dung be thrown in, yet is it no sooner thrown, than dispersed; and she cleared. She cannot be dyed or infected by it. What then must I do, that I may have within my self an overflowing fountain, and not a well? Beget thyself by continual pains and endeavours to true liberty with charity, and true simplicity and modesty. 

Pine Forest

I hiked through this pine forest two or three weeks ago, on a mountain a short train ride and bus ride from here. It reminds me of the pine forest my great-grandfather planted in my home country and the feelings of possibility and love I would have when walking through it as a child. 

Prayer for Michael

Prayer to the gods for the life and health of Michael.

Nobody stood up for Michael, but he seemed to be doing okay. "Michael is deeply religious, and he turned to his faith. He asked to start taking confirmation classes, and he carried a little Bible with him everywhere. He told us that he would sit at a table at lunchtime and recite Bible verses to himself, and it brought him great joy," Suttle said.

In addition to his religion and his love of My Little Pony, Michael has other keen interests. After watching violinist Lindsey Stirling perform, he was so enraptured that he decided to take up violin lessons. He avidly follows Stirling's music career and is now dedicated to practicing on his own violin. He also loves the music of Pentatonix, an a cappella group that has captured his heart. Outwardly, he appeared to be coping okay with the taunting and talked about it with his family. 

Seneca on Benefits, the Nature of the Gods, and Imitating the Gods

The last paragraphs of On Benefits, by Seneca the Younger (4 B.C. to 65 A.D.):

I ought to imitate the gods, those noblest disposers of all events, who begin to bestow their benefits on those who know them not, and persist in bestowing them on those who are ungrateful for them. Some reproach them with neglect of us, some with injustice towards us; others place them outside of their own world, in sloth and indifference, without light, and without any functions; others declare that the sun itself, to whom we owe the division of our times of labor and of rest, by whose means we are saved from being plunged in the darkness of eternal night; who, by his circuit, orders the seasons of the year, gives strength to our bodies, brings forth our crops and ripens our fruits, is merely a mass of stone, or a fortuitous collection of fiery particles, or anything rather than a god. Yet, nevertheless, like the kindest of parents, who only smile at the spiteful words of their children, the gods do not cease to heap benefits upon those who doubt from what source their benefits are derived, but continue impartially distributing their bounty among all the peoples and nations of the earth. Possessing only the power of doing good, they moisten the land with seasonable showers, they put the seas in movement by the winds, they mark time by the course of the constellations, they temper the extremes of heat and cold, of summer and winter, by breathing a milder air upon us; and they graciously and serenely bear with the faults of our erring spirits. Let us follow their example; let us give, even if much be given to no purpose, let us, in spite of this, give to others; nay, even to those upon whom our bounty has been wasted. No one is prevented by the fall of a house from building another; when one home has been destroyed by fire, we lay the foundations of another before the site has had time to cool; we rebuild ruined cities more than once upon the same spots, so untiring are our hopes of success. men would undertake no works either on land or sea if they were not willing to try again what they have failed once.

Suppose a man is ungrateful, he does not injure me, but himself; I had the enjoyment of my benefit when I bestowed it upon him. Because he is ungrateful, I shall not be slower to give but more careful; what I have lost with him, I shall receive back from others. But I will bestow a second benefit upon this man himself, and will overcome him even as a good husbandman overcomes the sterility of the soil by care and culture; if I do not do so my benefit is lost to me, and he is lost to mankind. It is no proof of a great mind to give and to throw away one's bounty; the true test of a great mind is to throw away one's bounty and still to give.  

To Be Content in Any Situation

To be content in any situation. Perhaps not merely content, but even happy. It doesn't seem so unthinkable anymore. It seems possible. I used to think that "to die in the cold in the arms of a nightmare" was the cruel truth, acknowledging it the tragic yet true perspective. I made no distinction between the facts of existence and the emotions I thought they implied. To me, they were a package. If loss is inevitable, sadness inevitably accompanies it. 

I maybe am being overly optimistic here. It could be that there are circumstances so extreme, contentment, let alone happiness, is simply not possible. The best one can hope for is a muting of distress.

I have three things to say to that. 

The first is that I'll take it. A softening or cushioning of negative emotional responses in extreme circumstances is no bad thing for not being the optimum. The perfect doesn't need to kill the good. 

The second is that whatever happens in extreme circumstances need not destroy the much more accessible, life changing possibilities for contentment, peace, and happiness in less extreme circumstances. Everyone's life has constraints, even the best lives. To rise to a better position in life is often simply to trade one set of constraints for a different set. The newer set of constraints maybe more desirable than the ones left behind. But, as Viktor Frankl said, suffering is like a gas: it fills up whatever available volume there is. Thus do the new constraints eventually come to seem as grievous as the previous ones. Or, when a better set of life circumstances is achieved, a further set of even better circumstances appears on the horizon, and so on, the desired thing being ever out of reach. Therefore, contentment isn't usually derived from external things. It arises from within oneself, or it doesn't arise at all.  

The third is cautionary. These are glimmers of possibility for oneself. For me. I don't mean to set up a new standard or judgmentalism under which to convict other people for failing to live up to. I especially don't mean to hand over defenses, excuses, or justifications to abusers, bullies, or tormentors of any kind. My adoption of a hope for myself does not bring into existence a corresponding duty on other people to adopt the same hope. I have a single mission in life: To bring joy to others. 

Here is Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, Book VIII, Section XLIII:

Take me and throw me where thou wilt: I am indifferent. For there also I shall have that spirit which is within me propitious; that is well pleased and fully contented both in that constant disposition, and with those particular actions, which to its own proper constitution are suitable and agreeable. 

Amazing. I hope I can do it. 

(I'm not sure the picture exactly matches the topic of this post. But it's drenched with sun, so maybe it does. I took it a couple of months ago near where I live.)

"I don't believe in this world-sorrow."

In Chapter Two of A Room With a View, by E.M. Forster, Lucy Honeychurch encounters the older Mr. Emerson on her first outing in Florence after her arrival. Because of Mr. Emerson's philosophical bent, the conversation quickly turns to philosophy. Mr. Emerson delivers these wonderful lines ('George' is Mr. Emerson's son, a young man of Lucy's age):

In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said: '"From far, from eve and morning / And yon twelve-winded sky / The stuff of life to knit me / Blew hither: Here am I." George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world-sorrow.'

Mr. Emerson is quoting a poem from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. Later, when Reverend Beebe and Freddy visit Mr. Emerson and George when Mr. Emerson and George are moving into the villa on Summer Street, they see a pile of books, among which is A Shropshire Lad. Reverend Beebe says, "Never heard of it."  

Here is the whole poem:

From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: Here am I.

Now--for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What you have in your heart.

Speak now and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.

A Room With a View

This is a charming 1985 production of A Room With a View. It stars Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy Honeychurch and Daniel Day-Lewis as Lucy's fiance Cecil. The characters and scenes are drawn more simply and less subtly than in E.M. Forster's novel. The pagan elements as well as the social themes that inform the plot, such as gender and class equality, are reduced in prominence--mostly reduced from theme to background--and the plot as love triangle is given more weight. (In the final scene, the specifically pagan conclusion of the novel has been replaced by church bells.) The film is optimistic and wholesome and lovely, like the novel.

I do like the Edwardian clothing, if it's been accurately represented. 

Retreat

I went on a retreat. It was a glorious three days to say the least. I was fortunate to be able to do many things: I participated in religious ceremonies. I prayed for my sick friend. I finished a novel I was reading. I stood on a road in the middle of a forest at night and listened to the call of an owl up on a nearby ridge. I drank coffee before dawn and listened to the sounds of several owls calling from different directions in the dark. I heard woodpeckers in the trees on a hike and again through the door while half dozing in my room on a sunny morning. Sometimes two or three could be heard to be drilling at the same time. I lay on the ground at night and looked up at a sky filled with stars. I saw Cassiopeia, Orion, Ursa Major, and the Pleiades. I saw a reddish planet in the eastern sky before dawn. (Was it Mars?) I walked along a river in which water rushed around enormous boulders. I saw a frozen waterfall hung in suspended animation over a green, rock-enclosed pool of river water. I stood at the summit of a mountain and, looking past and over a huge pillar of rock, saw mountains, one after another, receding to the horizon, poking up through a sea of cloud lit up white by the morning sun. I ate three meals a day of food prepared from scratch with nothing artificial in it. I stood at the base of a 1200 year old pine tree and looked up through its upper branches at the blue sky. 

I am happy and my heart feels full.