Apples of Gold

[D. Allan]

True religion is ours when we are kind and caring. True religion is ours when we work together for peace and understanding. True religion is ours when we love and support one other, work out our differences and forgive one another when we fail. True religion is ours when we take time, whether in meditation or prayer or walking in the woods, to stay in contact with what really, truly, ultimately matters to us. True religion is ours when we sing and laugh together. True religion is ours when we care for this delicate and beautiful earth we inherited. True religion is ours when we are a village that teaches children to love and respect others.

- from a sermon given by James Covington on January 22nd, 2006

[D. Allan]

"In our own century Einstein declared that his most awe-inspiring experience was to see and contemplate the unknown, which taught him first hand 'that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty...' Although he never liked the traditional concept of a God in humanly recognizable form, he was profoundly impressed by what he described as 'the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.'"

-Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life, p. 610

[D. Allan]

"...during my stay in Paris the sight of an execution revealed to me the feebleness of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw how the head was severed from the body and heard the thud of each part as it fell into the box, I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart."

- Leo Tolstoy, A Confession [autobiographical]

[D. Allan]

"The father of modern philosophy, René Descartes, once remarked of 'good sense' that 'everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even the most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess.' With self-discipline it is just the opposite. Rare indeed is the person who doesn't desire more self-discipline and, with it, the control that it gives one over the course of one's life and development. That desire is itself, as Descares might say, a further mark of good sense."

-William J. Bennett, The Book of Vitues, p.21

[D. Allan]

"Whereas the man of today can easily think about and understand all the "truths" dished out to him by the State, his understanding of religion is made considerably more difficult owing to the lack of explanations.. If, despite this, he has still not discarded all his religious convictions, this is because the religious impulse rests on an instictive basis and is therefore a specifically human function... When any natural human function gets lost, i.e., is denied conscious and intentional expression a general disturbance results. Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in, a dissociation of personality.... "

- C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, p. 65

[D. Allan]

It is our twentieth-century understanding that human infants do not distinguish between their own distress and that of others. One baby's cries in the nursery are frequently picked up by the rest, and together they form a natural choral symphony of sympathetic woe. Compassion seeks to retain our hold on this very early awareness that we are all in the same boat...."

-William J. Bennett, The Book of Vitues, p. 107

[D. Allan]

"Russian seems to be the only language in which you can refer to a loved one as "my native one" - a phrase reserved in other languages for the place where you were born. But, then, love is the very place where we are born."

- Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet, translated by Anthony Kahn

[D. Allan]

"The ideas we create, the technological artifacts we produce compete with each other, and with us, for scarce material resources and for attention - which is the scarcest resource of the mind."

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving Self, p. xvii

[D. Allan]

"The world of the future will consist of the ideas and objects to which we choose to pay attention in the present. Have you thought much about the kind of world you are helping to create now?"

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving Self, p. 143

[D. Allan]

"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer: and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten."

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

[D. Allan]

"Married people constantly have to find ways of expressing their love for each other, because unexpressed love is of less use than a dead fox. The idea of love as created in our brain can give some pleasure to us individually, but to no one else. It rather harms our beloved. Who enjoys being shown the blueprit of a house without any means of building it?"

"Love that can't be expressed isn't love. It should be called by another name. It can probably be called selfish love, which people should clearly distinguish from love for another person. These two loves often can't be separated, like the color of ocean and sky at the horizon; but although it is so at the horizon, it shouldn't be so at the shoals nearest the shore."

- Seikan Hasegawa (1945- ), Essays on Marriage, p.70

[ChildOfGod4Ever]

"Married people constantly have to find ways of expressing their love for each other, because unexpressed love is of less use than a dead fox. The idea of love as created in our brain can give some pleasure to us individually, but to no one else. It rather harms our beloved. Who enjoys being shown the blueprit of a house without any means of building it?"

"Love that can't be expressed isn't love. It should be called by another name. It can probably be called selfish love, which people should clearly distinguish from love for another person. These two loves often can't be separated, like the color of ocean and sky at the horizon; but although it is so at the horizon, it shouldn't be so at the shoals nearest the shore."

- Seikan Hasegawa (1945- ), Essays on Marriage, p.70

I just found this thread, will read through the rest momentarily, but wanted to mention how this quote struck me. I think it's based on outward observation of the dynamic expectations within just about any close relationship between two people, particularly romantic couples and parents/children. Partly I think it come from watching owners and their pets. We give treats to our pets for good behavior, and (when we are emotionally healthy individuals) we give unabusive negative reinforcement to them when they display a behavior that we find irritating or hurtful. Yet often times, in our human relationships, we are too afraid of each other to express how we feel toward each other, and even more often, we don't have the knowledge of how to do that without overly or underly valuing each other.

I agree that people should express love in loving relationships! But I don't believe they have to at all times or else all the sudden they won't be lovable or loved anymore by those who love them (internally or externally). To me, that's not love, either internal or external, to have that expectation forced onto one or both people in a close relationship. At best, it has to be chosen by the lover to express the love. And that's if they were raised in or otherwise exposed to an affection-showing environment in the first place. Some just weren't. Their love is internal because they've never been shown how to express themselves emotionally/outwardly/verbally.

Yet even in that, it's tricky business. Because some do seriously abuse this principle. In some cases, they can't admit that they really don't love someone. In other cases, they know they don't love someone, but they are further abusive of the word love, because they'll say they love that person yet never bother to act like it, and basically string that person along for ages on end... Both of which I find perverted and sick. Yet even these have to be forgivable. I do believe that most of the time, it's the first reason for this: they just don't know how. Somehow, the Golden Rule hasn't clicked in their brains - or else they just don't mind not having affection thrown at them left and right, and so they assume that others shouldn't want it either.

Lately, I've been dealing with the question, "Should people have to ask for affectionate actions that show the love of others to them? Or should they not have to worry about that in the first place, because loving people will love them soooo much that of course, they'll do these great things to show their love?"

To be honest, I'm just coming to a place where I'm realizing that some people just have to be asked for loving actions to come out of them, because otherwise, they have no idea what you want from them in the first place. Getting mad at them just because they didn't give you what you wanted (or said no when you asked) has never helped anyone, it only puts others on the spot, and it hurts you. Asking them for those loving actions to be done, in some cases, is the only way those people will ever learn how to be eternally affectionate.

[ChildOfGod4Ever]

"But I say to all

Of you who will listen to me:

'Love your enemies,'

'Do good to those who hate you,'

'Bless those who curse you,'

'And pray for those who treat you badly.'

As for the man who hits you

On one cheek

Offer him the other one as well!

And if a man is taking away your coat,

Do not stop him from taking your shirt as well.

Give to everyone who asks you,

And when a man has taken what belongs to you,

Don't demand it back.

Treat men exactly as you would

Like them to treat you.

If you love only those who love you,

What credit is that to you?

Even sinners love those who love them!

And if you do good only to those who do good to you,

What credit is that to you?

Even sinners do that.

And if you lend only to those from whom

You hope to get your money back,

What credit is that to you?

Even sinners lend to sinners

And expect to get their money back.

NO, you are to love your [size:14pt] enemies

And do good and lend without hope of return.

Your reward will be wonderful

And you will be sons of the most high.

For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked!"

- Luke 6: 27-35, The New Testament in Modern English, J. B. Phillips

Hmm... To summarize: "Let others act like jerks, you can choose to act like Love, like God, because you are His Children." I like that :)

[D. Allan]

Quote:

At best, it has to be chosen by the lover to express the love. And that's if they were raised in or otherwise exposed to an affection-showing environment in the first place. Some just weren't. Their love is internal because they've never been shown how to express themselves emotionally/outwardly/verbally.

This is a marvelous book I just found yesterday and started reading smack-dab in the center of it.

Loving is a skill at which over the years we become more adept.

Quote:

"Should people have to ask for affectionate actions that show the love of others to them? Or should they not have to worry about that in the first place, because loving people will love them soooo much that of course, they'll do these great things to show their love?"

My first thought about this is why not ask? But probably not 'in general' like saying "why can't you be more loving?" Maybe more specificly like, "please give me a hug, I really need a hug."

The author of these essays says a partner should train to recognize expressions of love even in forms that are humble and poor.

"Unexpressed love is not love, and blindness to love even when it is imperfectly expressed is also not love. To increase our married love we should try to express our love as concretely as we can, and at once we should try to see our love as spiritually as we can in the forms [material forms]." - ibid, p. 73

[ChildOfGod4Ever]

My first thought about this is why not ask? But probably not 'in general' like saying "why can't you be more loving?" Maybe more specificly like, "please give me a hug, I really need a hug."

[D. Allan]

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and , if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it...."

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

[D. Allan]

" Men are born soft and supple

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant,

dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail."

- Lao-tzu, translation by Stephen Mitchell

[D. Allan]

"Deep love arises from fear of death. The more we fear death, the more we love life. Thinking about the death of our marriage partner results in the increase of our love for him or her. Love not strengthened by the thought of death is shallow and changeable. We cannot fairly appreciate the value of life unless we think about the death of the person who is living."

- Seikan Hasegawa, Essays on Marriage, p.75

[D. Allan]

"By meditating n our partner's death, we probably regret most not giving enough effort to making our partner happy and to causing less suffering. Think about our partner's reasonable wish, hope, and dream that couldn't be attained. Think about our partner's reasonable pain, agony, and gloom caused directly or indirectly by living married life. How much did we satisfy our partner and how much make our partner unnecessarily cry? A large part of married love arises when we recognize how incapable we are of making our partner happy, especially how in capable we are of controlling our ego, for most of the misery we cause our partner could be avoided by controlling our ego."

- Seikan Hasegawa, Essays on Marriage, p.75-76

[D. Allan]

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprendhend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

- FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881), Russian novelist, from The Brothers Karamazov

[D. Allan]

"He prayeth well who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast;

He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us;

He made and loveth all.

"

Samuel Taylor Coeridge (1772-1834) was the British poet, critic, and philosopher who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

[D. Allan]

O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,

Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,

Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and

Death, like waters flowing,

Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,

Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,

Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,

I and my soul to range in range of thee.

- WALT WHITMAN, (1819-1892)

"Walt Whitman, was the son of a Quaker father and deeply spiritual mother. ...Whitman believed his country's destiny was to be found in a rediscovery of the religious spirit." - The Book of Uncommon Prayer, edited by Constance and Daniel Pollock, p.188

[D. Allan]

"Prayer is a force as real as terrestial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength."

-ALEXIS CARREL (1873-1944) French surgeon, biologist, and Nobel laureate

[D. Allan]

"Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be a new feeling and a new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education."

- FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) Russian novelist, from The Brothers Karamazov

[D. Allan]

"Religion is actually not a crutch; it is a cross. It is not a flight, but a response. We speak here of a religion with teeth in it, the kind that demands self-sacrifice and surrender. One leans on a crutch, but a cross rests on us. A coward can use a crutch, but it takes a hero to embrace a cross."

- FULTON SHEEN 1895-1975, American Roman Catholic bishop