“We do not inspire and expire fully and entirely enough, so that the wave, the comber, of each inspiration shall break upon our extremist shores, rolling till it meets the sand which bounds us, and the sound of the surf comes back to us.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Month: June 2010
Inside Upside Down and Backward Blog (4)
I want to thank Kathy’s comment on Morning Trip(12) for the inspiration and the inner push that helped me to move through what I will share. It was a comment back to her about what she said about being wise. (You can find her at Lake Superior Spirit).
The Comment that Became an Inside Upside Down and Backward Blog
Ok, that one has me shy, so…posting something on Wisdom 😉
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All right, this portion is an edit. I got up with my tea after sleeping in a bit and wrestling with things in my sleep (yes again), I came into WordPress as I do and read your comment again, thinking ok now what will I answer to it. I still squirm away from the label wise and wisdom. Perhaps if I chose to wrestle with that concept instead of the one that I am, I might be resting more!
My path through an answer this morning began as a trek through youtube. I wanted to see if a manner of expression which I found acceptable would present itself. I thought about easing my feeling of being vulnerable. I chuckled at myself as I said to myself, “Elisa, people do not often know just how vulnerable you have been by your choices in postings of subjects and the feelings that you express through a matching music choice or image.” At the same time the first video I encountered that felt right was:
The chatter in my head said: “Oh dear lord people will not listen to something Star Wars said!”
The emotional response was: “Ut oh, I have been “screwing up” and that I know how to “get me out”, but that I haven’t been attending seemingly disjointed incoming information to redirect myself.” I also cried, which I dislike and pretend to be cranky about, though it tells me, “Yay, on the right track!”
I was still feeling uncomfortably presenting Yoda for a wisdom response. I continued the search, and found this:
I’ve never seen the movie, nor have I read the book. I swore a lot at it, while other parts of my insides nodded in agreement uttering things like, “Seeeeeeeeeee!”
Next followed the Soupy Sales words of wisdom, that I posted above.
And, lastly, this:
Don’t start your soul out so loud or full out……mmm mmmmmmmm mmmm! What a breakfast!
Morning Trip (12)
“We read of spiritual efforts, and our imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them.
I am appalled to see how much of the change I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary.
The real work seems still to be done.
It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself – to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed & then to find yourself still in bed.”
– C.S. Lewis
Morning Trip (11)
“For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live compromise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can’t rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life.”
– Milan Kundera
This one is most excellenty! I am so pleased at the vast resources for information available online that provide pokes and prods, kisses and caresses for mind, body, and spirit!
Morning Trip (10)
“Backwater Pond: The Canoeists
Not for the fishermen’s sake
Do they drop their voices as they glide in from the lake,
And take to moving stealthily on that still water,
Not to disturb its stillness, hour on hour.
So that when at last a turtle, scuttling
Surprised from a stump, dives with a sudden splashing,
It startles them like a door slamming;
And then there is a faint breeze and echo of laughter
Dying as quickly, and they float still as before
Like shadows sliding over a mirror
Or clouds across some forgotten sky,
All afternoon, they cannot say why.”
–W.S. Merwin
Morning Trip (9)
Young Sycamore
I must tell you
this young tree
whose round and firm trunk
between the wet
pavement and the gutter
(where water
is trickling) rises
bodily
into the air with
one undulant
thrust half its height-
and then
dividing and waning
sending out
young branches on
all sides-
hung with cocoons
it thins
till nothing is left of it
but two
eccentric knotted
twigs
bending forward
hornlike at the top
Elisa's Spot 