Mirror, mirror

'There is no royal road from anatta to agape.'

---S. Blackburn.

Then what kind of road is there?

'We find ourselves in our world.'

To find yourself, be found, in the time and space in which you exist. There is no 'I' without the other..the 'I' itself is a mirror...There is no 'I' in itself (except a small one). The small 'i' of islam is a way, shared by others. The large 'I' is crystallization, an oasis, a place of determination and settled natures. The small way carries with it the sense of loss, of being lost, signals second chances. The rose is a brief flame and would not be a rose otherwise. What you hold on to is the memory of red, and he pointed to her. "And you, black crow?" And she pointed to him.

One does not talk of roads in the desert...

Clarification is not negation. Distillation is not "purity".

|||

'Man has a responsibility to find himself where he is, in his own proper time and place, in the history to which he belongs.' 

---Thomas Merton.

||

“A leftwing vision of the world requires you to imagine a future utopia, but one doesn’t have the right to forget that the most important thing for every human being is the life they lead now,”

“All we are doing is recognising something as old as humanity,” Mujica said. “The best thing is that people can live as they want to live.”

“I don’t think it inevitable that the world should live in capitalism. That is the same as not believing in man, and man is an animal with many defects but also with startling capabilities.”

|

The small world you inhabit is not really a world to most people (the world of big money, politics, false mirrors, staged (guest) appearances..) but it is the world to me. We find ourselves in our world. Of course, the kind of continuity now available is likely to be supplied by memory and a few dearly cherished individuals rather than anything material. Work , for example, is you imagine very rarely anything like Wendell Berry's description here