What I Learned Today on the Bumpy Road of Love
Dear Friends,
It's been a good morning to travel the bumpy road of love. The universe has nothing better to do than to teach us lessons.
Today I learned from The Nation that 5,000 US troops severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have been given personality disorder discharges to disqualify them for benefits. Estimated savings: $5 billion--a tad more than we spend weekly in our wasteful war efforts.
Friends, I once knew a Zen master who told me that he had never allowed himself to suffer even a moment's depression in his whole life. And he was indeed one of the most sweet, joyful men I have ever known, enduring extreme poverty in Brooklyn after Temple U fired him. Through him, and until Bawa, I learned--or surmised--the heart is not meant to break. So what goes wrong? Author Jim Harrison writes that there is a point at which the heart stands dangerously overexposed and suffering from acute memory loss of how or where to take cover. At such times, the last refuge is tears and prayer. Grief--and sometimes even despair--becomes a bark on the trembling branch of conscience. The prophets who beat their breasts in Jerusalem may have been sustained by faith, and never for a moment doubted God, but the agony of our human breach that they witnessed and endured is one I doubt I could withstand--no matter how brief its duration.
More fresh tales from our lapsed land and time: When the AIDS virus first reach plague status in the US, William F. Buckley seriously proposed that all men with the disease be forced to wear tattoos on their buttocks identifying them as medical untouchables. Buckley also told, I believe, Ladies Home Journal that he didn't mind a nuclear war with Russia because he was a Catholic and assured of eternal life for having been willing to die for his faith.
Last new fact: the infamous Nazi art exhibition, "Degenerate Art," was the most successful in German history, attracting 8 million people on its 4-year tour of Germany and the 'provinces.' Hitler posed in front of a Max Ernst painting which was later burned. Ernst was a Jew. And to quote Heinrich Heine: "Once you burn art, human flesh is next."
To pray without ceasing means to cling to the impossible dream that men will be carriers of wisdom more preponderantly than woe. This is not such a time. But we must pray for it to become one. To live as any less than God/godz is inhuman.
Love,
David
It's been a good morning to travel the bumpy road of love. The universe has nothing better to do than to teach us lessons.
Today I learned from The Nation that 5,000 US troops severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have been given personality disorder discharges to disqualify them for benefits. Estimated savings: $5 billion--a tad more than we spend weekly in our wasteful war efforts.
Friends, I once knew a Zen master who told me that he had never allowed himself to suffer even a moment's depression in his whole life. And he was indeed one of the most sweet, joyful men I have ever known, enduring extreme poverty in Brooklyn after Temple U fired him. Through him, and until Bawa, I learned--or surmised--the heart is not meant to break. So what goes wrong? Author Jim Harrison writes that there is a point at which the heart stands dangerously overexposed and suffering from acute memory loss of how or where to take cover. At such times, the last refuge is tears and prayer. Grief--and sometimes even despair--becomes a bark on the trembling branch of conscience. The prophets who beat their breasts in Jerusalem may have been sustained by faith, and never for a moment doubted God, but the agony of our human breach that they witnessed and endured is one I doubt I could withstand--no matter how brief its duration.
More fresh tales from our lapsed land and time: When the AIDS virus first reach plague status in the US, William F. Buckley seriously proposed that all men with the disease be forced to wear tattoos on their buttocks identifying them as medical untouchables. Buckley also told, I believe, Ladies Home Journal that he didn't mind a nuclear war with Russia because he was a Catholic and assured of eternal life for having been willing to die for his faith.
Last new fact: the infamous Nazi art exhibition, "Degenerate Art," was the most successful in German history, attracting 8 million people on its 4-year tour of Germany and the 'provinces.' Hitler posed in front of a Max Ernst painting which was later burned. Ernst was a Jew. And to quote Heinrich Heine: "Once you burn art, human flesh is next."
To pray without ceasing means to cling to the impossible dream that men will be carriers of wisdom more preponderantly than woe. This is not such a time. But we must pray for it to become one. To live as any less than God/godz is inhuman.
Love,
David
posted by David Federman @ 6:58 AM
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