i remember receiving a christmas gift from my coordinator from one of the schools i used to work in. it was "the purpose driven life." i was thankful, at the same time offended. i never thought anybody would think that i haven't found my purpose. well, maybe i haven't yet... but i'll get there. and i will get life's lessons through my mistakes and achievements and of course, vicarious experiences.
"the alchemist" by paolo coelho
"when your heart truly desires something, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve that thing, simply because it is a desire that originated from the soul of the world."
"…at that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still and the Soul of the World surged within him. whe he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke- the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. it was love. something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. something that exerted the same force whenever two eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. she smiled, and that was certainy an omen- the omen he had been waiting, whithout even knowing he was, for all his life. the omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert.
"it was the pure Language of the World. it required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. what the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. he was more certain of it than of anything in the world. he had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. but maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether its in the middle of the desert or in some great city. and when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. there is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. it is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning."
"the name of the rose" by umberto eco
"…the truth is that I “saw” the girl, I saw her in the
branches of the bare tree that stirred lightly when a benumbed sparrow flew to
seek refuge there; I saw her in the eyes of the heifers that come out of the
bard, and I heard her in the bleating of the sheep that crossed my erratic
path. It was as if all creation spoke to me of her, and I desired to see her
again, true, but I was also prepared to accept the idea of never seeing her
again, and of never lying again with her, provided that I could savor the joy
that filled me that morning, and have her always near even if she were to be,
and for eternity, distant. It was, now I am trying to understand, as if- just
as the universe is surely like a book written by the finger of God, in which
everything speaks to us of the immense goodness of its Creator, in which every
creature is description and mirror of life and death, in which the humblest
rose becomes a gloss of our terrestrial progress- everything, in other words,
only of the face I had hardly glimpsed in the aromatic shadows of the kitchen.
I dwelled on these fantasies because I said to myself that if the whole world
is destined to speak to me of the power, goodness, and wisdom of the Creator,
and if that morning the whole world spoke to me of the girl, who was
nevertheless a chapter in the great book of creation, a verse of the great
psalm chanted by the cosmos- I said to myself that if this occurred, it could
only be a part of the great theopantic design that sustains the universe,
arranged like a lyre, miracle of consonance and harmony. As if intoxicated, I
then enjoyed her presence in the things I saw, and, desiring her in them, with
the sight of them I was sated.
"And yet I felt a kind of sorrow, because at the same time I
suffered from an absence, though I was happy with the many ghosts of a
presence…
"…now I know that good is cause of love and that which is
good is defined by knowledge, and you can only love what you have learned is
good , whereas I had, indeed, learned that the girl was the good of the
irascible appetite, but the evil of the will. But I was in the grip of so many
and such conflicting emotions, because what I felt was like the holiest love
just as the doctors describe it: it produced in me that ecstasy in which lover
and beloved want the same thing, and for her I felt I felt jealous, but not by
the evil kind, condemned by Paul in I Corinthians, but that which Dionysius
speaks of in the “The Divine Names” whereby God is also called jealous because
of the great love He feels for all creation. I was jealous in the way in which,
for the angelic doctor, jealousy is motus in amatum, the jealousy of
friendship, which inspires us to move against all that harms the beloved."~Adso of Melk
...more when i feel like it...
No comments:
Post a Comment