Whether in flowers, music, painting, story or other expressions, the theme of beauty returns again and again. I think that it is a profound human need, yet one that is sometimes recognized as such only when it is deeply experienced.

I recall vividly my first trip to Europe. It was especially the architecture that struck me, perhaps more than anything the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, as well as the beauty of the city itself. The sculpture and painting as well really resonated. On returning to Canada, I found that I had to listen for a few weeks to classical music. It was the closest I could come to sustaining that European experience. I had a powerful sense that we have a very deep need for the experience of beauty.

On another occasion, when living in Quebec City, a group of us went to Montmorency Falls and the surrounding wooded area. Back at the university residence, we listened to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. The beauty of the music not only matched the beauty of the natural setting, but even seemed to name that experience in a way that words could not. The experience of this music is beautifully captured in the original version of the film, Fantasia, especially in the storm sequence followed by the unfolding calm beauty of the world showered with the light of the sun. At the same time, in listening to this symphony, I had a keen sense of the flowing quality of music. Its movement through time that a mirrored the tinge of sadness felt in the passing time of our own lives. It reflected also the same movement experienced in hearing a story unfold.

A writer on the philosophy of story, John Shea, has said that any sorrow can be borne provided a story can be told about it. We might add that, when an event, real or imagined, is situated in a story, it provides a framework of meaning for the event. It holds all the fragments in a unity. A non-story, such as the play, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett or the novel, The Stranger, by Albert Camus, conveys a sense of meaninglessness. Even further, when a unified story is encased in beauty, as in the Shakespearian play, Romeo and Juliet, it provides an enriching experience. Despite the tragedy, the life of the characters depicted is felt as meaningful, and so, by extension, are our own lives.

The beauty of art and music and story and nature is a reflection of the beauty of the human heart or soul. Writer Thomas Merton, speaks of the “secret beauty” of every human heart, and says that at the centre of our being is “a point of pure truth … like a pure diamond.” The story of Rapunzel tells how, isolated in a tower, the young woman sang out of her loneliness, and the beauty of her singing rang throughout the forest and reached a young man who was profoundly moved by it. The story suggests that out of the solitude that allows us to get in touch with and express our deepest self, the result is something that reflects its beauty.

Sometimes in a conversation or a shared experience, we may come to a vivid realization of that inner beauty of a person. On one occasion, a young woman was telling me of a horrendous experience of abuse inflicted on her as a teenager. At the same time, there was an overwhelming sense of the inner beauty of this person that the horror could not take away or even reach.

There is a film based on a story imagined about the painting by Johannes Vermeer called The Girl with the Pearl Earing. When the young woman is finally able to look at the finished portrait, she exclaims, “You looked inside me.” It seems that the role of art in any form is to express outwardly, however incompletely, an inner beauty that is often hidden. I recall once seeing a photograph of a 100 year old Innuit woman, whose facial wrinkles themselves had wrinkles. Yet the overall impression was one of incredible beauty, perhaps the beauty of a heart and soul that shone through.

We have often quoted the words of Eva Rockett in an older Homemakers magazine, who says that the beauty of music reaches beneath all our defenses and reaches the core of the condensed self. One effect of beauty can be to pass through the layers of the self, and have a healing effect on us, at the same time as it unveils in a non-threatening way our need of healing. In a similar vein, it is the experience of forgiveness itself that enables us to admit th need of forgiveness

One thing that has struck me about beauty, whether in persons or nature or the arts, is that, in reaching our inmost centre, it draws us out of ourselves, not to possess, but to admire and appreciate, and even to be transformed by it. To experience something or someone merely as property can lead us to grasp and possess it, to see n not in terms of itself, but only in terms of a perceived need. If we experience the beauty of another person, if we experience another person as a being of interior beauty, we can never violate that person.

The experience of beauty can also invite us, in fact challenge us, to grow in the direction of that beauty. The story of Rumpelstiltzkin, for example, calls us to spin straw into gold. That would seem to mean that the challenge of a lifetime is to take the raw material of our life, however limited and passing, like straw, and transform it into a beautiful and lasting work of art, like gold. This thought is reflected in the poem of Rilke on a statue of the Greek god, Apollo. He feels that he is seen by this statue who addresses him with the words: “You must change your life.”

I’ll conclude with an experience, again, of many years ago. Lorraine and I were visiting her uncle at his farm in northern Alberta, which bordered on the now longer used farm of her parents before they moved Windsor when she was a young child. A storm had arisen and as it passed, a rainbow appeared, and came to an end on the porch of her parents’ old house. It was the first and only time I had seen a rainbow’s end, and it was an overwhelmingly beautiful sight that remains always in my imagination. It seemed to embody all that is positive in a lifetime.

May your own lives be filled with rainbows, with beauty. May you come to discover more and more to experience the beauty of music and story and the natural world and so much more, and especially the beauty of your own heart and the hearts of those around you. And may you be awakened more fully as a result to a sense of meaning, to a recognition of worth that leads to compassion and generosity for yourself and those whose lives more closely intersect with your own, yet expanding in ever widening circles.

Norman King, November 28, 2021

We concluded last week’s reflection with a story familiar to many of you, called The Gift. I’ll repeat it here and add a brief comment
In one seat a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young woman whose eyes came      back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off. Impulsively he handed the flowers        to the young woman,. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like for you to have              them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” She accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk                through the gate of a small cemetery.

The story focuses on two generations, the old man and the young woman, and the relationship between them. The key image in the story is that of flowers. Flowers are beautiful, but short-lived, and are often given as a gift expressive of love, as is the case in this story.

Flowers express the beauty of life. Over and above fruits and vegetables which are necessary to stay alive, to survive, flowers express the something more of life, its value and meaning. A world without the colour and beauty of flowers would be like a world without music or art or story. These help us not only to stay alive but to live gratefully. Beyond being alive they help us to come alive and to be more fully alive. We need not simply to be alive but to come alive and to be fully alive.

Flowers also express the brevity of life, despite its beauty, since they bloom and fade, but are renewed again in the spring. They reflect the cycle of the seasons of life, the winters and springs of our life as well, as we have mentioned in the story of Demeter and Persephone. This theme is also reflected in the lyrics of the song, The Rose. “When the night has been too lonely/ And the road has been too long/ And you think that love is only/ For the lucky and the strong/ Just remember in the winter/ Far beneath the bitter snows/ Lies the seed that with the sun’s love/In the spring becomes the rose.”

Flowers also express love. They are intended as a gift from the heart to the heart. The old man gives to the young woman the flowers that he had originally intended to give to his wife, and expresses that this would be her wish as well. The “heart” of the story is precisely the transfer, so to speak, of the love of the man for his wife to the young woman, the next generation. The love of the man for his wife is not frozen or stuck by her death. Rather, he has allowed that love to continue to “bloom” by passing it on to another generation. The love he has shared with his wife, and her wish as well, is not to stop with her death, but to continue to be shared.

The story reflects the conviction of Erich Fromm, that love is not merely a bond with one person, but an underlying attitude and character development of the whole person. It is a matter of the kind of person we are, and of our underlying capacity to love, which we bring into any particular situation. It implies being in touch with our own sacred worth and thereby able to see and respond to that worth in others. Of course, the degree of connection, contact, and intimacy will vary from situations of close friendship to occasional encounters with a cashier at a store. Yet the recognition and respect of their personhood would be present in every situation, granted this is a difficult and only gradually and incompletely realized challenge.

This evolving process is portrayed beautifully in the story of The Secret Garden. In this story, a young girl, Mary Lennox, is orphaned and comes to live with her uncle, Archie who had lost his wife, Lily, some years previously. In his grief, his heart is closed and locked, reflected in the sickness and seeming paralysis of his son, Colin. The whole situation is expressed in the image of the physical or outer garden which has been closed and locked since Lily’s death. Archie has locked both the outer garden, and his own inner garden, the garden of his heart. As the story unfolds, both gardens are gradually opened again, and the love of Archie for his wife awakens and flowers again in his love for his son, Colin and his niece, Mary.

The story suggests that, despite, through, and beyond unbearably difficult losses, it is important for all of us to struggle to keep open or to re-open, to cultivate, and to share with one another, the secret garden of our own hearts.

In this vein, the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi, writes: “Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”

Contemporary Buddhist meditation teacher and writer, Sharon Salzberg writes in Real Change. of what she calls equanimity. “Equanimity means being with pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, in such a way that ouyr hearts are fully open and whole, intact. … Equanimity can be described as the voice of wisdom, beoimng open to everything, able to hold everything. Its essence is complete presence.“

Like the words of Rumi and Salburg, The Secret Garden suggests, in story form, that if we pass through the sufferings, betrayals, and deaths, that are part of life, and into the secret garden of our heart, we will discover the seeds of new life that flourish in wisdom and love, and move towards a fuller and richer meaning, one that finds expression in an ever expanding outreach in justice and compassion.

May the joy and sorrow of your life heal, open, and expand the secret garden of your heart, so that you sense more deeply your own sacredness and that of all that is, however hidden; and may it flower in a wisdom and compassion that gives meaning to your own life and enriches those whose lives you touch,

Remembering my brother, Mike, who died November 19, 1972
Norman King, November 21, 2021

There is one feature that struck me in speaking of the meaning of “heart” as the inmost core or unifying centre of the person. It was not only the notion that love is what most gives meaning and fulfillment in our lives. It was the form of love expressed by Einstein, and in the stories of King Midas and Rumpelstiltzkin. This is the love of a parent for a child. This theme is found also in King Lear, where his outer blindness gives way to an inner seeing of the reality of a genuine love beyond manipulative flattery.

The story of Beauty and the Beast further illustrates how this basic love, now expressed for the child to the parent, at once remains and is drawn upon and transferred to the spouse. The myths and folktales, from Oedipus to Hansel and Gretel, as well as my experience with the Children’s Aid Society, also illustrate how frequently there is the presence of abuse rather than love. Yet they also hold out the hope that even where this has been the case, it is still possible for a person to find their way through that dark forest to their true home, and to be a home to others.

This is also a theme of Wayne Muller in his book Legacy of the Heart. He says that many adults who were hurt as children “exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight. Deep within them–just below the wound–lies a profound spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right, and true.” In this light, he adds: “Your is not to keep trying to repair what was damaged; you practice instead is to reawaken what is already wise, strong, and whole within you, to cultivate those qualities of heart and spirit that are available to you in this very moment.”

These words again evoke our constant theme that there always remains within us a sacred and valuable core that nothing or no one can take away, whether we realize it or not. If we realize that we are a gift, the gift of who we are, embedded in the gift of life itself and its meaning, we will be able to share that gift. If we think of ourselves-erroneously in this view–as a burden, an accident, or a mistake, as wrong or evil, we will only be able to transmit that negativity to others. Sometimes it is other persons or the world of nature itself that conveys and supports that sense of self-worth that enables us, in turn, to love.

This perspective offers a renewed understanding of power. When someone feels deeply loved, they come to a sense that they are lovable and that they can love. To feel unlovable readily leads to withdrawal and lashing out, to destructive consequences. In a positive sense, power is understood as bringing something to life, calling forth life in someone. A more negative sense is power over or domination, which can be viewed as the tendency or compulsion to put something to death in someone. An example of the first meaning of power is to procreate, raise or educate a child. In the second meaning power means to batter, abuse, or neglect a child.

A third and perhaps most vital sense of power is exemplified in the possibility to take the battered, abused, or neglected child, and bring that child to life, physically, emotionally, mentally, artistically, morally, and spiritually. In this sense power is the ability to bring to life even out of the many deaths in the midst of life. And that is the power and meaning of love: to give life, to enhance life, to enrich life, in all its dimensions.

In a book simply titled About Love, Josef Pieper writes that more than the qualities another person may have, the basic experience of love is that it is good that the other person is, that they exist, and that it is good to be with that person. The celebration of a birthday is the recognition that the day that this person was born is a good day, that it is good that they are alive. A funeral, itself, if authentic, involves an acknowledgment that this person’s life is worthwhile, that it is worth remembering, that it is memorable. One expression of love is to say to another: “I will never forget you.”

Perhaps the most thorough and enlightening understanding of love is presented in the classic work by humanistic psychiatrist, Erich Fromm, in his book The Art of Loving. He begins by saying that the

deepest human need is to overcome our separateness without sacrificing our uniqueness, as happens in many mistaken forms. Mature love is not a superficial emotional reaction of clinging to or dominating one particular person. It is an underlying attitude and character development of the whole person. It is a matter of the kind of person we are, and of our underlying capacity to love, which we bring into any particular relationship.

This is an activity that comes from within our deepest self and shares our inner aliveness with another. It is an active concern for the real needs and the growth and development of the person. It sees the other person as they really are and cares for their unfolding in their own ways and for their own sake and not just in response to my perceived needs.

The most basic form of love which underlies all others, he adds, is the respectful concern to further the life of any other, based on the experience of our common humanity. Concretely and practically, however, our becoming fully human and being able to love genuinely, Fromm insists, is developed through responding marginalized., disadvantaged, and oppressed members of society. “Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose,” he says, “does love begin to unfold.”

I would like to conclude this weeks reflection with a very brief story which is familiar to many of you. We can perhaps comment further on it in next week’s reflection. It is called The Gift.
In one seat a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young woman whose eyes came      back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off. Impulsively he handed the flowers        to the young woman,. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like for you to have              them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” She accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk                through the gate of a small cemetery.

This is an example of love as an underlying attitude to life, a life-giving attitude that is carried into any contact we have.

May a thread of respectful caring, both given and received, be woven into the fabric of every day of your life, and make of your life a beautiful tapestry

Norman King, November 15, 2021

One word or image that has recurred over and over again is that of heart, from little emojis to songs to book titles. The Latin word is cor which, I think, gets at its inner meaning, the core or inmost centre of ourselves or of anything. Following this same direction, theologian Karl Rahner speaks of heart as well as the centre of unity in a person from which all that is within the person flows and to which all is gathered back into that unity. It is a unity that is a fullness rather than an onliness.

We have previously quoted Eva Rockett who, in a Homemakers article, says that beautiful music is able to reach behind all our defences and touch the core of the condensed self. We have also spoken of that core self as the home place, surrounded by other layers of the self. Anything that is able to reach behind those layers and reach the centre is something that touches the heart, that, so to speak, hits home to us.

In Greek mythology, arrows which reach the heart are associated with Artemis, Apollo, and Eros or Cupid. Artemis is associated with birth and death, with the protection and hunting of nature; Apollo with sickness and healing; and Eros with love. If we try to integrate these elements, they suggest to me that these are experiences which touch us at the core. Birth and death mark the beginning and end of our lives. Once when I gave a talk to hospital staff, and an elderly nun who was also a retired nurse told me how she witnessed the death of an old man in the morning and the birth of a child in the afternoon, and how the feeling level of both experiences was uncannily similar. It strikes me that in both cases the preciousness and precariousness of life were felt at once in their inseparability.

As protector and hunter, the myth of Artemis indicates how are lives are lived out within a context of nature, a natural universe of which we are a part, and which can be at once the source of food that sustains our life and beauty that gives it meaning. Yet it can also be threatening, whether in the fury of a storm or the predatory character of some animals. Once again we experience both the preciousness and the precariousness of life. These too are reflected in the arrows of Apollo which can confer both sickness and healing. A Modern counterpart is found in the words of scientist, Carl Sagan: “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

The myth of Eros and Psyche indicate that it is love which can hold all things together. The Latin name for Eros is Cupid, whose arrows of love, are often portrayed today in a sentimental and surface way. In a more fundamental sense, the arrows that pierce to the deepest heart or core of a person are those of love. The Greek word psyche can be translated not only as mind, soul, or life, but also as butterfly, which is a perennial image of transformation. It suggests that it is love which can most thoroughly transform a person and the meaning which they experience in their lives.

In our perspective, to love is to see and respond to the sacred beauty of another person and its reflection in oneself. It is to see and respond to the sacred worth of self and other, which does neither deny nor does it stop at the wounds, insecurities, or hostilities of self or other, but sees a sacred identity that is deeper than and beyond these frailties. In the story of Psyche, as in the folk tale, Beauty and the Beast, this kind of love is not blind but seeing, and involves a difficult journey to all the hidden recesses of the self, followed by a transforming awakening to a genuine love.

Along similar lines, one translation of the Jewish Song of Solomon, the lover says to the beloved, “You have wounded my heart.” This too is an indication of a love that reaches to and from the inmost core of the person.

It is fascinating that the word creed is so often taken as an expression of a set of beliefs held by the mind. The Latin root comes from two words cor and do, meaning heart and give. Your creed in this sense is what you give your heart to. It is that to which you entrust your self and your life; what you consider worthy of the gift of your whole self, your whole life; what is the foundation of your life and its meaning.

This is the lesson of the story of Rumpelstiltzkin, which comes out in one line of the story said by the dwarf who can spin straw into gold but lacks a child to love. “Something living is more precious than all the gold in the world.” It is echoed in the words of King Oedipus: “One little word can change all pain: that word is love.”

Albert Einstein says something similar in his letter to his daughter. “There is an extremely powerful force that … includes and governs all others. ..This universal force is LOVE. … This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. … When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, …we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything, because love is the quintessence of life.” In a similar vein, Eva Cassidy sings beautifully a song whose title is I Know You by Heart.

Finally, we may conclude with a similar teaching from the story of King Midas, as it emerged in a retelling from a conversation with my six-year-old godson.

King Midas and the Foolish Wish 

King Midas was a kind but not very wise man. He had always been a friend of the satyrs. These were part human and part horse, and companions to Dionysus, the god of wine and strong feelings. One satyr was found sleeping in the king’s flower bed, but Midas did not punish him.
Dionysus was grateful and granted Midas a wish. Without thinking, King Midas wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. He thought that this gift would make him the richest person on earth.
But when he tried to eat something, the food turned to gold and he could not eat. He was afraid that he would starve to death. While he was sitting worried and hungry, his beloved daughter came and gave him a hug, and she too turned to gold.
Midas was terribly upset and begged Dionysus to undo the wish. Dionysus granted his new wish. He was able to eat and drink again and hug his daughter.
Midas was beginning to learn that life itself and the food that keeps us alive is more important than gold. He also began to realize that love is what makes life wonderful, and that no amount of gold or wealth matters as much as love. The two greatest gifts are life itself and the love that makes life so worthwhile.

May you more and more be in touch with your heart, your inmost core, recognize its sacred worth, and live more and more from that centre.

Norman King, November 7, 2021

Last week, we spoke of compassion as offering to one another not advice, answers, or a defensive wall, but a caring and safe place, a largely silent and listening presence, empty of our own clutter. The poet Rumi says: “Some human beings are safe havens. Be companions with them.”

As suggested by the Greek and Hebrew roots, compassion means feeling in our guts, our womb, and so the listening involved is a listening from that same inmost place. As the Rule of St. Benedict puts it, it is listening with the ears of the heart.

David Steindl Rast, at once a Christian and Buddhist monk, brings out that the word “obedience “ comes from the Latin that means to listen deeply. It does not mean doing what one is told, but listening, that is tuning in to the meaning of our lives in the present moment. The opposite is “absurdity” whose Latin source connotes being totally deaf, unable or unwilling to tune in to that meaning.

The challenge then is to listen from our inmost core, both to ourselves and to one another. Such listening requires silence. Silence can be at first somewhat unnerving. We may readily opt for noise to drown out, to deafen our own inner voice or the voice of another. Conversations can sometimes be less a matter of communication than a trading of surface words. They can be empty not of our clutter but of our presence. Rumi puts it concretely: “Now silence. Let soul speak inside spoken things.”

I have said before that an image I have is of our core self around which are layers of hurt and fear and hostility and superficiality. As long as we live mainly in these layers, we are away from our real home, and do not have a felt sense of our own sacredness. We will feel forever restless, and almost always on the defensive or on the attack. Perhaps a first and continuous step is to recognize that having feelings does not mean that these feelings need to be unleashed on others or used to name ourselves. As we’ve noted from writer Sharon Salzberg, it may be best to regard them as visitors who are not to be given the run of the house.

Within that framework, such feelings may not be threatening when we allow them to come to the surface of our awareness in times of silence. And we may come to sense, within and beneath that silence, our real home, our true and sacred self. As we listen to ourselves in this way, and become more at home with who we truly are, we are more and more able to speak and act from that place of home. One way of putting it is to say that our truest words come, not from our noise, but from our silence. They come not from our hurt or fear or hostility, but from our heart, from the sacred core of who we are. It was said of writer Thomas Merton, for example, that when he spoke he did not break the silence, but gave it voice.

There is a film, Through a Glass Darkly, by Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, which portrays difficult family relationships, marked by a lack of communication. Towards the end of the film, the father does actually speak from the heart to his adolescent son. With a sense of wonder and gratitude, the profoundly moved son simply says, “Papa talked to me.”

Psychologist Erich Fromm says that love involves such communication in depth, and that its real essence is not what is talked about, but where it is spoken from.
Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one         of them experiences himself or herself from the center of their existence. Only in this “central experience” is human             reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a         resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is             secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that                they are one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one             proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned;         this is the fruit by which love is recognized.

If we are able to listen to our own sacred worth, we are able to hear that worth in others as well. The practice of silence is one pathway. So too is open conversation within a situation where trust and vulnerability are possible. So too is beautiful music that, in the words of previously quoted writer, Eva Rockett, is able to reach behind our defences and touch the core of the condensed self. Stories can do so as well, such as those by Margaret Laurence, which expose the whole range of human feelings and foibles, yet also unveil the sacred self beneath them.

May you come more and more to listen with the ears of the heart and to hear your own sacredness and that of others, which gradually fills you with a sense of gratitude that flows into compassion and generosity of sprit.

Norman King, November 01, 2021

Norman King, October 18, 2021

In renewing my study of Greek mythology, I tried to discern the experience behind the stories, the basic life questions they raise, the answers found in these ancient tales, and the continuing light they shed on our current life situations. At the same time, I tried to look at them through the lens of the sacred worth of the person, the fundamental equality of human beings, and the perspective that the outer events portrayed are inseparably a projection of inner events. The long journey of Odysseus back to his home in Ithaca, for example, is essentially a story of his inner journey to his most authentic self, his inner home. He is then able to share that home with his wife, Penelope, who has made that same inner journey in solitude as well.

The story of the Athenians’ choice of Athene over Poseidon as patron of their city, for example. reflects the priority of wisdom over power. There is a recognition of the raw power of the sea, of rampant vegetation, and of the wild horse. Yet preference is given to the ships that sail the sea, the cultivated olive grove, and the tamed horse one rides. A similar choice is reflected in the resolution of conflicts by jury rather than vendetta, that is, by reasoned decision rather than violent destruction.

The story of Oedipus, echoed somewhat in Shakespeare’s King Lear, reflects a profound transition in the understanding of power, wisdom, and love. It occurs as a result of his passage from successful king to suffering exile. Initially, reflecting a view of power as domination, he is provoked to violence and kills the person who turns out to be his birth father. He next solves the riddle of the sphinx, which asks what has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening. The answer is a human being at three stages of life. This is an illustration of Oedipus’ cleverness, yet also of his failure to grasp its deeper meaning, which points to the brevity and fragility of life. Finally, he is made king and receives its queen as a reward, so to speak, an example of love as possession. When the painful truth of the situation is unveiled he loses all royal authority and goes into exile, blind and physically week, In wrestling with his tragic situation and the suffering it entails, he comes to an inner strength and wisdom, and his last words to his daughters expresses his realization of a deeper sense of love. He proclaims his great love for his daughters and tells them that such love can change all pain.

A reinterpretation of the story of Narcissus helps to shed further light on a renewed vision of power, wisdom and love. After running from closeness to another, Narcissus discovers an image of himself as lovable, as one who is capable of giving and receiving love. If we translate this story as a dawning awareness of the intrinsic worth or value of the person, we may have a starting point for a new interpretation.

In this perspective, wisdom becomes a profound experiential conviction of the worth of each human person, and, in some way of the whole universe. Power becomes empowering not domination. Based upon the recognition of the worth of the person, it becomes the capacity to bring something to life, to summon the growth and fulfillment of the person, not the unreal need to put something to death in that person. Love is transformed from the attempted possession of a person to a genuine concern for their well-being that befits their intrinsic worth.

Last week, we referred to Howard Thurman who calls us to listen for the sound of the genuine in ourselves, which Thomas Merton calls the true self, which the Quakers describe as the inner light, and which Wayne Muller calls the song deeply within ourselves. This, I believe, is the voice of our own sacred worth. Thurman goes on to invite us to listen as well for the sound of the genuine in others. Then our hope is to have others listen to the sound of the genuine in us. When this opening occurs, there is a mutual, respectful encounter, which enables and summons both or vulnerability and our security. Finally, Thurman holds that we may come to hear the same music, the same sound of the genuine flowing through all that is, through everything. The starting point, the foundation, appears to be, a gradual awakening to our own sacred worth, as did Narcissus, though sometimes with great pain, as did Oedipus. It may be aided by the caring of others, or hindered by their indifference or even hostility. It can be fostered by the world around us and the experience that the universe is friendly. It may be clung to when it is not felt or when our feelings push us toward self-rejection. All of these may be the crack that lets the light in, and gradually lets the light of our own sacredness shine beyond all barriers.

When these ancient stories are reflected upon beneath their surface words and images, they perhaps echo the challenge of the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet: “Go within yourself and probe the depth from which your life springs.” And: “Always trust your own feeling. …Then slowly and with time the natural growth of your inner life will bring you to fuller awareness.”

May each of you discover and hear and appreciate the sound, the song, of the genuine within yourselves, and within others, and may you learn to sing its melody more and more in your everyday life.

Please visit our website: www.touchingthespirit.ca
Norman King, October 10, 2021