Monday, October 24, 2005
A Series of Fourth Day Events
The date with the Persian was very nice. Have I told you this already? I think I did. I'm meeting him again on Friday. He's very nice looking and friendly and smart and sexy.
Did I also tell you that the Vancouver Boy (Massage Boy/Grant) suggested that we read together. I am fantastic. I don't need to get treated with this much indifference. You know what's going to happen? I'm going to find out in a couple of days that Ben's parents or his sister or something died in some hideous way, and all my emotional processing of the fact that he has not been in contact with me for FOUR days will all be about how selfish I am. Don't I wish? Wow. That's horrible. And this is my blog so poo on you.
And I forgot to record these Barbara quotations from Friday:
(This first one is for a specific reader, because for me, the quotations are more about the learning process, and less about outrageous utterances [although the two often collide], but in this case, I'm making a requested exception): "If you don't understand theatrical language, I can't help you with that. You should take a course."
"The process of creation is chaotic - sometimes you cry, sometimes you scream, sometimes you laugh, but I don't understand why there's so much fear."
"It has to be moment to moment. If you just try to push through to an end point, you might as well be working at Safeway."
And these are from the Thomas Merton book:
"Disinterested love is also called the "love of friendship," that is to say a love which rests in the good of the beoved, not in one's own interest or satisfaction, not in one's own pleasure. A love which does not exploit, manipulate, even by "serving," but which simply "loves." A love which, in the words of St. Bernard, simply "loves because it loves" and for no other reason or purpose, and is therefore perfectly free. This is a spiritual idea which also had secular counterparts in the courtly love of the Provencal poets...."
"Often when I reread things I have written I find them so bad that I am irritated with myself: of course this is only vanity. But once I realize that they have meant something to someone they acquire something of the other person's value and meaning. What you read and liked of mine I shall like better now because you have all enjoyed them: I will like them because of all of you. I will like them because the are more yours than mine."
"It is not easy to try to say what I know I cannot say. I do really have the feeling that you have all understood and shared quite perfectly. That you have seen something that I see to be most precious - and most available too. The reality that is present to us and in us: call it Being, call it Atman, call it Pneuma...or Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the nautral capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than breathing), we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations."
"You are right about the Sufis and about the need for Christian equivalents of the Sufis. This kind of need is not something that man thinks up and then takes care of. It is a question of God's honor and glory so to speak: they are chosen and plunged into the crucible like iron into the fire. I do not know if I have been so chosen but I am familiar enough with the crucible, and I live under the sign of contradiction. Would that I might so live gently, non-violently, firmly, in all humility and meekness, but not betraying the truth."
"I think it was from Ananda that I first heard the quote of Tauler (or maybe Eckhart) who said in a seromn that even if the church were empty, he would preach the sermon to the four walls because he had to. That is the true apostolic spirit, based not on the desire to make others conform, but in the desire to proclaim and announce the good tidings of God's infinite love. In this context the preacher is not a "converter" but merely a herald, a voice (kerux), and the Spirit of the Lord is left free to act as He pleases."
"Intercede for me, a stuffed shirt in a place of stuffed shirts and a big dumb phony, who have tried to be respectable and have succeeded. What a deception!"
Did I also tell you that the Vancouver Boy (Massage Boy/Grant) suggested that we read together. I am fantastic. I don't need to get treated with this much indifference. You know what's going to happen? I'm going to find out in a couple of days that Ben's parents or his sister or something died in some hideous way, and all my emotional processing of the fact that he has not been in contact with me for FOUR days will all be about how selfish I am. Don't I wish? Wow. That's horrible. And this is my blog so poo on you.
And I forgot to record these Barbara quotations from Friday:
(This first one is for a specific reader, because for me, the quotations are more about the learning process, and less about outrageous utterances [although the two often collide], but in this case, I'm making a requested exception): "If you don't understand theatrical language, I can't help you with that. You should take a course."
"The process of creation is chaotic - sometimes you cry, sometimes you scream, sometimes you laugh, but I don't understand why there's so much fear."
"It has to be moment to moment. If you just try to push through to an end point, you might as well be working at Safeway."
And these are from the Thomas Merton book:
"Disinterested love is also called the "love of friendship," that is to say a love which rests in the good of the beoved, not in one's own interest or satisfaction, not in one's own pleasure. A love which does not exploit, manipulate, even by "serving," but which simply "loves." A love which, in the words of St. Bernard, simply "loves because it loves" and for no other reason or purpose, and is therefore perfectly free. This is a spiritual idea which also had secular counterparts in the courtly love of the Provencal poets...."
"Often when I reread things I have written I find them so bad that I am irritated with myself: of course this is only vanity. But once I realize that they have meant something to someone they acquire something of the other person's value and meaning. What you read and liked of mine I shall like better now because you have all enjoyed them: I will like them because of all of you. I will like them because the are more yours than mine."
"It is not easy to try to say what I know I cannot say. I do really have the feeling that you have all understood and shared quite perfectly. That you have seen something that I see to be most precious - and most available too. The reality that is present to us and in us: call it Being, call it Atman, call it Pneuma...or Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the nautral capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than breathing), we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations."
"You are right about the Sufis and about the need for Christian equivalents of the Sufis. This kind of need is not something that man thinks up and then takes care of. It is a question of God's honor and glory so to speak: they are chosen and plunged into the crucible like iron into the fire. I do not know if I have been so chosen but I am familiar enough with the crucible, and I live under the sign of contradiction. Would that I might so live gently, non-violently, firmly, in all humility and meekness, but not betraying the truth."
"I think it was from Ananda that I first heard the quote of Tauler (or maybe Eckhart) who said in a seromn that even if the church were empty, he would preach the sermon to the four walls because he had to. That is the true apostolic spirit, based not on the desire to make others conform, but in the desire to proclaim and announce the good tidings of God's infinite love. In this context the preacher is not a "converter" but merely a herald, a voice (kerux), and the Spirit of the Lord is left free to act as He pleases."
"Intercede for me, a stuffed shirt in a place of stuffed shirts and a big dumb phony, who have tried to be respectable and have succeeded. What a deception!"
// posted by MSR @ 12:59 AM 
