Something occurred to me this morning that has been written of for ages - that is, it occurred to me more as an idea, unfortunately, than an actuality. And that is, that the greatest reality we can strive for is to become the sounding board - really, the bell - of God. That is, to be filled with its presence to such a degree that we resound with it. In this we find ecstasy and absolute purpose in our material form. It is, from a Madison Avenue phrase, win-win. To become a bell, we have to be empty, but not nothing; our substance, the shell of our being, must be of solid and sound metal. I suppose if it is not, it might crack like the Liberty Bell, but much more likely would be that the Divine Urge wouldn't chose a broken bell. By this I do not mean the physical shell of our existence but he strength of our determination and integrity. Still, God might chose us anyway, broken and all. The Liberty Bell cracked, but liberty reigned. We celebrate it now.
On liberty and the spiritual - they are not as separate as one might think; I am reading Simon Weil now, and to her, freedom is absolutely essential for the soul, or for any real love. But I leave her and her ideas for another day. What is clear of both liberty and the spiritual is that both are tirelessly co-opted. I have spoken of this before, and was reminded of it in an advertisement, where a woman says that she is "freaked out" by her husband's obsession with a certain brand of car. "Freaked out" is a phrase invented by the LSD crowd to describe an anxious portion of an intense psychedelic trip. It usually means that you have discovered that normal reality is a sham, and that the infinite is clamoring to strip you of everything that you thought of as yourself. That is a freak-out, not a husband's desire for a car or any other usual commodity. The term has been debased into meaninglessness.
So, to a degree, has freedom. Many have talked of this, so I will only brush on it lightly by saying that freedom, as originally proposed, was a sacred thing - although it didn't have to be. It was sacred, because if could refer to one's calling, whatever that might be. In freedom, one is allowed to follow that calling, limited only by the minimal standards of society. Freedom assumes that a great portion of those in society are worthy of it - that is, they will use it for their calling - and, because of that, it is worth the abuse of this freedom by those not so noble, for to have one, we will have the other. By this, they used to say that "freedom is not license " - that is, that it has its limits not only in basic laws, but also in worthiness. We have decided that society cannot decide what is worthy. That might be for the better, but we should also understand that freedom is meant, at bottom, to ennoble, not to debase. Let freedom ring! FK
On liberty and the spiritual - they are not as separate as one might think; I am reading Simon Weil now, and to her, freedom is absolutely essential for the soul, or for any real love. But I leave her and her ideas for another day. What is clear of both liberty and the spiritual is that both are tirelessly co-opted. I have spoken of this before, and was reminded of it in an advertisement, where a woman says that she is "freaked out" by her husband's obsession with a certain brand of car. "Freaked out" is a phrase invented by the LSD crowd to describe an anxious portion of an intense psychedelic trip. It usually means that you have discovered that normal reality is a sham, and that the infinite is clamoring to strip you of everything that you thought of as yourself. That is a freak-out, not a husband's desire for a car or any other usual commodity. The term has been debased into meaninglessness.
So, to a degree, has freedom. Many have talked of this, so I will only brush on it lightly by saying that freedom, as originally proposed, was a sacred thing - although it didn't have to be. It was sacred, because if could refer to one's calling, whatever that might be. In freedom, one is allowed to follow that calling, limited only by the minimal standards of society. Freedom assumes that a great portion of those in society are worthy of it - that is, they will use it for their calling - and, because of that, it is worth the abuse of this freedom by those not so noble, for to have one, we will have the other. By this, they used to say that "freedom is not license " - that is, that it has its limits not only in basic laws, but also in worthiness. We have decided that society cannot decide what is worthy. That might be for the better, but we should also understand that freedom is meant, at bottom, to ennoble, not to debase. Let freedom ring! FK
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