It occurs to me…

Photo taken on a beach walk a few months back. You never know what you’ll come across on the beach.

Photo of a flowering weed picked by the roadside on a recent walk. Text from John Berryman’s Address to the Lord.

From Howard Thurman:

“It has been aptly said that the time and place of a man’s life is the time and place of his body, but the meaning and significance of a man’s life is as creative, as vast, and as far-reaching as his gifts, his dreams, and his response to his times can make them.”

Which strikes me as a riff from the Jackie Robinson quote, one of my favorites: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”   Or maybe Robinson was riffing on Thurman.  In any case, let’s not lose the point (or at least one of the points) of each.  We each hold the ability to make a difference in some form or fashion.

Another accidental photo. Text derived in thinking about this by Howard Thurman:

“Often, the degree to which we oppose a thing marks the degree to which we do not understand it.  Sometimes we use our opposition to an idea to cover up our own ignorance.  We express our dislike for things, sometimes people, when we do not understand the things we pretend to dislike; when we do not know the people for who we have antagonism.”  Howard Thurman

Photo taken from the I35 walkway over Lady Bird Lake (formerly known as Town Lake).

Today I am struck by the seeming contradiction of wisdom.  Compare Darrell Royal’s “Dance with them who brung you” (that is, stick with what works) to Anthony DeMello’s “The donkey that brings you to the door is not the means by which you enter the house” (that is, what got you here won’t necessarily get you there).*  But there is always a way to reconcile if one looks hard enough.  Perhaps you dance at the door with the donkey who brung you, then leave it behind, walk in, and dance with whoever is inside.  There’s a life lesson buried in there somewhere, but it will be difficult to fit on a bumper sticker.

*To my knowledge, though contemporaries, DeMello and Royal never met

Photo accidentally taken. Text derived from a Howard Thurman quote: “Often, the degree to which we oppose a thing marks the degree to which we do not understand it. Sometimes we use our opposition to an idea to cover up our own ignorance. We express our dislike for things, sometimes for people, when we do not understand the things we pretend to dislike; when we do not know the people for whom we have the antagonism.”

“Often, the degree to which we oppose a thing marks the degree to which we do not understand it.  Sometimes we use our opposition to an idea to cover up our own ignorance.  We express our dislike for things, sometimes people, when we do not understand the things we pretend to dislike; when we do not know the people for who we have antagonism.”  Howard Thurman

Not a new thought, but a revival of a basic truth.  There can be, is, of course, honest, learned opposition.  But I think much opposition, perhaps most, is “lazy opposition.”  That is, I oppose someone, something, because I don’t understand them/it.  Often, the fact that I have not made any effort to do so conveniently slips my mind.

Photo taken in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa last year. Ad recently run across.

From Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart:

“We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil.  Over and over we must know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body, the reduction to rubble of cities; the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within….  To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind – this is always the ultimate answer to the great deception.”

I love this from Howard Thurman – we take on the “evilness of evil” not with our grand gestures or efforts, but by being aware of the beauty around us, by being kind, and by realizing that the spirit of God is at work in our hearts and minds.  This in turn sends me to this quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”