Sunday, January 07, 2018
Wisdom from Khall Gibran
Wisdom from Khalil Gibran
Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.
~
Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.
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Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.
~
Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
~Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) (Lebanese American poet, thinker)
In earlier years, many "intellectuals" and academics scoffed at Khalil Gibran because they felt he was too sentimental or schmaltzy. Today we can perceive the wisdom of his words.
I particularly like what he says about "many a doctrine" as ''like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth." When we are given a "lens" through which to view the world we see much that is accurate, but at the same time we no longer are able to see the other and perhaps higher truths that are not revealed thereby. If we have a classification of all that we witness, we do not perceive that which lies outside that classification. Some of us fall for the spiral (useful in its way) but do not see the field that surrounds it.
"Reality is always
soft clay,
ever shifting and changing
its shape.
Fire it into form, and
at the very moment
you are hailing it as
final truth
it will break in your hands."
(from "Marrow of Flame" by Dorothy)
(picture from internet)
