Tuesday, June 28, 2016

How Should Anything Be Amiss?


Life is an open book — read it and weep for joy.

"In spiritual life, so long as you have grasped it properly,
nothing can go wrong."  — Rudolf Steiner



See I am God.


See I am in all things.


See I do all things.


See I never lift my hands off my own works, nor ever shall, without end.


See I lead every thing to the end I ordained for it from without beginning with the same might, wisdom, and love that I made it.


How should anything be amiss?






Source: Julian of Norwich, Revelation of Love, "The Third Showing"

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." —Julian of Norwich 


“I see the path of progress for modern man in his occupation with his own self, with his inner being, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner.”  —T. S. Eliot





"We must first lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again out of ourselves."  — Rudolf Steiner


The conclusion to "Little Gidding" from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot:
. . . .
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

                        IV.

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one dischage from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.


                         V.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.




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