unite..................

 

And all their logic would fill my head: As that I had no right to play With what was another man’s work for gain. My right might be love but theirs was need. And where the two exist in twain Theirs was the better right–agreed. But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

-Robert Frost, as he concludes my favorite poem, Two Tramps In Mud Time

this bifurcation of perception.............

 

     In the wake of the scientific revolution and certain deadening forms of modernist presumption, the trend has been to sever the bond between objectivity and subjectivity.  Consciousness in the modern West has been informed by trends the follow this severance.  Subjectivity and objectivity are commonly viewed as opposites, even at odds, rather than being component parts of an already reconciled whole.  The hard sciences have sided with objectivity against subjectivity.  The human sciences have done the opposite.  Errors of all kinds follow from this bifurcation of perception and being into two seemingly incompatible worlds of meaning, especially when one side of the dichotomy is elected over the other for arbitrary reasons.  But this is not how Chesterton experienced the world.  Arguably, this is not how anyone experiences the world, despite rationalizations to the contrary.

-Duncan Reyburn, The Roots of the World: The Remarkable Prescience of G. K. Chesterton

two eyes, one sight...................

 

People talk about their personal life and their professional life as if they are two separate entities.  But the fact of the matter is that we only have one life.  It's all connected, whether we want to admit it or not.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For

I'd like to add........................

 

...............................September 11th and the collapse of the Trade Towers, "Shock and Awe" in Iraq, and maybe the mini-series Roots to this list.

unite......................

 

But yield who will to their separation, 
My object in living is to unite 
My avocation and my vocation 
As my two eyes make one in sight. 
Only where love and need are one,  

And the work is play for mortal stakes, 
Is the deed ever really done 
For Heaven and the future's sakes. 

Robert Frost, concluding Two Tramps In Mud Time

unite................................

 

But yield who will to their separation, 

 My object in living is to unite 

 My avocation and my vocation 

 As my two eyes make one in sight. 

 Only where love and need are one, 

 And the work is play for mortal stakes, 

 Is the deed ever really done 

 For Heaven and the future's sakes.

-Robert Frost, as he concludes Two Tramps In Mud Time

Opening paragraphs.................

 

I remember very well the time I was captured by the dream of unified learning.  It was in the early fall of 1947, when at eighteen I came up from Mobile to Tuscaloosa to enter my sophomore year at the University of Alabama.  A beginning biologist, fired by adolescent enthusiasm but short on theory and vision, I had schooled myself in natural history with field guides carried in a satchel during solitary excursions into the woodland and along the freshwater streams of my native state.  I saw science, by which I meant (and in my heart I still mean) the study of ants, frogs, and snakes, as a wonderful way to stay outdoors.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Longing for leadership.......................

.................................capable of uniting.

As these events unfold, America’s global leadership role is being challenged outside by other nations and inside by our polarized electorate. We need to find ways to put aside our differences and work in partnership with other Western nations in the name of democracy. During this time of great crises, uniting to protect our essential freedoms, including free enterprise, is paramount. We should remember that America, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” still remains a shining beacon of hope to citizens around the world. JPMorgan Chase, a company that historically has worked across borders and boundaries, will do its part to ensure that the global economy is safe and secure.

-Jamie Dimon, from here

well served........................

 Postmodern times are well served by premodern thinkers, especially when it comes to caring about cosmos and psyche.

-Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Times

Union............................

 "Compassion arises when the jewel of the mind rests in the lotus of the heart."*

     In the West, we tend to separate the mind and the heart.  The mind thinks rationally.  It knows hard and objective truths.  It judges good from bad, right from wrong.  The heart is emotional and soft.  If we pay too close attention to it, it will make us weak and or lead us astray.  But the truth lies outside of this dichotomy altogether.  The mind is powerful when it is situated in the heart, when striving and trying to get something right is held with love and compassion. 

-Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

*quote attributed to Jack Kornfield

melting......................

      America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions.  The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances.  Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans.  The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.

-Victor Davis Hanson:  The Dying Citizen

On the wisdom..................................

.................................................of one war at a time.

Would that I could..................

      Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
     Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody,
     But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

-Kahlil Gibran, from his passage on Reason and Passion in The Prophet

What if............................

A small, inconsequential experiment. But I wonder: If instead of giving speeches, making promises, or berating opponents during their town hall meetings and political rallies, what if our politicians asked the question: “What are your hopes for America for 2020?”

And then listened to the answers.

-as cut-and-pasted from here

Not one. Not two....................

"How does one seek union with God?"

"The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and you."

"So what does one do about the distance."

"Understand that it isn't there."

"Does that mean that God and I are one?"

"Not one.  Not two."

"How is that possible?"

"The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song—not one.  Not two."

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

A kind of sorcery.......................

"Lines prompting reading, dreaming minds not to see every thing by itself and separate, but to see the seams often unseen in the dark expanses across space and time. . . . A power not to wield, but to hold. To practice holding.”

-Ellie Rogers, via David Kanigan's wondrous blog

Politics is a funny business.................

Andrew Sullivan points out that, contrary to popular belief, Donald Trump can be a unifier.

If you’ve been waiting for the U.S. Senate to exercise its constitutional prerogatives in the era of Trump, you need wait no longer. A big bipartisan majority has finally stood up to Trump … by voting to advance an amendment in favor of continuing the 18-year occupation of Afghanistan and the ongoing intervention in Syria!

Mitch McConnell actually went on the Senate floor to argue that Trump’s proposed exit from Afghanistan, where no serious progress has been made for almost two decades, would be far too sudden. “The precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either [Syria or Afghanistan] could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security,” he argued. “I believe the threats remain.” Precipitous!

In fact, the vote was — at 68-to-23 — veto-proof.

43 Republican senators (out of a total of 53) were joined by 25 Democratic senators (out of a total of 47).   Bipartisanship!

Simpler times they were not.....................

Clearly the president wanted to bury the "bloody shirt" that had enflamed sectional passions for decades.   But he knew that unity and social harmony also required good times and a sense that American prosperity was widely shared.  He devoted elements of his Annual Message to these themes.

-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century.  The year was 1897.

Undivided................................

“There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three—body, mind, or soul—can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression.” 

-Wallace Wattles

On conceptual divisions.........

"... perhaps the great disaster of human history is one that happened to or within religion:  that is, the conceptual division between the holy and the world, the excerpting of the Creator from the creation."

-Wendell Berry