Last month my friend, Ed Kline, asked me to write a poem about sleep.  He has come to appreciate what a wonderful thing sleep is.  Ed even did some research to help me get started:  Morpheus is the god of sleep and it is from his name that we have the words morphine (a pain killer and perhaps sedative) and metamorphosis (change). 


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Sleep’s sedative sought Morpheus for change

And I, with dreams more real than my own life,

Had lost all sense of purpose, time, and place.

Thus, in the early morning’s dawn and light,

As slumber crept away, I found myself

A captive held between the two:  I knew

Myself as neither sleeping nor awake.

With fear that Morpheus’ change too swift would rend,

I asked the dawn’s new light to pause so that

I might emerge from sleep to wakefulness

Not suddenly nor swift but by a path

As gentle as the hand of God himself.

    But dawn would not relent; so I instead

    Rolled over with the sheets now on my head.

© 2014 Wayne Goodling

Rudyard Kipling

"Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill Unviersity in Montreal.  He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered.

"Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said:  'Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things.  Then you will know how poor you are.'"

--Halford E Luccock (quoted in Guy Kawasaki, The Art or the Start, 2004, Penguin Books Ltd.)

How close am I to being the man who cares for neither glory, nor money, nor position?  I work full time so I can have enough money, take care of my possessions so they will continue to serve me, and certainly want people to have a good opinion of me.  So, on the outside I do give care to money and possessions.  But things on the inside are different than they were a year ago.  Whereas I used to work hard so as to have enough for the future, now I work hard because that is what I enjoy.   

I remember one of my friends always had a list of things she wanted and whose conversation was about her desire to have more.  I sometimes thought of asking her, "How much is enough?" but, not wanting to insult her, never did.  But I did ask myself, "How much is enough?"  and my answer was always that I had more than enough.  

Under Construction (or "Watch me write.")

This entry, which has to do with self-acceptance, will be written as a blog entry.  That is, I'm going to do the initial ideas, rough draft, and final editing as a blog entry which will change and expand each day as I work on it.

So, here goes...

Jonathan Edwards is considered to be perhaps the greatest American theologian.  Between 1722 and 1723 he wrote, and committed to using, 70 resolutions.  Here is his opening paragraph and resolution number 60:  

"Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God's help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ's sake. [I must] remember to read over these Resolutions once a week....

"60. Resolved, Whenever my feelings bgin to appear in the least out of order, when I am conscious of the least uneasiness within, or the least irregularity without, I will then subject myself to the strictest examination. July 4, and 13, 1723."  (click here to see them all)

http://thirdmill.org/newfiles/jon_edwards/PT.Edwards.resolutions.pdf

About 280 years later, on March 8, 2005, I was visiting Washington, D.C. and having lunch with my daughter, Rachel, who would be graduating from Ball State University in two months.  During our conversation, she paraphrased an idea from one of her communication classes.

"I'm not who I think I am;

I'm not who you think I am;

I'm who I think you think I am."

- Zick (quoted by Rachel at lunch in Washington, D.C. 03/08/2005)

The next time I work on this, I'll be pulling these two ideas together, along with some quotes from Carl Rogers.

Anthony Damiani (1922-1984)

Anthony Damiani (1922-1984)

Wisdom's Goldenrod Center (located about 20 miles from Ithica, New York) had its beginnings in 1972 when Anthony and his wife, Ella May, donated five acres of their family land for the site.  The following is from a brief biographical sketch of Mr. Damiani.

For hundreds of us who met him in the 1960's and 1970's, Anthony Damiani was a man of many facets, any one of which would have made him remarkable. But first and foremost he was a man - a vital, passionate, kind, and dynamic human being who revered life by living sincerely. He saw the meanings embedded in each person's experience as lines of a primordial scripture that one is born to embrace and understand - with and as one's whole being. His genius lay in piercing the secular veneer, uncovering these meanings, and awakening the heart to an awareness of the sacred song at its core. This was a process of giving birth to truth, not as a conceptual exercise but as an act of love, an exquisite expression of the proper relation between a soul and its source.

Becoming Public

Becoming Publicly Anonymous

Kathryn Damiano, a Quaker author, has written about the value and importance of silence.  I agree with Ms. Damianao:  silence is important; it's a way to control the Ego.  So there is irony in a blog (which, by definition, is public) that asserts the importance of anonymity.  

The thing that counts is Truth.  In fact, there is one religious tradition in which Truth (with a capital T) is synonymous with God.