"Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary use words."
- St. Francis
If you see a man who is hungry, do you preach about Christ's forgiveness to him? If you see a woman who is hurt inside, do you tell her to repent?
No, first attend to the man's hunger, and give him some food to eat. And attend to the woman's hurt, and comfort her in her loneliness. Be as Christ would've been. A friend, a healer.
Is this not the essence of Jesus' teachings?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Dead Artists
I was reading about how in 1848, the poet Edgar Allen Poe envisioned a concept of the Big Bang long before modern physicists confirmed its validity as a theory. Here's the excerpt from AskMen.com:
After reading that, I was reminded of other artists who are not noticed until after their deaths. We hear so often of the works of deceased artists fetching millions of dollars that we more or less correctly surmise that the only way for an artist to make money is to die. How horrible is that? But within that, I believe, lays a truth about true artists. They are visionaries, prophets who speak of the future to the world. Many times, people wearied by hard times become skeptical and the artist is largely ignored or forgotten. In spite of this, the artist is driven by something inside of him that will not let him die peacefully unless he obeys it. The artist cannot escape being himself and will continue speaking unto his grave. He is happy if even only one attentive hear has heard him.
Though he didn't know a damn thing about physics -- which was true of just about everybody in 1848 -- Poe wrote a lengthy prose poem called Eureka that proposed something oddly similar to the big bang, a universe whose beginning came from a single "primordial particle," "absolutely unique, individual, undivided." The poem was largely regarded as horrible, so horrible that it literally ended some of Poe's friendships. People called it "ridiculous," "damnable heresy," and one critic claimed it was so bad that it should have caused his house to collapse with its awfulness.
Poor Poe even suggested at one point that "Space and Duration are one," a phrase that sounds curiously like it's about space-time, but it's likely that nobody noticed, busy as they were bellowing that Poe was a failure.
After reading that, I was reminded of other artists who are not noticed until after their deaths. We hear so often of the works of deceased artists fetching millions of dollars that we more or less correctly surmise that the only way for an artist to make money is to die. How horrible is that? But within that, I believe, lays a truth about true artists. They are visionaries, prophets who speak of the future to the world. Many times, people wearied by hard times become skeptical and the artist is largely ignored or forgotten. In spite of this, the artist is driven by something inside of him that will not let him die peacefully unless he obeys it. The artist cannot escape being himself and will continue speaking unto his grave. He is happy if even only one attentive hear has heard him.
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