Hi.
About a month ago in the Park I was on post and a woman with a few
grandchildren approached. We spoke for a while, and sadly I don't
remember the particulars - but my focus is always the same -
the Vigil, Thomas founding it, it continuing with Connie and now my
help, anti-nuclear, climate protection and repair, Palestine....
that we do this out of Love for our global human family, that Waging
Love with greater ferocity, and greater numbers than the world
has waged death is our entire hope; that there is no other ....
I could tell she was deeply moved.
At the end, I asked where she was from - Connecticut she said, and
then mentioned that she is the wife of William Sloan Coffin. If you
don't know, and I did, William was Chaplin at Yale during the Vietnam
era and one of the most eloquent, first, most courageous, outspoken opponents
of that horrible, horrible, horrible war. A book that Ellen and Thomas
connected me with that I've excerpted here was my exposure to his
sublime Soul and writings - his essay is excerpted here:
Militant Non-Violence, William Sloane Coffin
I said that reading more of his work was high on
my list. I mentioned that I'd searched for more of
his work at the DC Libraries, but they had none. She said she would
like to send me one of his books. We spoke a few more words and then
she left (forgetting to get my address.) I let it go.
10 minutes later she was back - "I forgot to get your address."
Last week a copy of William's "Credo" arrived. Only just now did I
have a moment to begin leafing through. The first chapter is
entitled "Faith, Hope, Love." On the first page of this chapter she
had written a note: "* THIS IS FOR YOU!" Here is what she
had marked, of William's writings (and now I weep):
"Socrates had it wrong: it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life
that is not worth living. Descartes too was mistaken; "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think
therefore I am"? Nonsense. "Amo ergo sum" - "I love therefore I am." Or. as with
unconscious eloquence St. Paul wrote, "Now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
and the greatest of these is love." I believe that. I believe it is better not to live
than not to love." William Sloan Coffin, by way of his wife Randy.
Your brother,
Start Loving
About a month ago in the Park I was on post and a woman with a few
grandchildren approached. We spoke for a while, and sadly I don't
remember the particulars - but my focus is always the same -
the Vigil, Thomas founding it, it continuing with Connie and now my
help, anti-nuclear, climate protection and repair, Palestine....
that we do this out of Love for our global human family, that Waging
Love with greater ferocity, and greater numbers than the world
has waged death is our entire hope; that there is no other ....
I could tell she was deeply moved.
At the end, I asked where she was from - Connecticut she said, and
then mentioned that she is the wife of William Sloan Coffin. If you
don't know, and I did, William was Chaplin at Yale during the Vietnam
era and one of the most eloquent, first, most courageous, outspoken opponents
of that horrible, horrible, horrible war. A book that Ellen and Thomas
connected me with that I've excerpted here was my exposure to his
sublime Soul and writings - his essay is excerpted here:
Militant Non-Violence, William Sloane Coffin
I said that reading more of his work was high on
my list. I mentioned that I'd searched for more of
his work at the DC Libraries, but they had none. She said she would
like to send me one of his books. We spoke a few more words and then
she left (forgetting to get my address.) I let it go.
10 minutes later she was back - "I forgot to get your address."
Last week a copy of William's "Credo" arrived. Only just now did I
have a moment to begin leafing through. The first chapter is
entitled "Faith, Hope, Love." On the first page of this chapter she
had written a note: "* THIS IS FOR YOU!" Here is what she
had marked, of William's writings (and now I weep):
"Socrates had it wrong: it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life
that is not worth living. Descartes too was mistaken; "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think
therefore I am"? Nonsense. "Amo ergo sum" - "I love therefore I am." Or. as with
unconscious eloquence St. Paul wrote, "Now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
and the greatest of these is love." I believe that. I believe it is better not to live
than not to love." William Sloan Coffin, by way of his wife Randy.
Your brother,
Start Loving
Happy I am to hear your story. Life often brings us support and love in the form of others who give us what we need, and when we are able to appreciate the gift. Here is a gift I was given, also, from a man from the past:
ReplyDeleteSeptember 20, 1900
"I should like to be good, if I could only accept the many forms of good which I see before me, but none of them seems to be wholly good, none of them has flowered into beauty. I must make for myself a greater mould, even though I break myself in the making. It will be the knowledge of good and evil, of old forbid, but superiority to these. I will master the fates: I must be a master. I see the children Evil and Good playing before me, the one with somber fascinating face, the other of celestial look: they are natural foils and companions, each of the other, and their reciprocal, relative actions inform and balance life, while they give to it pathos and joy, brightness and tragedy. I love them both, even as a father loves; for they are only children of early years, of early ages, not yet in bloom. I have seen and gone beyond. I am a man, unmoved by passion, fear or regret, of the latest time, still developing, and hold straight on the free highway to universal love and beauty.".....Edwin Manners
Hi. There is much beauty and goodness in the Edwin Manners
ReplyDeletequote you left on my site. Thank you.
And there is fundamental age old error as well. That's ok.
We are to learn, and go beyond:
1. Any suggestion that good and evil need one another is as false as the idea that healthy tissue "needs" cancer in order to be complete. NO. Rather Cancer, and Evil, are the consequence of the Body /Spirit degenerating. That both are always potential is NOT to say that they are necessary to each other NOR that they must both coexist. I do NOT hope for cancer to coexist in my body.
2. Our early years are not what we need to go beyond, but what we need to return to - if civilization is to survive - before greed, before lust, before hate, before "others," before "enemy," before "not family...." Yes it is possible.
This is what I've done in my Life.
HIS ENDING ON "UNIVERSAL LOVE" IS ENTIRELY CORRECT.
Universal Love is what we are born into, and what we must return to, if civilization is to survive.
Your Loving brother,
Start
ps: I hope you consider following that blog. I'm really glad that you found the blog The Christlike Church, but that one is quite static. The Start Loving blog is much more dynamic - updated regularly.