So the work that created Tolstoy out of impending suicide, his translation and harmonization of the four Gospels, is not available in current print? A complete version is not available online? Think about this. Take your time.
Martin Luther King jr. Was headed away from the church, away from being a pastor, alienated at Best By the Church of his father. It was the understanding of Gandhi, and of a Buddhist monk Hanh, and most importantly maybe, Walter Rauschenbush, defamed and obscured Christian teacher at a university upstate New York, Christianity in an age of crisis. It's almost like we, and certainly the church that excommunicated Tolstoy, it's almost like the church doesn’t want folks like this.
After hours of trial and error a fairly clean version of part 1 of 3 of Tolstoy’s Harmonization was found and page by page copied into one document that today James is having read to him on the voyage up the hill. It is arduous, very technical, Tolstoy’s line by line word by word explanation of his translation decisions.
Never will James know if it was correct. Would Jesus agree with Tolstoy? Never will James know. But if Einstein rendered equals MC squared out of some psychotic trance, if he actually got it from a million monkeys typing on type riders, would it make equals MC squared any less powerful? Off shoots of this arduous work by Tolstoy included the kingdom of God is within you written years later. A more informative title would have been, the essence of Creator is in you}. Young Gandhi read that and his life took a new course. When I read that book, particularly the last two chapters as Tolstoy directs his readers to start with, it was like a physicist coming across Einstein's writing for the first time. Holy f***. Of course this would ignite a Gandhi.
His part 1 and all three are extremely technical. Can James grasp this? No. But by investing some time in this can James make an ethical informed decision as to how trustworthy or not is Tolstoy’s work? Yes.
The log is now termed igniting soul log. This is a good step forward. Is it permanent? Maybe. Time will tell.
The blog is now subtitled, for joy serving soul in solidarity. Is this permanent? Probably.
Several interactions of more than a few moments with folks lately suggest that James is becoming less of a not igniting soul, a not, transformational soul.
Central to this early part of toast toys translation, is the notion that Jesus showed us what we were born to be, born of, living in body months of the Father, the force of life, the wisdom and intelligence of life. And Tolstoy asserts that almost no one knows that this is what we are, and what we are to regenerate. It does not strike me as a new idea. It strikes me as a confirmation of what my soul has always known. But only in recent decades had the courage to fully embody.
Granted that Gandhi was absolutely correct, full effort is full success, there is something more than that however. Jonas Salk invented the vaccine for polio. Presumably he was a driven person to achieve this. Prior to achieving it if driven and committed he was a full success as Gandhi says. But actually discovering the vaccine was also a part of success.
The point? Gandhi if a truthful person considered himself an abject failure at the end of his life. Karen Armstrong says that Buddha considered the same of himself. They were wrong. They were both wrong. When Jonas Salk created the vaccine had no one used it he was still successful in creating the vaccine. He created the possibility of cure. Buddha seems to have become a transformational soul as did Jesus and a few others. And probably Gandhi also. These were successes, not failures. And James is feeling a success in that regard. Resting on that? Revelling in that? Celebrating that? Not at all. But James has become, if only partly, if very imperfectly, a transformational soul. So much more to become, to learn, to implement, if given the time.
