Monday, July 30, 2012

DENSITY AND DESTINY


You must be porous to hear the chorus that calls some to greatness. Those who can't ignore its chant, being deaf to music.
         
          You have to be dense to do what makes no sense, especially when you do it at your own expense because inwardly you are convinced that you are being spent in Destiny’s service. Thus nights find you working and days find you nervous because your only resource is a fund of courage that renews itself without your help (or permission), compelling you thus to pursue the vision. Meanwhile others behave as if you don’t exist. Those that are aware often stare stymied because you keep aligning yourself with the unseen with no guarantee that you will succeed.
          In your defense you erect a fence between their doubts and your own even as you are driven to labor to manifest a greatness that only you believe in enough to invest despite the stress and ridicule. The only consolation is that you have now become indifferent when, in referring to you, others whisper, “fool.” Instead you flash a half-smile because you too have turned this stile in an effort to turn away from what consumes your days and command your nights. Not even God is the consolation that religion excites. Yet HHe is the Source of Destiny’s summons.
          He’s also the reason your friends start running when they see you coming. It isn’t because you solicit money or anything else. You just sometimes need help believing in yourself. But it seldom happens, so you keep hoping and working that Destiny is certain, and that you aren’t deceived. Yet in reviewing the lives of the great similar parallels you perceive. That’s what makes it hard just to discard the time you’ve invested and to discount the ways you’ve been tested. So, you just vow to die until you are ushered into eternity away from time. At least it can’t be said that you denied your allegiance to the thing that kneaded itself in your soul.

Friday, July 27, 2012

ODE TO GREATNESS

Greatness is invasive when it comes and bewildering when it runs from us.

          Do you know what it is to be caught in the draught of destiny, for it to summons you unsolicited down a path contorted and twisted? Yet you lack the willpower to resist it? Do you know what it is to feel as if you are owed because of what it showed and promised to shower you with if you would only take time to develop your gift? Have you ever sat for days pondering its maze, wondering how you got in and how you will emerge?
What moreover do you do when you are seized by its urge, which compels you to walk because your heart is stirred though your vision is blurred? How many nights have you been prone to fight with yourself, to question your sanity and health because you couldn’t let go though it was squeezing you to death? While others lose themselves in pleasures and pursuits easily obtained, how do you handle that sense of shame that comes because what they consider fun frustrates you?
          How often in your heart have you silently accused them of being lazy and yourself of being crazy because you wanted to live a life beyond amazing? Have you ever wondered why it yet lingers and digs its fingers into your pores until it makes sores on your soul? In doing so, you routinely make oaths and inevitably write odes, shaking your head because not even half has been told because no one wants to listen to someone imprisoned by what they are free from. So much that even yourself you often shun, even as you wonder, “God, what have I done!”

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

TRANSITIONING AGES




It’s difficult for ages to transition through certain stages because something about their method leaves them stunted, blunted and unresponsive. So, they toy with ideas and make appeals that appease our lower nature, indifferent to its effect on morals, manners and culture. Architects succeed because they weave their webs through entertainment.
Thus citizens are less likely to indulge complaining. So whether it’s Lady Gaga or the contemporary obsession with being a star we fail to realize just how far we are falling because we are stalling in our duty to restore as truly as we can conditions that are fit for rational women and men. Meanwhile politics depletes and politicians defeat the aims of ethics though they are assigned to protect it.
Tis from this dimension wherein our positions should be erect, morally speaking, because politicians shouldn't be merely seeking to protect the interests of their constituents.  Yet critics of the system are mistreated and issued reprimands because they stand opposed to what everyone instinctively knows is too sinful to be tenable. Yet even sin and its concepts are of no help in this new age. We agree instead by silent consent to live until life is spent, preventing commonsense from making a dent in our depravity, eroding in route social stability.

Monday, July 23, 2012

EXHORTATION TO GREATNESS


No one exhorted Rembrandt as he labored to master the strokes of the brush. Thomas Edison had few supporters in his tireless attempts to develop the electric light. When Marty Wollstonecraft published Vindication of the Rights of Woman she was harangued. Each of these achievers spent most of their lives in obscurity. While others played, they persevered.
           Each failure nurtured success. Desire is the catalyst propelling ordinary souls toward extraordinary achievement. When combined with persistence success is inevitable. In fact success is seldom realized without persistence. No amount of talent can replace it. If you aren’t willing to persist in preparing, success won’t be yours. Ironically persistence and obscurity overlap.
           Today in some dark laboratory or on a dusty schoolyard tomorrows champions  are being chiseled, unknown today yet soon to explode on the scene of success. Know that the years you spend sacrificing will pay off. In life there are no wasted efforts. No one else needs to be aware of the time you spend improving your skills –God knows. He’s there with you, celebrating your determination because He knows that obscurity is the dressing room in which all achievers must change.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

THE PENALTY OF GREATNESS

When we consider the people and the events that have influenced our lives we are apt to become angry, especially if they disparaged our vision. Unfortunately, we must fight repeatedly to reverse the unjust judgments rendered by our contemporaries and our circumstances. This fight may begin with members of the clergy and end with our mentors in the classroom.
            Until these judgments are reversed we are often ridiculed. Not even the approval of Provide palliates because the vision was given to us, not to them. We are responsible for its fulfillment. If we do not fulfill it we will others will inevitably suffer. Of course the vision would be easier to fulfill with their support but we do not have it.
          This is an annoying reality. Others may applaud our ends but oppose our means. Thus our value sinks. Moreover, the favor they once gave freely is now given frugally. Even then they give it with the intention of changing our minds. Amid this dilemma we must decide whether to pursue it authentically or to pacify their opinions by changing it substantially.
           To choose the vision, however, is to choose enmity, insomnia and social insecurity. To choose the vision is to risk being branded aloof, unreasonable and an idealist. Choosing the vision means playing the protagonist and the antagonist together.
          Be assured, before it vindicates the vision will see each of us overwhelmed. To choose the vision is to be banished to the lonely isle of Patmos with the Apostle John or to be slain on your front lawn, as was Medger Evers. To choose the vision is to choose slander, scandal, scorn and a posthumous praise.

Friday, July 13, 2012

OUTLASTING FAILURE



Destiny is possible. Anything else impoverishes.
Every story is striking once it is told. In fact most of us would amaze if we could emerge from ourselves. In this regard, greatness isn’t just one of a kind but simply one of many stories that could be told` if we had the essential density. After all, J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter) could have very easily quit when failure eclipsed.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

THE ROTATION OF GREATNESS


Every soul has its season and every season has its soul. Despite appearances no one’s life blooms perennially. Even the privileged must endure days of drought. During these times the clouds threaten but bring no rain. Each day the horizon is pregnant with precipitation but the advent of eve leaves them shaking their heads, saying, “Maybe tomorrow.” Just over the hill, however, their neighbors are busy gathering a bountiful harvest. This year’s rains have left them plenty to fill their once bare barns. Yet last year this time they had considered quitting and starting elsewhere. What a difference a season makes.
          In this regard, life is forever instructing us, and one of its most illuminating lessons is this: We should never let the harvest of as few or the drought suffered by many to diminish our diligence. If we endure and adjust accordingly, we will have our time. We will have our season. Difficulties arise, however, when we desire to flourish in another’s season. When we embrace this folly we compare the bounty of our neighbor’s barrenness with the barrenness of our own. After a while we resent their abundance. Moreover, if we aren’t careful we will curse our once cherished soil. All this happens because we fail to realize that every soul has its season and every season has its soul.
          Characteristically, times and seasons are the protectors of our potential. They teach us to reverence our ground and not just the harvest it produces. They also compel us to remove our shoes and realize that the ground we stand upon is holy. Then we can applaud the bounty bestowed upon others because there ground is holy also. Realizing this, envy no longer torments and delay ceases to discourage. Instead we become persuaded that the time is coming when we will flourish also. Until then, we wait and hope quietly for rain. Despite the richness of our soil no one escapes this rotation. Only through it do we avoid the vanity of blooming too fast, too often.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

GREATNESS: STAKING YOUR CLAIM


If you want to be great you must drive your stake deep into the earth's soil until the water beneath the surface begins to boil, until fear and failure both recoil from respect for your commitment to be a witness to greatness' existence. If you do this without being remiss in your duty you will eventually bypass the layers and shales where others have failed and faltered because they allowed the earth's density to alter their pursuit. In this regard, greatness is all about going to the root.

FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY


Freedom in principle is seldom as simple as our celebrations suggest and our complaints impeace because of what it means to each. In this regard, the battle for democracy and its vision can only be sustained by an indomitable discipline and by strategies whose adages reject conventional claims and insidious aims which caution the conscience that what it heard is undemocratic and dishonest. Success requires us to be more than emphatic in our denials and patriotic in our avowals and commitment to its existent. Yet some people are hostile to what flows through the nostrils of those whose vision of democracy conflicts with what they see. Even so, democracy thrives when citizens practice beyond pretense its precepts with the help of wise governance and humble acceptance of its goals.

Monday, July 2, 2012

COMPLEXITY AND COMMONSENSE

          Due to uncritical fiscal restraints, the Department of Complexity and Commonsense has now been combined and condensed with the appropriate personnel being inappropriately reassigned. Thus, the head of the former is now weaker in resolve; whereas the ego of the latter no longer needs to be soothed. Practically, this means that citizens are now free to follow protocols or if they are sufficiently creative (or idle) can conceive their own. Approval of course must be obtained through ambiguous channels. Know, however, in advance that there is no one to handle requests, suggestions or innovations. 
          Those whom this approach repulses may appeal to the senior most station where all key staff have now been reduced to less than half. Of those that remain the decision was made to retain all but the most competent. Doing so was essential to gaining agreement on the achievement the alliance of these two giants represent. Technically, though, neither society nor its institutions have ever been ruled by commonsense. Still, with all due regard things shouldn‘t be as hard as they were before to have grievances deftly ignored. In fact, those concerns that reflect the utmost complexity will now be decided  irrationally and haphazardly.
          So, there is no need for grievances to be submitted because the inappropriate staff has already committed to solutions a priori, yet another benefit of the departmental tie. Yet the simplest concerns will now be subject to a vote by the Supine Court and Appellate Council. Their process for deciding is designed to censor all but the most unavoidable of concerns, which should also reflect the utmost significance. Upon receipt, these will eventually be referred to the Committee of Indifference.
          The same process holds for complaints due again to uncritical fiscal restraints. We, the Ruling Council, believe that these procedures will hasten the advent of social amnesia until citizens forget what it means to live in a society regulated by piety and concern for human souls. Of course, this depiction refers to democracies of old, as they have come down to us by what historians told in their banal annals which, thankfully, discourage emulation and duplication. Finally, anticipated savings from the Departmental merger will be diverted until they have dissappeared. After which, taxes will be raised in order to produce propaganda to further deceive citizens, for their own good of course.


Sunday, July 1, 2012

THE WINNER'S DINNER


Have you ever eaten at the winner’s dinner? Do you know what it is to dine because you took time to refine your skills or perhaps to rebuild what was broken? What did you do to keep you hoping? Knowing is crucial because so many see as futile their efforts to succeed. Thus they occupy themselves by wishing when they read about other winners, never tasting the delights served at its dinner. Even so, there is a way for us to reserve a space at the table. Nature didn’t make us equal but it did make us able, only however if we labor.