Friday 23 February 2007
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Pic of the day: Winter light in Oblivion. "Winter Light"Let us take a break from the falling snow to listen to the beautiful song Winter Light as performed by Linda Ronstadt. I happened upon this song without having heard about Ronstadt before, and I don't know whether she has any attachment to the song or is simply a "hired hand" performing it, but her voice certainly lends itself very well to the ethereal quality of the song and part of the lyrics. Yes, there seems to be a problem with very uneven lyrics here. The last part seems to be just emergency rhymes, or at least a human attachment without the power of raw revelation that lies in the first part. I'll just ignore it, though if you listen to the song you can enjoy the pretty music. Here's the part that set me on white fire: ***
Hearts call ***The first part sets up the scene, so to speak. The heart failing - not the literal muscle, of course, but the heart and soul - and the emptiness. This should be familiar to almost everyone, and if not, it will probably be. Even I will still sense the growing feeling of hollowness if I stray too long outside the center, the keep of my heart. And then, in the "winter light" - which need not be in the winter at all, but is any sudden invasion of beauty - the wicked and the sane in equal measure bear witness to salvation. Though they may not use that name for it. I should not have needed the revelation, because I have been told by two very different people about the nature of beauty. James Redfield (Celestine Vision), New Age writer whom I have quoted extensively on the topic of attention "energy", claims that the ability to see beauty is a sure sign of opening to the higher "energy". And Robert W Godwin (One Cosmos Under God) insists that Beauty is a trinity with Truth and Virtue and that art represents a gateway to the Vertical. In fact, art is superior over philosophy in just this that it speaks directly to the soul. We can try to arrange for beauty in various ways, from doing the dishes to putting flowers in vases, and I guess this can create some degree of positive ambience. But there is also the sudden, raw revelation of beauty. Sometimes it is the majesty of nature, other times a work of art or music. Sometimes it reaches many at a time, other times you are alone with it. And whether you are wicked or sane, this beauty is real and undeniable. You may fantasize that you are just a wandering construct of protoplasm with no purpose but senseless procreation (and if you are thinking like that, you're probably not even doing that). But beauty cannot be denied that easily. It speaks to you directly, cutting through that kind of insanity. You cannot help but bear witness to salvation, though you will of course have a very different name for it. But a part of your life will start over again. A part of the hollowness is gone, a part of the hunger of the soul. Due to my religion and my personal experience in that regard, I may more easily throw around words like "salvation" or "divine presence" or "God" or "Heaven". Others coming from a very different walk through life will find all this meaningless. But they will still experience the same things sometimes. When the dark clouds part and the winter light throws a million diamonds across the land, there is no difference between the saint and the sinner, the retard and the genius, the drunkard and the philosopher. For a moment we all see the same... a glimpse of something real. Truth can be denied, but not beauty. Just ignore the rest. Only lost children search for love, begging for scraps of attention. A heart filled with beauty seeks to share. |
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