After writing this I thought it might be of interest to the Group.
Food for though and comment.
He will meet us in the air"- Matthew 24
Buddha explains no thing arises without cause-there is no
uncaused cause. Christians believe that God and soul causes the
appearance of astounding and exceptional individuals. The word soul
is used in a secular manner to describe the exceptional: soul food,
soul music, soul kisses, soul mate and soul brother. Soul, when used
in this manner, implies that the object of its attention is
outstanding or the essence of good and God.
Joseph Conrad writes: “A human that is born falls into a dream
like a human who falls into the sea and spends its life trying to
climb out into the air.“ The faithful believe the soul/spirit can
lift them out of the sea. But because the soul resides in the
invisible subconscious mind, what we presume to know about it will
always be a supposition and a mystery until it is personally felt.
The soul shows us the marvelous and mystical underpinnings of reality
and make us wonder.
Some people are blessed with soul, unknowingly, and it is the
events of history that chooses the time of their appearance. Some of
these people are Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Sophia and Hans
Scholl- German, martyrs executed by the Nazis in 1941. Sophia Scholl
knows the soul when she writes about pressing her face to an apple
tree, “Could it be I hear a secret throbbing. I press my face to the
trees dusky warm bark, and think, My Homeland, and I am so
expressively graceful.”
In the soul song requiem,Wind Under My Wings, Pattie LaBell
sings to her departed sister, Jackie. LaBell tells her sister, in an
voice soaring with soul, You ‘re the wind under my wings, Jackie, and
in another line, Did you ever know you ‘re my hero. They are words of
love sang for the listening soul of her sister and as a message, a
reminder, to the listeners that if they love someone to tell them that
before it’s to late. Pattie LaBell sings: Life is not about money or
fame: it’s about soul.
Other soul songs with lyrical distinctive messages of love, hope
and revolution are, Starry Night , a song about Vincent Van Gogh,
Bridge Over Trouble Waters, Blow in' in the Wind; Sing by Barbara
Streisand; We Shall Over Come and the mournful Taps that honors the
fallen. The music is wonderful but it is the words of songs that
captures the heart and soul, enriches life and makes them special.
Modern soul songs of this nature are as vital and important as great
literature.
Maya Lin gives “cause” when she said the Vietnam Memorial Wall
was conceptualized to be completed by the thoughts and the feelings-
meaning sorrow and love- that the people brought to it. It is a way
of saying that once we can confront and go beyond death, we find
renewed life. When the mourners look into the polished black granite
of the wall they can see their faces, with the names of the honored
dead cast over them, and at that moment they become part of the
mystic and magic soulful essence of Vietnam Memorial Wall.
Maya Lin's’ soul, the souls of the mourners and the dead are
imbued in the spirituality (soul) radiating from the Vietnam Memorial
Wall. It is a memorial that honors the men and women who were killed
in vain in sorrow of the Vietnam War. It is an antiwar memorial that
does not glorify war nor the state.
When Buddha explains: No thing arises without cause, there is no
uncaused cause- what Buddha is saying is that there is no happenstance
or miracles because everything has cause. Einstein said the universe
was not created by accident i.e. had cause.
There was confirmation the souls presence at the opening
ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Georgia Olympic games. Where a full
stadium and millions of television viewers watched as the torch
bearer, Muhammad Ali, a beloved American hero, climbed the stadium
stairs, in the radiant aura of his soul and truth, to light the
Olympic flame.
The name of the torch carrier was not announced but everyone knew
instantly who it was and a wave of wonder swept the stadium. “It’s
Muhammad Ali.” they said in amazed voices, some with tears of joy in
their eyes, as a huge cheer rose from crowd into the night sky. Such
honor and adoration has no been accorded to many men or women.
Muhammad Ali is a honored legacy of the Civil Rights era, the struggle
to stop the Vietnam War and the history of our land. He is a national
treasure. He as soul and knows God.
It is said no narcissistic human can reflect the love and the
bidding of the soul. Marilyn Monroe had fame, fortune, and bueaty-the
temporary possessions of a secular life-and was still unfulfilled and
went looking for love in all the wrong places. Marilyn had trouble in
identifying herself even when looking in a mirror.
Marilyn, like most of us, was searching for her soul. Marilyn did
not have heroes, beliefs, faith or mentors wise enough to interrupt
her plunge into the hell of drugs and fractured identity. She had
lost the beat, crucial to keeping her song in rhythm, and was a
magicians trick. Did President John F. Kennedy sense this when he
introduced her at his birthday celebration as the "late" Marilyn
Monroe, three months before she committed suicide. Spiritually dead
she died alone one night in a drug induced frantic flight from the
emotion pain of herself and a reality that had become a demon.
The reason for Marilyn Monroe sadness is expressed in the lyrics
of a Cole Porter Lorenz Harts song, Spring is Here: Spring is here
why doesn't it delight me / Spring is here why doesn't it excite
me / Maybe its because nobody loves me.
But she died redeemed and standing up to be counted. Marilyn
Monroe last picture was The Misfits. A movie about a woman who
teams up with three men to capture wild horses. The movie moves
pleasantly along with Marilyn not knowing the fate of the horses they
had captured.
Until the day she innocently asked one of the men, Clark Gable,
where they were going to take the captured horses and he replied they
were going to be sold for dog food. Marilyn immediately came unhinged
and cried. “Oh, no!!. Why didn’t you tell me !!’ jumps up and runs
into a field barren of foliage, turns with her knees together, hand
grasped in front of them, face contorted with anguish, and her body
bent over in emotional pain and cried in despair, “Murderers.!!
Murderers at the startled men. Sending the message that a horrible
crime was being committed. A crime against the humanity and the soul.
There she was a narcissistic women-thought of as sex symbol, and
the late Marilyn Monroe-emotionally alive, vibrant and dazzling in her
protestation of the coming deaths of the innocent horses and against a
world she did not understand. Marilyn's performance was so
passionate and authentic that one could conceive that it was the real
Marilyn Monroe on that barren field doing what the soul asks of a
compassionate soulful women.
The soul, the integrity and nobleness in humans, is described
in Arthur Koester book, Darkness at Noon. He writes about the
courageous, and doomed (many were executed the next day), communist
prisoners who proudly sang the communist anthem The International ,
from a upper cell blocks of a fascist prison during the Spanish Civil
War, as they waited to be executed. They truly believed that
communism would eradicate poverty and courageously gave their lives
for that cause.
And I cannot take leave at this moment because it is essential
to my soul that I write-in remembrance-about Bartolomeo Vanzetti and
Nicolo Sacco, Italian immigrants and anarchist who were executed in
1929, for a crime they did not commit, by the state of Massachusetts.
In his last letter, expressed in the wonderful words that are
intrinsic to the soul, Bartolomeo Vanzetti shows he understanding the
mythic meaning of their martyrdom: “If it had not been for these
things(the trial,death sentence and innocents ) I might have live my
life talking on street corners to scorning men. I might have died.
unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we ( meaning his codefendant Nicolo
Sacco) are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never
in my full life could we hope to do such good work for tolerance, for
justice, for man’s understanding of man as we do now by accident.
Our words-our lives, our pains-nothing. The taking of our lives-lives
of a good shoe maker and a poor fish peddler -all. The last moments
belong to us-that agony is our triumph.”
And with those finale words, imbued with soul, Bartolomeo
Vanzetti reaches down, from the freedom of air, to pull others out of
the sea.
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