Reinvention is my philosophy, if you want to call it that,” he says, looking out the window. “Imagination is the key to creating a life that is ever new.” Stanley turns his eyes to me. “We are each of us a changeling person,” he says. “We are not going to be the same decade after decade. Wisdom results from confronting not only one’s desires and capacities but also one’s limitations.” “The Layers,” one of Stanley’s best-loved poems, is his crystallization of this wisdom. I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road is precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.
Her mind escaped between them, and went exploring for itself through the great gaps they had made in the simple obedient assumptions of her girlhood. That question originally put in Paradise, "Why shouldn't we?" came into her mind and stayed there. It is a question that marks a definite stage in the departure from innocence. Things that had seemed opaque and immutable appeared translucent and questionable. She began to read more and more in order to learn things and get a light upon things, and less and less to pass the time. Ideas came to her that seemed at first strange altogether and then grotesquely justifiable and then crept to a sort of acceptance by familiarity. And a disturbing intermittent sense of a general responsibility increased and increased in her.You will understand this sense of responsibility which was growing up in Lady Harman's mind if you have felt it yourself, but if you have not then you may find it a little difficult to understand. You see it comes, when it comes at all, out of a phase of disillusionment. All children, I suppose, begin by taking for granted the rightness of things in general, the soundness of accepted standards, and many people are at least so happy that they never really grow out of this assumption. They go to the grave with an unbroken confidence that somewhere behind all the immediate injustices and disorders of life, behind the antics of politics, the rigidities of institutions, the pressure of custom and the vagaries of law, there is wisdom and purpose and adequate provision, they never lose that faith in the human household they acquired amongst the directed securities of home. But for more of us and more there comes a dissolution of these assurances; there comes illumination as the day comes into a candle-lit uncurtained room. The warm lights that once rounded off our world so completely are betrayed for what they are, smoky and guttering candles. Beyond what once seemed a casket of dutiful security is now a limitless and indifferent universe. Ours is the wisdom or there is no wisdom; ours is the decision or there is no decision. That burthen is upon each of us in the measure of our capacity. The talent has been given us and we may not bury it.
“I am bourgeois to the core and parochial beyond belief, and yet I am drawn to art and scholarship as my anti-type, my shadow, the voice of distinction I never possessed. I don't think of myself as a teacher so much as an impersonator of profundities, inhabiting the wisdom of texts with the naked confidence that the value of the genius I espouse transcends the particular fraud that I am the one espousing it. And it doesn't even matter to me that no one seems to be listening; those who listen that I don't know about are enough to keep me going--soaring on the wings of borrowed metaphors.”
To suggest that the grief of Christ issues from his perfect wisdom andcharity would confirm that true sorrow is human and therefore cannotcorrespond to despair, since the hopelessness of despair would yield nothingabout which to sorrow. If life is meaningless, there is no reason tomourn. Truth is what makes grief authentic and real, and so it followsthat Truth Incarnate, come down from heaven to our vale of tears, wouldgrieve at the highest pitch. The “tragic experience of the most completedesolation”49 depends on “the knowledge and experience of the Father.”50Or as Adrienne von Speyr puts it: “The Father is never more present thanin this absence on the Cross.
Almost I feel the pulsebeat of the ages, Now swift, now slow, beneath my fingertips.The heartthrobs of the prophets and the sagesBeat through these bindings; and my quick hand slipsOld books from dusty shelves, in eager seekingFor truths the flaming tongues of the ancients tell;For the words of wisdom that they still are speakingAs clearly as an echoing silver bell.Here is the melody that lies foreverAt the deep heart of living; here we keepThe accurate recorded discs that neverCan be quite silenced, though their makers sleepThe still deep sleep, so long as a seeker findsThe indelible imprint of their moving minds.
Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum. Though is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away. We should feel the same pity for minds that do not eat as for stomachs. If there be anything sadder than a body perishing for want of bread, it is a mind dying of hunger for lack of light. All progress tends toward the solution. Some day, people will be amazed. As the human race ascends, the deepest layers will naturally emerge from the zone of distress. The effacement of wretchedness will be effected by a simple elevation level.
Weak and narrow are the powers implanted in the limbs of men; many the woes that fall on them and blunt the edge of thought; short is the measure of the life in death through which they toil; then are they borne away, like smoke they vanish into air, and what they dream they know is but the little each hath stumbled on in wandering about the world; yet boast they all that they have learned the whole—vain fools! for what that is, no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, nor can it be conceived by mind of man. Thou, then, since thou hast fallen to this place, shalt know no more than human wisdom may attain.
In his business, he observed human nature and came to certain conclusions about it. The conclusions lacked wisdom and originality; in fact, they were tiresome. But they were important to McGarrity because he had figured them out for himself. In the first years of their marriage, he had tried to tell Mae about these conclusions, but all she said was, "I can imagine." Sometimes she varied by saying, "I can just imagine." Gradually then, because he could not share his inner self with her, he lost the power of being a husband to her, and she was unfaithful to him.
Souls spread over the planet and leave no mountain unclimbed, no valley undiscovered, no sea unsailed, ventured even into outer space.Souls mingle and leave no relationship unattempted, no emotion unfelt, no pleasure and pain unexplored.Souls plunge into their minds and leave no tale untold, no image unpainted, no melody unheard.Souls transcend their fantasies and leave no idea unthought, no natural law undescribed, no wisdom undefined. Souls even pass over the thinkeable and witness ineffable realms of other worlds and their inhabitants. Curiosity, the drive to experience, the urge of urges, the world's innermost desire. We, souls, are its foremost scouts. We are the embodiment of the purpose of existence.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.