This article, Church and State should help Europe grow, is from The Times (London) of Saturday, July 21, 2007. Interesting thoughts from a Christian clergyman in Britain. Does he give us more credit than we deserve?
Society and the soul, and you
“And I thought sitting up awake in the African night that I knew nothing about the soul at all. People were always talking about it and writing of it, but who knew about it? I did not know anyone who knew anything of it nor whether there was such a thing…. Once I had thought my own soul had been blown out of me when I was a boy and then that it had come back in again. But in those days I was very egotistical and I had heard so much talk about the soul and read so much about it that I assumed that I had one. Then I began to think if Miss Mary or G.C. or Ngui or Charo or I had been killed by the lion would our souls have flown off somewhere? I could not believe it and I thought that we would all just have been dead, deader than the lion perhaps, and no one was worrying about his soul….
“But what did this have to do with `In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning?’ Did Miss Mary and GC have souls? They had no religious beliefs as far as I knew. But if people had souls they must have them. Charo was a very devout Muhammadan so we must credit him with a soul. That left only Ngui and me and the lion.” (pp. 172-173)
This long quotation is from True at First Light, a posthumously published work of Ernest Hemingway that was extensively edited (put together, I gather, or rather, culled) by his son Patrick. And that’s what Papa thought, late in his life, about the soul: It couldn’t be proved, it probably didn’t exist, maybe it depended on whether one believed in it or not. Continue reading Society and the soul, and you
Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea
I went shopping and bought The Old Man and the Sea, and read it for the first time in many years, and had this conversation.
June 13, 2007
10:30 p.m. Mr. Hemingway — Mr. phenomenal writer Hemingway — talk to me about The Old Man and the Sea.
It is a love story, of course. The old man loved the world, and his life, and everything in his life, and he particularly loved the boy who loved him. He loved the fish he caught, and God who had put him there, and even certain things about the sharks.
He was a tough old man of great unconscious pride and no arrogance.
Yes, that is right. He would have seemed arrogant in his strength in his middle years but he had learned humility and not by being beaten down or humiliated by anyone or by anything or circumstances, but just in the way a man at night in the ocean would see his size and the size of all around him and know that he is not nothing, but he is not the be-all and end-all either. Only those who get close enough to the source of living get to understand that, though perhaps some people are born knowing. Continue reading Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea
Hemingway on the effects of the Spanish Civil War
For those who came in late — this is another in a series of conversations I have with people who have passed over to the other side. I have found that at least seemingly we can connect with anyone we have a reason to connect with. I call it the Cosmic Internet. The process has been described by some as Active Imagination, which is not the same thing as fantasy. I suggest that you not read this trying to decide whether it is Hemingway speaking, or my idea of Hemingway, or something else, perhaps something we couldn’t even guess. It makes more sense and may prove more useful to you to feel whether the material resonates, in and of itself. Truth is great, and will prevail, but you have to be open to the possibility before it can do so.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Oh, papa, your For Whom the Bell Tolls! Does it not tell the truth! Such a relief from political lying, even by those on our side — so to speak. Upton Sinclair did not tell the truth as you did.
Upton Sinclair told the truth as Claude Bowers told it — as a form of weapon, as a club to beat the fascists and reactionaries with. But I was trying to do a deeper thing than that. Continue reading Hemingway on the effects of the Spanish Civil War
Henry Thoreau on guidance
9:30 a.m. Sunday March 12, 2006
All right, friends, I am going to be working on the assumption that I am working on a book about guidance – sort of not realizing it – this past 15 years, not to say 40. As Henry sat at Walden accumulating the wisdom and experience that became Walden, he thought he was doing something entirely different, at first, which was writing A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which wasn’t nearly so important. And perhaps I have been doing the same. So – comments, suggestions? Oh, and what was going on Friday night/ Saturday morning?
You understand me instinctively in the same way you understood Colin Wilson, and the result is that our consciousnesses and yours are linked in ways unsuspected by the outside world. Walden is a finished product, and could never be changed now because too many minds link to it, and share their being with it. But I live, and I am affected, as are we all by each other. Continue reading Henry Thoreau on guidance
Elvis, on life after fame
[Friday March 10, 2006]
Michael Ventura had said, as a joke, if I started channeling Elvis to be careful – but that made me think about it and I had a vivid sense of how imprisoned his life became. Hell.
Elvis, if you’d like to me to pass a message to Michael I am willing.
The imprisonment of fame
Thank you very much. (That’s a joke.) We do hear when our name is called, or anyway it’s sort of that way. And what the connecting mind knows, we know. At least, I do, or that’s how it seems to me. So I know your conversations. It seems to me that communicating through email isn’t much different from talking between the worlds, as you say.
I do have this to say. You both made the right decision, avoiding fame. Prison describes it exactly. I used to look out at the room full of people, in Vegas, say, and they all liked me, they weren’t mean about it, but they envied me, and I thought how they were all going to go back to wherever it was they lived and they were going to do what they wanted and nobody would much care. And my world kept getting smaller. I had my little bunch of pals – but that wasn’t really healthy, for me or for them. Hangers-on aren’t really pals. And my wife and even my baby – how was I to have a normal family life when nothing in my life was normal? But there wasn’t any way to get back to normal, even by failure. And the funny thing is, I’d have been happy being just somebody normal who sang. I loved performing, and I’d have sung for myself if nobody had listened – but all that money, and everybody wanting a piece of me, and people looking at me with this craziness in their eyes, wanting something that God Himself couldn’t give them—
People criticize the uppers and downers and the booze, but they don‘t understand, that was what was real in my life after a while. That wasn’t the craziness, it was the escape from the craziness.
Yes, I was created to open up the doors and blow in some fresh air and I did that. But at the same time, I had to live a life as a human being, and that proved to be too much to do. You two stop and think – you think of me as older than you because that’s how it started – but you’re much older now than I ever got. And you’re managing your lives.
I hope you don’t think I’m complaining about getting to be Elvis Presley! But part of that involved living in a box that just got smaller and smaller the longer I went on. It was good to squeeze out of it.
Thank you for listening to me – and Frank, if you’ll think on why your father liked me, it will tell you something about him.
Yes I get it already. Thank you.
Woodrow Wilson’s Defense
[Thursday March 9, 2006]
Woodrow Wilson on the creation of the Federal Reserve System
(9:40 p.m.) A first, a “by request” attempt to reach a specific historical individual. In this case it is Woodrow Wilson, at my brother Paul’s suggestion.
“Here is the quote. If you reach Mr. Wilson, before you ask him about the late amendment ask first if he ever actually said this:
“`I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.’ -Woodrow Wilson”
Mr. Wilson, my brother makes the excellent suggestion that I try to contact you to see if we can get the truth about the creation of the Federal Reserve System. We see that this will be valuable for two reasons if successful. First, because I don’t know the answer and so will know that this information (not just opinion) did not come from me, and second because we would like to know the facts. Many a conspiracy theory has been spun around the Federal Reserve system and it would be valuable to get to someone whose knowledge and word we trust.
You know perhaps that I have admired your work for years, though not without reservation. And we were told years ago that there is a direct connection between the author of any book and anyone who ever reads it. So let us see if that is so. I read your Division and Reunion at least twice – very interesting book, by the way.
Did you say it, or write it, and if so, where and when, and if not did you say anything like it? Continue reading Woodrow Wilson’s Defense