"Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.
They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. The gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. . . The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.
I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-coloured chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do; indeed, it is a thing which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt very much on the varying qualities of toughness and endurance in the material. I explained to her that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and that I did not want them to endure in the least; and that from my point of view, therefore, it was a question, not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thing comparatively irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw she offered to overwhelm me with note-paper.
I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked the quality of brownness in paper, just as I like the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer. Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said (in an off-hand way) to the old woman; and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly other things. I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
With my stick and my knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs. . .
I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place to sit down and draw. Do not, for heaven's sake, imagine I was going to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim, and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right, and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green, and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright colours on brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of a cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all beasts. But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.
They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. The gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. . . The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.
But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funereal dress of this pessimistic period. Which is not the case.
Meanwhile I could not find my chalk.
I sat on the hill in a sort of despair. There was no town near at which it was even remotely probable there would be such a thing as an artist's colourman. And yet, without any white, my absurd little pictures would be as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water with him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk. The landscape was made entirely of white chalk. White chalk was piled more miles until it met the sky. I stooped and broke a piece of the rock I sat on: it did not mark so well as the shop chalks do, but it gave the effect. And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realising that this Southern England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition and a civilisation; it is something even more admirable. It is a piece of chalk.
"If we had the blessings without asking for them, we should think them common things; but prayer makes our mercies more precious than diamonds. The things we ask for are precious, but we do not realize their preciousness until we have sought for them earnestly."~ Charles Spurgeon ~
Concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle - free speech - they seize on whatever content happens to come their way and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
Our faith in letting it all hang out
Stanley Fish The New York Times
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2006
DELRAY BEACH, Florida
If you want to understand what is and isn't at stake in the Danish cartoon furor, just listen to the man who started it all, Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Rose told Time magazine that he asked 40 Danish cartoonists to "depict Muhammad as they see him," after he noticed that journalists, historians and even museum directors were wary of presenting the Muslim religion in an unfavorable light, or in any light at all.
"To me," he said, this "spoke to the problem of self-censorship and freedom of speech." The publication of the cartoons, he insisted, "was not directed at Muslims" at all. Rather, the intention was "to put the issue of self-censorship on the agenda and have a debate about it."
I believe him. And not only do I believe that he has nothing against Muhammad or the doctrines of Islam, I believe that he has no interest (positive or negative) in them at all, except as the possible occasions of controversy.
This is what it means today to put self-censorship "on the agenda": the particular object of that censorship - be it opinions about a religion, a movie, the furniture in a friend's house, your wife's new dress, whatever - is a matter of indifference. What is important is not the content of what is expressed but that it be expressed. What is important is that you let it all hang out.
Rose may think of himself, as most journalists do, as being neutral with respect to religion - he is not speaking as a Jew or a Christian or an atheist - but in fact he is an adherent of the religion of letting it all hang out, the religion we call liberalism.
The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously. This is managed by the familiar distinction - implied in the First Amendment's religion clause - between the public and private spheres. It is in the private sphere - the personal spaces of the heart, the home and the house of worship - that one's religious views are allowed full sway and dictate behavior.
But in the public sphere, the argument goes, one's religious views must be put forward with diffidence and circumspection. You can still have them and express them - that's what separates us from theocracies and tyrannies - but they should be worn lightly. Not only must there be no effort to make them into the laws of the land, but they should not be urged on others in ways that make them uncomfortable. What religious beliefs are owed - and this is a word that appears again and again in the recent debate - is "respect"; nothing less, nothing more.
The thing about respect is that it doesn't cost you anything; its generosity is barely skin-deep and is in fact a form of condescension: I respect you; now don't bother me.
This is, increasingly, what happens to strongly held faiths in the liberal state. Such beliefs are equally and indifferently authorized as ideas people are perfectly free to believe, but they are equally and indifferently disallowed as ideas that might serve as a basis for action or public policy.
Strongly held faiths are exhibits in liberalism's museum; we appreciate them, and we congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask of us more than we are prepared to give - ask for deference rather than mere respect - it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the last week have filled the pages of newspapers.
One of those arguments goes this way: It is hypocritical for Muslims to protest cartoons caricaturing Muhammad when cartoons vilifying the symbols of Christianity and Judaism are found everywhere in many Arab countries. After all, what's the difference? The difference is that those who publish such cartoons in Arab countries believe in their content; they believe that Jews and Christians follow false religions and are proper objects of hatred and obloquy.
But I would bet that the editors who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it gratuitously, almost accidentally. Concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle - free speech - they seize on whatever content happens to come their way and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
This is itself a morality - the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form. It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil. And the difference, I think, is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors.
The argument from reciprocity - you do it to us, so how can you complain if we do it to you? - will have force only if the moral equivalence of "us" and "you" is presupposed. But the relativizing of ideologies and religions belongs to the liberal theology, and would hardly be persuasive to a Muslim.
This is why calls for "dialogue," issued so frequently of late by the pundits with an unbearable smugness - you can just see them thinking, "What's wrong with these people?" - are unlikely to fall on receptive ears.
The belief in the therapeutic and redemptive force of dialogue depends on the assumption (central to liberalism's theology) that, after all, no idea is worth fighting over to the death and that we can always reach a position of accommodation if only we will sit down and talk it out.
But a firm adherent of a comprehensive religion doesn't want dialogue about his beliefs; he wants those beliefs to prevail. Dialogue is not a tenet in his creed, and invoking it is unlikely to do anything but persuade him that you have missed the point - as, indeed, you are pledged to do, so long as liberalism is the name of your faith.
Stanley Fish is a law professor at Florida International University.
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"
- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Hmm...
I ve always been a computer idiot and couldn't be bother with blogs. Have always thought that bloggin is an invasion of privacy and a waste of time.
Beginning of February, SL asked me if i blogged and I told him no. He asked me why not and I told him lazy lai.. and I never like writing diary (reminds me of the bad and sad times which I have no intention of remembering at all). H/w, he told me that we can now use our blogs to share our walk with God and to inspire people with our testimony. At that time, I thot it was a great idea, but was lazy to walk out of my comfort zone and explore st different.
On 9/2/06, I was about to start studyin when I was suddenly inspired to write about my walk with God in my notebook. The title was prayers and answered prayers. While I was tryin to recall the things I have prayed for and the prayers God has answered, I realised that I had to think very hard and there were lots of things to write about(feelings, thoughts and incidents). At this point of time, I realised that I should start a blog! For the first time, I wanted to share my testimonies with people. I wanted people to experience the goodness and the reality of God. Most of all, I wanted to remember every single step of my life with God, for the old has gone and the new has come. This new life is definitely something worth remembering and sharing...
"I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing that we have in christ." (phil 6)
Petrina dream on x 12:38 AM
Void
Friday, February 10, 2006
It sounds so strange, but today, I heard Ellson talking to this friend of ours, asking him to look into the sky tonight and get a feel how small and seemingly insignificant are we. And I decided that while I was walking home just now, to take a look at the sky, just a look, and yeah, we are so small..., mankind is just so small within the macrocosm of this universe. Just exactly two months ago, I would look at the sky, and get the feeling of emptiness and void within me. I wouldn't admit then, and I wouldn't even be bothered about it then.
But, friends, sometimes we reached home after a day of 'fun' and even so, we still feel a sense of void and emptiness in our heart, as if everything has lost its meaning and purpose. Sometimes, we got what we want but we do not feel the sense of achievement. Have you had that kind of feeling before?
But bear in mind, it's not a question of whether you are bored or not, but a question of whether do you feel fulfilled or not, it's the question of the 'void' in our heart. Cos if you are bored, all you need to do is to just party the night away and walaaa, you got rid of the boredom. Anyway, the failure to make the distinction between the void and the boredom is what a lot of us experience at time, and that resulted in a lot of us engaging in a lot of 'fun activities' such as partying to fill up the 'hole'. So what's the 'void'? And what are we doing about it?
This reminds me of a famous saying by Pascal: 'When Man is created by God, we are created with a space in our heart, it's a God-size void which only God can fill' (parahrased). Perhaps that is why, when the night is silent and the air is quiet, that when we are alone, we hear a voice, an unknown and yet familiar voice whispering to us. I dun know if some of the readers can identify with that, but certainly there's a voice which is constantly speaking to us. That is the voice of the One who is able to fill our 'God-size' void. Whether you take it or not, it's entirely up to you. I'm attemtpting to explain this void.
Eventually, I'm not going to prove to people the validity of my argument. Cos if God can be proven by empirical method, then he shouldn't be called God. That's also the reason why people failed in their try to prove the existence of God without letting him to fill up the void. Cos God is not the result of the kopitiam discussion, but the reason why we are able to sit in the kopitiam and discuss about Him. Therefore, I am unable to prove God's existence except through my own personal experience. In fact, the best evidence of God's existence is our hearts, when He enters the 'void' and makes it His home. That is the best proof and the beginning of a purpose driven life (not advertising for Rick Warren). As what He has said, 'I have come that they may have life and have it to the full' (John 10:10b)
Dynamo cleans your head like nothing else can.
