walk

on wit

I watched this film last night. It is a profound story.

I have great affinity for learning and philosophy, though I am admittedly pedestrian in my own understanding of much. Learning is joyful. It is movement toward the Holy. But the solitary path for finding a deep metaphysical understanding of truth (Jnana Marga) - through science, philosophy or poetry is unfulfilling. I am not a hermit. 

We cannot know without experiencing, and even then, we only experience truth within our own damaged context. The John Donne comma or semicolon debate has only relational meaning. It is merely a representation and not yet true to me. It is as ethereal Magritte's pipe. 

I cannot fully know truth on my own. My pursuit of knowledge or beauty to the exclusion of relationship is valueless. What I know and learn is merely the backdrop to how I love those with whom I have the privilege to connect. The backdrop allows me to see truth more clearly. The foreground is where it lives.

"I am two fools, I know, 
   For loving, and for saying so" - John Donne

“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.” - Margaret Wise Brown

 

 

advent

"In metaphorical language, Christ is born in the poor manger of our own empty hearts, the poor manger inside us, emptied of all ego, of all clinging neediness. Advent is the time of cleaning, of emptying ourselves of ourselves (and anything else) to make room for the birth of Christ. Swept clean and empty, it is the poorest, most humble place on earth and yet the perfect place for the birth of God."

from: http://bit.ly/frJYcj

the end of the office... and the future of work

Excerpt from an article in the Boston Globe:

"This shift has begun to trigger a more fundamental examination of what a job is and what we expect to get from it. Despite the vast diversity of the work people do, the traditional notion of a job has tended to be a standard bundle of responsibilities, roles, and benefits: We do our work for an employer to whom we owe our primary professional allegiance, and that employer pays us and provides us health insurance and a sense of professional identity. In the United States, many of the laws that shape health insurance, retirement, and tax policy are structured around this model.

But in a few realms, people have begun to unpack that bundle and reassemble it in new, surprising, and potentially very important ways. As it becomes easier for companies to plug in on the fly to the constantly shifting network of freelance labor, freelance workers have begun to think not in terms of having a job, but of having a collection of different jobs at any one time."