December 28, 2012
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark Twain
December 24, 2012
A story to share on Christmas Eve.
A Legacy of Love
December 24, 2012
We have a family tradition that stretches back as far as I can remember. Every Christmas Eve, we listen to the story of The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico, narrated by Herbert Marshall and Joan Loring. As a child, my parents had the vinyl record in their collection, and a few years ago I bought it on iTunes perpetuate the ritual. This week, I found that the origin of the tradition dates back to the early 1950s when the recording was a Christmas gift to my mother’s family from Francis and Jessica Brett-Young, who shared the Christmas celebrations with them in Montagu all those years ago. Francis died in 1954, but the memory lives on.
Christmas Eve, for me, has become a time to reflect on the real values that underpin my life. Friends, family, and most of all, Love. Not just romantic love, but love in its most general form; compassion, empathy, kindness, forgiveness, honesty, humility, courage, understanding, and the multitude of other of Love’s derivatives. It’s fitting for me that at this time, we remember the birth and sacrifice of the Prince of Love for the sake of our mortal failings. A beacon of light in the darkness that is human existence.
How blessed I am to have an abundance of love in my life and what a gift to be given a chance to teach love to my children, so that they may carry the fire onward. Without love there is nothing but darkness and the void.
As I go through Life and try to piece the parts together; what will last and what will fade, what’s important and what’s just a distraction, I find increasingly and perhaps fittingly the paradox that everything of value and permanence is fleeting and ephemeral while at the same time there is no value in anything tangible. Life is only about Love and the tales of Love that live on once we’re gone, and life ends only when there’s nobody left to tell the tales of the Love that came before.
And so, at this time, I give thanks. For the love and light at the core of my being. For this crazy McSweeney clan that I was born into; a tribe of dreamers, artists, bleeding hearts, lovers and bards, with all their mortal failings and weaknesses. I love you more than you will know. Merry Christmas to you all.
December 6, 2012
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
Sailing by the Stars
December 4, 2012
I try to imagine what it must have been like for the early explorers as they set off in their little ships across the vast oceans. What courage it must have taken to sever all ties with home and journey into the unknown. “Here be Dragons” was used by the mapmakers to indicate the void beyond the known, but they didn’t let that deter them. I wonder what motivated them to abandon the comfort of the known and embrace the terror of the unknown. Of course, we will never really know, but ultimately only dreams have the power to draw us to venture into the true unknown, and with every bold dream, the mystery of the vision at its heart.
The boundaries of today’s world are so familiar and natural to us now that it’s easy to forget about the earlier times of sirens and demons, maelstroms and terra incognita. But it’s not just lines on maps; In the sciences, humanities and every human endeavour, it’s the dreamers that have pushed the boundaries and in doing so, redefined them and changed our world, or at least the way we perceive it.
Like so many other aspects of Life, I think that the boundaries that most define us lie within us. Quite possibly, they are the most difficult of all to identify and challenge. It’s so easy to go about life without really testing ourselves or pushing our own boundaries, and I find an inconsistency between one aspect of myself which wants to live easy in the moment and has its roots in appreciation, and another which is founded on pursuit and dreams and is rooted the hope of a better tomorrow. I suppose that the answer is to somehow find a balance between the two. In so many respects my life is and has been a never ending search for this. Balance. It’s almost as though to punish me for the disdain that I would hold for astrology, the stars saw to it that I was born with the sun in the constellation of Libra, and then ensured that I turned out to be the archetype of the sign.
And now, having set out naively and without much sense of direction, after following the winds of circumstance and having relished the journey, I find myself at the verge. At some point in our lives, I believe we’re all called to account. To take stock, as it were, of where we’ve been and what we’ve done and left undone. A recovery of truth divine and a reckoning of truth denied. Which way shall I go? Shall I stay in the realm of the known, or do I dare to venture beyond?
In this way I make my voyage. In my mind the memory of a vision draws me on. In my heart, the search for truth guides me. Like the needle of a compass turning North. But like mariners of old, I sail without compass in cloudy skies. Navigating by night, praying for a break in the clouds and an anchoring glimpse of Polaris. Scanning the horizon by day for the shore of the land that haunts me. Is it real, or is it just a dream?