Romantic Love: Friendship that has Caught Fire

Fidelity: Becoming loyal, reliable, consistent.

Love: Choosing commitment, is action.

Friendship: committing to another individual who has interests and goals in common, with affection and esteem.

Romancing love is “friendship that has caught fire,” filled with romance, passion and mental, emotional, and sexual intimacy.

Consider the fiery words of Sherman Alexie from one of his famous short stories. Roman and Grace are a married Spokane Native American couple. He is standing close to her with his basketball between them, as if the ball represents the expectant infant they will soon create...

“Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.

“You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”

“Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”

“Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”

Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day.

Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love—it just happens!—but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit...

Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that...that was what was missing in most marriages: politeness, courtesy…thank-you notes to his wife for the smallest favors, did the dishes…vacuumed...

...year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.

Then he lifted the ball over his head...and pushed it toward the rim...it caught fire.
From “Saint Junior” by Sherman Alexie, Grove Press, pages 176-178, 188
--

Yes, LOVE is friendship that has caught fire.
Love grows like a glowing vineyard in the sunrise,
takes root and develops one day at a time. Love
in maturity is like fine wine, improves with age.

Love is quiet understanding and mature acceptance
of imperfection. Love gives strength and creatively
opens in new ways
to your beloved.


You are warmed by your beloved’s presence,
even when your lover is away. Miles do not separate.
You want your beloved nearer. But near or far, you
know your lover is yours, and you are your beloved's.

Love means patience and trust. Love springs up;
you and your beloved feel more whole. Love fill
the empty spaces in your hearts, leads you both
to look up, and to give out to others.

Love is
creative, compassionate, gentle, and kind,
coming from deep in the heart, essential.

Love is choosing again and again, daily to love
your beloved even in the hard times.

Love is wider
than the widest, deeper than the deepest,
closer than the closest--
a fire of chosen passion.

Anon and adapted

Perseverance

All down, failed up low?
then fail on, without ceasing
so much edged beyond normal,
failing onward into victory
instead of ceasing--
quitting
without fail

--Daniel Wilcox


Famous example:
*The inventor Thomas Edison made thousands of failed attempts at creating a successful light bulb. When someone asked, "How did it feel to fail so many times?"

Thomas Edison said, "I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty, as perhaps you know, was in constructing the carbon filament, the incandescence of which is the source of the light." Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 1890 interview

Then in Edison’s failed efforts to create a good storage battery, Edison failed by conducting 10,000 experiments, too.
One of Edison’s friends said: “Isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven't been able to get any results?”

‘Edison turned…like a flash, and with a smile replied: “Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won't work!”
Edison: His Life and Inventions, Frank Dyer and T. C. Martin

Each failure, eliminated one possibility, and brought him possibly closer to the right one.

Brilliance, hard work, and PERSEVERANCE!

And, last but not least, make sure that what you persevere toward is the Good, the Compassionate, the Beautiful.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Taking the Belief Survey Again

In my search for what is true, good, and compassionate, I often strongly wish I had a larger community with which to identify, share, seek, search, and work, so find myself retaking this Belief-O-Matic Survey.

I've taken the quiz a few times over the last 10 years. Intriguing, how today, again, I came out as 100% liberal Friend.

But strange--yet not so strange--how my percentage for conservative Christianity keeps going down. Reached an all time low today of only 40%.

But, my deepest values and ethical views haven't changed, not since I was about 19. Rather Christianity has changed, gone off into the abyss.

Another intriguing change is that I came out 100% UU. Didn't expect that, though when I think about my intellectual, skeptical, and keen focus on seeking truth and human rights and social concern, it fits in the old 19th century sense of the UU.

What wonderful changes could occur in the world, especially in Palestine/Israel if more and more humans would turn to the radical peace-seeking movement across the years.

Like liberal Quakerism, Unitarian/Universalism was a grand tradition of seeking and bringing change.

Of course every movement for change has its dark side too, its own skeletons in its spiritual closet.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inhabit all social and spiritual movements. Only by constant reflection and self-correcting in humbleness can we humans make a difference.

What a loss is some of the current Quaker movement, even gone to declaring there is no truth to seek! And UU's have lost their deep quest for truth!

Gone to the superstitious, the new age, yet anti-religious, yet still practicing--for who knows why--archaic Protestant church rituals. About a year ago I visited one UU meeting. Dreary and superficial:-( I tried to be friendly and positive, but got the cold shoulder. Though I signed up for their email news letter, it never came.
I guess the views were mutual. Haven't been back.

Liberal Quakerism 100 percent

religious icon 100% Unitarian Universalism
religious icon 36% Seventh-day Adventists
religious icon 69% Bahá'í Faith
religious icon 37% Roman Catholicism
religious icon 47% Church of Christ, Scientist
religious icon 40% Conservative Christian Protestant
religious icon 27% Eastern Orthodox Christianity
religious icon 50% Hinduism
religious icon 56% Islam
religious icon 85% Jainism
religious icon 63% Liberal Christian Protestantism
religious icon 61% Mahayana Buddhism
religious icon 48% Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
religious icon 61% New Age
religious icon 57% New Thought
religious icon 45% Orthodox Judaism
religious icon 65% Orthodox Quakerism
religious icon 59% Reformed Judaism
religious icon 68% Scientology
religious icon 62% Secular Humanism
religious icon 64% Sikhism
religious icon 67% Taoism
religious icon 71% Theravada Buddhism
religious icon 45% Jehovah's Witnesses
religious icon 40% Neo-Paganism
religious icon 50% Atheism

See for yourself where you journey:

http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/BeliefOMatic.aspx

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

4-Letter Praise

4-Letter Praise

While the high tech media, low-minded men
Cuss you out
In 4-letters,
Let us sing to you God of All Becoming
Personal
Beyond all temporary selfishness
Exalted
Higher above than the highest high
Lowliest
Born a despised infant in a barn trough
Rejected
A reviled criminal executed and buried
Abandoned
So many tragic events and centuries past
Everlasting
One now present in all beings and things
Indwelling
Finite, erring beings so ever inadequate yet
Ultimate
But not scientifically evident
Incomprehensible
Incarnated in men’s spiritual acts
Compassionate
Giving, peaceful, patient, joyous
True
4-letter
Word--
Love



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox


First published in The Mindful Word,
and in the 3rd book collection
of published poetry selah river