I know great people. That is, or rather was, my big secret. These are people with profound thoughts and kind lives. Sometimes I have blogged about them. Other times, I have encouraged them to write about their ideas, healings or courageous acts and "give it to the world." Sometimes they have.
But more often, they haven't. Even with my best encouragement and finding potential publishers for them, offering to share my editing skills (such as they are) or giving them names of magazines where they could submit their brilliant ideas, it hasn't been enough to stir them to immortalize their most wise and wonderful ways. And so I know there are these profound thoughts and kind acts out there, unacknowledged and so under the radar of popular thought as probably never to be seen or heard.
This bugs me. But then, with the plethora of profound thoughts out there, who is being heard? Is it possible for everyone to be heard at once? Of course not.
So, I turn away from seeing acknowledgment as being the main way to affirm one's life and ideas/ideals. Maybe just to live a life of integrity, sharing one's wisdom and acting with courage and kindness is the reward in itself. Like a columbine flower growing on the unexplored side of a mountain, it is beautiful just because it is.
The characteristics of the great people I know are summed up in two ideas from MBEddy's book Science and Heath. In one idea, she talks about grand and noble lives including these qualities: "unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love--the kingdom of heaven." And then she goes on to say
Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity,-- these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence.
Being great has everything to do with being good. From her book Miscellaneous Writings (p. 354), she includes a cluster of ideas that, it seems to me, would lead one to greatness: "A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened and a character subdued."
But the grand core of all great lives is Love.
Love cannot be a mere abstraction or goodness without activity or power.... it is the tender, unselfish deed done in secret; the silent, ceaseless prayer; the self-forgetful heart that overflows; .....the gentle hand opening the door that turns toward want and woe, sickness and sorrow, and thus lighting the dark places of the earth. - Mary Baker Eddy
To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.
No comments:
Post a Comment