One needs to risk to become a fool for love...

A friend sent me a quotation of John Newton noting how burdensome the past can be if we do not let it go. Also, how extra the weight of tomorrow can be if we allow it to take over our living today:

"We can easily manage if we only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burdens over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it."

We all know of the very serious and sensible movements, methods and systems to help us to mindfulness and to live in the present. Across the many disciplines of art, poetry, literature as well as history and philosophy as well as the biographies of individuals we have constant reminders of how slights and resentments of the past can utterly dominate and direct our present days.

Many countries have histories that are filled with massacres, wars and then revenge and retribution: it is as if forgiveness and forgetfulness have no part to play. Indeed, it is almost as if a determination to live is based on a determination not to forgive, forget and let go. Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie had the bitter hatred between her upstairs and her downstairs, a hatred that kept them alive. One died the other followed immediately...her purpose of life over. 

I was told, whether true or not is almost irrelevant, that Primo Levi took his own life for fear his growing dementia would let him forget the evil of the holocaust.

Do we learn from history?

What is it that can relieve the past?

How do we possibly right peaceably injustices, sleights, murders?

There are definitely virtues which may need us to sacrifice our present, our pride.

Do we fight for freedom to the point of physical combat and the risk to our own lives? Many heroes and heroines have been fighters for justice, for human rights and for personal and national liberation.

Sadly today there are many prisoners of conscience.

Sadly also many people are being persecuted and imprisoned for personal beliefs and ideals.

Arguments are set forth attempting to justify actions and attitudes and methods are used to galvanise political and social assent against others.

I ask myself the question: for what or for whom would I be prepared to fight, to risk my freedom, to risk my safety and lifestyle and even to risk my very life?

Would I ever be prepared to defend to the point of killing?

Do I walk by on the other side and refuse to confront evil...we know the saying that for evil to flourish it is for good men to do nothing. 

Years ago I recall a conversation with a military friend. He told me of the three places he had been deployed to keep the peace, to support the legitimate government, to fight the enemy and to preserve freedom and democracy. He told me the British army had trained him to " the very point where I could hear a bullet before it was fired". The training saved his life on more than one occasion. He was so trained as to be sensitive to the smallest nuance of discord around him...a trained instinct, a sensitive intuition, a total focus and awareness.

I try to take this sentiment in to my own life. I try to be absolutely aware of what I consider right and proper and loving so that in any situation my trained instinct is to do the loving thing.

I fail.

I fail often.

I recall my failures.

I ask forgiveness for them but I also train myself to leave those failures behind and to start afresh almost every moment of my life.

The cycle of evil, of violence, of hatred, needs to be broken...one needs to risk to become a fool for love.

Anne Beresford's poem on St Alexis, she told me was about this very point:

" In his father's house

   We're many rooms.

   He had known them all.

   he lay under the stairs,

   a place to sleep all he craved.

   Of the bride he had left weeping

   on their wedding night

   only a memory of perfume

   and silk sheets.

   He was a beggar

   one of Christ's fools."

An apparent fool will lay down his life for his friends, his enemies, for love.

Many an example is there to be followed.

#newton #beresford #foolforlove #burdens #daybyday