hearts ablaze

[chelidon]

My bibliomancy for my partner is again, today from my friend Angela Magara's Earth Psalms, and I opened it to Psalm 127:

Psalm 127

Except Goddess lay the hearth, no heat will fill the fire.
Except we bank the coals, no fire will last.
It is foolishness to struggle, work, and deny joy
'less your heart is ablaze.
Our children, to the tiniest baby, are sparks to the future.
Now rejoice at the abundance of heat
We hold amongst us.
We will flame through generations and across time.

Yes, we will. Yes, they do.

Last night, the household sat and watched Pleasantville, a movie I remembered greatly enjoying back when it came out in 1998. What I caught the second time around was the well-crafted and creative cinematography, the fine attention to detail, the delightful use of visual metaphor, avoiding coming across with relentless heavy-handed visual cliches, despite a device (a black and white world where color begins to appear) which could have come off as merely a gimmick, instead of the aid to good storytelling that it ultimately becomes. No, not the most subtle at times, and with its share of flaws (one glaring example, the Don Knotts character is totally unfleshed-out, not so much a character at all, rather a convenient, and crude, plot device) but ultimately, a very effective firm, I thought.

And watching it again, and the subtext of the inherent tension between "pleasant" and "passionate," of the critical importance of finding and pursuing those things for which you have true, deep passion, and of both the light and shadow-sides of inspiring passion in people, re-dedicated me to something I really, deeply believe in.

I will be a warrior for love, for passion, for full, deep engagement with the universe and all those in it. I will not be merely a visitor in the world, or a tourist passing through my own life. I wish to expand, to find my potential, to know my self and my strengths, and to face and grapple with my challenges with courage and unflinching self-honesty. I wish to be continually inspired to grow, and I wish to do whatever I can to help inspire others to grow into their own truths and their own selves, and to find and explore their own passions in life.

I will do my best to face that challenge, to be a warrior for love. With will, intent and desire, with presence, awareness and openness, with beauty balance and delight, I choose to love beyond all reason.

How 'bout you?

Comments

[contentlove.livejournal.com]

Me? I couldn't have said it better, that's how.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

You're the only person I know who has said "warrior for love" out loud. I say it to myself in my head all the time, but don't reveal it because I worry other people will make light or make fun. I still follow it as best I can, though.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Interesting. One thing about that movie that I recall is that I can stand on both sides, the color and the black and white, and see them at the same time, which allows for some interesting pastels and other things... Okay the analogy is going to fall apart somewhere. I think one of the strengths I have that get me through like is my ability to take joy in things that are pleasant, things that are simple. Maybe this is a semantics thing. Maybe I just don't live my life to the fullest. But sometimes I do feel like a tourist. I can take a walk on a spring day and just look around. It feels like engaging to me? I'm a tourist in reality and it's fascinating and I can soak it in and feel blessed for being a part of it. It's not that I don't want to grow, change, or love, it's that sometimes I need to stop striving. "Passion" as I see it can be beautiful and wonderful to experience, but I also have this experience of it as wasteful and unnecessarily intense. Can one have a passion for the ordinary? A moderate passion? A Passion for moderation? Either way, the fact that I can even begin to understand where you're coming from pleases me greatly. I've been blessed to see and feel intensity.

Hope any of that makes sense.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

I think it does. For me, it's not intensity that I'm seeking, or rather, not constant or merely intensity -- I think that would wear someone out rather quickly ;> I find a distinction between living life engaged with what one has passion about, and just being an adrenaline junky or always seeking to jump from one "peak experience" to another. There must be time to rest, to integrate, to balance, to observe, to reflect. Sometimes the most profound changes, and most profound wisdoms, come in those most still, quiet moments.

There are many different levels of engagement. It sounds to me like when you describe talking a walk, you're fully engaging. When I speak of being merely a tourist, I mean passing through life without changing or being changed by it in any meaningful way. In the brilliant film "Johnna D'arc of Mongolia," there's a German tourist character who reads every last detail about the places she visits in her bible, the official guidebook, but who doesn't really see anything or let herself experience it, be changed by it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with "pleasant," and who would want to live a life that was unpleasant most of the time? Bleah! What I took from the film was the danger of seeking to make life constantly, unrelentingly pleasant, at the expense of danger, pain, deep passion, growth and change, and all of the other feelings and experiences that make us most deeply human as we pass through them.

[veedub.livejournal.com]

I will be a warrior for love, for passion, for full, deep engagement with the universe and all those in it. I will not be merely a visitor in the world, or a tourist passing through my own life.

you silver-tongued devil, you. that's going in my collection of sig lines. <3