Dreaming of Silver Roses

For Safe Passage, Fellow Sojourners…
Current mood: adventurous
Category: Life

     I am like every one else. I am on a quest; I look for Truth. When I get stuck there are a few places I repeatedly go back to in order to get my bearings on my adventures. If you want to know my heart this is a pretty good road map. The Bible certainly is my first resource, but not my only resource.

 

      Here are a few passages that have continuously spoken to me- there are tons more- but these are excerpts from some of my security blankets when the weather of the soul grows cold. Hope they help you warm up when you need it. (I actually recommend reading the entire works they are from by the way!)

 

          Aunt Serena, leaning slightly on Stassy, came in and joined us. “You will find that penguins are totally communal creatures. If one penguin heads for the sea, two or three others will follow. If they stray from each other, they become easy prey for their predators. … But while penguins are communal, living in community, they have no intimacy. They are dutiful with their babies, but they do not love.”

      “Why?” I looked at a snapshot of a line of penguins which seemed to be hurrying down to the water.

      “Life is too treacherous. If you become intimate with spouse or child who may be eaten in the next hour, you are too vulnerable. You cannot afford affection.”Something in her voice made me shiver.

 

     “Penguins,” I said. “But human beings can’t live that way.”

 

     “Sometimes they have to,” Aunt Serena said. “When parents knew that they were going to lose their babies and young children to scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, they could not afford the kind of secure love that exists between parents and children today.” …

      “But people still loved each other, I mean, they always have!” I cried. … “But mothers nursed the babies! How could they help being intimate?”…

      “They couldn’t help it,” Aunt Serena agreed, “but you already know, Vicky, that the more people you love, the more vulnerable you are.”…

      “Maybe our intimacies are more precious if we know they may be taken away.” …

      Aunt Serena said, “You are wise, my child. I do not regret my intimacies, no matter how expensive, not with any of the people I have loved…” - Troubling a Star, L’Engle, pg. 77-79

 

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“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added,
“You’re very pretty to look at.”

“I’m a fox”, the fox said.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince, “I’m so unhappy.”

“I can’t play with you,” the fox said, “I’m not tamed.”

“Ah! Please excuse me,”said the little prince.
But after some thought, he added: “What does that mean—’tame’?”

“You do not live here,” said the fox, “What is it you’re looking for?”

“I’m looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean—tame?”…

“It’s an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

“To establish ties?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “to me, you’re still nothing more than a little boy
who’s just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you.
And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I’m nothing more than a fox
like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.
To me, you’ll be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world …”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
“Please—tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I’ve not much time.
I’ve friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox.
“Men have no more time to understand anything.
They buy things all ready made at the shops.
But there’s no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship,
and so men have no friends any more.
If you want a friend, tame me…”

“What must I do, to tame you? asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox.
First you’ll sit down at a little distance from me – like that – in the grass.
I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing.
Words are the source of misunderstandings. …

So the little prince tamed the fox.
And when the hour of his departure drew near—

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It’s your own fault,” said the little prince.
“I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you…”

“Yes that is so”, said the fox.

“But now you’re going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes that is so” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.”
And then he added: “go and look again at the roses.
You’ll understand now that yours is unique in all the world.
Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses…

And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox.
“And now here’s my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,”
the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–”
said the little prince so he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it.
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
You are responsible for your rose…”

“I am responsible for my rose,”
the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember. – The Little Prince, Antoine de St. Exupery, from Chapter 21

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“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin — to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours — closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word.”  – Merry to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring,  J.R.R Tollkien

  

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“…you have to allow even the people you most admire to be complex and contradictory like everybody else. The more interesting somebody is, the more complex. … You don’t have to like it, honey, but you do have to understand it.” – House Like a Lotus, L’Engle, pg. 272

Filed under: life on February 20th, 2008