Dan Pallotta

Friday, February 25, 2005

Have you ever read Meister Eckhart? Oh he is wonderful. He lived, they say, in the 13th century, and was a mystic and a prophet. He wrote about about God in a way more accurate to my experience of God than anyone else I have ever read. There is a great book by Matthew Fox called, "Meditations with Mesiter Eckhart that contains translations I think you'll love. Here are a few choice ones:

"The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."

"The most beautiful thing which a person can say about God would be for that person to remain silent fro9m the wisdom of an inner wealth. So, be silent and quit flapping your gums about God."

"Above all else then; Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive."

"Into the sea all the rivers go, and yet the sea is never filled, and still to their goals the rivers go."

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Thursday, February 24, 2005

Imagine little children watching the news our society puts out every evening. Are they being taught to imagine, to innovate, to believe in their ideas, to dream, or are they being taught to fear, to protect, and to suspect? Are they being taught to ask why or are they being taught to ask nothing? Are they being taught to open up or to shut down?

In the answers to these questions lies the real tragedy of our world today. But we can imagine a different world - one in which children cannot wait to turn on the news because it will bring them messages from around the world of the most fantastic new horizons being opened up by people just like themselves - a world wherein imagination reigns. By that, I do not just mean the imaginative skill it takes to come up with a great painting. I mean too the imaginative skill it takes to overcome the world's greatest problems.

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Wednesday, February 23, 2005

I read a great thought today that went something like, "if we're never willing to go too far we'll never know how far we can go." We cannot overestimate the extent to which we are taught to limit our hopes and dreams - how much we are conditioned to accept a watered-down kind of optimism that bears no resemblance to the true optimism in our hearts. The true optimism of the human imagination sees a world without war or hunger, a world where we are exploring other planets, a world where cars run on compressed air and hydrogen, a world where every child in the world is well-educated - and it sees all these things in our lifetime. This is God's imagination. When we limit our own hopes and dreams, we limit God's. It is important that we recognize that the ultimate expert on these things is not the establishment. It is God. This will serve to make us feel less stupid when we indulge the full horizon of our dreams. We are not indulging silliness. We are indulging God. Hell of a counter-balance to the establishment, don't you think?

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