I was recently reading one of those modern spirituality articles, which was mostly the usual New-Age-ish, quasi-Eastern Mysticism, imitation Ken Wilber blah-blah-blah. But I did take note of a poem, by some would-be Hindu holyman, that speaks of “the placid sky”. Hmmm, interesting concept — the sky as an inspiration for spiritual centering and calmness. I did a Google search and came up with a couple of “western literature” poems making use of the same idea. They actually were rather nice poems, so I’ll give a few quotes:<\/p>\n
The Stars of Yon Blue Placid Sky in vivid thousands burn,
and beaming from their orbs on high, on radiant axles turn.
( Charles Tennyson Turner )<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
Silence guides the rivers flow
\nand Silence the light falling snow
\ndescending from the placid sky
\nso softly and so silently
\nthat even Silence bends her ear
\nand lists if she should perchance hear.
( Stephen Jenner )<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe growing grain and the placid sky have a kind of voice; and though you are alone,
the boundlessness of the universe is with you.
( Max Ehrmann )<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAh, very lovely. And mostly untrue. IMHO, the skies are very dynamic, anything but placid. Aside from the cycle of night and day, clouds usually amble about even on the most calm days. But more and more days are anything but calm. The skies have from time immemorial been hurling lightening bolts and tornadoes and angry black clouds at us, along with wind and rain and fog and snow and hail. If you are looking to Mother Nature for placidity and contemplative stillness, the sky is usually not the best of places to look. Not for long, anyway.<\/p>\n
And just yesterday, the US federal government released a big report called the “National Climate Assessment<\/a>“, an overview of what climate change and global warming has in stock for the homeland. One clear trend that is already being seen (even here in New Jersey, a really boring corner of the meteorological world before Hurricane Sandy) is the increasing frequency of storms<\/a> and extreme weather. <\/p>\n
So, as with all of the Americanized-Buddhism and other touchy-feely modern spirituality stuff, the concept of a “placid sky” is quite beautiful, but is need of a reality check. Not to say that we shouldn’t live “in the moment” on a lovely, sunny summer afternoon in early Summer. But nowadays, you’d best be ready to “batten down the hatches” at any time! I’ll leave you with another poem of sorts, or at least the lyrics from a song:<\/p>\n
Beautiful for spacious skies, but now those skies are threatening
(End of the Innocence, Bruce Hornsby and Don Henley)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was recently reading one of those modern spirituality articles, which was mostly the usual New-Age-ish, quasi-Eastern Mysticism, imitation Ken Wilber blah-blah-blah. But I did take note of a poem, by some would-be Hindu holyman, that speaks of “the placid sky”. Hmmm, interesting concept — the sky as an inspiration for spiritual centering and calmness. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4148"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4150,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4148\/revisions\/4150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}