Friday, May 4, 2018
SIMPLE
Hi There !
So, here's the scoop.
Be the first to know.
It's not salacious enough for the
National Inquirer,
but I do need to fess up to you.
For four days, four long days,
I've tried to write
a piece for you on
Simplicity.
It simply hasn't worked!!
That may say something about simplicity.
It sure says something about me!!
So here's the best I can do right now.
Simplicity isn't all that simple.
That's especially true in
our time and place.
For most of history
life was simple, but hard.
Today life is complex and hard.
The current of our culture
runs hard and fast
with complexity upon complexity.
We live in an epoch flooded
with countless technologies and systems
subtly in the service of materialism.
The theme song is
More.
"More is better,"
and all the more so if
More
increases by geometric progressions.
Our psyches, our souls, our society
are so speeded up in the pursuit of
More
that we get separated from each other
and our true selves,
blur out clear channel connect to
The Ground of our Being
as we zip along on the surface of things.
So, how about you?
How goes living in this epoch of
technologies and systems
with all their complexities
work out for you?
What effect have they had
on your spirituality out here
on the street of everyday living?
I'd be surprised big time
if it wasn't quite a lot.
They are now the ground we walk on,
the air we now breathe.
They effect us more than the weather.
For all the stress involved, though,
the technologies and systems
of our times carry much good.
They can:
- get you from New York to London in 7.5 hours
- get the laundry washed and dried
- get us in "text touch"
- get us strawberries out of season
- get us warm in the cold,
and cool in the heat
- get us credit "carded"
- get us inter "netted" and face "booked"
- get you a new knee,
or do a repair on
all sorts of body parts
- get a pizza delivered at two in the morning
- get us endless data, information,
and entertainment instantly.
Yet, our technologies and systems
segment, suppress, stultify, stymie
and stress us.
- we work in one place
and reside in another,
the two often connected
by a torturous commute
- on the way, many drop off
the kids at a third place
for others to raise
- many work in cell blocks
of cubical and relational confinement
- for others it is isolated work stations,
assembly line posts, delivery vehicles
- being inter "netted' and face "booked,"
our privacy is striped naked,
bared to all, all in all
- medical attention is
depersonalized and mechanized
- many of the elderly are cloistered
in colonies of isolation and loneliness
- when the power goes down
just about every thing stalls and stops
- we walk by each other on crowed streets
ear budded in solitary confinement
- to rent a car or have a medical procedure
we blindly sign pages of
incomprehensible legalize
- there are programs, protocols, procedures,
forms, regulations that never heard of simplicity
- we Tweeter, Instagram, face time, text, SnapChat
incessantly, and for too many, addictively
- there's an app for just about everything
except tying your shoes
(of course, how many people
ware shoes that need to be tied anymore ?)
- work and recreation are paced
like a high speed machine
- we are data drowned and
information force fed
Our psyches and souls get
distracted, scrambled, stressed,
kept at a superficial level.
Society gets segmented, and lonely.
To survive,
and hopefully flourish,
in this high speed ride
to distraction and social fraction,
restricted to the surface of stimulation,
we simply must simplify.
We simply must simplify
speed, space, "stuff" and style.
We need to simplify at soul level
and all the way out to
attitude and function.
and do so for sanity and society's sake.
It takes smarts and courage
to be counter cultural
while functioning in our
hyped up technological and
systematized society.
Our very sacred selves
and our very sacred society
depend on rebalancing simplicity.
Otherwise we are tipped on the hurried surface,
distanced from our Center and Source,
our deepest selves orphaned and abandoned.
We become technological and
systems paced and powered robots.
To simplify we go deep and real to our
Source and Center - God,
or whatever you choose to call
Fundamental Being,
Fullness of Reality,
Existence Itself,
The Energy of the Cosmos,
Being.
Our being and doing evolve from
that underlying, all pervasive
Being and base,
the font of existence.
To get our bearings and balance,
to simplify for full living,
we need to
"Return to the Source."
Speaking of that Source,
Thomas Aquinas said
"Deus est simplex,"
"God is simple."
That means:
- no moving parts
to complicate, collide,
or break down
- unitive
- whole
- solid state
- an integrity
- A Oneness
Sensitive to our Source,
consciously centered there,
we live out our lives
simply and sanely
from right there,
not in whip lash reaction to complex,
surface simulation.
So growing detangles
the complexity holding captive
our heads and hearts,
frees us from a hell bent pace
and a maddening manner of
robot-like living,
one restricted to surface existence.
Where and how we live,
our pace and life style,
our financial choices,
our time to muse and schmooze,
addressing issues of social justice,
caring for the elements,
hugging babies,
having time and energy for a lover,
getting lost in a meadow, symphony, good book,
being Spirit feed and free,
all these open up and bloom to beauty
like a Spring garden.
It takes some time and sorting out.
Otherwise, we are "taken out"!!
So, for the next week
let's take time each day
detoxing, sensitizing to simplicity,
allowing God's Simplicity,
Integrity, Wholeness to be ours.
The Meditation Markers that follow
are offered to support that refreshment.
Let's be wise enough to catch ourselves.
If we don't, it'll be Artificial Intelligence
and artificial too much else
from here on out,
and out we will be!!
***
.
A warm welcome to those new
to our weekly sharing here.
We are blessed this week
with new connections
in the United Arab Emirates,
Columbia, Portugal and Oman.
How good to be together here.
Thank you for your company.
"frankly speaking
is available here online at
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
and can be bookmarked for easy access.
It is also available for automatic delivery
by email. Please see the top right
of the online posting.
Past posts are available from
Blog Archive
located at the bottom right of the online version.
New posts go up toward the end of the week.
Ever good wish and abundance of blessings.
To borrow from the dear Shakers,
" Tis a gift to be simple..."
Holding you in
God's Dear Love,
John Frank
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MEDITATION MARKERS
We find a place of Sanctuary.
We go there each of the next seven days.
We dedicate time to be stilled and centered.
We slowly savor each of the sharings for that day.
We then go back over them, selecting the one (s)
that most speak to our spirit.
We consider:
- what is being shared here?
- how am I/am I not experiencing that?
- how can it happen freely and fully
in my spirit and in the practicalities
of my every day life?
- what new attitudes and behaviors
will free me for that?
- what one practice will I embrace today
to facilitate that?
We spend our concluding time being quietly grateful in God's Simplicity.
****
.
"Tis a gift to be simple,"
THE GIFT OF SIMPLICITY
DAY ONE
- " Childhood means simplicity.
Look at the world
with the child's eye."
Kailash Satyarthi
- " In character, in manner, in style, in all things,
the supreme excellence is simplicity."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- "Live simply, so that others may simply live."
Mother Theresa
- " If you can't explain it to a six year old,
you don't understand it yourself."
Albert Einstein
- "I have just three things to teach you:
simplicity, patience, compassion."
Lao Tzu
DAY TWO
- "Pure, holy simplicity
confounds all the wisdom of this world
and the wisdom of the flesh."
Francis of Assisi
- "Simplicity is not an object in art,
but one achieves simplicity
despite one's self
by entering into
the real sense of things."
Constaintin Brancusi
- "Possessions, outward success,
publicity, luxury...to me these
have always been contemptible.
I believe that a simple and
unassuming manner of life
is best for everyone,
best for both the body
and the mind."
Albert Einstein
- "Reduce the complexity of life
by eliminating the needless wants of life,
the labors of life reduce themselves."
Edwin Way Teale
- " Have nothing in your houses
that you do not know to be useful
or believe to be beautiful."
Hans Hofmann
DAY THREE
- "How many undervalue
the power of simplicity!
But it is the real key to the heart."
William Wordsworth
- "All the masters tell us that
the reality of life -
which our noisy waking consciousness
prevents us from hearing -
speaks to us chiefly in silence."
Karfried Graf Durckheim
- "Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being."
Lao Tzu
- "The heart at rest sees
a feast in everything."
Hindu Proverb
- " The ability to simplify means
to eliminate the unnecessary
so that the necessary may speak."
Hans Hofman
DAY FOUR
- "Find ecstasy in life;
the mere sense of living
is joy enough."
Emily Dickinson
- "To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable,
wealthy, not rich;
to study hard, think quietly,
talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds,
babes and sages
with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely,
await occasions,
hurry never;
in a word,
to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow through the common.
This is to be my symphony,
William Ellery/Henry Channing
- "Truth is ever to be found
in simplicity,
and not in the multiplicity
and confusion of things."
Issac Newton
DAY FIVE
- "Besides the noble art
of getting things done,
there is the noble art
of leaving things undone.
The wisdom of life consists
in the elimination of non-essentials."
Lin Yutang
- "Fools ignore complexity.
Pragmatists suffer it.
Some can avoid it.
Geniuses remove it."
Alan Perlis
- " Simplicity is not about deprivation.
Simplicity is about
a greater appreciation
for things that really matter."
Anonymous
- " Simplicity is not style,
it is a state of harmony."
Naoto Fukasawa
- " Simplicity is making
the journey of this life
with just enough baggage."
Charles Dudley
DAY SIX
- "There is no greatness
where there is no simplicity,
goodness and truth."
Leo Tolstoy
- "My encouragement :
delete the energy vampires
from your life,
clean out all complexity,
build a team around you
that frees you to fly,
remove anything toxic,
and cherish simplicity,
because that's where genius lives.'
Robin S. Sharma
- "There is a beauty and clarity
that comes from simplicity
that we sometimes
do not appreciate in our thirst
for for intricate solutions."
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
- "When you remove layers,
simplicity and speed happen."
Ginni Rometty
- "Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity,
reduce selfishness, have few desires."
Lao Tzu
DAY SEVEN
- "Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more,
whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more,
love more, and all good things will be yours."
Swedish Proverb
- "Beauty of style and harmony
and grace and good rythm
depend on simplicity."
Plato
- "Three Rules of Work:
Out of clutter find simplicity;
From discord find harmony;
In the middle of difficulty
lies opportunity."
Albert Einstein
- Shaker Hymn
Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free
'Tis a gift to come down where I ought to be
And when I am in the place just right
I will be in the valley of love and delight
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and bend I will not be ashamed
To turn, to turn will be my delight
'Til by turning, turning, I come round right.
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