The best things come to those who dare
3.14.2011 | All Blog Posts, Contemplation and Meditation, Those Who Show Us the Way
Without leisure, contemplation, reflection, and worship, society is impoverished. Aristotle commended those who dared to shift the practice of their vocation so they had space to step back and reflect; he named them vital for society. Leisure alone can sustain the wisdom we need. Hence the necessity of contemplation, rapt attentiveness, living in the present. It’s a path too few really try; they assume it’s too difficult. It is difficult, but the best things come only to those who dare.
There is an inner geography of utter freedom. Find it.
There’s a glorious desolation of your falsehoods and attachments that comes with this abandonment.
Here, in this sheer nothingness and the absolute vulnerability of prayer, God comes and fills the yielded vessel with divine love and wisdom.
3.15.2011
Some readers have expressed interest in this line of thought stemming from Aristotle.
I’d suggest a longer treatment of the argument in Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Slim book by a strong Catholic philosopher. About it the New York Times Book Review says, “Pieper’s message for us is plain…. The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know-how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind-all this points to our peculiar leadership in the drift toward the slave society…. Pieper’s profound insights are impressive and even formidable.”
http://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp/1890318353
On the first page Pieper writes: “It is essential to begin by reckoning with the fact that one of the foundations of Western culture is leisure. That much, at least, can be learnt from the first chapter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. And even the history of the word attests the fact: for leisure in Greek is skole, and in Latin scola, the English ’school.’ The word used to designate the palce where we educate and teach is derived from a word which means ‘leisure’. ‘School’ does not, properly speaking, mean school, but leisure.”
3.15.2011
[...] The best things come to those who dare [...]