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Aug. 27, 2005 Faith moves mountains. As one rises from bed and the covers heave, the entire universe of pillows, sheets, and comforters is totally transformed. Bedbugs, spiders, and resting cats can't help but take notice. Humans, too, can observe the changes. Without faith a man awakens and scarcely moves a muscle. He may require a dose of amphetamine to come awake and faithful. Certainly without the extra chemical the man will never move the mountain of himself. He will remain clinically depressed. Instead of amphetamine, caffeine may be the man's drug of choice. Fact-oriented teachers and schoolchildren may call a blessed poet a fricken liar, and discourage a natural poet from writing or speaking. Indeed, schools frequently reward the factual boy who remembers every jot and tittle that's been scratched on the blackboard or printed in the textbook. Such fact-oriented boys may easily score 150 or 180 on an IQ test. But a compulsive poet sees the wrinkles of a comforter as waves on the sea, and some leaves placed there may provide the young imagination with many a tale of whales, dolphins, or ships adventuring on the high seas. (See Robert Louis Stevenson's poem My Bed is a Boat. In a burst of tremendous energy, Jesus took off from his usual humdrum carpenter's job and wandered alone in the desert wilderness. Soon after the very imaginative and possibly sun-struck man emerged spouting unheard-of poetry. Claims of extraordinary import followed the emergence of this natural poet. Almost ever since people have been trying to accept the sayings of a natural poet as statements of natural fact. Two such sayings are "Faith moves mountains," and "Faith is like a mustard seed." Jesus also spoke of "My Father" and he said, "In my Father's house are many mansions." Trying to interpret as natural facts the sayings of this natural poet has caused no end of arguments. Even today, in homes and in schools young poets are sometimes just labelled "liars." Jesus' energy was not great enough to cause people to pay attention to this error, however. People have always paid attention to Jesus for other reasons. His poems and stories became legends. When a skeptic such as Thomas Keyes denounces a poet-mystic who says, "Faith moves mountains" and thinks he has made a case because the poet can't actually even move a clod of earth let alone a whole mountain by will power, psychic means, yogic force, or by mere mustard seed power, the skeptic has only shown his gross ignorance of language and particularly poetry. The truth is, spoken and written language can be used (a) as a factual report to communicate factual information and excite scientists (b) to equate or compare one thing to another thing as in poetry and in mathematics to excite poets and mathematicians alike. Poetry is an aspect of word usage that may be confused with lying. As a result, a child like Tom Keyes might well grow up without composing a single poem. In fact a person might even suggest that in times past when Tom Keyes was (as he says) addicted to various substances, this addiction was due in part because he'd never cultivated a poet's singing heart. In fact in an effort to be factual and truthful he'd spent so much of his brain energy cultivating the non-emotional and purely factual aspect of language that he needed a chemical kick in the pants to get out of bed and get on with the day. He didn't wake up in the morning humming and singing. Quite a lot of modern students are like this for the same reason. It certainly is to Tom Keyes' credit that he managed to overcome his addictions! I respect the man for this and you should too. Tom's next major achievement is in language. Robert Louis Stevenson can help him on this one. Stevenson says among other things, "The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." Think about it. Use your imagination. Furthermore, as you keep on groping for answers, don't ever give up the peace. You're proud of your linguistic skill, Tom, and you've published some mathematical formulations on U-K. Now let's see an original poem. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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