Spoken Word Messages - Page 59

We have all seen the remarkable construction of the chambered seashell—how each year the developing marine animal adds another compartment to its home, making a larger, expanded dwelling to accommodate the annual growth. Oliver Wendell Holmes’ observation of this phenomenon led him to a conclusion about man's own need for continued growth and development. Speaking of the chambered nautilus, he wrote:

Is there really, somewhere, in a meadow far away, still a shepherdess who sings all day while she watches her flocks?  If there is, we are separated from her by a thousand cares, our world caught up in crisis, strung with personal tensions and responsibilities that tie us up and bind our songs within our hearts. For too many of us the world is bleak and gray and cold, and we are breathless with hurry as we rush from one job to another. No time for meadows or easy songs.

A dynamic and optimistic executive was once asked if he ever got discouraged. His quick reply was a pearl of insight. He said, "I don't get discouraged, but I do get tired. The Lord surely knew what He was doing when He put a night between two days."

Oh divine Redeemer…turn me not away…grant me pardon and…remember not my sins… oh divine Redeemer. 1

Of all the sicknesses which afflict man, homesickness is at once the easiest to contract and the most difficult to cure. For we can be exposed to this infirmity with a simple change of scenery or even a temporary move from familiar surroundings. We all remember our first extended leave from home: whether we were at camp, the home of relatives, or away at school—the symptom was always the same; it is the inexplicable longing for the one place we call home.

The turn of a decade, perhaps even more than the turn of a year, is a time for reflection, a summing up of where we've been, where the last ten years have taken us. Many observers have called it an age of turbulence and disappointment, a time when optimism was dashed by the problems and challenges of a changing world. Some have called it a time of retreat from old values and old assumptions about the way things are or ought to be. And many look to this new decade with all the unease of a child who wakes up in a strange house in a dark room.

The words of an old song suggest a subject: "Let us oft speak kind words to each other, At home or wher-e'er we may be ... "1 Negatively, it suggests another subject: the opposite of kindness, which is cruelty. There is so much need of kind­ness, and yet so many kinds of cruelty - the physical kind and sometimes the almost crueler, subtler kind - the cruelty of sarcasm, the cruelty of indifference, the cruelty of neglect, the cruelty of ignoring people, of making them feel small, inadequate, foolish, or frustrated.

There is a proverb that says: “Believe no tales from an enemy’s tongue.” But perhaps we can believe our own examination of ourselves.

One of the most gracious and considerate men of our acquaintance, and one of the busiest also, puts at ease those who come to call by giving them his complete attention. Many people seem preoccupied when others are talking to them, and the split attention is obvious. It is difficult to talk to people who are thinking two ways at once. This tendency has many manifestations. There are those, for   example, who only give half attention in their offices, who only give half attention in an interview, those who only give half attention when receiving instructions, those who try to read or study while looking at or listening to entertainment. This two-way attention is hardly effective for either purpose. Perhaps all of us have sat in church or in a classroom and received credit for being present when the thinking part of us really wasn't there.

“Build the more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!”1 This is more than a line of finely phrased poetry. It suggests we must not be indifferent, or resigned, or smugly satisfied with ourselves.

There is maxim quoted in Don Quixote which this day somehow suggests: "Where one door shuts, another opens. . .."1 We come to an end and find a beginning. 

We have spoken before of the several sides of this season.  But beyond all else, all the festivities, all the gathering of families and friends, the gayety, the gifts and giving, beyond all the outward evidence, there is yet a side to consider which is the essence of all that Christmas is.

What can one say for a season where so much is intermixed?  There is thoughtfulness for others, but a thoughtfulness preoccupied with a bustling of busy-ness.  Nor could one deny that sentiment is encouraged partly by commercial motive, but the sentiment is there, a sentiment set apart from all other times and seasons with many buying for others, few for themselves.  Whether or not all this is always wise, whether or not there are some excesses, whether or not it is partly compulsion, the compulsion of expectancy, of custom, the compulsion of comparisons, is something which by itself should sometime be considered—but, nevertheless, not at any other time are hearts so intent on doing so much for so many, moved by a spirit which is real, and different, and which runs down deep—despite all the mixture of motives. 

Last week we talked of the waste of worshiping the average, and that the average is neither an absolute nor an ideal and is not something with which we should necessarily be satisfied, and this we quoted from Carlyle: "Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can."1 In this day and season of many pressures, we frequently feel we ought to do more than we reasonably call.  We feel both the shortness of time and the magnitude of our tasks. 

Last week we closed with this comment: "Man is obviously made to think.  It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought."' And now we should like to turn to what follows from the thoughts we think: the doing, the learning, the practicing, the performing—and would preface what follows with a quotation from Carlyle: "Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can."1

Today we should like somewhat to summarize our subject of some weeks on our responsibility for all the thoughts we think, for our actions and utterances, and for turning from wrong ways; and the fallacy of being resigned to wrong, once we have made a mistake—the fallacy of postponing repentance when we have done wrong things, when he have thought wrong thoughts.  This whole subject seems somehow to be summarized in a single sentence from Pascal, who said: "Man is obviously made to think.  It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought."1 It follows, of course, that if he thinks as he ought he will do as he ought, for thought is the forerunner of all action and utterance. 

We would turn back today to a citation from Emerson which said: "Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. . .—"1 At this season when the harvest has been brought home, we are earnestly thankful that the fruit is in the seed, that the harvest comes from causes that can be counted on, that the Creator is over all. 

We would turn again to a sentence previously cited, which says: "What we are to be, we are becoming."1 This seems somewhat to coincide with another quoted sentence which says: "I believe . . . we will be judged as we are, for what we are, and. maybe not for what we have been!"2 When we have done wrong things, when we have thought wrong thoughts, when we have made mistakes, we can well be exceedingly grateful for the great and blessed principle of repentance—because there isn't very much that anyone can do about the past, except to learn from it.  But there is much we can do about the present and the future. 

We should like further to pursue the question of where thoughts come front and how we can control them—for controlling thoughts is essential to controlling all we are ever likely to become, everything we are about to be.  And he who persists in saying that he cannot help what be thinks, is in effect saying that be cannot help what he does.  And if he cannot help what he thinks or what he does, he obviously could not be trusted under any conceivable circumstances.  But fortunately we can control thoughts, because we can choose to think other thoughts, and the obligation for choosing clearly is ours, but it does require will; it does require wanting to; it requires concentration.  And this brings us to another side of the subject—the use of the mind for positive purposes.  Perhaps we have all been aware of being physically present and mentally absent. 

Last week we talked of "the seed and the fruit," of cause and consequence in thought and action and utterance, and of the importance of avoiding all untoward intent.  This scripture is perhaps most frequently cited on this subject: "For as he thinketh in his heart so is he."1 Now since thoughts are the forerunners of action, there sometimes comes the question: Where do thoughts come from?  How can they be controlled? 

Recently we cited a sentence from Emerson which said, "Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed;”  This suggests another sentence concerning cause and consequence which says, "There is a law, irrevocably decreed... upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing... from God it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated."1

We have talked in recent weeks of work: and would turn now for a moment or two to the question of how we work.  As already observed: work should be more than merely motions; more than for money; it should also be moral—and since it is the expenditure of life itself, it should provide not only essential material substance, but also satisfaction and a real sense of service.  Furthermore, work should be pursued if possible, in an atmosphere of orderliness.

Some recent weeks ago we spoke of willing work: its dignity, its healing power, its power to soften shocks and sorrows—work which Carlyle called "The grand cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever-beset mankind."1 There is yet another side of this subject of work that should be considered.  For want of a better word we might call it the worthiness of work.

Somewhere we have read a sentence which says "God is in the ... march of the seasons. . ."1 At this season of harvest, it seems to be so.  The changing of seasons is an always awesome sight.  And awesome would it also be if one of them failed to follow in order.  But blessedly the Creator and Administrator of heaven and earth has not left such things to chance: "He comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, . . . And ... he hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons; . . . and any man who hath seen any or the least of these hath seen God moving in his majesty and power."2

Last week in commenting on the anniversary of what Gladstone called the “…American Constitution,"1 we included some recent quotations from a "Challenge to the Citizen," by a distinguished judge—and now would cite some further sentences from the same source. 

This week we would let the words of the great British statesman, William E. Gladstone, suggest a subject: "... the American Constitution, is so far as I can see, the most wonderful word ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."1 This we would cite also from another source: "The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; a heavenly banner; … like the cooling shades and refreshing waters of a great rock in a weary and thirsty land. . . like a great tree under whose branches men from every clime can be shielded from the burning rays of the sun … founded in the wisdom of God"2 "by the hands of wise men whom [God] raised up unto this very purpose."3

In discussing the subject of living with ourselves, and of learning to live with life, some recent weeks ago, at this same hour, we made the remark that work itself is one of life's surest satisfactions, and one of' its surest shock absorbers. 

Last week we closed with a significant quote which said much and implied much more, in this single sentence: "There is nothing that a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits."1 While this applies to all travel, to all activity, to all social situations, more particularly we have in mind the many who, at this season, or soon, or at any season, leave home for school, for work, for military service, or for other purposes or pursuits.  And we have in mind re-emphasizing that people are more important than place; that what a person is, is more important than where he is; that character and conduct are of utmost consequence always, everywhere. 

In these recent weeks we have spoken of the person as being of greater importance than the place, and of our being inseparable from ourselves, which means, in a measure, that no matter where we are, or who we are, or what we are, or how much help we have, we have to do some part of the solving of our problems for ourselves.  We have to have the will and the willingness inside ourselves.  And this we say in face of the fact that there sometimes seems to be a tendency to desensitize people in a sense, physically, morally, mentally—sometimes almost seeming to be a seeking to evade rather than a seeking to solve. 

Last week we cited sonic thoughts on facing problems and opportunities, and on the fruitlessness of seeking to outrun ourselves.  And from Horace we recalled a comment quoted by Montaigne: “Reason and sense remove anxiety; Not houses that look out upon the sea.  Why should we move to find countries and climates of another kind?  What exile leaves himself behind?"1