"Today if ye will hear His voice..."

"..Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts..." (Hebrews 3: 7-8)

I hear the song that the Heavenly Father sings.

His tones of everlasting Love and Peace 

reach my senses through songs of the birds,

early on this wintry day. 

Their strength and perseverance,

their feathered bodies, puffed from the frigid air, 

reveal joyful exuberance throughout the day.

Thus, through prayer, 

the Lord shows me Hope is always present: 

touchable, embraceable, palpable, making me able 

to move through this day 

humbly, energetically, thankfully 

in fulfillment of His promise.

© Jeanne I. Lakatos

Sydney Owenson, Intellectual Thought, and Positive Change

                                                                                                                 
From my book, Innovations in Rhetoric in the Writing of Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan, 1781-1859), pages 52-53: 

In her 1840 book, Woman and Her Master, Sydney Owenson makes the following observation:

As the acquirement of a physical elevation, in expanding the sphere of vision, and opening new and vast regions to the sense, obscures and diminishes the individual details comprehended in its grasp; so that intellectual and moral elevation, which has opened to the mind’s eye the wider fields of scientific research and of social combination, has caused the relative value of the smaller facts presented to its apprehension to be either overlooked, or mistaken. Society has become complicated more rapidly than philosophy and legislation can follow; the actions of man upon man, and those of the species upon nature, have multiplied faster than observation can co-ordinate, or reason control; until a positive advance has assumed the appearance of a relative retrogradation. (Woman and Her Master, p. 15)

The global network of intellectual thought feeds upon innovation within the consciousness of humanity. As one notion spirals to form a new idea, the resulting awareness creates new perspectives on issues not perceived within the current reality of some communities. Knowledge gained from sharing this new awareness provides more communities with intellectual capabilities to affect a positive change. 

Beoufed Up

Below is a poem I wrote a while ago after passing a farm and seeing the cows getting loaded onto a red cattle van. I was amazed to see the reaction of the cows across the street in the lower pasture, obviously distraught. On my next walk, I came across the farmer's wife, and she informed me that the cows were only on their way to their annual check up. Whew!!!

Beoufed Up

Brown cows loaded

into a red cattle van

One last bellow

to spare their ribs

Black cow shouts out

from the lower pasture

"Don't worry, Girlfriend!

I'll meat you on the other side."

This week, the 'girls' will be on the menu:

Porterhouse, Sirloin, Filet Mignon

"Medium Rare, au jus on the side, please."

I wonder,

as the restaurant patrons

pass the emptied pasture

in beefed up red sports cars

with their beoufed up selves,

will there be a longing?

© Jeanne I. Lakatos 

Heart and Consciousness

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In her book, Patriotic Sketches of Ireland, Sydney Owenson observes:

Political philosophy is an extension of the mind’s eye to the whole great scale of civil society, and demonstrating the close-linked dependencies of its remotest parts, affords to the benevolence of the human heart, and the comprehension of the human understanding, a social system, gratifying to the feelings of the one, and ennobling to the faculties of the other. (33)

The human heart and 'comprehension of understanding,' which I will identify as consciousness, are two distinct entities, for the heart, aside from its organic characteristics, contains the essence of human emotions. In contrast, comprehension of understanding involves the assimilation of intelligence and critical analysis as they interact with the psycho-physiological structure in a wondrous flow of human experience. I reflect on this concept in the following poem:

Flow I: Heart and Consciousness

Passion creates verve

whose song desires voice;

now boldly...sing,

radiate stillness,

encircle fear: enflame!

This fervor flows

with molten resonance,

gentle benevolence,

evolution through revolution,

illumined by 

the intricacy of simplicity, 

transformed 

through the interlacing.

© Jeanne I. Lakatos

Imre Madach's "The Tragedy of Man," Revolution and Knowledge

Photo: Illustration from website: http://www.wga.hu/html/z/zichy/index.html 

In The Tragedy of Man (1860), Hungarian playwright, Imre Madach, reveals the inherent spirit within humanity to resolve differences through knowledge. This play, consisting of fifteen scenes, depicts the first couple, Adam and Eve, in paradise whereby Eve questions the validity of the Lord’s request to deprive the couple of all knowledge. In her exchange with Lucifer in Scene II, she philosophizes:

Why should he punish? For if he hath fixed

The way that he would have us follow, so

He hath ordained it, that no sinful lure

Should draw us otherwhere; why hath he set

The path athwart a giddy yawning gulf

To doom us to destruction? If, likewise,

Sin hath a place in the eternal plan,

As storm amid the days of sunlit warmth,

Who would the angry storm more guilty deem

Than the life-giving brightness of the sun? (Scene II)

After leaving the garden of Eden for tasting of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve fall asleep in their new home and experience a number of historical events to become aware of the many ways humanity has grown into self knowledge, beginning in Egypt, where the couple learn of personal glory. Adam then longs to learn of humanity’s struggle for the good of nation, through experiences in ancient Athens, Greece. They discover hedonism in ancient Rome, Christianity in the form of knighthood of the middle ages, where he also discovers medieval fanaticism. This leads to his search for sense in the sphere of Johannes Kepler. However, in the world of Emperor Rudolph, Adam moves on to the French Revolution, where he encounters the deceit of Danton and the ultimate failure in humankind’s ability to execute a lasting revolution. He becomes disenchanted with humanity at the London Fair. In the final scene, Eve tells Adam of the upcoming birth of their second child. She foreshadows:

If God so will, a second shall be born

In sorrow, who shall wash them both away

And bring upon this wide world, brotherhood.

Well, we all know what happened with that relationship, so Imre Madach, who places the burden of man’s struggle at the hands of the woman, also illustrates that humanity has within its grasp the ability to seize control over its destiny as the heavenly choir of angels sings:

…Yet in the glory of thy road,

Let not the thought thee blind

That what thou dost in praise of God

Is wrought of human mind.

Think not the Lord hath need of thee

His purpose to fulfill,

And thou receivest from Him grace,

If thou mayest work His will.

The Lord responds: O Man, strive on, strive on, have faith; and trust! (Scene XV)

Therefore, Imre Madach reveals, through the artistry of his writing, his intense belief that within its own consciousness, humanity has the ability to advance harmonic relevance from dissonant experience, for he presents Eve as the mother of humanity with the conviction that her children will move humanity forward in their quest for true knowledge. (Lakatos 2007)

Revolutionary Thought Begins with Creative Emergence

'Equality Emerging' National University of Ireland, Galway, photo taken by me.

The following Biblical quote illustrates a position of Saint Paul to the Philippians regarding creativity. 

"For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things." (Philippians 4:8) Douay-Rheims 1899

Below, is a poem I wrote a while ago to illustrate a mindset that involves an appreciation of the Divine Source of inspiration:

A Humble Creation   
With every minute

the mighty Sculptor

molds, shapes me

into that which will

inevitably become

the fulfillment

of my dreams.

His Promise.

And I feel

the designated pliancy

of wondrous hands,

the angst

of sorrow and pain

blending

into sculpted reality

of laughter and joy,

humility

I, one loving creation

of the Almighty Artist.

© Jeanne I. Lakatos