What a great surprise to see your piece on gratefulness.org, Chip!

I LOVED the “holistic thinking” idea and the connecting-of-the dots, as well as “the intuitive insight that … cuts through the clutter,” as you say. Actually, getting the gist of something, and synthesizing, are qualities even more difficult to find nowadays, because digital devices, the internet, and social media disperse focus and attention. Your ideas couldn’t be more timely!

Well, … it’s September 18 (an auspicious Chinese number!) and your book is going out into the world this very moment. Wishing it great success!

Let me surprise you, dear Kristi!

You ask: “But if we appreciate the sun, does the sun flourish more brightly in the field of our revelry?”

Well, yes it does! That’s what prehistoric man and even ancient societies actually did. They did not only adore the sun as being alive – a god in fact – but they also nourished him. Sometimes with simple prayers, but at others through animal sacrifices, and more rarely, (unfortunately) even human sacrifices. The Aztecs, for example, thought they had to feed Huitzilopochtli, their sun god, with human blood in order to help him vanquish his enemies and allow him to continue rising every morning.

Although the latter is an extreme example, it seems that we have given a complete circle and are now approaching the idea of appreciation from a higher pedestal in our human evolution. We may not need to take care of the Sun, but we certainly do need to take care of the Earth!

A great short theatrical play about the sun-adoration of the Inca, is “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” by Peter Shaffer. In the dialogue between the heathen Atahualpa and the “Christian” Pizarro, it is Atahualpa who proves to be the real Christian, by actually using some of the many nice points in your present essay! 🙂

Thanks a lot for sharing your soulful story with us, Jim! Reconnecting with Nature’s miracles can only bring strong emotions like those you experienced after getting out of the ‘haunting, one hundred and thirty year old farmhouse’. Sometimes isolation or even fear of being away from anything and anyone we know, as in your experience, can re-energize our mind and our thoughts like lightening re-energizes Earth, as you say. I very much liked the following: “This Lightening is NEEDED on the earth. It does realign energy lines that cover the entire globe…like a grid…like coordinates…all naturally made. It is all so perfect.” Very original idea!

Good question. I indirectly address it when I write, “it (the poem) becomes a poem of love only after the poet becomes engaged in loving acts – not before.” The feelings become “something” after they are expressed in real life. In the case of the poet, the feelings become the actual poem that the feelings generated. So the poem itself is an act, an expression of love. But it is not only this: In order for the actual feelings to generate a true poem of love, they must have somehow been “dipped” in some experience of loving action that the poet must have already had in the past. As I write a few paragraphs later, love is being taught to us during our upbringing through and by the loving acts of others toward us. So a true feeling of love as we learn to experience it, just like the “contemplation in action” of Brother David, is “feeling through the urge to act.” So, to continue with the example of the poet: The force that gives rise to the feeling of love that forms the inspiration for the poem, as well as the act of writing the poem itself are both immersed in action. In other words, the feeling that gives rise to a poem is not a Feeling that sits but a Force that acts!

Consider this as a short addendum to the essay. 🙂