We all long to be free. Free as a bird. And this longing is a tacit admission that we are limited in so many ways. For some it is the limitation of being the "wrong" skin colour, the limitation of being born in an impoverished country, or we feel the limitation of being born at the wrong time, or with the wrong body.
Or it is the sense of the passing of days and the limitation of our finite lives.
Whatever the form of our prison- we long for freedom.
There is in all of us an innate sense of beauty and an accompanying longing and desire for it. It may be expressed in the desperate joy of making friends with a rat in a dark, dank and lonely dungeon of solitary confinement. It may express itself as the joy of a panoramic view on a spotless day.Or as that exquisite moment with loved ones that lasts just seconds. Even in the midst of chaos, hatred and destruction, those dark nights of the soul, we may see briefly a window through which we long for and appreciate something beautiful, and we instinctively desire that sight, that sense and we wish for it to be prolonged.
Especially as we enter what may be called the "twilight years" we are conscious of the passing of days and the temporal nature of our lives.
I hate it when a writer you disagree with intensely, writes something you like immensely. Such was the case when I opened yesterday’s paper and met with the words of Joe Bennett.
Dear readers, please listen to Joe, but ignore what he says. Joe extols and simultaneously laments the passing beauty of life, his melancholy is all the more palpable because we can all relate to it, and if we do not at this point- we will one day- guaranteed.
The angst I refer to is the inexorable passing of days, beautiful days some of them, but days never the less that will come to an end.
I attended a funeral recently of a man that left a legacy, but it was counted not in terms of money or possessions, but in terms of relationships, character and memories. It was a life attested by many to be beautifully lived. And it showed.
Joe’s piece is the sigh of a man who sees an end of days and tastes the bitter injustice of it. When we love- we wish it never to end- but it does, at least in Joe’s story. And therein lays the folly. Joe is a realist, or so he believes. And yet his sense of injustice betrays his story.
To read Joe's Piece Click on the Image.
C.S. Lewis put a handle on it:
Peter Kreeft adds:
Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.
Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"
Oh like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Songwriters: COHEN, LEONARD
Or it is the sense of the passing of days and the limitation of our finite lives.
Whatever the form of our prison- we long for freedom.
There is in all of us an innate sense of beauty and an accompanying longing and desire for it. It may be expressed in the desperate joy of making friends with a rat in a dark, dank and lonely dungeon of solitary confinement. It may express itself as the joy of a panoramic view on a spotless day.Or as that exquisite moment with loved ones that lasts just seconds. Even in the midst of chaos, hatred and destruction, those dark nights of the soul, we may see briefly a window through which we long for and appreciate something beautiful, and we instinctively desire that sight, that sense and we wish for it to be prolonged.
Especially as we enter what may be called the "twilight years" we are conscious of the passing of days and the temporal nature of our lives.
I hate it when a writer you disagree with intensely, writes something you like immensely. Such was the case when I opened yesterday’s paper and met with the words of Joe Bennett.
Dear readers, please listen to Joe, but ignore what he says. Joe extols and simultaneously laments the passing beauty of life, his melancholy is all the more palpable because we can all relate to it, and if we do not at this point- we will one day- guaranteed.
The angst I refer to is the inexorable passing of days, beautiful days some of them, but days never the less that will come to an end.
I attended a funeral recently of a man that left a legacy, but it was counted not in terms of money or possessions, but in terms of relationships, character and memories. It was a life attested by many to be beautifully lived. And it showed.
Joe’s piece is the sigh of a man who sees an end of days and tastes the bitter injustice of it. When we love- we wish it never to end- but it does, at least in Joe’s story. And therein lays the folly. Joe is a realist, or so he believes. And yet his sense of injustice betrays his story.
To read Joe's Piece Click on the Image.
Joe’s unspoken, yet felt desire is that life is beautiful often enough to warrant the longing that it should not end. The question is reasonable enough: Does that desire necessarily have no fulfillment? Joe's take is that death is the cessation of the possibility of that unfulfilled longing for the continuation of life and he believes in his "realism" that it is the only sane position possible in the face of death.
C.S. Lewis put a handle on it:
"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Peter Kreeft adds:
"No one has ever found one case of an innate desire for a nonexistent object. Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted that "there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, 'Is that all there is?'"
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.
Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"
Oh like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Songwriters: COHEN, LEONARD
*As a footnote to Bennett's article, I found it fascinating that the line he quoted: "my heart in hiding stirred for a bird"(and remember he is an avowed atheist) was out of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins dedicated the poem "to Christ our Lord".)
