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Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Reverend Kirksey, I was hoping you could say a few kind words for our dearly departed.

I am late responding. My friend from Tennessee I consider to have been one of the best of RHP. A true gentleman and a gifted scholar. Also a man who knows a lot about life, probably more than we know or he will give credit.

God bless, my brother. Everytime I see a goat, which is quite often, I think of you. Not that you're a goat or anything. 🙂

I read somewhere that, toward the end of his life, St. Thomas Aquinas, after writing tomes of dense theology, come to the conclusion that all he had written was "mere straw", and duly withdrew into silent contemplation. Enjoy following in his footsteps, vistesd (although you wrote more than straw!).

..... and I was planning to initiate a thread on the subject of "The Holy Trinity in the Old Testament" ...... yeah, the OLD Testament ....

I was hoping you could shine your light on this ......

Vistesd, is there any chance you might do us this favour and stay just a little bit longer ?

Good to hear it visted.

I've been there, and back.

To quote a friend, Francis Bacon:

"What then remains but that we still should cry
For being born, and, being born, to die?"

I couldn't take it. Everytime I look at something, hear something, feel something, I can't help but despair.

There will soon be a day, when everything returns to the way it was.

There is one thing that makes me happy now, seeing the sun rise. I know people like walking along beaches and watching the sun set, but I think it's much more beautiful to watch it rise.

I spent a summer day lying in my backyard watching the grass move when there was no breeze, feeling the texture of the chair I sat in, the clouds above me, listening to the sounds of traffic far away, knowing that the world is passing by.

It's depressing...

Originally posted by Tetsujin
Good to hear it visted.

I've been there, and back.

To quote a friend, Francis Bacon:

"What then remains but that we still should cry
For being born, and, being born, to die?"

I couldn't take it. Everytime I look at something, hear something, feel something, I can't help but despair.

There will soon be a day, when everything returns to e sounds of traffic far away, knowing that the world is passing by.

It's depressing...

I've felt that despair. Well put.

Originally posted by Tetsujin
I spent a summer day lying in my backyard watching the grass move when there was no breeze, feeling the texture of the chair I sat in, the clouds above me, listening to the sounds of traffic far away, knowing that the world is passing by.

It's depressing...

Apologies for breaking the mood of indulgent despair, my friends, but that's the wonderfulness of the world that you are sensing. 😏 Somtimes it passes you by, other times the bluebird of happiness
craps on your head.

If I had to choose the wave of sensation versus the splat of reality, I would know which I wanted. 😕

Originally posted by vistesd
I just call it “the simple bliss of being.”

This simple bliss might be manifest in, say, the song of a mockingbird, or the thrum of bees on a warm morning; or a scattering of stars in a midnight winter sky, or a thundering summer storm; or the face of the beloved; or the play of the passionate mind; or the simple drawing of a breath. But even in time ...[text shortened]... awareness, needing only to be noticed, to not be forgotten... (And I have sometimes forgotten.)

This reminds me of C.S. Lewis in his book Surprised by Joy:

It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? . . . Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison. The second glimpse came through Squirrel Nutkin; through it only, though I loved all the Beatrix Potter books . . . it administered the shock, it was a trouble. It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and as before, the experience was one of intense desire. And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was impossible - how can one possess Autumn?) but to reawake it. And in this experience also there was the same surprise and the same sense of incalculable importance. It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, 'in another dimension' . . . [it was] an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy . . . anyone who has experienced it will want it again . . . I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.

[Joy is] a special kind of longing . . . surrounded by a misty indefiniteness which seems essential to its very nature . . . it encompasses not only . . . Germanic longing . . . but also the more turbulent, passionate aspiration associated with what [Matthew] Arnold calls "Celtic Titanism" . . . At times one sees it clearly, at other times it seems to recede before one's eyes . . . Thus, the exploring of this mystery has turned out to be a quest in itself.

May you succeed in your quest.

So long, vistesd. Perhaps your work here is done.

Originally posted by vistesd
It has suddenly struck me—like a thought that you have long known you knew, but kept forgetting—that of the few things in this life that I actually know, there is only one that I know well enough and truly enough to be worth the effort and the attempt to share:

I just call it “the simple bliss of being.”

That is as far as I can go in describing it. If ...[text shortened]... ]Tamam Shud[/i]

—Omar Khayyam

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Good-bye, and be well.

Best. Post. Ever.

Let me simply say that your presence here has not gone unnoticed. Thank you for your contributions.

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What The Doctor Said

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
HE SAID ARE YOU A RELIGIOUS MAN DO YOU KNEEL DOWN
IN FOREST GROVES AND LET YOURSELF ASK FOR HELP
WHEN YOU COME TO A WATERFALL
MIST BLOWING AGAINST YOUR FACE AND ARMS
DO YOU STOP AND ASK FOR UNDERSTANDING AT THOSE MOMENTS
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

Raymond Carver

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It seems to me that you have found that understanding. Good luck with the rest of your journey. It's been real.