on reason & passion
and the priestess spoke again and said:
"speak to us of reason and passion."
and he answered saying:
your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.
would that i could be the peacemaker in your soul, that i might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.
but how shall i, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?
your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
if either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
for reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;
and let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
i would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.
surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.
among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows - then let your heart say in silence, "god rests in reason."
and when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, - then let your heart say in awe, "god moves in passion."
and since you are a breath in god's sphere, and a leaf in god's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
years ago, when i started looking for my first job, wise advisers urged, "barbara, be enthusiastic! enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience." how right they were. enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure, extra work into opportunity and strangers into friends."nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm," wrote ralph waldo emerson. it is the paste that helps you hang in there when the going gets tough. it is the inner voice that whispers, "i can do it!" when others shout, "no, you can’t."
it took years and years for the early work of barbara mcclintock, a geneticist who won the 1983 nobel prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. yet she didn’t let up on her experiments. work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.we are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder as anyone knows who has ever seen an infant’s delight at the jingle of keys or the scurrying of a beetle.
