Friday, October 12, 2007

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Allow me two for today. To me they are related.

"We are ourselves only part of the whole, and we can conceive and speak only of parts, but not the whole."
Jacob Boehme


"He listened attentively to what I was saying. But there was nothing in his intellectual or emotional equipment to which he could connect my words. He possessed no frame of reference for such concepts."
Chaim Potok

Wild Thing

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey WT - are you having challenges communicating with someone about something? I'm thinking of your choice of quotes of the day.

It's not that I disagree with the writers of those quotations, but the reason WHY you choose them in this specific day piques my curiosity.

Anonymous said...

No Xena. No particular personal reason other than that I like the quotes. These I actually had written down a long time ago. They just played into my hands again when I was going through some stuff. I am always trying to express how we do not know everything. How we cannot indentify with concepts outside our experience. How there is so much more to the universe then we can conceive of. How people argue themselves blue in the face, make war even, over issues that cannot be proven, or scientifically explained... These two quotes say that for me. Jacob Boehme was a Christian and prophet who lived from 1575-1624. It says about him that in the spiritual thinking of Western Civilazation, he is accepted without question by all leading Philosophers, artists and theologians. Entering into the spirits of his writings, is sure to expand the mind and to elevate the heart of the reader, giving him/her a greater and more sublime conception of God, Nature, and Man.

Jacob Boehme drew many intrecate mandalas.

Chaim Potok is a far more recent guy. He wrote books like "in the Beginning" - "My Name Is Asher Lev," The Promise", "The Chosen", etc. Always about conflicts among Jews themselves, like for example, Fathers not accepting more progressive ways, new ideas of their studyng sons and disowning them.

I don't know Potok's birth date but he is 1900's .

Potok is a whole lot easier to read than Boehme. I read all his books, and am just sorry there aren't any more. His style of writing suits me so well, I've burned suppers, let kettles cook dry, by reading him, being in a totally different world.

So, that's it. These two quotes confirm for me the way I am thinking, It's always a nice AHA when someone states what you would like to say yourself, but cannot quite get your words around.

I have many books of Jacob boehme, but I cannot claim to have read them. Hans (Hans Boehme) bought them, believing that Boehme was a far relation of his Dad who was born in then East Germany, I think in Bohemia where Jacob also had lived.

I read snitches. Jacob Boehme and Hildegard of Bingen, to me,were alike in their philosophies. I did read more of Hildegard. She too expressed much with art(visions)and mandalas. She was from the twelfth century. So that was way before Jacob Boehme.

Maybe he read her. Who knows.

I have Hildegard's of Bingen's BOOK OF DIVINE WORKS with Letters and Songs, edited by Matthew fox.

Wild Thing