Day 078d: Back into the Wilderness … (July 01, 2019)
“Often in less modern times, we focused a great deal of thought & effort upon rituals of return to the human condition. Seeking enlightenment or the Promised Land or the way home, a man would go or be forced to go into the wilderness, measure himself against the Creation, recognize finally his true place within it, and thus be saved both from pride and from despair. Seeing himself as but a tiny member of a grand world he could never comprehend or master or in any final sense possess, he could no longer think of himself as superior to the living or more worthy of life. And by the same token, since he shares in, depends upon, and is graced by all of which he is a part, neither could he become a fiend; neither could he cannot descend into the final despair of destructiveness. Returning from the wilderness, he became a restorer of harmony, a preserver of peace. He sees the truth of his Oneness with all other beings, recognizes them all as his true heirs, honors his forebears and his heritage, and gives his full blessing to his successors. This is how he embodies the passing of his human time, and this is how he honors that life and its living.” ~ via Wendell Berry
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