embracing mystery

“Sewing” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
“Sewing” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Some adopt a rigid system that answers all possible questions and so you don’t have to think beyond its systems. The other response is much more seemingly fragile but much more expansive, because it doesn’t lay down a rigid framework. It allows you to move within the mystery of it. And that seems to be flowering right now. I think people are more and more interested in embracing that because they’ve been through everything else. It is a willingness to embrace mystery, a willingness to embrace not knowing, allowing that intuitive awareness to speak.
~ Paul John Roach
(The Translucent Revolution)

There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
~ Emily Saliers
♫ (Closer to Fine) ♫

Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
~ Wisława Szymborska
(Poems New & Collected)

wisdom is of the soul

“The Nut Gatherers” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
“The Nut Gatherers” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things,
and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
~ Walt Whitman
(Meditations of Walt Whitman: Earth, My Likeness)