Conversations with a Soul Read Online Free
Author: Tom McArthur
are being consciously American or political, are remarkably quick to suggest that an art which is marked by perception and knowledge, although all very well in its way, can never get us through gross dangers and difficulties. 7
Widespread disillusionment with Government and political leadership has left most of us yearning for leaders who value integrity above all else. We hunger for men and women whose judgments are characterized by wise choices, which usually means, at the very least, being able to see the consequences of their decisions before those decisions are implemented. And we hunger no less for leaders who put the welfare of the state before their own aggrandizement.
In 2002 The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the war in Iraq would cost $651 Billion through the end of 2007 . The New York Times and Boston Herald revised that figure to somewhere between $1 and $1.6 Trillion . One economist has calculated that with $1 trillion we could have:
… . constructed as many as eight million new dwelling units, employed 13 million more school teachers, provided elementary education to 120 million kids or health insurance to 530 million children for one year or granted scholarships to 43 million students for four years. 8
The Opportunity Cost is phenomenal. Amongst those 43 million scholars, could there have been some who would have made major discoveries and pioneered new ways of dealing with many of our most pressing problems? How many writers, teachers, poets, artists, mathematicians, medical researchers, physicists and social reformers have been lost because of a war?
Living under the shadow of this disaster, the words of an Onondaga Wisdomkeeper, Clan Mother Audrey Shenandoah, shines with a kind of patent transparency:
… We live in an era when far too much money is expended on the military. Even as we enter a time of increasing potential for peace among the major powers, military expenditures remain grotesquely high. The purpose of these high military budgets must be the anticipation of violence. As a mother I demand that our sons not be raised to die in war. War is irrational, its causes suspect. If we are to live on this planet, we must eliminate warfare, which is harmful to all living things. 9
My old friend and Wisdomkeeper, Ross Snyder, often used to speak about mining our experiences so as to extract wisdom. Behind that phrase lay his conviction that everyone, all through life, accumulated a rich repertoire of experiences: some joyous and celebratory, some deep and rich, some disturbing, some painful, and some of no great significance whatsoever. Periodically, and more frequently than we suspect, when we take time to reflect, and possibly even share these experiences with another, we come up against a piece of our personal history which, to use his words, is coiled with explosive power .
These are the experiences which have the potential to change our lives, yet even these seminal events, over time, lose their potency. Eventually we forget and the repertoire shrinks, or we keep on having the same experiences without ever digging into them and extracting the treasures, or the hungers, or the disasters that are waiting to be revealed and transformed into wisdom.
The journey from experience to wisdom always follows a path of reflection. The route traverses through a sacred realm, home to our Wisdomkeepers.
However we describe the process, this is the work of Soul! This is where that deep, mysterious inner part of me invites the Wisdomkeepers of my life to come and be present and illuminate and empower my efforts. This is where the light falls. This is where God speaks.
Sometimes I hear folk reflecting about their parents or grandparent(s) who had a particular way of seeing that somehow marked them off as keepers of wisdom. It is not so much about what they said as about who they are or were . There’s no need to lecture about love when you simply lived it. There was never a suggestion of needing
Widespread disillusionment with Government and political leadership has left most of us yearning for leaders who value integrity above all else. We hunger for men and women whose judgments are characterized by wise choices, which usually means, at the very least, being able to see the consequences of their decisions before those decisions are implemented. And we hunger no less for leaders who put the welfare of the state before their own aggrandizement.
In 2002 The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the war in Iraq would cost $651 Billion through the end of 2007 . The New York Times and Boston Herald revised that figure to somewhere between $1 and $1.6 Trillion . One economist has calculated that with $1 trillion we could have:
… . constructed as many as eight million new dwelling units, employed 13 million more school teachers, provided elementary education to 120 million kids or health insurance to 530 million children for one year or granted scholarships to 43 million students for four years. 8
The Opportunity Cost is phenomenal. Amongst those 43 million scholars, could there have been some who would have made major discoveries and pioneered new ways of dealing with many of our most pressing problems? How many writers, teachers, poets, artists, mathematicians, medical researchers, physicists and social reformers have been lost because of a war?
Living under the shadow of this disaster, the words of an Onondaga Wisdomkeeper, Clan Mother Audrey Shenandoah, shines with a kind of patent transparency:
… We live in an era when far too much money is expended on the military. Even as we enter a time of increasing potential for peace among the major powers, military expenditures remain grotesquely high. The purpose of these high military budgets must be the anticipation of violence. As a mother I demand that our sons not be raised to die in war. War is irrational, its causes suspect. If we are to live on this planet, we must eliminate warfare, which is harmful to all living things. 9
My old friend and Wisdomkeeper, Ross Snyder, often used to speak about mining our experiences so as to extract wisdom. Behind that phrase lay his conviction that everyone, all through life, accumulated a rich repertoire of experiences: some joyous and celebratory, some deep and rich, some disturbing, some painful, and some of no great significance whatsoever. Periodically, and more frequently than we suspect, when we take time to reflect, and possibly even share these experiences with another, we come up against a piece of our personal history which, to use his words, is coiled with explosive power .
These are the experiences which have the potential to change our lives, yet even these seminal events, over time, lose their potency. Eventually we forget and the repertoire shrinks, or we keep on having the same experiences without ever digging into them and extracting the treasures, or the hungers, or the disasters that are waiting to be revealed and transformed into wisdom.
The journey from experience to wisdom always follows a path of reflection. The route traverses through a sacred realm, home to our Wisdomkeepers.
However we describe the process, this is the work of Soul! This is where that deep, mysterious inner part of me invites the Wisdomkeepers of my life to come and be present and illuminate and empower my efforts. This is where the light falls. This is where God speaks.
Sometimes I hear folk reflecting about their parents or grandparent(s) who had a particular way of seeing that somehow marked them off as keepers of wisdom. It is not so much about what they said as about who they are or were . There’s no need to lecture about love when you simply lived it. There was never a suggestion of needing
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