Happy Birthday, J.M. Barrie

How comely a thing is affliction borne cheerfully, which is not beyond the reach of the humblest of us. What is beauty? It is these hard-bitten men singing courage to you from their tent; it is the waves of their island home crooning of their deeds to you who are to follow them. Sometimes beauty boils over and them spirits are abroad. Ages may pass as we look or listen, for time is annihilated. There is a very old legend told to me by Nansen the explorer--I like well to be in the company of explorers--the legend of a monk who had wandered into the fields and a lark began to sing. He had never heard a lark before, and he stood there entranced until the bird and its song had become part of the heavens. Then he went back to the monastery and found there a doorkeeper whom he did not know and who did not know him. Other monks came, and they were all strangers to him. He told them he was Father Anselm, but that was no help. Finally they looked through the books of the monastery, and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there a hundred or more years before. Time had been blotted out while he listened to the lark.

That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boiling over; perhaps the same thing. Then spirits walk.

J.M. Barrie, born on this day in 1860, from "Courage," the rectorial address delivered at St. Andrew's University, May 3, 1922.

Golden.

J.M. Barrie’s "Courage: The Rectoral Address delivered at St. Andrews University," May 3rd 1922 ... 

How comely a thing is affliction borne cheerfully, which is not beyond the reach of the humblest of us.  What is beauty?  It is these hard-bitten men singing courage to you from their tent; it is the waves of their island home crooning of their deeds to you who are to follow them.  Sometimes beauty boils over and them spirits are abroad.  Ages may pass as we look or listen, for time is annihilated.  There is a very old legend told to me by Nansen the explorer--I like well to be in the company of explorers--the legend of a monk who had wandered into the fields and a lark began to sing.  He had never heard a lark before, and he stood there entranced until the bird and its song had become part of the heavens.  Then he went back to the monastery and found there a doorkeeper whom he did not know and who did not know him.  Other monks came, and they were all strangers to him.  He told them he was Father Anselm, but that was no help.  Finally they looked through the books of the monastery, and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there a hundred or more years before.  Time had been blotted out while he listened to the lark.

That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boiling over; perhaps the same thing.  Then spirits walk.

They must sometimes walk St. Andrews.  I do not mean the ghosts of queens or prelates, but one that keeps step, as soft as snow, with some poor student.  He sometimes catches sight of it.  That is why his fellows can never quite touch him, their best beloved; he half knows something of which they know nothing--the secret that is hidden in the face of the Monna Lisa.  As I see him, life is so beautiful to him that its proportions are monstrous.  Perhaps his childhood may have been overfull of gladness; they don't like that.  If the seekers were kind he is the one for whom the flags of his college would fly one day.  But the seeker I am thinking of is unfriendly, and so our student is "the lad that will never be told."  He often gaily forgets, and thinks he has slain his foe by daring him, like him who, dreading water, was always the first to leap into it.  One can see him serene, astride a Scotch cliff, singing to the sun the farewell thanks of a boy:

   Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun

   hold a red torch above the farthest seas,

   and the fierce island pinnacles put on

   in his defence their sombre panoplies;

   Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun

   like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees,

   till all the beauty of the scene seemed one,

   led by the secret whispers of the breeze.

   The sun's torch suddenly flashed upon his face

   and died; and he sat content in subject night

   and dreamed of an old dead foe that had sought

     and found him;

   a beast stirred bodly in his resting-place;

   And the cold came; Man rose to his master-height,

   shivered, and turned away; but the mists were

     round him.

If there is any of you here so rare that the seekers have taken an ill-will to him, as to the boy who wrote those lines, I ask you to be careful.  Henley says in that poem we were speaking of:

   Under the bludgeonings of Chance

   My head is bloody but unbowed.

A fine mouthful, but perhaps "My head is bloody and bowed" is better.

Let us get back to that tent with its songs and cheery conversation. Courage.  I do not think it is to be got by your becoming solemn-sides before your time.  You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by.  Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.  Diligence--ambition; noble words, but only if "touched to fine issues."  Prizes may be dross, learning lumber, unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding. Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity--that corpulent cigar; if you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for more like a diseased goldfish.  Look to it that what you are doing is not merely toddling to a competency. Perhaps that must be your fate, but fight it and then, though you fail, you may still be among the elect of whom we have spoken. Many a brave man has had to come to it at last.

Unborrowed.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

Ayn Rand, born on this day in 1905, from The Fountainhead

Courage.

We've forgotten that a rich life consists, most importantly, in serving others – trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

 Reverend Dr. Cornel West

Strength.

When looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

Joseph Campbell

Detail.

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

Thomas Merton

Face.

We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.

William F. Buckley Jr., from The Jeweler's Eye

Stir.

According to the disposition of the state and the liberty allowed us, we shall either extend or contract our activities; but at all events we shall stir ourselves and not be gripped and paralyzed by fear. He indeed will prove a man who, threatened by dangers on all sides, with arms and chains clattering around him, will neither endanger nor conceal his courage: for self-preservation does not entail suppressing oneself. Truly, I believe, Curius Dentatus used to say that he preferred real death to living death; for the ultimate horror is to leave the number of the living before you die.

Seneca

Unique.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges of life; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.

John Taylor Gatto, from Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Happy Birthday, Rubens

Rubens, Study of Two Heads, 1609

My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size, has ever surpassed my courage.

Peter Paul Rubens, born on this day in 1577

Don't miss Waldemar Januszczak's Rubens: An Extra Large Story ...

Courage.

You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some cost a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage. 

Ludqwig Wittgenstein, from Culture and Value

Bold.

I don’t care about spending much time with people who haven’t a definite personality. I am that kind of an egalitarian. I like to mix with my equals, people who have as much personality as I have.  But the great thing is taut boldness.  People will tell you that freedom lies in being cautious. Freedom lies in being bold.

Robert Frost

Courage.

Thanks to Austin Kleon.

Courage.

Dr. West on integrity ...

What is the quality of your courage and your willingness to bear witness radically against the grain, even if you have to sacrifice something precious, including your popularity, in the name of integrity?

Courage.

“I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."

By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, ...

 ... but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Hrman Melville, from Moby-Dick

Bravest.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. 

Thucydides

Courage.

We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

Reverend Dr. Cornel West

Courage.

In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning.  In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. 

You do not need to know what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.

 

What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

 

In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.

Thomas Merton

Courage.

Noble.

It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.

Herodotus