Tuesday 26 January 2010

A Feast for the Soul

Welcome to the feast.  I'm not the chef for this feast; in fact I'm really nothing more than the doorman.

It's all about an extraordinary speech given by an incredible man shortly before his premature but not unexpected death from bone cancer.  You can find the key parts of his speech in this video, starting at 4:14 (the rest of the video is outside our scope here).

http://bit.ly/7oBssb

Or you can find the whole speech here:

http://bit.ly/5fhw7M

I'll leave you to find out more about the speaker on your own - it's well worth your time and very inspiring - but for now I just wanted to highlight one of the things he says:


"To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."

I'm a bit reluctant to add anything to this, of course, and I feel unworthy even to open my mouth about it.   Nevertheless, I'll give it a try.

Laughing is tremendously important.  I've met holy people living in remote places and every time I'm struck by their sense of humor.  Laughter - the ability to see the ridiculous in ourselves and around us - is vital to your well-being on every level.

When something moves you to tears, you get in touch with the deeper layers of your being and feel a renewed sense of purpose.

And so few people take the time to think.  Not "think" as in the obsessive, neurotic thinking that hits when we're stressed out, but real thinking - using our cognitive abilities to learn something new or to reevaluate our old opinions.  Clear and accurate thinking is highly under-rated in our culture.

I hope you enjoy this speech as much as I did.  May we all learn from it.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

No comments:

Post a Comment