I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
T.S. Eliot, from Four Quartets
Lovely and elegant. There is an interesting sentence.
“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing”
Dear reader, what is your hope?
We hope for.. we desire.. always wanting. An act of future tense, as if progressing, arriving later, always tomorrow.
What is your hope.. peace? Something better than ‘This’? What ‘image’ do you create to plaster over ‘This’? Can we look at ‘what is’ without the fabricated ‘image’ of our hope superimposing itself? that is perpetually in a state of false progression, arriving later. Always tomorrow.
The endless novelty of change is hypnotic & intoxicating, perceived through the passage of time, creates an illusion of progress.
Can we, stop hoping & end the perpetual illusion of ‘being’ tomorrow? Can we, together, discard illusory ‘images’ see ‘what is’ and ‘become tomorrow’ today? The betterment, that hope will never bring about, can then flourish.
‘The Future’ is today, not tomorrow.
“..wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing”
ελπίδα is the greek word of hope.. it sounds better i think, so hope for hope?
hope like our only reaction to the madness of our being?