Magazine - Year 2007 - Version 1
Media: TEXT
Language: ENGLISH
Language: ENGLISH
Nothing can be possessed
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To enjoy things is not to possess them or to be possessed by them, but to use them. The joy of anything is the use of it. The joy of anything is to take it and make it into something more.
I said to the Master, “Tell me about things. Is it wrong to pray for things?”
The Master said, “It is wrong not to pray for things. If prayer is right, then there is no aspect of living that we should not pray about.”
“Pray about things, and you will find that you have the things you need, and you have also the attitude toward things you need.”
Then I thought about things. I saw that it is futile to pray for the possession of things, for things can never be possessed.
Nothing can be possessed. We have the use of things, but we never have the possession of them, however many titles to them we may deposit with the recorder of deeds, however many locks and strongboxes we may use for hiding them. There is nothing that is ours to keep. Not one thing. Sooner or later, we will have to give it away or it will be taken away. Everything. Even our body. Even our mind. Everything was the gift of life. And life asks it back. According to the greatest teacher of all, life asks it back with interest; life expects it to have grown under our care. Life asks what we have done with what was given us. Have we turned it into a trash heap, or into a park?
Life is for us to be alive in.
Life is not to build a castle on. A castle is a vast pile of stones, damp, gloomy, and usually uncomfortable. After a short time nobody wants to live there anymore; then it becomes a ruin.
Life is to grow a garden in. A garden changes a bare patch of land into a place of trees and flowers and grass and fountains splashing into pools and singing birds and buzzing insects.
Life is not a thing of stones for stones, but a thing alive for things alive-for mayflies and pine trees and hummingbirds, and you and me.
A gardener knows what a garden is like. A gardener knows that no one possesses a garden.
No one owns the land. In a well-built house the landlord is merely a lodger-with rooms for a week, a year, five years, fifty years. Generations of mockingbirds sing in the branch tops. Generations of moles tunnel the lawns, smelling out the grubs that live here too. The rabbits mock at the fences; the pokeweed lords it in the lot corner; the flower garden belongs no more to the gardener than the bees that sup the flowers. In the limestone of the walls are the remains of shellfish that swam here once, and perhaps … the gardener is content to plant his trees and not trouble himself as to who will lie in their shade.
Till the ground, tend the plant, pluck the flower as you wish. But the garden grows with spring and rests with fall.
You may take the flower, dry it, and place it in a glass case - but it is not the flower. You have only a bit of colored straw, slowly fading, slowly powdering. Keep it long enough and you will have only colorless dust.
Things are not for forever.
Things are like smiles and frowns that flit across the face of the Eternal. When a smile becomes fixed, it turns into a grimace. When a frown becomes fixed, it is just another wrinkle.
To enjoy things is not to possess them or to be possessed by them, but to use them. The joy of anything is the use of it. The joy of anything is to take it and make it into something more.
Rows of dresses hanging dusty in a closet, dresses no one wears any longer; tools slowly rusting in a tool shed, where no one comes to work; books that have gotten yellow and brittle with age because no loving hand ever fondles them or opens their pages; or a house in which no one has lived for a long time - there are few things sadder than these.
The joy is not to have a shining plane in your tool chest, but to take the plane out and plane a board with it until the board is flat and smooth and true.
To do this is to know what things are for.
The joy is not to have a beautiful dress in your closet, but to wear the dress to make the day or evening colorful and bright and interesting to you and your friends -or even to give it away when you will not wear it.
The joy is not to have a book upon a shelf, neat and perfect in its shining clean dust jacket, but to read the book and rejoice in its information or its inspiration, even to scribble in its margin - or to lend it to friends to read, even friends who never return it.
It is right to pray for things. When you pray, pray knowing that life lavishes its things, crowding every crack of space with its fecund living stuff, pressing into every outstretched hand its overflowing bounty.
Know, too, that things are not for forever. Things are not to hold on to. Hold on long enough and you had cast even the dearest thing away.
There is a great Japanese myth. It is about twin deities, Izanagi and Izanami, who were devoted lovers and produced the Japanese islands and their people. When Izanami died in childbirth, the sorrowing Izanagi could not let her go but followed her into the underworld begging her to return to him. When he neared her in the darkness, she asked him not to look at her, for she knew that death had not made her sightly. But he lit the comb that held his hair in place, and saw her moldering.
Clutch things to you, and when life comes round again, where will it leave its gifts? For whatever you have, life has yet more to give.
The snake must slough its skin; the bird must molt its feathers; and the evergreen that lies for a thousand years must give up many of its boughs as it grows.
Is the corn less because it gives itself for food?
Or the Sun because it gives itself for light?
Things are made for life, not life for things. Pray for them, knowing that they are yours to use, to enjoy, and to expend - for the increase of your own joy-in-living and for the joy-in-life of others.
- James Dillet Freeman
[From “Angles Sing in Me” – Published with glad permission of Unity House, Unity School, USA – The Publishers]
I said to the Master, “Tell me about things. Is it wrong to pray for things?”
The Master said, “It is wrong not to pray for things. If prayer is right, then there is no aspect of living that we should not pray about.”
“Pray about things, and you will find that you have the things you need, and you have also the attitude toward things you need.”
Then I thought about things. I saw that it is futile to pray for the possession of things, for things can never be possessed.
Nothing can be possessed. We have the use of things, but we never have the possession of them, however many titles to them we may deposit with the recorder of deeds, however many locks and strongboxes we may use for hiding them. There is nothing that is ours to keep. Not one thing. Sooner or later, we will have to give it away or it will be taken away. Everything. Even our body. Even our mind. Everything was the gift of life. And life asks it back. According to the greatest teacher of all, life asks it back with interest; life expects it to have grown under our care. Life asks what we have done with what was given us. Have we turned it into a trash heap, or into a park?
Life is for us to be alive in.
Life is not to build a castle on. A castle is a vast pile of stones, damp, gloomy, and usually uncomfortable. After a short time nobody wants to live there anymore; then it becomes a ruin.
Life is to grow a garden in. A garden changes a bare patch of land into a place of trees and flowers and grass and fountains splashing into pools and singing birds and buzzing insects.
Life is not a thing of stones for stones, but a thing alive for things alive-for mayflies and pine trees and hummingbirds, and you and me.
A gardener knows what a garden is like. A gardener knows that no one possesses a garden.
No one owns the land. In a well-built house the landlord is merely a lodger-with rooms for a week, a year, five years, fifty years. Generations of mockingbirds sing in the branch tops. Generations of moles tunnel the lawns, smelling out the grubs that live here too. The rabbits mock at the fences; the pokeweed lords it in the lot corner; the flower garden belongs no more to the gardener than the bees that sup the flowers. In the limestone of the walls are the remains of shellfish that swam here once, and perhaps … the gardener is content to plant his trees and not trouble himself as to who will lie in their shade.
Till the ground, tend the plant, pluck the flower as you wish. But the garden grows with spring and rests with fall.
You may take the flower, dry it, and place it in a glass case - but it is not the flower. You have only a bit of colored straw, slowly fading, slowly powdering. Keep it long enough and you will have only colorless dust.
Things are not for forever.
Things are like smiles and frowns that flit across the face of the Eternal. When a smile becomes fixed, it turns into a grimace. When a frown becomes fixed, it is just another wrinkle.
To enjoy things is not to possess them or to be possessed by them, but to use them. The joy of anything is the use of it. The joy of anything is to take it and make it into something more.
Rows of dresses hanging dusty in a closet, dresses no one wears any longer; tools slowly rusting in a tool shed, where no one comes to work; books that have gotten yellow and brittle with age because no loving hand ever fondles them or opens their pages; or a house in which no one has lived for a long time - there are few things sadder than these.
The joy is not to have a shining plane in your tool chest, but to take the plane out and plane a board with it until the board is flat and smooth and true.
To do this is to know what things are for.
The joy is not to have a beautiful dress in your closet, but to wear the dress to make the day or evening colorful and bright and interesting to you and your friends -or even to give it away when you will not wear it.
The joy is not to have a book upon a shelf, neat and perfect in its shining clean dust jacket, but to read the book and rejoice in its information or its inspiration, even to scribble in its margin - or to lend it to friends to read, even friends who never return it.
It is right to pray for things. When you pray, pray knowing that life lavishes its things, crowding every crack of space with its fecund living stuff, pressing into every outstretched hand its overflowing bounty.
Know, too, that things are not for forever. Things are not to hold on to. Hold on long enough and you had cast even the dearest thing away.
There is a great Japanese myth. It is about twin deities, Izanagi and Izanami, who were devoted lovers and produced the Japanese islands and their people. When Izanami died in childbirth, the sorrowing Izanagi could not let her go but followed her into the underworld begging her to return to him. When he neared her in the darkness, she asked him not to look at her, for she knew that death had not made her sightly. But he lit the comb that held his hair in place, and saw her moldering.
Clutch things to you, and when life comes round again, where will it leave its gifts? For whatever you have, life has yet more to give.
The snake must slough its skin; the bird must molt its feathers; and the evergreen that lies for a thousand years must give up many of its boughs as it grows.
Is the corn less because it gives itself for food?
Or the Sun because it gives itself for light?
Things are made for life, not life for things. Pray for them, knowing that they are yours to use, to enjoy, and to expend - for the increase of your own joy-in-living and for the joy-in-life of others.
- James Dillet Freeman
[From “Angles Sing in Me” – Published with glad permission of Unity House, Unity School, USA – The Publishers]
