a diddakoi and her travelling caravan

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be...

Psychology is limited in that it goes only as far back as childhood to understand human nature. Philosophy on the other hand can go back to the beginning of time to derive meaning. Take for example the pain of separation. In psychology they call this an 'abandonment issue', arising from the unhealthy ways a child relates to the absence of its parents. Being the good philosopher that I am, I think this originates from the time we were separated from Eden. The pain we feel at every loss is the pain that is stitched deep into our DNA, of knowing perfection, beauty, love and innocence, and then destroying it all in one fell swoop. Here is a poem by David Ferry, as they prepare to leave Eden: You lie in our bed as if an orchard were over us. You are what’s fallen from those fatal boughs. Where will we go when they send us away from here? From the poem - In Eden - By David Ferry

Recently I suffered from deep grief through the loss of someone I loved. To find comfort, I read some words by C.S. Lewis, well known for his books on Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Lewis lost his wife Helen, his only love, and following that loss he wrote a book called ' A Grief Observed '. In his deep sense of loss, when he reached out to God, he felt a sense of isolation and alone-ness. He said: But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. In my grief during this period, as well as in many other difficult times in my life, I have often felt the same, and been angry that God does not come closer and make the loss easier, send his angels to carry me over, show me mercy... However, in my recent relationship, in playing the role of ...

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring The Jewel Net of Indra, by Harold Cook The Buddhist concept of reality is that all things are related to eac...

Recently, in suffering deep grief from the loss of someone very close to me, I came across the poem called "How I Became A Madman" by Kahlil Gibran. It goes as follows: You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen -- the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives -- I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves." Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me. And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks." Thus I bec...