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True heroism goes beyond a single act of courage-it is a lifestyle of loving mankind every day, the effects of which ripple from each practitioner out into the world
The Dance
I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.
Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!"
Just stand up quietly and dance with me.
Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache, and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.
Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.
Tell me a story of who you are, and see who I am in the stories I am living.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.
Don't tell me how wonderful things will be...someday.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next...
I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.
Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.
What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?
And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the learn, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.
Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.
Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are.
When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.
Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.
Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.
Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.
And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions have died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.
Don't say, "Yes!"
Just take my hand and dance with me.
Sometimes, ordinary men must do what heroes cannot.
The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
Since the history's first epic poem recorded the visit of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh to a special grove of cedars, certain natural spots scattered around the world - Ayers Rock, Mount Fuji, Canyon de Chelly, the springs at Lourdes, the Ganges River, and hundreds of others - have drawn people seeking insight, inspiration, healing or proximity to the divine.
Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. This is an accident of hourly proof, Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero!
In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.
What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
1. A big black bug bit a big brown bear. 2. Bring a bit of buttered brown bran bread. 3. Just which one he wants I don't know. 4. His daughter was going to New York to study law. 5. That's the question that really troubles him. 6. Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 7. Thou wouldst not play false yet wouldst wrongly win. 8. Amidst the mists and coldest frosts, With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts, He hits his fists against the posts, And still insists he sees the ghosts. 9. An Austrian army awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Deal devastation's dire destructive doom; Ev'ry endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for freedom, fight, fierce, furious fray. Gen'rals 'gainst gen'rals grapple,-gracious God! How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood! Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labor low levels longest, loftiest lines; Men march 'midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd'rous mines. Now noisy, noxious numbers notice nought, Of outward obstacle o'ercoming ought; Poor patriots perish, persecution's pest! Quite quiet Quakers "Quarter, quarter" quest; Reason returns, religion, religion, right, redounds, Suwarrow stop such sanguinary sounds! Truce to thee, Turkey, terror to thy train! Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine! Vanish vile vengeance, vanish victory vain! Why wish we warfare, wherefore welcome won Xerxes, Xantippus, Xavier, Xenophon? Yield, ye young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell! Zimmerman's, Zoroaster's zeal Again attract; art against arms appeal. All, all ambitious aims, avaunt, away! Et caetera, et caetera, et caeterä.1 10. I am the very model of a model major-general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical; I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news- With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse; . . . I'm very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral I'm the very model of a modern major-general.2 1 Anonymous, "Alliteration, or the Siege of Belgrade" Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 2 The Pirates of Penzance
Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men . . . forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice. . . . They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties. . . . They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft.
Upon the standard to which the wise and honest will now repair it is written: You have lived the easy way; henceforth, you will live the hard way. . . . You came into a great heritage made by the insight and the sweat and the blood of inspired and devoted and courageous men; thoughtlessly and in utmost self-indulgence you have all but squandered this inheritance. Now only by the heroic virtues which made this inheritance, can you restore it again. You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again. . . . For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task that you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer.
True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blonde Hero--really look--and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.
Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.
There is meaning in anyone's life: A man who had been condemned to a life of forced labor for wrong doings, was shipped to devil's island. On the high seas a fire broke out on the steamer, the convict, a strong man, was released from his handcuffs to help and he saved the lives of ten persons. His sentence was commuted for the act of heroism. If one had asked him before if his life was worth saving, he probably would have shook his head.
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.
"If you are loyal you are successful," ruminated the company paper at one time. "All useful work is raised to the plane of art when love for the task-loyalty-is fused with the effort. Loyalty is the great lubricant of life. It saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do. The man who is loyal to his work is not wrung nor perplexed by doubts, he sticks to the ship, and if the ship founders he goes down like a hero with colors flying at the masthead and the band playing."
See the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpet, beat the drums!
He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.
It is through woman that ideality is born into the world and - what were man without her! There is many a man who has become a genius through a woman, many a one a hero, many a one a poet, many a one even a saint; but he did not become a genius through the woman he married, for through her he only became a privy councillor; he did not become a hero through the woman he married, for through her he only became a general; he did not become a poet through the woman he married, for through her he only became a father; he did not become a saint through the woman he married, for he did not marry, and would have married but one - the one whom he did not marry; just as the others became a genius, became a hero, became a poet through the help of the woman they did not marry.
Nature abhors a hero....how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to get creamed?
How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.
The Inevitable I like the man who faces what he must, With step triumphant and a heart of cheer; Who fights the daily battle without fear; Sees his hopes fail, yet keeps unfaltering trust That God is God,-that somehow true and just His plans work out for mortals; not a tear Is shed when fortune, which the world holds dear, Falls from his grasp - better, with love, a crust Than living in dishonor; envies not, Nor loses faith in man; but does his best, Nor ever murmurs at his humbler lot But with a smile and words of hope, gives zest To every toiler; he alone is great Who by a life heroic conquers fate.
By whatever basis human desires are classified, the promise of an abundant life covers virtually all. To the spiritual it suggests escape from futility; to the sensuous it calls up visions of luxury; to the defeated it is a dream of success. To the idle it pledges ease; to the weary, rest; to the frightened it means safety; to the anxious, security; and to the improvident it conjures inexhaustible resources. Persuade a man that you can give him the thing he most desires and you will be his hero; offer him justification for his failures and he will be your disciple; assure him a boundless supply of "loaves and fishes" and he will seek to make you king.
A hero is one who does what he can. The others don't.
. . . He had by now divested himself of schoolboy attitudes. He was unburdened by the desire to be a martyr or a hero. Any thoughts in that direction, Belgica effectively had quashed. Heroism in the corrupt sense of the age almost by definition, meant wanton self-sacrifice and bungling. For neither had he any taste. He wanted rational attainment; victory, but not at any price. No point upon the globe was worth the cost of a single life.
A man not perfect, but of heart so high, of such heroic rage, That even his hopes became a part of earth's eternal heritage.
