Over Easter we spent a few days on vacation, and during this time we came across these two – our friendly companions and patron saints for this conference. Many of you may recognize them: one is the archangel Gabriel as he announces the birth of Jesus, and on the right is Mary as she receives this news from Gabriel. They were created in around the year 1280, and they can be found in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Regensburg. The religious or art history background isn’t important for me here – it could just as well be Jewish or Buddhist forms, or simply other human faces. What matters is what the two “angels” – I’ll call them this for simplicity’s sake – are expressing: friendliness; merriment; and a natural lightness and ease.
What do these qualities of our two angels have to do with collective wisdom? Well, collective wisdom deals with matters which are really close to our hearts... we can’t afford to waste our time and our lives with matters which don’t fulfill our spirit, and which don’t really touch our hearts.
And we know this: What really touches our hearts also lets us smile, and it often has the quality of lightness; it naturally incorporates our interest in issues close to the hearts of others, our fellow human beings; and our own heartfelt concerns bring us into contact with our natural and compassionate generosity and inclusiveness, especially even towards those who at first appeared to us to be unfamiliar, alien, or even repulsive.
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I am drawn to images of the Buddha. They seem to embody the concept of the "enlightened" human being
Posted by: David Star | January 27, 2007 at 08:28 PM