Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
Pablo Picasso
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No matter what we do there is some degree of inspiration necessary and connected to it. But sometimes gaining that inspiration is a major test of faith.
According to the Zohar, a centuries old document of Jewish lore and Biblical interpretation, The Red Sea did not part until a man named Nachshon walked into it. Though nothing happened at first he didn't turn back but walked on with absolute certainty. When he reached the danger point and the water was up to his neck, the sea parted for the Israelites.
The point of this story is clear. We have to make the effort if we want to achieve the result and we have to have the certainty that there is inspiration to be had from our efforts. Simply put it's the old saying "God helps those who help themselves."
Considering the circumstances Nachshom obviously saw that crossing The Red Sea was their only alternative, so he set to it. Whether we are writing a novel, painting a picture, designing a building, raising a barn, financing a project or solving a scientific problem there are solutions that we haven't found yet and maybe don't even know are there.
I have noticed this to be true so many times in my life that I have come to have the faith of a Nochshon about many things. I stare at the problems confronting me and I despair and give up, for a moment. But then I pick up a pen or a brush, or I sit down at the keyboard and set to it. It is almost miraculous sometimes what happens, a parting of the waters. Where did that inspiration come from? Where did those answers emerge from? How did that happen?
I don't know. I just keep walking to the other side of it. All I know is that it found me working.
DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Given the resources and opportunity, what one thing do you want to do in 2010 that you've never done before.
You have all Winter to answer. Answers will be posted on the first day of Spring.
20 responses so far.
DB - The Vagabond
3 comments:
And it always comes back to that, to you and your faith in the things you believe, doesn't it? There comes a point where you have to account for your resolve and the things you hold dear to you.
Faith, much like patience, is an action word that leads to a result. How much you have put into both determines what you get out of it.
I was just reading about the Zohar yesterday in a novel by Dan Brown. Don't know as I have ever read about it before. That seems like synchronicity to read about it again so soon in your blog. Perhaps choices of such words are not always random. Zohar. I thought quite a long time about it, too, thinking about how much wisdom had been gathered by the ancients which many modern thinkers imagine they are just discovering. Quite reassuring somehow to think that some of the ancients were also so busy pondering the mysteries, writing, and preserving a record of their thoughts to serve mankind hundreds of years later.
Great lesson to take things to the brink. If we do not push the limits, we will not evolve, as a person or as a society.
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