Saturday, September 5, 2009

Acknowledgement

"I bear witness, oh my God, that Thous hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify at this moment to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. There is none other God but Thee. The Help in peril, the Self-Subsisting."
(Bahá'u'lláh)




There is this feeling of awe that I get when faced with things that are great, it's a good feeling. A great feeling. Acknowledgment.

Then there is the other end, acknowledgment of my limitations, my imperfections. That is another good feeling. Humility. The ocean is humble. I read somewhere that the ocean's greatness is that it places itself below all the other bodies of water, and then they all flow to it. So there is a kind of power in humility too.

Acknowledgment is the first movement of John Coltrane's masterpiece "A Love Supreme" a piece that is hard to listen to at first in light of its complexity and energy. But it has become one of my all time favorite albums, and I have the studio version and the live version. It is Coltrane's personal prayer of thanks to our Creator for having touched him in his time of need. It is really timeless and as overpowering as watching the stars move accross the clear nocturn sky, or watching the sun rise in the early morning, or watching the tide come in. It's monumental. It's awesome. It's humanity touching something that is greater than oneself, and emanating energy that is more than what is within.

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