Vista into Darkness&Light over the Horizon

After doing and caring for the daily needs, finally I was free to sit outside and read that difficult but challenging text I carry along for some time. It surely is not my first reading, but in order to find the entrance for deep understanding, you need time, focus, repetition and re-reading back and forth, making small notes, underline notions and sentences, keep an index. This would only be a minimum. I could write and lecture on how I have learned to read and understand from various well known philosophers/university-teachers and how I developed my own art of slow reading.

Indeed, slow is my keyword here. Because in my work in public administration, I was obliged to follow instruction courses in “fast&efficient” reading and writing. My bosses would return any paper which was not reduced and abbreviated according to format. Horrible and deadly for a deeper understanding of any matter or complex case. The justification for that was and is always “lack of time”. The consequence of this is clearly visible in Dutch parlamentary practice: Ministers or Secretaries of State are no longer prepared and instructed in an adequate way to inform the MP’s, so that the latter can control the executive power in an adequate and informed way. Montesquieu would turn around in his grave if he could have shared my experience. And my subject was limited to a specific branch of legal-financial affairs in environmental law only. Only that special branch, but it gave me that very clearly focussed insight in the failing and erosion of democratic policymaking in a small country.

So, happily leaving that far behind, I felt deeply grateful to sit outside on the veranda, while Willemien and Mischa were cycling to Meinbrexen. And do my Reading thoroughly, without yawning or nodding. And to find the openings and see with different eyes. To share those deep and farsighted views of the writer. That means sharing revelations, vistas, the richness of a life long searching for real understanding. Yes, there are moments of Enlightenment! As you can see on todays photo: showing the darkening and yet still opening of the cloudy skies at the far Western horizon. Last time I had been looking out over the darkening valley towards the West, I have told you about Carl Jung’s “Nekyia” and Max Weber’s “daimon”. Indeed I absolutely believe in the indestructability of our core-self, which is beyond birth and death, because it is grounded in unconditional and encompassing Love. That gift makes us see far into the Darkness and meet the Light over the Horizon.