QotD: on Waiting

[liveonearth]

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-- T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets". It appears in the second poem called "East Coker"

Comments

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

I struggle with this good "taoist" advice. Faith and Hope i can understand, and part of detachment is to give up both these chimera. But to "wait without love" seems to ask too much of the soul which is love and is born in love and will die without it.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Well that's a lot to say, that the soul is love, is born in love, and will die without it. I don't know the truth of all that. I do know the truth of the importance of being able to sit still and be without questing for love, and that is how I interpreted it. ... Words are so slippery, and mean many different things. Soul is a word for something that nobody seems to fully agree about. And it's OK. =-]