Knowing

I have been feeling more than a tad uncertain lately. I found this quote from Ernest Holmes in The Voice Celestial:

I want to know and know that I know.

Dragons Wild

This weekend I read Dragons Wild, a fun fantasy novel about a young man who upon graduating from college and looking for a job finds out that he and his sister are really dragons. In some way, I suppose the novel is about change and growing up. I found one quote that gives some perspective on this idea of change.

“Now ‘change’ is a pretty nebulous word. It could mean for the better or for the worse. Of course, for those who are comfortable with things the way they are, change is something they look at with distrust if not outright fear. The odds of change improving things for them aren’t nearly as high as that it will really mess things up.”

I think the author, Robert Asprin, was a wise soul.

Eternalities

I normally don’t consider myself a wordsmith, but every so often a word will give me pause. Today I was reading an affirmation by Ernest Homes in The Science of Mind “…the Good, the Enduring, and the True are Eternalities in my experience.” Try saying that phrase a few times fast. Every time I tripped over the word “Eternalities.” I wasn’t the only one who had problems. Microsoft Word flagged it as a misspelling, but would let me look up Eternality: “Something that lasts for all time without beginning or end.” The pop up window even gave me some clues as to how to pronounce it.

The word “Eternalities” is like a neglected child in a large extended family. It has five syllables in a world of short words. It describes a very, very long period of time in an era of short attention spans. It describes something very spiritual in an era of consumerism, though the era may be ending. Yet, “Eternalities” seems to be invaluable to anyone who wants to think of the Divine. It is like the kid with insomnia who wakes up the family when he smells the gas leak. He finally gets a little respect.

Now all I need to do is use it three times in conversation and the word will be mine forever—or so the theory goes.

City of Ember

The title of on article posted on Yahoo! today exclaims, “Antarctic Meltdown Would Flood Washington, D.C.” My first response was “well, I guess we’ll just have to move the Capital then.” I was slightly annoyed. “Do you think things always stay the same?” Given the context that cities around the world would be flooded at that point in time, moving the Capital would be one of the least of everyone’s worries. For those with a natural inclination for visualizing or long term planning, I suggest creating a folder on their computers or taking out pencil and paper and start noodling on this idea now.

In January I read the Books of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau: The City of Ember, The People of Sparks, The Prophet of Yonwood, and The Diamond of Darkhold. Three of the four books in the series take place in a post-apocalyptic society. According to Amazon.com, the reading level is 9-12 year old and, the series is aimed at the 10 to 14 year old group. This is all rather deceiving. Adults could benefit from the series just as much as kids.

I told my 84 year aunt about the books, and we wondered whether they were good for children. “Won’t they worry about their future? Won’t they have nightmares?” Yet in the days since I have read the books, some of the “take home” messages have been floating around in my head. “We make a lot of assumptions about the future, thinking it will be more or less like the present.” “In all probability, one way or another, the world will probably change radically in the next generation or so.” “People are resourceful.”

Change is a given. Radical change is highly probable. The sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can move on to working from an attitude of resourcefulness. Lina, the little girl in the Ember series, kept on drawing her vision of a city of lights. This is DuPrau’s message of hope to tweens and adults alike. It can give people a context when reading about predictions for the future.