“Dear God, I want it all: the depths, the heights.”
— Theodore Roethke
Prayers to shell games
deific masques wishing for the extremes
and gaining them only
for the middle to drop out
I thought if I had the highs and the lows
I’d have it all
yet it is in the mid-ranges I thrive
Striving to understand
striving to learn
Striving to live
and missing the plot
that my life is scattered around me
the discarded and discarnate pieces
waiting to be picked up.
the wide ranges are great
agony and ecstasy
yet so easy to lose the plot
the context in which they all make sense
I want the colours and the greys
foreground and background to
and the key to make them fit.
Not out of a sense of greed
but of commitment to knowing the all
One eternity or another will be just time enough
— G A Rosenberg
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is one of the most amazing novels I’ve ever read. It tells the story of Michael Valentine Smith, as a child lost on Mars then found a few decades later. The novel explores many aspects of what it means to be human and also how our world may be seen through the eyes of a stranger. It most importantly introduces the word grok and the concept of groking. I use the word quite a bit because I don’t know that there is a current word in the English language that expresses the idea as well.
To Grok something is to understand it so fully that it becomes part of you. To grok a chair for instance would mean that you understand the very essence of what the chair is, what its purpose is and how well it performs its purpose. To Grok a concept means that you understand it so fully that you can inhabit it and vice versa. Something that is often lacking. To Grok a person means that you get them on every level possible and carry them within you.
At various times in the novel Michael Valentine Smith talks about groking something or someone in their fullness. That is total and complete understanding and empathy. He talks about waiting and sitting with something before he can grok it in its fullness and won’t speak of it except to ask clarifying questions until he does. I only wish that I and many others I knew had the patience to sit with something or someone until groking in fullness came. Do you grok groking?
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Thoughts Falling like Rock and Rising Like Butterflies by G A Rosenberg
“In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false.”
— Austin Osman Spare
Buckminster Fuller said the universe was asynchronously apprehended which means that it cannot be fully comprehended all at once. At most when we contemplate the vastness that we live in we can only achieve a partial comprehension. I believe it is possible to have a peak or mystical experience where we can catch a glimpse of the totality but those tend to be notoriously difficult to put into words. Therefore any system of belief that is written or spoken is only a partial approximation and thus on some level flawed. With that understanding tho we can look at many belief systems (and lets not kid each other, there are probably at least as many systems of belief as there are people. Even people who believe in as structured a religion as fundamentalist christianity will differ in exactly how they interpret the ‘literal word of God’ and what that means in their lives.) any one of them will be false or at best partial. Of course since I believe we live in a universe of infinite possibility I also agree with Ken Wilber when he says that everyone is right (but partial).
Blessings, G
Hazy Pasts, Hazy Paths by G A Rosenberg 
Scarabic Ties by G A Rosenberg 
