A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. TRAVELING WITH TIME The wild desire to be forever racing against old Father Time is one of the kill-joys of modern life. That ancient traveler is sure to beat you in the long run, and as long as you are trying to rival him, he will make your life a burden. But if you will only acknowledge his superiority and profess that you do not approve of racing after all, he will settle down quietly beside you and jog along like the most companionable of creatures. That is a pleasant pilgrimage in which the journey itself is part of the destination. Join us next time for another philosophical look at life – 15 September 2018.
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A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. DAY'S END The lights in the cottages twinkle like fireflies, and there are small groups of people singing and laughing down the road. The honest fisherman reflects that this world is only a place of pilgrimage, but after all there is a good deal of cheer on the journey, if it is made with a contented heart. He wonders who the dwellers in the scattered houses may be, and weaves romances out of the shadows on the curtained windows. The lamps burning in the wayside shrines tell him stories of human love and patience and hope, and of divine forgiveness. Dream-pictures of life float before him, tender and luminous, filled with a vague, soft atmosphere in which the simplest outlines gain a strange significance. They are like some of Millet's paintings - The Sower, or The Sheepfold - there is very little detail in them; but sometimes a little means so much. Then the moon slips up into the sky from behind the eastern hills, and the fisherman begins to think of home, and of the foolish, fond old rhymes about those whom the moon sees far away, and the stars that have the power to fulfill wishes - as if the celestial bodies knew or cared anything about our small nerve-thrills which we call affection and desires! But, if there were some one above the moon and stars who did know and care, some one who could see the places and the people that you and I would give so much to see, some one who could do for them all of kindness that you and I fain would do, some one able to keep our beloved in perfect peace and watch over the little children sleeping in their beds beyond the sea - what then? Why, then, in the evening hour, one might have thoughts of home that would go across the ocean by way of heaven, and be better than dreams, almost as good as prayers. Join us next time for Traveling With Time – 15 August 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. THE GIFT OF IMAGINATION To see things as they are - this is a precious gift. To see things as they were in their beginning, or as they will be in their ending, or as they ought to be in their perfecting; to make the absent, present; to rebuild the past out of a fragment of carven stone; to foresee the future harvest in the grain of wheat in the sower's hand; to visualize the face of the invisible, and enter into the lives of all sorts and conditions of unknown men - this is a far more precious gift. Imagination is more than a pleasant fountain; it is a fertilizing stream. Nothing great has ever been discovered or invented without the aid of imagination. It is the medium of all human sympathy. No man can feel with another unless he can imagine himself in the other man's place. Join us next time for Day’s End – 15 July 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. SIMPLICITY IN OUR LIVES There is a great complaint nowadays about the complication of life, especially in its social and material aspects. It is bewildering, confusing, overstraining. It destroys the temper of tranquility necessary to education. The simple life is recommended, and rightly, as a refuge from this trouble. But perhaps we need to understand a little more clearly what is simplicity. It does not consist merely in the absence of bric-a-brac. Simplicity, in truth, depends but little on the external. It is not outward, but inward. A certain openness of mind to learn the daily lessons of the school of life; a certain willingness of heart to give and to receive that extra service, that gift beyond the strict measure of debt, which makes friendship possible; a certain clearness of spirit to perceive the best in things and people, to love without fear and to cleave to it without mistrust; a peaceable sureness of affection and taste; a gentle straightforwardness of action; a kind sincerity of speech - these are the marks of the simple life. It cometh not with observation, for it is within us. I have seen it in a hut. I have seen it in a palace. And wherever it is found it is the best prize of the school of life. Join us next time for The Gift of Imagination – 15 June 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. AU LARGE! There is magic in words, surely, and many a treasure besides Ali Baba's is unlocked with a verbal key. Some charm is the mere sound, some association with the pleasant past, touches a secret spring. The bars are down; the gate is open; you are made free of all the fields of memory and fancy - by a word. Au large! Envoyez au large! is the cry of the Canadian voyagers as they thrust their paddles against the shore and push out on the broad lake for a journey through the wilderness. Au large! is what the man in the bow shouts to the man in the stern when the birch canoe is running down the rapids, and the water grows too broke, and the rocks too thick, along the river-bank. Then the frail bark must be driven out into the very center of the wild current, into the midst of danger to find safety, dashing, like a frightened colt, along the smooth, sloping lane bordered by white fences of foam. Au large! When I hear this word, I hear also the crisp waves breaking on pebbly beaches, and the big wind rushing through innumerable trees, and the roar of headlong rivers leaping down the rocks. I see long reaches of water sparkling in the sun, or sleeping still between evergreen walls beneath a cloudy sky; and the gleam of white tents on the shore; and the glow of firelight dancing through the woods. I smell the delicate vanishing perfume of forest flowers; and the incense of rolls of birch-bark, crinkling and flaring in the campfire; and the soothing odor of balsam-boughs piled deep for woodland beds - the veritable and only genuine perfume of the land of Nod. The thin shining veil of the Northern lights waves and fades and brightens over the night sky; at the sound of the word, as at the ringing of a bell, the curtain rises. Scene, the Forest of Arden; enter a party of hunters . . . Join us next time for Simplicity in Our Lives – 15 May 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. THE QUESTION OF LIFE What is the goal that you desire and hope to reach? What is the end of life towards which you are drifting or steering? There are three ways in which we may look at this question, depending upon the point of view from which we regard human existence. When we think of it as a work, the question is, "What do we desire to accomplish?" When we think of it as a growth, a development, a personal unfolding, the question is, "What do we desire to become?" When we think of it as an experience, a destiny, the question is, "What do we desire to become of us?" There is a difference in these three standpoints from which we may look at our life; and this difference not only makes a little variation in the view that we take of our existence, but also influences unconsciously our manner of thinking and speaking. Most of the misunderstandings that arise when we are talking about life come from a failure to remember this. We are looking at the same thing, but we are looking from opposite corners of the room. We are discussing the same subject, but in different dialects. Some people - perhaps the majority - are of a practical turn of mind. Life seems to them principally an affair of definite labor directed to certain positive results. They are usually thinking about what they are to do in the world, and what they are to get. It is a question of occupation, of accomplishment, of work and wages. Other people - all serious-minded people when they are young, and life still appears fresh and wonderful to them - regard their existence from the standpoint of sentiment, of feeling, of personality. They have their favorite characters in history or fiction, whom they admire and try to imitate. They have their ideals, which they seek and hope to realize. Some vision of triumph over obstacles, and victory over enemies, some model of manhood or womanhood, shines before them. By that standard they test and measure themselves. Towards that end they direct their efforts. The question of life, for them, is a question of attainment, of self-discipline, of self-development. Other people - I say all people at some time or other in their experience - catch a glimpse of life in still wider and more mysterious relations. They see that it is not really, for any one of us, an independent and self-centered and self-controlled affair. They feel that its issues run out far beyond what we can see in this world. They have a deep sense of a future state of being towards which we are all inevitably moving. This movement cannot be a matter of chance. It must be under law, under responsibility, under guidance. It cannot be a matter of indifference to us. It ought to be the object of our most earnest concern, our most careful choice, our most determined endeavor. If there is a port beyond the horizon, we should know where it lies and how to win it; and so the question of life, in these profound moods which come to all of us, presents itself as a question of eternal destiny. Join us next time for Au Large! – 15 April 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. THE HAVEN OF CHARACTER Our life is made up, not of actions alone, but of thoughts and feelings and habitual affections. These taken all together constitute what we call our present character. In their tendencies and impulses and dominant desires they constitute our future character, towards which we are moving as a ship to her haven. What is it, then, for you and me, this intimate ideal, this distant self, this hidden form of personality which is our goal? I am sure that we do not often enough put the problem clearly before us in this shape. We all dream of the future, especially when we are young. A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. The stuff of which our day-dreams are made is for the most part of very cheap material. We seldom weave into them the threads of our inmost spiritual life. We build castles in Spain, and forecast adventures in Bohemia. But the castle is without a real master. The hero of the adventure is vague and misty. We do not clearly recognize his face, or know what is in his heart. But in all these reveries we do not really think deeply of our selves. We do not stay to ask what manner of men and women we shall be, when we are living here or there, or doing thus or so. Yet it is an important question - very much more important, in fact, than the thousand and one trifling interrogatories about the future with which we amuse our idle hours. And the strange thing is that, though our ideal of future character is so often hidden from us, over-looked, forgotten, it is always there, and always potently, though unconsciously, shaping our course in life. “Every one," says Cervantes, "is the son of his own works." But his works do not come out of the air, by chance. They are wrought out in a secret, instinctive harmony with a conception of character which we inwardly acknowledge as possible and likely for us. When we choose between two lines of conduct, between a mean action and a noble one, we choose also between two persons, both bearing our name, the one representing what is best in us, the other embodying what is worst. When we vacillate and alternate between them, we veer, as the man in Robert Louis Stevenson's story veered, between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We say that we make up our minds to do a certain thing or not, to resist a certain temptation or to yield. It is true. We make up our minds in a deeper sense than we remember. In every case the ultimate decision is between two future selves, one with whom the virtue is harmonious, another with whom the vice is consistent. To one of these two figures, dimly concealed behind the action, we move forward. What we forget is that, when the forward step is taken, the shadow will be myself. Character is eternal destiny. Join us next time for The Question of Life – 15 March 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. DRYADS, NAIADS AND OREADS The trim plantations of trees which are called forests in certain parts of Europe - scientifically pruned and tended, counted every year by uniformed foresters, and defended against all possible depredations - are admirable and useful in their way; but they lack the mystic enchantment of the fragments of native woodland which linger among the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, or the vast, shaggy, sylvan wildernesses which hide the lakes and rivers of Canada. These Laurentian Hills lie in no man's Land. Here you do not need to keep to the path, for there is none. You may make your own trail, whithersoever fancy leads you; and at night you may pitch your tent under any tree that looks friendly and firm. Here, if anywhere, you shall find Dryads, and Naiads, and Oreads. And if you chance to see one, by moonlight, combing her long hair beside the glimmering waterfall, or slipping silently, with gleaming shoulders, through the grove of silver birches, you may call her by the name that pleases you best. She is all your own discovery. There is no social directory in the wilderness. One side of our nature, no doubt, finds its satisfaction in the regular, the proper, the conventional. But there is another side of our nature, underneath, that takes delight in the strange, the free, the spontaneous. We like to discover what we call a law of nature, and make our calculations about it, and harness the force which lies behind it for our own purposes. But we taste a different kind of joy when an event occurs which no one has foreseen or counted upon. It seems like an evidence that there is something in the world which is alive and mysterious and untrammeled. Join us next time for The Haven of Character – 15 February 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? It was the little lad who asked the question; and the answer also, as you will see, was mainly his. Said the lad, lying on the grass beside me, "Father, who owns the mountains?" I happened to have heard, the day before, of two or three lumber companies that had bought some of the woodland slopes; so I told him their names, adding that there were probably a good many different owners, whose claims taken all together would cover the whole range of hills. "Well," answered the lad, after a moment of silence, "I don't see what difference that makes. Everybody can look at them." They lay stretched out before us in the level sunlight, the sharp peaks outlined against the sky, the vast ridges of forest sinking smoothly toward the valleys, the deep hollows gathering purple shadows in their bosoms, and the little foothills standing out in rounded promontories of brighter green from the darker mass behind them. They were all ours, from crested cliff to wooded base. The solemn groves of firs and spruces, the plumed sierras of lofty pines, the stately pillared forests of birch and beech, the wild ravines, the tremulous thickets of silvery poplar, the bare peaks with their wide outlooks and the cool vales resounding with the ceaseless song of little rivers - we knew and loved them all; they ministered peace and joy to us; they were all ours, though we held no title deeds and our ownership had never been recorded. What is property, after all? The law says there are two kinds, real and personal. But it seems to me that the only real property is that which is truly personal, that which we take into our inner life and make our own forever, by understanding and admiration and sympathy and love. This is the only kind of possession that is worth anything. We measure success by accumulation. This measure is false. The true measure is appreciation. He who loves most has most. "Come, laddie," I said to my comrade, "let us go home. You and I are very rich. We own the mountains. But we can never sell them, and we don't want to." Join us next time for Dryads, Naiads, and Oreads – 15 January 2018. A man moves slowly or swiftly, he does his work weakly or strongly, according to the energy that is in him. But the direction of his life, this way or that way, follows the unseen influence of what he admires and believes most. Available the fifteenth of every month, short inspirational treasures by Gammon Irons. LIBERTY What is liberty? It is the recognition of voluntary allegiance to the highest law. And what is the highest law? It is the law of gratitude and love. Who, then, is free? He who sees and feels the obligations which bind him to serve the highest and the best. The noblest, richest, fullest, purest life is that which has the deepest and strongest sense of indebtedness resting upon it always, and impelling it forward along the line of duty, which is also the line of joy. So, then, true liberty is the highest kind of bondage. I. The sense of belonging to something is essential to our happiness. We are never without this sense, and therefore we do not realize its importance. But let us try for once to strip it away from us, and then perhaps we may feel what it means. You remember the story of The Man Without a Country. Endeavor now to construct in imagination the figure of a man without a world, without a fellow-man, without spirit. Does not the mere contemplation of such a condition as that throw us back forcibly, almost violently, upon the truth that the joy of life is a dependent joy, and that we can only come into true and happy possession of ourselves when we realize that we belong to something greater than ourselves? As living beings we are part of a universe of life; as intelligent beings we are in connection with a great circle of conscious intelligences; as spiritual beings we have our place in a moral world controlled and governed by the supreme spirit. In each of these spheres there is a law, a duty, an obligation, a responsibility, for us. And our felicity lies in the discovery and acknowledgment of those ties which fit us and bind us to take our place, to play our part, to do our work, to live our life, where we belong. II. The true uplifting and emancipation of our life comes through the recognition of the higher ties and relationships which bind us. Here is a slave bound by artificial law to the service of a human master. How shall you make that man free? Suppose you slay the master, and strike the bonds from the limbs of the slave, and say to him, "Go! you are free, you have no master, you belong to no one." What have you done for him? Is he really any more free than he was before? Is he not still a slave, though a masterless one? But suppose you teach him to believe that he is a human being, and that he has a service to render, even in his low estate, to the whole brotherhood of mankind - a service just as real and true, and therefore just as noble, as that of the king upon the throne. Suppose you bring into his mind the great truth that he belongs to humanity just as fully and as completely as his master does, and that, even under the hard conditions of his life, it is his duty, his privilege, his glory, to serve humanity by honesty and fidelity and diligence and purity. Now, indeed, you have liberated his soul; and if the liberation of his body comes, as it ought to come, as it must come, it will find him already a free man, and fit for liberty, because he has caught sight of the true meaning of fraternity and equality. And, so life carries written upon its very face the great truth that the only real deliverance from a lower bondage lies in the recognition of a higher obligation. Mankind is made free by discerning their noblest allegiance. III. The inward joy and power of our life, in every sphere, comes from the discovery that its highest obligation rests at last upon the law of gratitude. In every tie that binds us, we are made free and glad to serve, when we recognize that we have been given value we cannot repay. Suppose we come to understand that this race of mankind to which we belong is bound together by something deeper and more vital than subjection to an outward law, that there is a vicarious element in human life, that no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself, that all the efforts and aspirations and toils and sufferings of humanity serve us and are for our sake. This is true in the plainest and most literal sense. The houses that shelter us, the clothes that cover us, the food on our tables, have all been won for us by the labor of other hands. We have paid for that labor, it is true, but there is one thing that we have not paid for, and that is the life that has gone into the labor. Every touch of beauty, of light, of power, every gift of riches, of freedom, of learning that is ours, has been paid for by the lives of our fellow-men, and binds us to their service. It is this thought alone which can reveal to us the immense meaning of humanity, and fit us for our part in life, and make us truly noble men and gentle women. We are bought with a price. Join us next time for Who Owns the Mountains – 15 December 2017. |
AuthorMusings from Gammon Irons. To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for us all; and surely a good haven to sail. Archives
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