We meet together on the common ground of our humanity, witness to the commonality of mankind’s search for answers to the terrible injustices of life and our yearning to be chalices, receptacles of the divine, however we name it. We are witness also to the wondrous truth that every human being — indeed every spark of life in air, sea, earth, and sky — is a living being, evolving in its own unique way toward ever keener awareness of its god-essence, yet all are one — living and moving and having our very existence within the ambience of the Cosmic Purpose.
I chose the title of this address from John Keats’ poem “To Homer,” the blind minstrel. It was found among Keats’ papers after his death:
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green;
There is a budding morrow in midnight;
There’s a triple sight in blindness keen:
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.
– The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge Edition, p. 119.
———
Grace F. Knoche
Presented at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Chicago, August 31, 1993.
Notes
We meet together on the common ground of our humanity, witness to the commonality of mankind’s search for answers to the terrible injustices of life and our yearning to be chalices, receptacles of the divine, however we name it. We are witness also to the wondrous truth that every human being — indeed every spark of life in air, sea, earth, and sky — is a living being, evolving in its own unique way toward ever keener awareness of its god-essence, yet all are one — living and moving and having our very existence within the ambience of the Cosmic Purpose.
I chose the title of this address from John Keats’ poem “To Homer,” the blind minstrel. It was found among Keats’ papers after his death:
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green;
There is a budding morrow in midnight;
There’s a triple sight in blindness keen:
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.
– The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge Edition, p. 119.
———
Grace F. Knoche
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