Extracts from an article by Quentin de la Bedoyere: Catholic Herald 7.4.17
......He held that to write things down was to close the argument. But he taught that knowledge was a dynamic process: we can never claim to know the truth and the best we can do is to recognise our ignorance. In that way, we beat down the barriers to knowledge.
.... His superior wisdom, he concluded, was that he knew the extent of his own ignorance.
Socrates was not popular. Going around pointing out people's errors is not a recipe for popularity. Indeed, even his friends could find him aggravating as he picked holes in their common-sense ideas. And he did so simply by asking questions, which obliged his victim to discover his errors for himself.
Socrates's great enemies were the sophists. These were the pseudo-intellectuals who went around Athens selling their false truths. We have plenty of these nowadays on our media..........The general and public view was that Socrates was a comic old idiot, ...... capable of "making the weaker argument defeat the stronger".
...... But we like our heroes, and recognising Socrates as the prophet of moral virtue...... is an indulgence I am happy to grant my self.
Me too; I like the sound of him!
Sunday, 30 April 2017
Wednesday, 8 March 2017
Together - A wedding poem
I have turned my face towards you
And you will see,
From my way and from my willing,
I shall not turn away.
We will stand and walk together,
To each inclined;
Our lives now interwoven,
And love shall light our path.
This poem virtually wrote itself around the time that husband and I were married.
It seems to me to follow on from the previous two.
(It hasn't always been a docile path but we are still on it.)
Friday, 3 March 2017
Poem - The land of Unsmiling Eyes
And here I stand
Lone in this land,
Where eyes unsmiling go,
As so go I.
I, as driftwood,
Cast adrift on strange seas,
Buffeted and tossed by waves,
Which hither, thither, all seemingly, at random flow,
As so go I.
But you as strength,
Becalm those stormy seas,
And, as a calm and steady breeze
Instills tranquillity in waves to gently flow,
Then so go I.
And here we stand,
Joined is this land
Where eyes now smiling go,
As so go we.
The first two verses of this poem came into my head at around the same time as the previous poem.
When I met husband-to-be, he, on my reading the rather woeful lines to him, though never a big lover of poetry, came up with the ideas for the last two verses, which, if nothing else, are certainly more upbeat, to say the least!!
Lone in this land,
Where eyes unsmiling go,
As so go I.
I, as driftwood,
Cast adrift on strange seas,
Buffeted and tossed by waves,
Which hither, thither, all seemingly, at random flow,
As so go I.
But you as strength,
Becalm those stormy seas,
And, as a calm and steady breeze
Instills tranquillity in waves to gently flow,
Then so go I.
And here we stand,
Joined is this land
Where eyes now smiling go,
As so go we.
The first two verses of this poem came into my head at around the same time as the previous poem.
When I met husband-to-be, he, on my reading the rather woeful lines to him, though never a big lover of poetry, came up with the ideas for the last two verses, which, if nothing else, are certainly more upbeat, to say the least!!
A poem - Dreamer
No foolish fantasiser, I.
Rather are my dreams
Impassioned facets of my reality,
Flamed, from time to time, from within;
Fired by sudden stoking of the heart's furnace,
Which had learned, in pain, to quietly feed
The soul's suppressed requirement.
Of the ten or so poems I have written through the years, this one pleases me quite a lot.
I was in my mid-twenties with my life going through somewhat of a turmoil at the time.
The words just came to me as I stood in the kitchen and I wrote them down exactly as they are here.
Rather are my dreams
Impassioned facets of my reality,
Flamed, from time to time, from within;
Fired by sudden stoking of the heart's furnace,
Which had learned, in pain, to quietly feed
The soul's suppressed requirement.
Of the ten or so poems I have written through the years, this one pleases me quite a lot.
I was in my mid-twenties with my life going through somewhat of a turmoil at the time.
The words just came to me as I stood in the kitchen and I wrote them down exactly as they are here.
About glimpses of beauty - on the train
Our senses are the gateway to beauty.
Sight, sound, touch, taste, aroma,
all take us into the world of delight.
Sight, sound, touch, taste, aroma,
all take us into the world of delight.
Tuesday, 31 January 2017
On a 'bad-weather' day
I am one of those annoying people who really doesn't mind any type of weather and can genuinely find benefits in all of them. Now, be fair, this is an asset, surely, in countries like ours!
Today is a case in point; it has been dull and gloomy, and now rainy, ALL day. I rub my internal hands together and think, aaah, a great day for just being in all day, doing those little jobs which we LIKE to put off for a rainy day OR, even better, for phoning friends we haven't spoken to for ages (as I have been doing since yesterday - gorgeous!).
I had sorted all my favourite pictures from last year's many calendars, all landscapes or trees or the beautiful things that family and friends know I love. I gave the tiled wall in the kitchen its once yearly fairy-liquid winter-clean and this afternoon, have spread out my collection and positioned them, for a change, to my satisfaction at the first go.
I actually based the idea on best friend S's mum's kitchen which I visited once many years ago. She had pictures up and down the walls and they looked marvellous. She said she preferred them where she could see them all the time. My efforts are part of her legacy to the world, I reckon.
I have taken a photo of them and posted it on our family whatsapp site, dubbing it 'Kitchen gallery 2017'. Some of the family who understand my ways and like to humour me have commented; daughter no. 1 'Lovely', son no.2 'Nice hang, Mum', granddaughter no.1 'Lovely, Gran'.
So, come rain or shine, it's all one with me.
The very best thing was, of course, the chats. I was poorly too, so I was actually, for a change, on lighter duties. Old school friend, T, over the phone, said it sounded like the Queen's flu so if it's good enough for Her Lovely Majesty, it has to be good enough for me.
Today is a case in point; it has been dull and gloomy, and now rainy, ALL day. I rub my internal hands together and think, aaah, a great day for just being in all day, doing those little jobs which we LIKE to put off for a rainy day OR, even better, for phoning friends we haven't spoken to for ages (as I have been doing since yesterday - gorgeous!).
I had sorted all my favourite pictures from last year's many calendars, all landscapes or trees or the beautiful things that family and friends know I love. I gave the tiled wall in the kitchen its once yearly fairy-liquid winter-clean and this afternoon, have spread out my collection and positioned them, for a change, to my satisfaction at the first go.
I actually based the idea on best friend S's mum's kitchen which I visited once many years ago. She had pictures up and down the walls and they looked marvellous. She said she preferred them where she could see them all the time. My efforts are part of her legacy to the world, I reckon.
I have taken a photo of them and posted it on our family whatsapp site, dubbing it 'Kitchen gallery 2017'. Some of the family who understand my ways and like to humour me have commented; daughter no. 1 'Lovely', son no.2 'Nice hang, Mum', granddaughter no.1 'Lovely, Gran'.
So, come rain or shine, it's all one with me.
The very best thing was, of course, the chats. I was poorly too, so I was actually, for a change, on lighter duties. Old school friend, T, over the phone, said it sounded like the Queen's flu so if it's good enough for Her Lovely Majesty, it has to be good enough for me.
Sunday, 1 January 2017
About 'knowing me, knowing you'
9.9.24
The posts now number 9, soon to be 8, so definitely some progress shown, however slowly!! Here goes!
11.6.23
01.01.17
Today is the third anniversary of my properly starting to write posts for my blog so each New Year's day is very special to me in this context. The meaning behind the title of this Abba song has been in my mind for a long while so I thought that today might be as good a day as any to try to write about it.
Why is 'knowing me' such an important idea to me and what is its relevance to my posts? It is this; whatever I write, however inconsequential or trivial it may be, is me. What you read is what I am. So, as you read my thoughts, opinions, views, they are 'me'. If you should be interested enough to follow them, you are 'learning me'.
My feeling is that as we 'learn' each other, we 'learn' ourselves. Whether or not we like or dislike someone, that person can give us an insight into ourselves. The 'realness', the honesty of each person I meet is, for me, the most important factor in our contact.
When people are 'not themselves', for whatever reason, and I'm not condemning or judging them, it makes me uncomfortable and I then find it hard to be myself. It isn't easy for everyone to be completely natural with others, especially on first meeting, for a variety of reasons.
It could be a person's nature, background or a combination of many other circumstances but it is possibly something that can be helped by sticking around people who are 'themselves', whatever that means exactly.
As ever, my hope is that some of what I send out on the e-waves may be of value to someone 'out there' in this very important aspect of life. I would love to think that I might be a little point of reference in the 'landscape of someone's life', however unknowingly.
So here's to "knowing me, knowing you - aha" now, and in time to come, hopefully.
It is, of course, the title of an Abba song, one of the many much-liked by me and my husband, not only because we loved their music but also because one of our early dates was a visit to a local cinema to see "ABBA: The Movie", a filmed documentary of their lives which we really enjoyed. I can still see some of the images from the film in my mind, particularly of their plane landing at the Australian airport!
(Also, I was, of course, his 'dancing queen' and I remember us dancing to "When I Kissed the Teacher' at our friends' New Year's Eve party, shortly afterwards, a very happy memory.)
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