WYATT

 

VIDEO

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0824758/

JUDITH

WA - Judith (Kema) Larsen (nee Rankin) crossed the threshold to the Great Beyond on August 11, 2025. Born in Butte, MT on December 5th, 1939, she was a Montana girl who loved her horse, Dagger. She moved with her family to Bainbridge Island, WA and at age 17 published her first poem. A year later she was accepted to the University of Washington where she studied poetry under Theodore Roethke and other major poets, and was quickly embraced by its creative community. Kema met her husband Paul in Yellowstone Park during the 1959 earthquake. Together, they had daughters Astrid in Anchorage and Heidi in Montreal. After a master's degree in Elizabethan literature at Columbia, she procured a law degree from Georgetown University. She practiced as a public defender in the juvenile courts in Washington DC and worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. She also contracted with the American Bar Association, advising on laws, educating judges, and writing the book, Foster Care Law: A Primer. Kema was the self-imposed anonymous editor of over 100 of her husband's journal articles on Air and Space Law and was the source of their engaging titles. After retiring, she moved back to Bainbridge Island to study philosophy, quantum physics, and esotericism. Kema was brilliant, enigmatic, and will be missed, especially by her Thursday group, Quaker friends and her beloved Bookies.                                  ___________________

A month before she passed away, Kema, Jason and I took the ferry to Seattle and visited her favorite bookstore and gelato shop. Our arms heavy with books and our bellies full of chocolate gelato, we took the ferry home, singing aloud all the songs we knew.  Some people on the ferry looked at us, because we were making so much noise. But I think they were happy for us, and wanted to sing along. What is your memory?

With love,

Heidi

WAR AND PEACE

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

449

because he understood something else that the living did not and could not understand, and that entirely absorbed him.

452

In those hours of solitary suffering and half delirium that he spent afterwards, the more he passed in thought into the new element of eternal love, revealed to him, the further he travelled from earthly life. To love everything, every one, to sacrifise self always for love, meant to love no one, meant not to live this earthly life, the more completely he annihilated that fearful barrier between life and death.

453

when love for one woman stole unseen into his heart, and bound him again to life.

... It was the last mortal struggle between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It was the sudden consciousness that life, in the shape of his love for Natasha, was still precious to him, and the last and vanquished onslaught of terror before the unknown. 

454

"Natasha I love you too much! More than everything in the world!

455

Love hinders death. Love is life. All , all that I understand, I understand only because I love. All is, all exists only because I love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God, and dying means from a particle of love, to go back to the universal and eternal source of love

455-56-57

... He dreamed...by degrees all these people began to disappear, and the one thing that was left was the question of closing the door...Everything depended on whether he were on time to shut it or not...And    an agonizing terror came upon him; Behind the door stood it...His last supernatural efforts were in vain...It comes in, and it is death. He died.

But at that instant he recollected that he was asleep; he made an effort and waked up. "Yes, death is an awakening," flashed with sudden light into his soul, and the veil that had till then hidden the unknown was lifted before his spiritual vision. He felt, as it were, set free from some force that held him in bondage, and was aware of that strange lightness of being that had not left him since.

that day there began for Andrey an awakening from life...he was no more...the body, deserted by the spirit, passed through its last struggles

Midsummer Night's Dream

Blakes Fairies

Bottom's dream 

"Methought I was—there

is no man can tell what. Methought I was,—and
methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if
he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue
to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of
this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the
latter end of a play, before the duke:
peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall
sing it at her death."

First Corinthians 2

[9] But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
[10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
[11] For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
[12] Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
[13] Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
[14] But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
[15] But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
[16] For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Frye, Page 50

" but he has been closer to this wonderful and mysterious play than any other of its characters, and it no longer matters that Puck thinks him a fool or that Titania loathes his asinine face."

A Midsummer Night's Dream 
Puck (Act 5 Scene 2)
"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends."

TITANIA AND OBERON
Song of Los, Plate 5 , British Museum

Tate
Illustrations to Shakepeare
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing

GOOD LIFE

Sunday, September 13, 2009

THE GOOD LIFE

Milton O. Percival in his book WILLIAM BLAKE'S CIRCLE OF DESTINY, analyzed the ideas that lie behind Blake's thinking. He finds Blake to exhibit familiar tenants of idealism. These are the ones he names:

1.) Appearances are not reality

2.) Intuition is a prime source of knowledge

3.) The mind creates the universe in its own likeness

4.) The cosmic mind corresponds to the individual mind

5.) Reality is mental

Percival adds these tenants in Blake's thought.

6.) The individual and universal minds are identical in nature

7.) The supreme experience is ecstacy

8.) The good life is unitive concerning itself in building Jerusalem

Percival describes the good life as envisioned by Blake thus:

"It requires that one make the mystical identification of oneself with others and of all with God; and that one should have faith in that identification when the immediate perception fades. ...

"The good life must be built by faith or experience, on the qualities of imagination.

To attempt to build it on the qualities of reason or sense is to reduce a god-like man to a handful of dust."

Blake in his poetry continually restates and develops these tenants. Furthermore he lived his life by these tenants in his commitment to Eternity and to the expression of Imagination. 

 

LARRY'S LIFE

 BIOGRAPHY

1st decade        LIFE BEGINS

2 nd decade      HIGH SCHOOL YEARS

                         COLLEGE YEARS

                         GOING TO SEA

3 rd decade       CUBA VICTORY 

                         BACK TO DUKE 

                         KOREAN WAR

                         CIVILIAN AT LAST  

                          LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS  

4th decade        TRANSITION

                          SETTING FORTH

                          NEXT STEP

5th decade         GOVERNMENT JOB

                          LIFE IN WINSTON SALEM

                          TRY AGAIN

                          JOURNEY CONTINUES

6th decade         IN ARLINGTON

                           QUAKERS 

                           LIVING IN VIRGINIA 

7th decade          END OF BEGINNING

                           FREEDOM   

                           FREEDOM 2

                           FREEDOM 3

8th decade         REFLECTIONS 

___________________________________________________________________

Another perspective. CHILD'S JOURNEY

Ezra

E 707

Now my lot in the Heavens is this; Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave me his hand Paracelsus & Behmen appeard to me. terrors appeard in the Heavens above

 2 Esdras

4Ezra.1

4Ezra.8

[47] For you come far short of being able to love my creation more than I love it. But you have often compared yourself to the unrighteous. Never do so!
[48] But even in this respect you will be praiseworthy before the Most High,
[49] because you have humbled yourself, as is becoming for you, and have not deemed yourself to be among the righteous in order to receive the greatest glory.
[50] For many miseries will affect those who inhabit the world in the last times, because they have walked in great pride.
[51] But think of your own case, and inquire concerning the glory of those who are like yourself,
[52] because it is for you that paradise is opened, the tree of life is planted, the age to come is prepared, plenty is provided, a city is built, rest is appointed, goodness is established and wisdom perfected beforehand.
[53] The root of evil is sealed up from you, illness is banished from you, and death is hidden; hell has fled and corruption has been forgotten;
[54] sorrows have passed away, and in the end the treasure of immortality is made manifest.
[55] Therefore do not ask any more questions about the multitude of those who perish.
[56] For they also received freedom , but they despised the Most High, and were contemptuous of his law, and forsook his ways.
[57] Moreover they have even trampled upon his righteous ones,
[58] and said in their hearts that there is not God -- though knowing full well that they must die. 

QUAKERS

 

This drawing of the breaking of Silence at a Quaker Meeting appeared on the

website of the Miami Meeting. I was curious about who had created the image

and wondered if it was drawn by the artist Bobby Buskirk who had formerly been

a member of Miami Meeting. Bobby's daughter, Sally Gillespie, who was my

friend in the Friends Meeting of Ocala for many years was able to confirm that

the picture was done by her mother.

Bobby and Phil Buskirk were married in Miami after Phil moved there in 1974.

It was a second marriage for both of them. Bobby's first husband Robert Slane

had died in 1972. Phil was divorced from Frances Hamer Kanzler to whom he

was married from 1942 until the early seventies. Phil and Bobby were distant

cousins and knew each other as children in Palisades, Michigan. Bobby was

born August 18, 1916 and named Rosamond Mack Clark. She and Robert Slane

parented four children, Mack, Robert, Sally and Susanna. Phil and Frances were

also the parents of four, Charles, Philip, James, and Martha.

Phil Buskirk had been a powerful spokesperson for peace, justice and reconciliation

as he worked for AFSC for many years. He held the position of Field Director for

AFSC in Israel from 1959 to 1961. Bobby became a Quaker and joined the Miami

Meeting after her marriage to Phil. She was always interested in art. She drew

pastel portraits of people and animals.  She designed wood block prints, and she

painted in oil and acrylic paints.

Her love of art was passed on to her daughter Sally who became an art teacher

in public schools.

Later Phil and Bobby moved south from Miami to the town of Florida City very

near Homestead and the Everglades National Park. In 1994 extreme south

Florida was in the path of Hurricane Andrew which became the costliest storm

to hit the US up to that time. The home of Bobby and Phil was destroyed along

with 25,000 other homes in Miami-Dade County. Instead of rebuilding in south

Florida Bobby and Phil moved to higher ground in central Florida. They settled

in the small town of McIntosh 18 miles south of Gainesville. Although they

became a part of the Gainesville Friends Meeting their time in central Florida

was short. Phil died in 1995 and Bobby's death followed the next year.

Sally said of her mother, "She loved Quaker Meeting.  She enjoyed getting to
know the people.  She loved making up poems about people and playing word games and family games.  She liked to laugh and she loved to read."

One daughter followed her mother into art, the other became a college librarian.

FOR JUDITH'S BOOK

In 2015 our friend Judith Larsen wrote Becoming Ourselves: Thirteen Conversations in which she related interviews with thriteen octogerarians. Here is some of what Larry told her.

Larry

Larry grew up in Louisiana.  His father was a preacher.  There is a picture of Larry, a sullen teenager, arms folded, staring at the camera in a way that says “Bring it on!”  The last thing on that young man’s mind is preaching the Gospel!  

Even today, Larry is counter to expectations.  He speaks simply with a deep Southern  accent.  He talks to the man at the cash register in Wendy’s, to the folks who gather in his home on Sunday, to distinguished academics in the same down-home way.  It is after you have been with him a while that you recognize his brilliance, intuition, and learning.  Duke and Tulane Universities broadened his reach, but didn’t layer any social pretensions on him.   He came to a crisis.

I’ll tell you how it was.  I had a good job, a nice house, a nice car and everything that anybody could want.  1954-5.  And it occurred to me that there wasn’t anything else – I thought to myself “Is this all?”  I was kind of desperate.  In desperation I prayed.  That must be the first time I ever really prayed in my whole .life.  “God, send me something to read.”  I had heard plenty of preachers and I was always distrustful – do you really mean that or do you just throw that at us, but a few days later I was at the barber chair and a Roman Catholic young man was cutting my hair, and he started raving about Norman Vincent Peale, and he said “He’s the best there is.”  I got the book and it changed my life.  Positive thinking.  God loves me personally.  That is the whole deal.

How should he express this with his life?

I wanted to do something for God!  One possibility was to be a social worker.  But then my brain just tipped like that, I realized that I wanted to be a minister.

It was 1954 and he had in mind studying theology at Southern Methodist University, but he met Ellie in New Orleans and destiny took a hand.  In order to be close to Ellie he attended a local Baptist seminary.  From his studies:

I expected nothing and I didn’t get very much.  I got a piece of paper.  I needed a diploma, I needed a B.D. to be admitted into session in the church.

At first, restless Larry – now married to Ellie, with little ones on the way—tried to bind himself to a traditional minister’s role.

8 years was enough.  I finally came to believe that preaching was not the way, not the thing to do.  Preaching is…preaching doesn’t really help much.  All the preaching to people who were already better than I was, they were glad to hear what I had to say…  Here I am every Sunday, preaching to good people, and I shake hands at the door, and “Preacher, you really stepped on my leg today!”  That’s supposed to be a compliment.  And then they would go home and put their feet on the table and eat their chicken dinner and watch the football game.

Larry and Ellie moved to Winston Salem N.C. where Larry was attached to the court as a pastor.  A number of the people he counseled were habitual drunks.

I found myself in court one day, and I asked [the court] to release these drunks.  There was a whole pack of them who were continuously going in and out of the jail.  [The] judge would say 30 days!  28 days they were back.  30 days!  The judge was so glad to have someone try to do something for them.  “Take them.”  And I took about 50 of ‘em.

Larry formed the Alcohol Education Program, which operated much like Alcoholics Anonymous, with good results.  The groups grew in size.  When the Methodist Conference said they had a new church assignment for Larry, he asked instead for a special appointment as a probation officer.  He worked hard at that, but after 10 years he began to feel infected by the mindset of the prison system.

They say “You’re not coming back,” and the guard will say “He’ll be back.  Because it changes you, the criminal mind.

Larry and Ellie intended to take a trip around the country to refresh their outlook.  One of the first stops was in Washington D.C.  They visited the Church of the Savior, a group of Christians dedicated to good works in the city.  The church’s organization around early Christian values appealed to Larry so strongly that he stayed, while Ellie returned to North Carolina to care for the children.  Within 2 years the family had re-joined Larry in Washington.

You were not really a member of the Church of the Savior, you were a member of your mission group.  And that was a lot of fun.  One of the groups I was in, they bought the Ritz which was an old apartment building that used to have had better days, and they formed task forces to refurbish it [for the homeless].

Almost coincidentally with Larry’s arrival at Church of the Savior, though, the church began to go through “Dispersal,” which meant sending its members out into the world.  At that point Larry sought a civilian job with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  That is when I met him – I was also an employee of the agency – never suspecting that Larry was a Methodist minister.  Larry has always had a disarming, simple and direct manner that doesn’t advertise any particular social or professional status.  He is that rare person whose ego doesn’t need to be supported by someone saying “Oh, you’re the pastor of the church.”  He makes his own way, deciding where he needs to be, without asking for social reinforcement.

During his Washington D.C. residence, Larry and Ellie attended a Quaker Meeting, drawn to the simple gatherings and shared tasks.  Later, when they moved South again first to South Carolina, and then to Florida, they worshipped in Quaker meetings, and opened their door to anyone who wished to join them in fellowship.  Larry tends the sick and dying in a local hospital. He tends a William Blake blog, and is in touch through the internet with seekers all over the world.   In these simple, gentle person to person ways, Larry lives, checking in with God, through prayer.  Underneath the good works, however, is a radical man in the early Christian sense. 

I have no home.  My home is upstairs.

I worked for three institutions, but they didn’t own me.

Society is to me what it was to Dickens – he never fails to lampoon society.  Society is for the birds.

I like myself.  Some people like me and others don’t and that’s all right.

Most people think that you keep your wits about you, say things that people need to hear.  I don’t feel like that.  I have other aims in life, so I frequently say something I shouldn’t have.  I have failed in many ways with my mouth.

[As for society] I’d be content for the tent to collapse.  An entire shakeup.  We need that, another revolution.  Divine intervention.

 

KATRINA DAY

 

 Jonathan Hodge, Wrath of Katrina, 2012

at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art

STORM

 

THE HORSE

 The Horse

https://images.collections.yale.edu/iiif/2/ycba:23c761c8-e7ab-44ef-a6fb-9c0db43a226f/full/,1024/0/default.jpg

https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:38462

"Blake made this small painting from one of his illustrations to William Hayley's BALLADS, FOUNDED ON ANECDOTES RELATING TO ANIMALS, published in 1805. Hayley was a minor poet and biographer now remembered chiefly as Blake's patron. His ballad "The Horse" tells of the courage of a mother who stands between her child and a runaway horse, which she tames by looking it fixedly in the eye."

Virtue! thou hast spells divine,
    Spells, that savage force controul!
  What's the strongest charm of thine?
    Courage in a mother's soul.

  Haste my song, the scene proclaim,
    That may prove the maxim true!
  Fair ones of maternal fame,
    Hark! for honour speaks to you.

  Noblest of your noble band,
    Brave Marcella chanc'd to rove,
  Leading childhood in her hand,
    Thro' a deep and lonely grove:

  See her child! how gay! how light!
    Twice two years her life has run,
  Like a young Aurora bright,
    Sporting near the rising sun.

  Thro' a pass of sandy stone,
    Where autumnal foliage glow'd,
  While the quivering sun-beams shone,
    Lay their deep, and narrow road:

  Now, as thro' the dale they pac'd,
    Pleas'd with its umbrageous charm,
  Lo! a fiery steed, in haste,
    Prancing, spreads a quick alarm,

  Fiercest of Arabia's race,
    Force and beauty form'd his pride;
  Vainly tutor'd for the chace,
    Care he scorn'd, and rule defied.

  Soon his rider had been flung,
    Tho' like Perseus, he adroit,
  Oft to flying coursers clung,
    Proud of every bold exploit!

  Now, on foot, he tried in vain,
    Or to soften, or subdue
  This wild steed, whose leading rein,
    Short and tight he firmly drew:

  But the more the horseman strove
    To restrain his fiery force,
  More he made the solemn grove
    Echo to his frantic course.

  Snorting loud, with savage leer,
    All controuling powers to foil,
  See him plunge! and see him rear!
    Mocking all his leader's toil!

  Fearless for himself alone,
    He, of courage bravely mild,
  Manly fear was frank to own
    For the mother, and her child:

  For the beast, in barb'rous ire,
    To the child and mother rush'd;
  Both he deem'd must now expire,
    By the vicious monster crush'd:

  For his rage, with forceful art,
    Still he fail'd to turn, or tame:
  Fear and pity fill'd his heart,
    And convuls'd his manly frame,

  "Fly!" he cried, in accents weak,
    As the rampant courser sped;
  "Fly!" was all, that he could speak,
    Toss'd beneath the monster's head.

  But without her child to fly,
    Brave Marcella now disdained:
  As her darling's guard to die,
    This her only hope remained.

  On the bank, where pine-trees mixt,
    Thick to form an arching wood,
  At her back her child she fixt,
    And before it bravely stood:

  Firm in voice, in soul elate,
    Then in solemn tone she cried,
  "With her features fixt as fate--
    Tell your father how I died."

  Noble parent! nature saw,
    Virtue shining in thy soul,
  And with sudden, wond'rous awe
    Struck the beast, that spurn'd controul;

  For, as if thy fixed eyes
    Darted fascinating flame,
  He, to thy devout surprise,
    Stood before thee fondly tame:

  He, as touched by powers above,
    That can demons dispossess,
  View'd thee, with submissive love,
    Like a spaniel's meek caress.

  Free from all maternal dread,
    Now 'twas thine to raise and chear
  Him, from whom the courser fled,
    Trembling yet with generous fear!

  Fear soon turned to strong delight,
    When he saw the savage tam'd;
  And enchanted by the sight,
    Quick the horseman thus exclaim'd:

  "God! I thank thee, I behold
    Wonders far surpassing thought
  More than fiction ever told,
    By maternal virtue wrought!"

  "Virtue, in thy praises warm,
    I may speak how fair thou art:
  I have seen thy fairest form--
    Courage in a mother's heart."

It finally occurred to me that the woman in the picture is Catherine, Blake's wife.