#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/11/15 -- Special Edition: A Birthday Remembrance

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 3, No. 3: November 15, 2023

 

Special Edition: A Birthday Remembrance

 

Editor’s Note

                This very special blog post is dedicated to the memory of Ninianne, my first peer mentor at the University of Illinois. During my freshling and sophomore years, Ninianne, two years my elder, took me under her wing, introduced me into her circle of friends, gave me sage advice about how to navigate campus life as a student with diversabilities, and showed me what philia (the Greek word for love between friends) is all about. She also helped me to understand how numinous everyday life can be when we approach it with an open mind and an open heart.

                She was an English major, and her favorite color was pink. I was studying Classical Philology, and my favorite color was blue. I had not yet read Plato, Rumi, or Dante; those authors were still in my future when Ninianne and I overlapped at the U of I for two amazing years. In looking back on those years, however, I can see how she was trying to teach me about things that I would later learn about by reading Plato’s Symposium, Rumi’s inspired poetry, and Dante’s La Vita Nuova. And what were those lessons of hers all about? They were all about Platonic love and courtly love – two types of loving that I had never heard of or learned about before, until Ninianne (and, later on, Plato, Rumi, and Dante) opened the eyes of my heart to see that there are many different kinds of love in this world, all of which are beautiful, and equally valuable, in their own way.

                But friendship, Ninianne taught me (both by word and example), is the firm foundation upon which all other types of love are built, as expounded in this classic poem:

 

“Upon the Sand”

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

 

All love that has not friendship for its base,

Is like a mansion built upon the sand.

Though brave its walls as any in the land,

And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;

Though skilful and accomplished artists trace

Most beautiful designs on every hand,

And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,

And fountains play in some flow'r—hidden place:

 

Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust

Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall

Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,

Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.

Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe,

Needs friendship's solid mason work below.

                 Ninianne truly was a “dreamer, shaper, singer, and maker” – who was, like Homer the epic poet, bereft of physical sight but nonetheless endowed with the “second sight” that one usually finds only in sages of threescore years and ten. Today would have been her 58th birthday, but her life was cut short by cancer a few years ago. This is my heartfelt tribute to Ninianne – who was (and still is) truly the best friend of my undergraduate days at Illinois. Requiescas in potestate, Platonica anima cara mea. (Latin) = May you rest in power, my Platonic soul-friend.

 

“In that part of the book of my memory, before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: ‘Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life.’ Under that heading I find written the words that it is my intention to copy into this little book: and if not all, at least their essence.”

-- Dante (1265-1321): La Vita Nuova

 

Dante and Beatrice by Carl Wilhelm Friederich Oesterly (1805–1891). Beatrice was the (unknowing) recipient of Dante’s Platonic love since their first meeting as nine-year-olds on May 1, 1274. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“To Homer”

By John Keats (1795-1821)

 

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind; — but then the veil was rent,

For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live,

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,

And precipices show untrodden green,

There is a budding morrow in midnight,

There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell

To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

 

“Through the Force, things you will see – other places, the future, the past, old friends long gone.”

-- Jedi Grand Master Yoda in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

 

“The Higher Life” (1913)

By Madeline S. Brigham

 

There are royal hearts, there are spirits brave,

There are souls that are pure and true;

Then give to the world the best you have,

And the best will come back to you.

 

Give love, and love to your life will flow,

And strength in your utmost needs;

Have faith, and a score of hearts will show

Their faith in your work and deeds.

 

Give truth, and your gift will be paid in kind,

And a song a song will meet;

And the smile which is sweet will surely find

A smile that is just as sweet.

 

Give pity and sorrow to those that mourn,

You will gather in flowers again

The scattered seeds from your thoughts outborne,

Though the sowing seemed in vain.

 

For life is the mirror of king and knave,

‘Tis just what we are and do;

Then give to the world the best you have,

And the best will come back to you.

 

“Everything perishes except the world itself and its keepers. But while life lasts, everything on Earth has its use. The wise seek ways to be helpful to the world, for the helpful ones are sure to live again. … Yet every man has his mission, which is to leave the world better, in some way, than he found it.”

-- L. Frank Baum (1856-1919): The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (Book I, Chapters 6 & 7)

 

“The Heritage”

By Abbie Farwell Brown (1871-1927)

 

No matter what my birth may be,

No matter where my lot is cast,

I am the heir in equity

Of all the precious Past.

 

The art, the science, and the lore

Of all the ages long since dust,

The wisdom of the world in store,

Are mine, all mine in trust.

 

The beauty of the living Earth,

The power of the golden Sun,

The Present, whatsoe’er my birth,

I share with everyone.

 

As much as any man am I

The owner of the working day;

Mine are the minutes as they fly

To save or throw away.

 

And mine the Future to bequeath

Unto the generations new;

I help to shape it with my breath,

Mine as I think or do.

 

Present and Past my heritage,

The Future laid in my control; —

No matter what my name or age,

I am a Master-soul!

 

“We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. … These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.”

-- Elric the Technomage, in the Babylon 5 episode “The Geometry of Shadows” (1995)

 

“Sonnet XVI: An Allusion to the Phoenix”

By Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

 

‘Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round

Of the birds’ kind, the Phoenix is alone,

Which best by you of living things is known;

None like to that, none like to you is found.

Your beauty is the hot and splendorous Sun,

The precious spices be your chaste desire,

Which being kindled by that heavenly fire,

Your life so like the Phoenix's begun;

Yourself thus burned in that sacred flame,

With so rare sweetness all the heavens perfuming,

Again increasing as you are consuming,

Only by dying born the very same;

And, winged by fame, you to the stars ascend,

So you of time shall live beyond the end.

 

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.”

-- H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

 

“Up-Hill”

By Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

 

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

 

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

 

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

 

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labor you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

 

“Many Ways We Wend”

By George MacDonald (1824-1905)

 

Thou goest thine, and I go mine –

Many ways we wend;

Many days, and many ways,

Ending in one end.

 

Many a wrong, and its curing song;

Many a road, and many an inn;

Room to roam, but only one home

For all the world to win.

 

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”

-- Nelson Mandela (1918-2013): Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

 

Excerpts from “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After”

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,

Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, through the human soul;

Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

*                                           *                                             *

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.

Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

Follow Light, and do the Right -- for man can half-control his doom --

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.

I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

 

An illustration from an Ottoman manuscript (ca. 1600) depicting the first meeting of Rumi with his spiritual mentor, Shams of Tabriz. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries. A lover may be drawn to this love or that love, but finally one is drawn to the Sovereign of Love.”

– Rumi (1207-1273)

 

Recommended Readings

·         The Symposium by Plato (Platonic Love)

·         Anything by Rumi (Divine Love)

·         La Vita Nuova by Dante (Courtly Love)