U tube clip on Venus

[Julianne]

I just watched this clip, and, as sometimes happens in life, it spoke exactly to my thoughts at this time. First of all, it confirmed for me some musings of my own, about how the entire quality of one's thinking and one's life directly impacts the particular events that unfold. Taking the pressure off of another person in relationship, and bringing the focus back to oneself, and the quality of one's own life, confers greater peace and harmony, both within the self and in relationship to another. I love what Thomas said about not having to always understand "the other." Or even trying to. I don't always understand myself. Also, I'm currently working on a book, and have been studying two paintings by Botticelli, the Primavera and the Birth of Venus. By watching Thomas' clip I can understand how these images from the Renaissance were created to bring beauty and harmony into the lives of the viewers.

[Julianne]

Thank you. I love that quote.

[Rita Abreu Costa]

The last comment of Julianne made me remember a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet: “You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

[Julianne]

Perhaps understanding is a kind of grace that comes of its own accord when we empty ourselves of thinking and trying so much. The older I get, the more importance and significance "just being" takes on. Then, whatever I need to know will be revealed to me.

[Rita Abreu Costa]

Well…last week, a friend of mine, sent me an e-card, with a Christmas tree. The tree was decorated with several small pieces of paper and when we click them a message appears. Each piece of paper had a thought or a statement of a poet, a writer or a philosopher.
I answer my friend, telling her that all of them where great, but my favourite was the one from Clarice Lispector, stating: “Don’t worry about understanding. To live goes beyond every understanding.”

[Barque]

Thanks Julianne for sharing your response to the Venus clip. I imagine some in the audience shuddered when Moore recommended to let go of trying "to understand the other." During a CBC radio interview in 2004, Moore suggested couples remove their pressure on "communication" and "commitment" within the relationship. The program host seemed defensive about the importance of these attributes and Moore asked about her reaction -- a refreshingly spontaneous radio moment. I like your point "I don't always understand myself." The Primavera is a central image in Moore's own map for discovering treasure.