What to do?

[Waking]

Lately I’ve been transcribing audio snippets I capture with the digital recording feature on my Smartphone while listening to recordings of James Hollis and Thomas Moore on my long commute. I’ve also recently typed up certain themes I found personally resonant in Moore’s “The Soul’s Religion”. It’s kind of tedious and more often than not I find myself inspired but less than committed to actually following through with my intentions along these lines.

Incidentally, I’m also very keen of listening to Stephen Batchelor (agnostic Buddhism), David Whyte (poetry & prose that advocates finding soul in everyday life), and Stephen Mitchell (ancient & modern spiritual wisdom anthologies).

I sense this subtle prompting to somehow assimilate and make something personal out of my experience in reading and listening to these guys…I mean somehow crafting my own response out of their corpus in lectures & writing and then living it as part of my own personal philosophy of life. For example sometimes I fancy myself editing and anthologizing a “collected works” of Moore and/or Hollis - kind of like Moore’s collection of James Hillman in “A Blue Fire” - not for publication so much as for my own literary distillation of their works that I can hold close to my soul.

Anyhow, I may start placing my transcriptions of Moore here in follow up entries...

I'm tempted to post such musings on the discussion board to get some reflection, but since it's such a personal prompting I hesitate.

[Waking]

Thanks Julianne, I appreciate the encouragement! I will post reflections from the calling I spoke of... but I'm still alchemically cooking my intentions and stirring with Barque's comments...

[Barque]

Hi Julianne,
Thanks for checking in. My books are in storage, too, so access to Moore's books is difficult. I hope Andy follows through with this plan. His musings may stimulate more discussion on the forum.

[Julianne]

I haven't been to the site in a while. As I'm currently living in Europe with most of my books in storage in the U.S., I don't have access to Moore's books here. I actually ordered one from Amazon months ago but it never arrived. If you post some of the text with your thoughts, I'd be interested in reading them.

[Barque]

Hi Andy,
I think posting your musings in your blog here would be a good way to go. I'm particularly interested in how the musings resonate with you or why you find these particular passages so powerful. I am disappointed with blogs that post a text by Moore as if they're contributing something. I understand that he writes beautifully and bloggers want to share his sentiments because they somehow believe that he is expressing their own approach, however I'd hate to think we're depriving Moore of $$$ from book sales because his texts appear free on the web. Ken, a strong supporter of Barque and a former member who continues to be missed, wanted to do something regularly with Moore quotes that Barque members found personally significant. I think the Barque community can/will grow if people share their own responses to the texts once they're stated. This makes a contribution that others may reflect on and then further as well. These are initial thoughts, Andy. Thanks for introducing the topic for consideration.