Contributions to my Work

I have had, and continue to have, periods in my life when I become very focused for a time on a certain activity:  reading in a certain genre; doing house maintenance or renovation; working on and enjoying my golf game; trying to organize the unorganized; learning a new skill, etc. 

One of those focal changes has recently occurred with my renewed interest in poetry.  I say ‘renewed’ because my journals remind me that I have had at least two former periods of my life, decades apart, when I read much poetry and tried my hand at this method of expression.   Having posted a couple of my poems recently is witness to that renewal.  

A problem that I have grappled with, though, is that some poets inspire me so much with their content or style or specific word usage and combinations that I sometimes use them as a model or impetus for my own expression and I worry that perhaps I should give credit where it may not even be necessary. This occasionally presents a problem because my thoughts are also often stimulated from things I hear on the news or in lectures, sermons, etc., or see on television, or read from my voluminous notes or acquire from other sundry sources. 

Having a son who is a lawyer by training I have heard him use the term ‘intellectual property’ as something that should be respected and not violated. The problem for me is that by constant reading or rereading the work of others some of their work is internalized by me and becomes, in effect, my thoughts, my ideas, my work—to support, expand, take as a guide or sometimes refute.  Hence the quotation by Sir Isaac Newton that accompanies every Omnium-Gatherum posting about standing on the shoulders of giants.  It can be seen that the ‘Gatherum’ portion of my title obviously has reference to the material that was gathered from many contributory  sources. 

A reading from one of my intellectual ‘giants,’ Ralph Waldo Emerson, resolved my quandary: “The inventor knows only how to borrow; and society is glad to forget the innumerable laborers who ministered to this architect…. When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon and Sophron and Philolaus.  Be it so.  Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.  And this grasping inventor puts all nations under contribution.”  I initially addressed this disclaimer in my second posting, on June 24, 2010, “Our Thoughts.”

An example of what I trust to be an appropriate use of another’s work was posted by me as “The Captain of Thy Soul” where I took the last line of Orson F. Whitney’s poem “The Soul’s Captain” for the title of my January 19, 2013  posting.  Whitney, in like manner, took on the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley and rebutted it by his derivative work .

Legal support for such ‘transformative use’ of another’s earlier intellectual product was explained as appropriate by legal scholar Judge Pierre N. Leval in the Harvard Law Review, "Toward a Fair Use Standard", which the Court quoted and cited extensively in its Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., legal opinion. In his article, Judge Leval explained the social importance of transformative use of another's work and what justifies such a taking:

       “I believe the answer to the question of justification turns primarily on whether, and to what extent, the challenged use is transformative. The use must be productive and must employ the quoted matter in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original. . . . [If] the secondary  use adds value to the original--if the quoted matter is used as raw material, transformed in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings--this is the very type of activity that the fair use doctrine intends to protect for the enrichment of society.”

All this preamble is to justify what may be my ‘transformative use’ of another author’s creation of poetry or thoughts that have influenced me, (as was Whitney’s cited rebuttal to Henley’s poem). Having said all this I will submit in the next couple of postings a few recent poems, of my own creation, which have been influenced in structure, style or content by others in their poetry. I thank them for their contribution to my education and for your consideration.    

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving is a day and season for me as, I believe, the Passover and accompanying meal and season is for those of the Jewish faith. It was, likewise, for three of our first four presidents of the United States (Washington, Adams, not Jefferson, but Madison).  Over forty years later Abraham Lincoln revived the earlier precedent and again gave presidential acknowledgement as did most or all presidents since his time. 

Below are two presidential proclamations, by Washington and Lincoln, that resonate deeply with my convictions.  I would hope readers might share them with their guests or in the homes in which they celebrate their Thanksgiving meal this year. 

President George Washington issued a national Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789. He wrote, 

"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country...for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed...and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually...To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best."

  

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November a "prayerful day of Thanksgiving."
President Lincoln said this: 

"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VI, "Proclamation of Thanksgiving" (October 3, 1863), p. 497.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939  (approved by Congress in 1941).

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Reproduced here is the Colonel Alexander Bliss copy of President Abraham Lincoln’s peerless address at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery in Pennsylvania.

I, like countless other Americans, consider this document to be the quintessential and divinely inspired expression  of  appreciation for the “unfinished work which they who fought [there had]so nobly advanced.”  It is also a timeless charge for us today.  The “great task” still “remain[s] before us” to be ‘one nation under God, indivisible. . . .” Sadly, we are failing at that task.  We--every one of us--must rededicate ourselves. There can be no better time than this 150th anniversary of this pivotal American historical event

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Remembering C. S. Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963)

Though he rarely left his home in Oxford, England, Clive Staples Lewis was far more than a staid and proper Englishman, more than even a scholarly, popular, and effective professor of medieval literature and intellectual history at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.  It was his half-century contribution to the spiritual awakening of a war-torn, disenchanted and skeptical Western world that was the hallmark of his popularity and lasting influence.  It was Lewis’ simple but powerful writings on the transforming nature of Christian faith that endeared him to so many.  He was, I believe, the most trusted and widely-read Christian author of the 20^th Century. 

Following the death of his mother from cancer, ten-year-old Clive became angry with God and eschewed his childhood upbringing in the Anglican church.  Lewis entered a period of atheism before regaining his faith at age 33.  Although he became a communicant in the Church of England his faith was not in the trappings of that religious denomination but rather the result of a conversion to the bedrock tenets of Biblical and revelatory Christianity. Example and patient personal persuasion by good Christian friends plus the influence of enlightened writers such as George MacDonald and J. R. R. Tolkien led to repentance and spiritual submission and consequent confirmation of faith in Jesus Christ. 

Lewis’ personal conversion and quickly gained insights were put into print in the 1930’s and ‘40’s and he became a very popular apologist for the Christian faith.  Probably his most influential book (at least for me) was a compilation of talks he had given on BBC radio during WWII,  first published as Broadcast Talks and later, in 1952, as Mere Christianity. 

Lewis’ prolific output of very readable non-fiction and fiction works and extensive correspondence were, in his words, “a defense of Christianity” and clearly “evangelistic.” Yet his writings were never dry, pedantic, or histrionic.  He never claimed that he or his church had all or even most of the answers, but instead invited sincere investigation of the Christian truth that was somewhere “out there.” 

Here, indeed, was an insightful, enthusiastic and joyful Christian –witty, fervent, non-sectarian and apolitical –a man whose confident focus on Christianity shows us how a faith in Christ and knowledge and application of His gospel gives meaning to everything we experience, think, crave, are and do.

Your New Vessel (a poem) by Ron Miller

Only when a lifetime has whitened your hair

Only when sorrow and pain and joy have etched themselves upon your  countenance

Only then will you come to see yourself whole.

Yea, only when you have loved, and lost, and loved again

Only when you have travelled many roads

And left a hundred projects unfinished

Only then will you come closer to seeing yourself whole.

Only when you have bared yourself before the gaze

Of one who has seen you naked all along

Only when you have cast off the covers in the bed of your own self-deceits

and self-defeats

Only then will you come to your Maker

to be made whole.

Only when the wind and the water have weathered the edges of you

Only when you seem to yourself but a remnant of what you once were

Yet find to your surprise you are so much more

Only then will you behold yourself whole.

Not as arms and legs

Not only as thoughts and feelings

Not simply as deeds and accomplishments

But as something wholly transparent

            A new / old vessel

            A clean vessel 

            A filled vessel.

Only then will you find your new name

Forever etched upon the face of your new vessel

And find yourself whole

And holy

And more beautiful than ever.