A PROPHET

In 1923 a Lebanese-Syrian immigrant to the United States named Kahlil Gibran published a little book of poetic essays which he entitled The Prophet.  When I picked it up as a college boy in the 1960’s I was immediately struck with the many provocative and, of course, some debatable insights and thoughts the book presented.  I resonated with the book.  I thought at the time how fortunate it would be to have a real, a living prophet—like the Biblical prophets—on the earth to learn from. 

I later learned—though few on the earth yet know it or believe it—that there is a Prophet on the earth.  Indeed, there are several men who carry by ordination the divine prophetic mantle who serve with him.  But there are other ‘prophets,’ men and women though not ordained, who are on the surface very ordinary individuals who have lived lives of sufficient purity to receive divinely inspired insights. I have also learned that we all can.

Kahlil Gibran, and doubtless others, are of that caliber. 

How does one know?  I believe that one resonates to one of like mind.  As Gibran said, “Even as the strings of a lute are alone. . .they quiver with the same music.” C. S. Lewis said essentially the same thing—that there are men and women walking around on this earth who, if you are attuned, you immediately connect with because you, too, ‘quiver with the same music,’ or you would like to; they are that attractive to you.  

Brigham Young said that of Joseph Smith, Jr., the Prophet of our dispensation: “I feel like shouting Hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever knew Joseph Smith, the Prophet whom the Lord raised up and ordained, and to whom he gave keys and power to build up the Kingdom of God on earth and sustain it.  I can truly say that I invariably found him to be all that any people could require a true prophet to be, and that a better man could not [now] be found upon this earth.” 

  

But to stick with our Lebanese ‘prophet’s’ more secular insights, I present a few of Kahlil Gibran’s gems:

 

·        Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

·        Do not fear the thorns in your path for they draw only corrupt blood.

·        Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

·        Your children are not your children.  They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.  They come through you but not from you.

·        I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange[ly], I am ungrateful to these teachers. 

·        You give but little when you give of your possessions.  It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

·        You pray in your distress and your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

·        Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.  And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.  And how else can it be?  The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

·        It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship.  Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity, and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created in years or even in generations.

·        You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

·        To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to. 

·        Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

·        Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

·        Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.

·        They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

·        When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

·        Work is love made visible. 

·        The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. [I would say 'your heart.' See his next quotation.]

·        Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

·        Words are timeless; you should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness. 

Finally, I present one of his more “debatable insights” and let you (as with all the rest) draw your own conclusions drawing upon your mind and your heart:

·      “Modern civilization has made woman a little wiser, but it has increased her suffering because of man's covetousness. The woman of yesterday was a happy wife, but the woman of today is a miserable mistress. In the past she walked blindly in the light, but now she walks open-eyed in the dark. She was beautiful in her ignorance, virtuous in her simplicity, and strong in her weakness. Today she has become ugly in her ingenuity, superficial and heartless in her knowledge. Will the day ever come when beauty and knowledge, ingenuity and virtue, and weakness of body and strength of spirit will be united in a woman?” 
― Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings