It is my understanding that the Latin root word for the word Religion, is ‘Ligare’. Which is also the root for the word ligament. It means to connect or to tie onto. With the ‘Re’ it means to reconnect, or to tie-back onto something.
Not being afraid of words can be very helpful. The way I see this as personally useful is at one point in my life when I had made such a mess of it, that I was willing and ready to die on the streets in despair and confusion. At one point I asked for help. A seagull had shit on my shoulder while standing in a line at St. Anthony’s on Golden Gate Ave. in S.F. and that oddly enough was the beginning of my saying “Enough! I don’t want to die like this!”
It takes what it takes.
The help started coming by the truckload, but I was not ready to accept it. I was not through running. I stopped running when I finally saw that no wanted to chase me any more. They had given up trying to help. The drama wasn’t sufficient. Finally I was actually alone
When I started to accept the help, I encountered and accepted a 12 Step program that changed my life, a month into it I declared myself a Buddhist and after almost 37 years I may be catching on to some basic things. Here’s one.
I had a deep hole in my gut and tried to fill it with many things and almost died. Then when I finally accepted help, I began to seek a way to commence a reconnection to that which I seemed to be disconnected from.
Even thoughI didn’t know what That was.
Feeling an emptiness.
Not knowing cause or what it is.
Yet setting out in search of it.
Empty hole,
Must fill! No!
Don’t create or
Excavate to leave yet again ,
An other empty hole.
Allow, to fill.
Great bit about transformation Helmut. Reminds me of a saying by St. Francis of Assisi: “What we are looking for is what is looking.”
Thanks for your insight.
🙏🏻
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Thank you Jude,
When I was still in detox ’83:) I came up with the practice of writing down phrases that had meaning for me on the best paper, with the best pen I could afford and in the best ‘hand’, I could manage. The idea was that this extra effort would help me take in ideas at more than the intellectual level. I still have those notes and one of them, attributed to Meister Eckhart, is still operative; “The eye with which I see God, is the same eye with which God sees me.”
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That noose, or rosary or lariat that Fudo extends to us…I always wondered if that wasn’t the rope that could be used to re-bind us…Thanks for pointing out what a great word “religion” is.
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