Gertrude is Gertrude is....

Dear Friends,

When Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) wrote, "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," it was actually about someone named Rose.  But she later re-wrote it as, "A rose is a rose is a rose," its more famous form. 

And what does this mean?  First, when you get a few minutes do read her wonderful, brief essay, "What Are Masterpieces And Why Are There So Few Of Them?" from 1936, which touches on the essence of the issue without mentioning any roses.

What does it mean, after all, to say that a thing is that thing? 

Here's Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter (1978), holding up a bullet: "See this, Stanley?  This is this.  This ain't something else.  This is this.  From now on, you're on your own."

Understanding that a thing is what it is has something to do with the human self in its self-sufficiency ("From now on, you're on your own").  Because if self-sameness can be asserted of anything, it can be said in a kind of redoubled way of the human self that is, knows, declares itself and is nothing but what it is.  Pure, in that way -- a clear note.  Self-sameness is an attribute of the divine, the one who can answer Moses's question with, "I am what I am."

Stein's roses are like Rilke's roses in that they are an emblem of the human self in its intentionality and self-creating -- intentional even into total self-giving.  They are emblems, too, of the transformed emotional life, that lives now in creativity and compassion -- no longer in self-regard, which is a kind of devilish, warped opposite of self-sameness.

Stein perhaps, Rilke certainly, knew of the lines by Angelus Silesius (1624-1677):

The rose is without a why.
She blooms because she blooms.
She pays no attention to herself,
doesn't ask if she's seen.

Die Ros ist ohn warum;
sie blühet weil sie blühet,
sie acht nicht ihrer selbst,
fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet.

We'll dedicate our candle today again to David Spangler's recovery, as we did last week.  He has so inspired our practices of coming to Earth and to our selves.

wishing you joy in all you do,
Michael