A Weekend Story

Soul’s Vocabulary

The boy was mentally challenged and his parents left him to die on top of a craggy mountain. The parents thought a child of seven who could not count beyond three would only bring discredit to them. But he was found by a team of lumberjacks loitering in a most piteous state in the wilderness where bears abounded. They all wanted to adopt him but wiser counsel prevailed when the Indian guide pointed to the boy’s features and said,” See those special markings on his head? Extraordinary things he shall do. No authority of human kind can hold him down.” The lumberjacks gave up the idea of adopting him.
The Indian however took the strange boy by his hand and said,” I shall teach you all that you need to know.” The boy left silently with the Indian.
The brave Wolf-by-the tail after taking care of the hungry child gave him a place to sleep. He slept under the starlit sky and at one point he saw the stars clustered at a particular spot in the sky. He saw the middle of that cluster the sky had cleared as if by some divine hand. It struck him as odd. Slowly he could see stars forming strange symbols and it began to make sense! They coalesced and parted and their many combinations were like  an exercise for him. The boy stared attentively at the ‘picture show’ but could not keep up with the celestial lesson after a while. He slept.
Next morning when his adopted father took him to the chief he amazed the wizened old man by saying, “ I had a dream. I saw stars forming themselves into some pattern.” He called for some strings and he tied them in an intricate design and said,” This was how the night looked at first.”
The elders looked at each other in wonder. “I shall tell you how it is going to look two weeks form hence.” He folded the design in another fashion and held out, “You may check if I am wrong or not.”
The chief found the boy was accurate.
The boy explained that his parents abandoned him because he couldn’t make two and two into four. “ But because I was adopted by you I was given a new way of adding by that Great Spirit over the blue yonder. It is what you can find use for.”
That extraordinary aspect of life is not wisdom or power apart from one another but connected. Soul of the mentally challenged is unaffected by his physical debilities but connected to Truth. How the boy scanned Soul is unique to himself.  Soul taught him arithmetic more in keeping with his needs.

Soul has its own special language and its contour always will be a fit for the individual.

benny

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Pen Portraits-30

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN (British)  (1809  –  1882)
Naturalist.

Darwin was noted for his documentation of evolution and for a theory for its operation. He was the fifth child in a family of six and was born on February 12, 1809 at Shrewsbury, Shropshire. His influence on the scientific and religious tenor of his time was immense and provocative. He was reared by his eldest sister from age 8. After an early life that showed little promise of his later prominence, apart from his passion for collecting, a habit which either leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso or a miser. He abandoned a career in ministry just as he did with medicine. In 1825 he entered Christ College at Cambridge, where he did just enough to get a degree. It was while at Cambridge he came across Humboldt’s ‘Personal Narrative’. He developed an interest in Natural History, and in 1831 sailed as a naturalist in ‘HMS Beagle’ to survey the wildlife of the west coast of South America and some Pacific Islands. During this five year trip he became convinced of the gradual evolution of species. Besides, he had gathered a magnificent collection and a thorough practical knowledge of geology and zoology. His study of fossils and the unique bird life of the Galapagos Islands led him to believe that all living things were interdependent. Upon his return to England he worked for 20 years before he began to write about evolution in 1856. In 1858, a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, a younger naturalist, voicing Darwin’s own ideas prompted Darwin to abstract his work, which he published the next year as ‘On the Origin of Species’.So much interest was generated about it that whole edition of 1250 copies were sold out on the day of publication. In the raging controversy that followed the Church was on one side and Scientists, led by Thomas Huxley, on the other. Bishop Wilberforce’s spirited arguments crumbled before Huxley’s cold logic. The intellectuals greeted the discomfiture of the Church; It astonished the common man: The wags had a field day in tracing their lineage to the apes.
When the dust had settled down Darwin’s theory was accepted by the leading scientists. Subsequent research in embroyology helped to confirm it. It was used to advance man’s knowledge in anthropology, ethnology and psychology.
His later days were spent in much physical discomfort, as a result unknown at that time, of Chagas’ disease, contracted while in South America. Several important works preceeded his Origin. Later works include ‘Variation in Animals and Plants under Domestication’ (1868) and the ‘Descent of Man’ and ‘Selection in Relation to Sex’ (1871). He died on 1882 at Derby, Derbyshire.
compiler: benny

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