For the Inward Journey, Day Thirty-Three
The Idea and the Reality
Between the idea
and the reality
Between the motion
and the act
Falls the shadow
This quotation from T.S. Eliot's “The Hollow Men” puts into crisp words one of the oldest problems of the human spirit. There is always the riding frustration to all human effort that makes it fall short of the intent, the clear-cut purpose. Sometimes it is very difficult for the idea or the plan to be clearly defined. It is hard to make up one's mind about goals because motives are often confused. To know precisely what it is that we want is often a very torturous process.
And yet, the great frustration is not at the point of the elusive and indefinable goal or purpose. It is rather at the point of determining how to span the gulf that lies between the goal and its fulfillment, the purpose and its realization. The gulf is deep and wide between the dream and the implementation. Look at any achievement of your life, however simple or elaborate! There is one judgment that you can pass upon it: it is so much less than you had in mind. As the dream lay nestled in your mind untouched by the things that sully or corrupt, you were stirred to the deep places within by its rightness, by its beauty, by its truth. Then the time of birth was upon you—the dream took its place among the stuff of your daily round. Looking upon it now, it is so much less than what it seemed to be before. It is ever thus.
A man sees the good and tries to achieve it in what he thinks, says, and does. With what results? You know your answer. How often have you felt: the good I see I do not, or the good I see I achieve only in such limited, inadequate ways that I wonder even about the vision itself. Always there is the shadow. Always there is the wide place between the dream and its fulfillment.
(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 74-75
Originally published in The Inward Journey)
“Always there is the wide place between the dream and its fulfillment.” It is a Sunday morning. I wish I had a few lines from today’s sermon that would fit correctly here . . . but I have to get to the congregational center to prepare for the day!! Perhaps tomorrow . . . (for now, I dream!)