Coral Reefs of Meaning

 

Kawase Hasui (1950) carefully rendered the light in each of his 600 prints. In this image of twilight at Hatsuse Temple, the sky is still bright, but darkness has descended upon the building. Lanterns light the path, and a single star in the sky reinforces the quiet scene. Hasui created multiple versions of this design, some of which show the temple earlier in the day.  AIC - part of the Bruce Goff archive I saw last week

This is from April 21, 2016 in my journal:

Parents dropped off a saw and some wood from Phil for the fireplace surround. They need to drop it off bc he needed to fill his car with material for building a new handrail in the rectory (because the priest who is leaving is many 100 pouds - 400?) He's been spending days working that out as part of the St. Vincent DePaul society M & D belong to. And mom is in the garden club and volunteers as a bereavement minister to help with funerals. They are always being helpful, doing the work that no one else wants to do - the things getting neglected or forgotten. Their lives are coral reefs of meaning, built a little at a time.  

Meanwhile, most of what I see is people satisfying themselves: finding good vacations, taking kids to soccer tournaments, getting up early to go to cross fit, weight the time value of money, making astute trades on their stock market, "branding" themselves in social media.

Related to my thoughts at the end, a philosophy prof I've been following, Lily Abadal, recently wrote this;

My Good Friday thoughts:

Have we created a society full of people unwilling to suffer for anything but themselves?

Even worse, have we created a society unwilling to suffer for anything at all? Egoists and hedonists, respectively.

How difficult are such people to teach?