Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
May I here suggest a few ideas as to how you should begin to absorb the
good things of God in order to get the fullest benefit from them, and
then let us go out together and absorb some of the things that will make
one a newer, fuller, more vigorous and truly radiant being.
Get into the habit of looking out of your bedroom window at the skies
each night before you retire to rest. Is it clear? Study that brilliant
scheme of stars and planets. What grander sight could you ask for? Yet
every common man and woman may see it from the smallest attic or
hall-bedroom window. Is the moon in the heavens dimming the stars but
flooding the earth with dream-light? Can you see the great wonderful
clouds floating about in the night's silences away up under the light of
the moon or against the sparkling of the far off stars? Or is the sky
dark and lowering with black clouds so that you can see nothing as yet?
What a wonderful thing that cloud screen is; that soft, moist vapor
piled in great billows above us, shutting out the heavens and their
wonders from our gaze. How dark it seems on the earth beneath. How shut
away from the brightness and serenity of the stars. Yet we know that the
clouds are but temporary, that they will soon pass over, and that we are
perfectly safe nestling here on the quiet bosom of mother earth.
Look up to the heavens _every night_ for some intellectual and spiritual
food, just as you go to the dining-room, _only more so_. Form the habit!
Study the stars as David did. They are as free to you as they were to
him. The poorest beggar and the most degraded sot have as much claim to
the stars as the king on his throne or the most divine man that ever
lived. What a wonderful drama is being nightly played in the skies. How
much more interesting and attractive to the seeing and understanding eye
than the puppet shows of the theater, where there is so much of the
glare, the tinsel, the sham, the shoddy.
The Passion Play of Oberammergau is well worth seeing. To witness and
hear the dramas of Wagner is worth while, especially soul-stirring
_Parsifal_, but here in the heavens is the great mystery of the Creator,
watched over, guarded, protected by these bright armored knights,--the
stars and the planets, the comets, the nebulæ, the milky way,--with a
vigilance which is as keen as it is eternal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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