Richard Burton: Please Help

Even in those fits and starts where we see fit to retrench,

the essential force is always within us.

Ann: Hi Richard, I’m pretty dry, don’t know what to put on the blog. Do you have any suggestions?

Richard Burton: Oh, yes, of course. Never ask a man who loves to talk if he has any suggestions or anything he would like to say, because he will talk your ear off and send you into an extended coma before you know what hit you.

          You would like some words of wisdom from yours truly. I can’t do better than to steer you back to the poet, Manley Hopkins, the beautiful, complex, lyrical, and intimidating, “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo.”*

          Therein he finds essence, opposite, centralizing, and yonder, the Creative Force, not only of human but all life however expressed. Isn’t this the force that pulls us together?  Gravity, not just gravity of the Earth, but gravity of the essence of the created multiverse, to wit, the force of creation.

It is that gravity which impels us forward, which has dragged us from one iteration to another, sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes bellowing at the top of our lungs, sometimes weeping or rejoicing, but always moving.

Not always expanding, though that is the hope. But even in those fits and starts where we see fit to retrench, the force is always within us, behind us and ahead of us moving us on. To choose otherwise is to choose death and that we cannot do.

I don’t mean the physical death. Because that comes to all mortals. But somehow to try choose a death of the Spirit, though that is beyond our poor powers did we but know it.

          Nevertheless, sometimes we are just so tired. On occastion, I hear you say “I want to go home.” And I understand the sentiment - as I’m sure do many of your readers. And yet always the echo returns: “You are home.”

You are always home. You have only to look inward to find the grace of your original spark, the spark that lit the flame that powers you forward in spite of your fatigue or despondency.

          So as John McCain once said to you “ Buck up, kid. We’ve only just begun.”

Ann: Thank you, Richard. I always come to you when I think there’s nothing left to say.

Richard: And long may you continue to do so with my heartfelt appreciation as nothing is dearer to my heart than the opportunity to hold forth. May each and every one of you go forth in peace to hold forth on your own.

June 20, 2025

*Richard Burton reading Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhQwFf6Qb9U

All blog entries are works of the imagination and are for spiritual and entertainment purposes only.