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May 25Liked by J. Aaron Simmons

Thanks for this great reminder! - (“It is important that we avoid thinking that the same things should matter in the same ways throughout our life.”) I am constantly working to let go of the things that I have held in some way as historical or static “absolutes” to remain in the flow of life and James’ “spacious present.” It reminds me of Heraclitus’s wisdom in that “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Also, Carl Jung’s exhortation that “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” What am I swimming in!? - As always, thanks for this!

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Such great points! Yeah, every time I go fishing I think about Heraclitus and try to lean hard into the notion of becoming rather than being. I also struggle to "let go" of stuff that far too often I hold onto as a way of affirming my own ego, instead of opening myself up to show hospitality to new ways forward. Thanks for thinking with me!

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May 25Liked by J. Aaron Simmons

He I Me I Owe

Old Macdonald

Played with norms,

He didn’t take for granted

That what we do

and what we see

are always as they shad be

He disturbed our standards

And our assumptions

By pushing on them all

And like a feline Siamese

He marveled whence each did fall

Ill remember that funny farmer

As long I walk these fields

And ponder What and Why

Over our cultivated yields

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You have forever elevated and ruined "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" for me!

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“Norms are funny things” 😆 that got me goin. I had to respond. That ol Joke Farmer is a very inspiring/challenging character to me. Finding out about his mostly secret theological investigations (not to mention deeply philosophical reading of Russian literature) was exceedingly interesting. It opened up a whole bunch of doors to his comedy and what he was actually offering the world with his work.

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This post is so liminal, which I’ve heard has been adopted by the young folks just to mean cool. But I also mean to say that the James and Husserl thing is especially liminal in the temporal meaning-making, action-defining, existential sense too.

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hahahaha! Thanks - I need to get better at the lingo of the young folks. My son just stays perpetually embarrassed that I don't know the words the kids are using!

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