“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
~ Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who revolutionized physics and our understanding of the universe. He’s best known for his theory of relativity, which helped scientists understand how the universe works. His famous equation, E=mc², describes how matter can be converted into energy. Einstein’s work also contributed to quantum mechanics and statistics. He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
~ Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, novelist, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history, and the first laureate in literature born in Africa. Wikipedia
In early 1934, a twenty-four-year-old graduate student at Columbia Teachers College took an internship teaching drama and producing student plays at PS 24 in Harlem. Among her young charges at that “dreadful ancient New York schoolhouse,” as she would later recall, was a ten-year-old boy she was astonished to find reading, like her, Dickens. Their conversations quickly made her realize that “here was an exceptional and brilliant boy.”
Her name was Orilla Miller, though he called her Bill. His name was Jimmy, though to the world he would become James Baldwin.
Bill started giving Jimmy more books. He devoured them. Although he would recall that he loved her “absolutely, with a child’s love,” she discussed them with him like a peer. Suddenly, the bookishness and sensitivity that had rendered him strange to others were not only accepted but encouraged, cherished, held in kinship.
His father — a storefront church preacher who preached that white people were the Devil and who banned all books but the Bible from his house — didn’t like it one bit when Bill walked Jimmy home to ask permission to take him to the theater, which was also banned in the Baldwin household. But, like an ice-capped volcano, David Baldwin gave his consent with seething politeness.
“My first conscious calculation as to how to go about defeating the world’s intentions for me,” Baldwin would later write of his first cultural outing with Bill, “began on that Saturday afternoon.”
The defeat was total and triumphant. Baldwin was still in his twenties when his first novel catapulted him into celebrity. The novels and essays that followed established him as one of the most urgent yet enduring literary voices of his century, reverberating with that rare combination of passion and rigor by which writing survives the fads, formulas, and moral fashions of its time to touch the future, to shape it into being.
James Baldwin with Orilla and her husband Evan, 1976.
In the spring of 1963, at the peak of his fame which was also the peak of his heartbreak, that slow-burning acceptance of the dissolution of a great love, Baldwin traveled to Los Angeles for a series of lectures he had committed to give for CORE — the Congress for Racial Equality. There in the crowded hall was Bill, with her husband Evan.
They hadn’t seen each other in seventeen years.
Shyly, she made her way to him through the sea of people after the talk just as his press team was shepherding him onward to another appearance. “But she’s my teacher,” he protested, “don’t you understand? She’s my teacher!” They didn’t, whisking him away before Bill reached him.
Across the infinite abyss of that short distance, she found herself, like everyone, impressed by his intellect and eloquence, but moved by something else — the simple recognition that her dear “sweet boy” had become “a sweet man.”
A few days later, in a lovely mirror-image to the tender letter of gratitude Albert Camus wrote to his childhood teacher shortly after becoming the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, she sent him a letter quoted in Nicholas Boggs’s altogether magnificent biography Baldwin: A Love Story (public library):
May 15, 1963
James,
I want to tell you that the promise of the wonderful child has been fulfilled in the man. I am not referring alone to the development of your writing ability, the incisive use of your intelligence in social commentary. I am referring to the moral you — in the broad sense of one’s individual relationship to man around him. That Evan and I had a small part in your life adds to the value of ours. I also say, thank you, that there is this James Baldwin in America in the year 1963
Two days later, LIFE Magazine published Baldwin’s most personal and passionate interview. In it, he insisted that the emotional and spiritual role of the artist is “is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of every great teacher. And of every true friend.
“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty.”
~ Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born mathematician and physicist who revolutionized physics and our understanding of the universe. He’s best known for his theory of relativity, which helped scientists understand how gravity works and how objects affect space and time. His famous equation, E=mc², which comes from special relativity, shows that mass and energy are equivalent. Einstein also made significant contributions to quantum theory. (Wikipedia.org)
“Connectedness is of the essence of all things of all types. It is of the essence of types, that they be connected. Abstraction from connectedness involves the omission of an essential factor in the fact considered. No fact is merely itself. The penetration of literature and art at their height arises from our dumb sense that we have passed beyond mythology; namely, beyond the myth of isolation.”
Alfred North Whitehead’s quote means that everything in the universe is deeply connected to everything else, and true art and thought reject the false idea that humans or things exist in total isolation. [1, 2]
Key Ideas in Simple Terms
Everything is connected: Nothing in the world stands alone. Every object, event, and idea is shaped by and linked to other things. [1, 2]
No fact is by itself: When we try to study or look at something as if it is completely separate from the rest of the world, we miss the most important part of what it really is. [1]
The myth of isolation: Old myths and simple thinking taught that humans and things are trapped in separate boxes.
Art and literature: Great art and literature succeed because they tap into a deeper truth. They show us that we are part of a shared, living web of existence, moving past the illusion that we are all alone. [1]
Alfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology. Wikipedia
William Blake’s quote “Eternity is in love with the productions of time” means that the timeless, infinite divine realm deeply values, cherishes, and seeks expression through the physical things humans create and experience within our limited lifetimes. [1, 2, 3]
Key Concepts in the Quote
Eternity: The permanent, endless, and timeless realm of the spirit or God. It does not change and has no clock.
Time: Our temporary physical world. It is marked by aging, limits, endings, and change.
Productions of Time: Everything we make, feel, and do while alive. This includes art, music, human struggles, love, and everyday actions. [1, 2, 3]
The Core Message
Fulfilling the Infinite: Blake flips the usual idea that heaven or eternity is perfect and our physical world is just trash. Instead, he says eternity needs our mortal world to truly feel and express itself. [1]
Meaning in the Finite: Because time has limits, everything we do matters deeply. A poem, a painting, or an act of kindness has real weight because it happens in a temporary life. [1]
Making the Temporary Last: When we put true passion and soul into our work, those mortal creations take on an eternal quality. They echo far beyond our own lives. [1]
William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. Wikipedia
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an influential 20th century English novelist, essayist, biographer, and feminist. A pioneer of stream of consciousness narration, her innovations in narrative technique expanded the possibilities of the novel. Woolf’s work resonated with feminist movements in the 1970s and inspired adaptations like Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours (1998). (Wikipedia.org)
“It is a good idea to go looking for God, before he comes looking for you.”
Christopher Julius Rock III, born February 7, 1965 in Andrews, South Carolina, is an award-winning American actor, comedian, producer, director, and screenwriter. He’s known for his stand-up routines that tackle race relations, human sexuality, and observational comedy, often referencing differences between Black and white Americans. Rock’s comedy specials include Bring the Pain, Never Scared, and Bigger & Blacker, which all won Grammy Awards. (Wikipedia.org)
Simone Adolphine Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, political activist and labourer. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality and politics have remained widely influential in contemporary philosophy. She was born in Paris to an Alsatian Jewish family. Wikipedia
Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright, and novelist known for his wit, sharp social observations, and literary brilliance. His works, including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, continue to inspire readers with their insights into human nature, individuality, and beauty. In the early 1890s, Wilde became one of London’s most popular and influential dramatists. (Wikipedia.org)
May 15, 1963
