Spiritual Prompts for the Week of May 22nd through 28th
Prompt 1 courtesy of Rudyard Kipling and the 2nd prompt takes the format of some of Ravyne’s daily specials of yesteryear
I find that Rudyard Kipling’s poem If, which I recall hearing for the first time three years ago when my brother-in-law read it to his twin son and daughter at their achieving B'nai Mitzvah in Israel in March 2019 (because his father had hung it in their finished basement growing up), contains a lot of spiritual thoughts and messages.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
Prompt 1
Write an essay, poem, or fiction containing spiritual concepts you perceive in Kipling’s poem.
Some Thoughts of Mine
While researching the phrase “man plans and God laughs” last year for my essay, Life Is School for the Soul, I read a blog post on Psychology Today’s website by Dr. Saul Levine, which brought me back to the poem and I started to see that it contained much spiritual wisdom.
Of the lines, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same,” Levine writes:
Downturns are not permanent defeats, and successes are not ultimate triumphs. How we face our setbacks, with resilience, and accept our successes, with grace, are important measures of our worth as individuals.
I then took a look at some other lines.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
Do not get defensive.
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Patience is a virtue
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
Two wrongs do not make a right
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
Practice humility
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
Have aspirations but not projections or expectations, which can lead to disappointments. Don’t become a slave to acquiring things that some people place on vision boards.
As I wrote in a post last fall in Melanie J.’s great pub Unpopular Opinions,
con artists encourage people to cover their boards with their desires, and people cover them with pictures of big houses, fancy cars, expensive clothes, yachts, etc. These are all attachments that do not provide happiness, and thus vision boards are an obvious perversion of a spiritual concept for material gain.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
Confidence as opposed to arrogance.
Here’s a poem I wrote a few months later about the difference:
Discern difference Ego thinks with arrogance Nous knows confidence Egotistical ramblings versus language of the soul
I could sing a decoder ring and stop there at tanka but let’s keep going and rhyme our way to the beautiful island of Sri Lanka
One insists while the other one listens and desists One thrashes with dissension while the other one sows expansion One hits you with its belt while thymoeides emulates Teddy Roosevelt One rattles its cage with rage while logistikon imparts like a calm sage
One seeks to win with a head of steam while the other one knows there is no I in team and affords others their fair share of esteem
One incites and gaslights while the other one stokes the furnace of insights
One calls everyone else dumb while the other one knows that Socrates humbelly nous he was no dumbbelly
One thinks that English is the best while the other one thought surely you jest
Other says Greek is the language that waxes poetic and fits meanings like a glove until it learned last night from Ikram that Arabic was created for epic poetry and has no less than eleven words for Love
I look forward to seeing what you create from this prompt.
Prompt 2
I used to love creating poetry from Ravyne’s prompts to write a poem using at least five words from a list of ten. Here is a list of seventeen spiritual words found in my essay
Love (any kind), empathy, compassion, humility, honesty, courage, accountability, surrender, hope, faith, integrity, willingness, love (for others), self-discipline, perseverance, awareness, and service.
While all those words have feelings that come with them, they are more states of being than emotions. Emotions signal to us. Spiritual principles not only serve as lighthouses when our vision is foggy, but they also guide us to and present safe harbors in which to live, and anyone and everyone can live with contentment and serenity by working Step work into their self-improvement and spiritual growth routines.
The Prompt
Choose 5 or more of the 17 words and write a poem. You may use any syntactic category of the word and if you are using it as a verb you may use any tense of the verb. You may also choose to write a 100-word fictional story using your word choices.
While you may utilize any poetic form, I found these types of prompts lent themselves very well to the rondeau, particularly if one of the words is used in the title, which for a rondeau also becomes the non-rhyming refrain (AABBA AABR AABBAR)(each of the rhyming lines about 8–10 syllables).
Reminder: You can use my prompts here on PW or anywhere else on Medium (which I strongly encourage as it builds a wider audience and I believe in cross-pollination between and among publications). Regardless of where you publish, please tag me, and Ravyne and use “promptly written” as one of your reader interest tags, and include a link to this prompt.
In Rama I create, with soul-energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,
