We continue to delight in the words of Kahlil Gibran:
Then a lawyer said, But what of our laws, master?
And he answered: you delight in laying down laws.
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore.
And when you destroy them the ocean laughs with you.
Verily, the ocean laughs always with the innocent.
But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers.
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness? What of the handicapped person who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And if him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters are lawbreakers?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun.
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weather- vine shall direct your course?
What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke against no man’s iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgement if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man’s path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
-/-/-/-
This piece illustrates the subjectivity of laws, the judgements attached to them, and the willingness of many not to follow them.
There are inner laws of conscience and inner guidance direction. I choose to follow them. OM
