Black Horoscope

Sagittarius

Don’t think that your good reputation will prevent us from making a complete list of your numerous flaws! Firstly, you claim to be a philosopher endowed with open-mindedness. Actually, it is only a way to escape everyday realities that you find boring. It is more accurate to say that you have no inner life. Your interest in culture and spirituality is nothing but an interest, as we have mentioned already! Indeed, you have no reflection of your own. You stupidly repeat what you have read or heard, and you proudly think that you can appear to be a wise person who has an immense knowledge of the world. In addition, you never go very deep, and while you boastfully display your knowledge, you show no critical or analytical mind. You are a real drought and you are restless, which translates into irritating fickleness, lack of stability, and no sense of commitment or loyalty… Lastly, you are unable to fulfil your promises. You exaggerate everything in order to impress your entourage (yes, you are proud, definitely), and you don’t have a clue what the word “tact” means. Many among you are just big petty-bourgeois…

Source: http://www.astrotheme.com/files/black-zodiac.php

Musings on Music, Love, Life and not only

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“Love is a drama of contradictions.”
— Franz Kafka

“Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”
— Franz Kafka (Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923)

“And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.”
— Franz Kafka (The Basic Kafka)

“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.”
— Franz Kafka

“All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”
— Franz Kafka

From correspondence with my friend.

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I:

[…]  I don’t like Salsa music.

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He:

There is no salsa music; under 80% of world songs you can dance salsa. Term “salsa music” is created by people, who don’t understand concept of dancing.

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I:

Since it is clearly not a compliment, should I consider it as an invitation for a fight?  LOL

[…there was a link of a song, not a Salsa one…]
This one is not Salsa.  And I like it whatever your opinion might be.  Taste is always a personal matter.  I think.

You are stuck in an adolescent stage; I will send you the explanation once I have it.  Stop teaching the world, relax and enjoy today and NOW.

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He:

“You are stuck in an adolescent stage” – thank you for this – because this is the highest compliment possible.

The problem is that most of the people (99.99% period) never pass this stage (not only “stuck”) – they are born old – and that is the main problem of mankind - people are old – cannot learn, enjoy, evolve – and if they cannot do that, guess, who they are – right – they are our old friends – idiots.

By the way, who told you that I don’t enjoy life – this is exactly what I am doing all the time (probably, even too much) – because I am in “adolescent stage” of my life.

I see, you have last time some taste to have little fight with me – it is OK – the most important that it entertains you (I hope).

Regards & kisses (if allowed).

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I:

It makes me laugh.  I passed the stage of criticizing everyone & everything long time ago.  I was joking about fighting.  Frankly, I feel wiser than you and according to the theory of soul evolution; I am three stages further than you.  Don’t worry, there are people ahead of me – I still have a long way to go and suffer evolving.  That is why I said I will send you the info, once I have it, you wouldn’t believe me, of course, but it is not my goal to persuade.  But it requires reading. LOL

But I don’t feel superior.  To anyone.  I like people and they like me – it is genuine.  Passion & compassion go along way, so do love & kindness.

"Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never." — Franz Kafka

The reason I say you don’t enjoy life is that is how I see you.  Maybe it is not the image you want others to have… but it is for you to discover your own reflection.

Kissing in virtual space is fine, but in real life, I guess, these things are taken care of.  You know what is my love mystery?  It is passion.  I cannot go long without it.  It is passion for everything, for love, for life, for music, for dancing. I have no time for teaching world how wrong it is.  Besides, I don’t think the world is wrong or people are idiots for that matter.  Even my seven-year-old son is capable of saying things that amaze me.

We went to see an adult movie, never mind why, and it was a romantic comedy.  He asked me what a romantic comedy was and I said it was a funny movie about love.  You know what he said?  “Mom, there is nothing funny about love”.  There.  Then he cried during the movie when Julia Roberts wanted to leave the guy she was in love with.  It was priceless.  Love is always good answer and if there is no other meaning of life, love is a good one.

By the way, if you are a true Leo, that should be your thing – LOVE (besides being a teenager, LOL).  Am I wrong?  Don’t take it as insult, my son is Leo and he lives up to the promise of being full of LOVE.

All right, I am going for a walk – to enjoy the weather and the beauty of my favourite month & season.

Dedicated to Lincoln Phayze who always goes with the flow except for the times when he doesn’t.  Both of us are lost…

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/b37bd4f91ab74c2b5be4a419893cfda7/

That was an advice from somebody like me.  The gentleman in question works in the arts (I almost said “arts industry” and I was appalled by the ugliness of the expression).  Correction:  he used to work in the arts, but now he is in as much mess as I am.  He told me that once he was taking the program “The Artist’s Way” and one of the requirements was keeping a diary.  Yes, a diary.  Keeping a diary in order to awaken one’s creativity, reconnect with one’s creativity, and welcome one’s creativity back.  So the rules were simple enough – you wake up and write three pages without letting the pen stop.  The rule to remember is “Don’t get it right, get it written…”

It is a very catchy and encouraging phrase.  But no matter how encouraging a phrase may be, it still took me a while to actually start writing in my diary.  But I did.  I have some “volumes” completed, mostly filled with crap worth only getting rid of (by shredding, this detail is very important! LOL), but it does not matter.  It was not right, it was written.  My web-site contains very little of my private diary entries, it is more polished and edited. Of course.  Which course?  Moving on…

Of course. Which course? Do we know where we go?

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/d09d182bdef53d9a4b384576a47df417/

Am I creative?  We all are supposed to be creative, by the way…

Well, anyway, when I started this web-site, it was nearly impossible to find things to write about, and I stopped almost as soon I started.  Then I came back to it and I was more or less consistent.  There were some large gaps due to my mood swings.  When I am depressed, I feel like drowning, when I am high, I feel as if I am resurfacing…and what does it have to do with water I have no idea…  Maybe because I am a Water Sign?  Sometimes I dream that I fly so high and so skillfully…

In my dreams I fly so much higher

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/9f878a2f026418e54ca53b7917b261e9/

Coming back to the gaps.  There some of them, all due to polarity of my moods, doubts, losing faith, not really knowing what to do.  The last one started early in May when I finally found a part-time job, started dancing more and generally was busy with I don’t even remember what.  But I tried to come back.  There must be something about writing that I either like or need or maybe both.  Self-expression?  Letting out the pain?  Sharing my experience?  Pleasure of typing? LOL – yeah, that must be it, “pleasure of typing” – exercising my fine motor skills.

Exercising fine motor skills

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/5dc33cf6576d5f43e0de16fa8bf43253/

But the idea of “not getting it right, but getting it written” is very appealing.  I was reading some of my own posts from January and it turned out to be pleasant enough.  I have already forgotten the pain and the joy and details.  And it was nice to come back and see – my insanity (at one point), my pain, my suffering, and the progress I made.  So the verdict is “YES”, the point may very well be ZERO, but I should keep at it.  My diary, my web-site, “My life, my universe and everything”.  Life goes on and diary is only a reflection.  We all love mirrors, don’t we?

Or yes, we do.  Reflections, reflections, reflections…

It took me a while to pick the best idea for the post on March the 8^th, the International Women’s Day.  What do women cherish the most?  Careers?  Perhaps… But love is always the safe bet, so I decided to talk more about love and meaning of life because this is the most important thing for me.  And for the rest of the world?  That is for the rest of the world to decide.

From Katherine Woodward Thomas “Calling in “The One”

Are you frustrated by stymied relationships, missed connections, and the loneliness of the search for someone to spend the rest of your life with?  Are you ready, instead, to find “The One”?  In Calling in “The One”, Katherine Woodward Thomas shares her own personal experience to show women that in order to find the relationship that will last a lifetime, you have to be truly open and ready to create a loving, committed, romantic union.  Calling in “The One” shows you how.

Based on the Law of Attraction, which is the concept that we can only attract what we’re ready to receive, the provocative yet simple seven-week program in Calling in “The One” prepares you to bring forth the love you seek.  For each of the 49 days of Thomas’s thoughtful and life-affirming plan, there is a daily lesson, a corresponding practice, and instruction for putting that lesson into action in your life.  Meditation, visualization, and journaling exercises will gently lead you to recognize the obstacles on your path to love and provide ways to steer around them.  At the end of those 49 days, you will be in the ideal emotional state to go out into the world and find “The One”.

An inspirational approach that offers a radical new philosophy on relationships, Calling in “The One” is your guide to finding the love you seek.

From the Chapter 13 “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall”

Source: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/ny/3-11-fiction-mirror-1.jpg

An ordinary man behaves like a dog which, upon entering a hall of mirrors, barks at all the other dogs.  The sage, entering the hall of mirrors, sees only himself.”

Gurunathan

I no longer try to change outer things.  They are simply a reflection.  I change my inner perception and the outer reveals the beauty so long obscured by my own attitude.  I concentrate on my inner vision and find my outer view transformed.

Daily Word

Like attracts like.  Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes, the subconscious identically creates.

Brian Adams

A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world.  Everyone you meet is your mirror.

Ken Keyes Jr.

Page 84

We often have more faith in the act of assertion than we do in the Law of Attraction – trusting more in trying to make things happen by taking actions than we do in drawing things toward us and allowing them to happen.  This doing-ness could be called the masculine aspect of the creative process; that part that goes out and gets what it wants.  It is the hunter in all of us, both male and female.  The masculine creative principle is largely how our Western culture works.  It is the principle that we are most familiar with and the one that we trust in the most.

The feminine aspect of the creative principle, however, draws toward itself that which it is actively creating from within.  We often mistake this stillness as passive and static.  Women, who are usually cast in this inactive role, are often frustrated by the “sit and wait by the phone” thing.  However, this is a misunderstanding of the power of the feminine creative process, which conceives by cultivating a strong inner vision and then working internally to draw that vision in.  Feminine creative energy is like a barber role.  It alternates between the red and the white with no beginning and no end.  The internal vision is the magnet for the external condition and they dance fluidly and in harmony with one another constantly.

[…]

Many of us feel so desperate and driven to find love.  But the feeling of desperation is really a panicked response to inner belief that you will not get what you want.  This belief then causes an anxious ambition to have this not be so, and we start trying to push, manipulate, and cajole the events of our lives in reaction.  But there’s absolutely nothing you can do externally to prove that your own internal belief is wrong.  Because it’s neither right nor wrong.  It’s simply your belief.  As such, it has the power to magnetize that which does – and that which does not come into your life.

[…]

What can’t come through you, can’t come to you.  If you want to attract in the people, situations, and circumstances that support the manifestation of love in your life, then you must feel love, believe that it is possible for you, and claim it as your own.  Because we draw toward us that which is most compelling within us, believing with all your heart that you can and will have love is the single most important thing that you can do on this quest for fulfillment.

My Next Calling

My next calling was discovered by my darling – “Mein Lieber A.”, Mr. “And your point being?”, “Mi Amore”, Mr. “I never promised you anything”, Mr. “I am Beautiful”, Mr. Denial (well, I am being creative with nicknames!)

I do have a soft spot for him, obviously.  He doesn’t reciprocate, but that is fine, it is to be expected.

He does not have such a good memory and my ability to pay attention and remember some of his words is the source of irritation for him.  Once he gave me permission to kick him out of his complacent condition, yet when I did, he did not like it all that much.  That is to be expected, too.

Quoting:

“If you wish to devote all your energy to keeping tabs on me on what I say then you may have found your next calling.”

I wish I had such sharp memory to remember everything he said, but I don’t.  But some things just stay, what can I do?

Certain sentences are repeated so many times, they become fixtures, motifs, cornerstones, whatever name you want to use.  “I never promised you anything” and “And your point being is?” are just a few of them.

Some sentences are just worth remembering.

“I never once refused not to help you.”

 

“I am beautiful.”

 

“I […] enter this forest at its darkest point; for it is at the darkest moment we see the light.”

How about that?

The best thing about him is not my infatuation, however sweet, intoxicating, euphoric and painful it might be, but the fact that he inspires me in a sense.  Is it he I like or my own reflection in him; for we can only see ourselves reflected in others?

Maybe I am not Light enough (my name literally means “Light”) for him to see, or maybe he is not in that dark forest anymore.  Maybe he never was there.  Of course, I am joking.  Most people (he is not an exception) take things way too seriously.

So my next calling is not to remember him and his every word, but to discover that Light within me that will bring me happiness and harmony.  Whether I can light anybody else’s life or not, we will see.  Discovering that Light would be my Success.  Yes, that one that is usually defined (limited!) by perseverance.

Talking about names!

“There’s a scientific hypothesis that every person’s name is a primary suggestive command that contains the entire script of their life in highly concentrated form. . . . According to this point of view, there is only a limited number of names, because society only needs a limited number of human types. Just a few models of worker and warrior ants, if I could put it like that. And everybody’s psyche is preprogrammed at a basic level by the associative semantic fields that their first name and surname activate.”
— Victor Pelevin (The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

If that is right, I must be Light.  The question is what Light is and what to do with it.

Quotes on the subject.

1. Love is not consolation.  It is light.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

 

2. Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we’ll need no other light.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

3. Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space.  It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe.  It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished.  ~Michael Strassfeld

 

4. We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.  ~Mary Dunbar

 

5. Light, when suddenly let in, dazzles and hurts and almost blinds us: but this soon passes away, and it seems to become the only element we can exist in.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

 

6. Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft.  ~Sven Nykvist

 

7. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come.  At the darkest moment comes the light.  ~Joseph Campbell

 

8. Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.  ~Kahlil Gibran

 

9. Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way.  But if you hold it up against the light of God’s goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright.  And then you ask yourself in amazement:  Is this really my own life I see before me?  ~Albert Schweitzer

 

10. An age is called “dark,” not because the light fails to shine but because people refuse to see it.  ~James Michener

Coming back to

“I never once refused not to help you.”  He did help me.  By making me amorous, by irritating me, by making me think, by inspiring me.

“Why do you want to be infatuated with me?”  It was not my choice, mi amore, but it felt good, why is it so difficult to understand?  But he does not have to understand; searching for the Light and Meanings is my journey.

So there I go, full of Love in my heart and Hope and Light………………………………..

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

Anyone who wishes to understand the nature of beauty should first of all ask himself: where is it located?  Can we say that it is somewhere inside the woman who is considered beautiful?  Can we say, for instance, that there is beauty in the features of her face?  Or in her figure?

Science tells us that the brain receives a flow of information from the sense organs, in this case from the eyes, and without the interpretations imposed by the visual cortex, this is simply a chaotic sequence of coloured dots, digitized into nerve impulses by the visual tract.  Any fool can understand that there is not beauty in that, so it doesn’t find its way into a man through his eyes.  In technical terms, beauty is the interpretation that arises in the consciousness of the patient.  As they say – in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty does not belong to a woman and it is not her specific quality – it is just that at a certain time of life her face reflects beauty, as a windowpane reflects the sun that is hidden behind the roofs of the houses.  And so we cannot say that a woman’s beauty fades with time – it is simply that the sun moves on and the windows of other houses begin to reflect it.  But we know that the sun is not in the windowpanes that we look at.  It is in us.

What is the sun?  I’m sorry, but that’s another mystery, and today I was only planning to reveal one.  And in any case, from the point of view of practical magic, the nature of the sun is absolutely irrelevant.  What matters are the manipulations that we perform with its light…

It seems strange nowadays, but I do have difficulty even picking a film.  Maybe I just do not want to waste my time watching some garbage.  The major difficulty is, of course, in defining what garbage is.  I can only pass a judgment after having watched a movie.  Now, I try to laugh at myself on many accounts.  This one is no exception.

Maybe it simply was awhile since I was aware of what is out there.  There is no list in my mind of what I should watch.  So I feel like a blind person in a forest.  Then I go to the “Hidden Gems” category and try picking something suitable.  Then I get stuck with what is exactly suitable.  Suitable for what?  For my mood?  For improving it or for reflecting it?  Or neither?

When I picked “Two Lovers”, it is hard to say what exactly I expected.  I think instinctively I knew it would not be a simple comedy you forget right after the film is over.  I like Joaquin Phoenix and he was so highly praised for his performance, that it was hard to resist.  The fact that Gwyneth Paltrow was there also was almost a turn-off, but you can’t have everything.  So there, the choice was made.

After having watched “Two Lovers”, I haven’t thought much about the film.  Not because I would say it was not good.  It was not thrilling; I would even say it was boring to a point.  But I kept thinking about it, which is always a sign, that the film is really not bad.  Anything that makes you think is worthwhile.

I read the reviews later.  The critics sympathized with Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) and commented how likeable he was and how the critics knew what he should have done and how he should have behaved in order to make the right choice in love.  Pick somebody familiar and safe (and boring) and forego flashy, unstable and instantly attractive.  Save yourself trouble, trade excitement of love and a possibility of heartbreak for security, stability, maybe friendship. 

“However, while it is clear to the audience which of the two women Leonard should focus his attentions on, he instead pursues the other one.”  (Cinema Autopsy, Thomas Caldwell)  http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2009/06/06/film-review-two-lovers-2008/

Of course, there is truth and merit to that, but I wonder how many people could actually resist falling in love and how many of us sit and calculate the odds and the possible outcomes.  Maybe those who took the decision-making courses (you know “What-if analysis”, “Strategic Thinking”).  I know I did.  But I still prefer to be in love rather than not.  Maybe that is why Leonard is so likeable.  Not because he is bipolar, because he is very human.

That is the word – BIPOLAR. 

The film does not put such emphasis on his diagnosis and Leonard is only shown as a depressed person, rather than manic.  The diagnosis is mentioned in one of the reviews and whether it is an assumption or not, there is no way of knowing.  Being bipolar, I know the difference much better than film critics.  But, let’s say it does not matter.

But one point was so touching, so it took me a few weeks to really come back to it and remember.  Subtlety and gentleness of the film is chiefly responsible for the fact that I cannot stop thinking about it.  The first scene – Leonard is going (home?) or on his way to deliver dry-cleaned clothes – and he jumps into the ocean.  Suicide out of the Blue?

Here critics should have said that it was not advisable to jump fully-clothed in freezing water.  Oh, no, I never jumped.  I only thought about jumping from the balcony from the 20^th floor.  Oh, yes, I can sympathize.  That scene is now somewhat haunting and somewhat a relief really.  To see it from a different perspective.  You do have to jump in order to see the light of day.  To realize that there actually will be another day and …who knows what.

Just do not ask the film critics what is right and what is wrong.  Whom to pick and fall in love with.  Make your own decisions.

it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy.  The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact.  By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson.  Few can resist the power of the Mirror Effect.

“48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene

A lesson in Seduction

In 1652 the recently widowed Baroness Mancini moved her family from Rome to Paris, where she could count on the influence and protection of her brother Cardinal Mazarin, the French Prime Minister.  Of the baroness’s five daughters, four dazzled the court with their beauty and high spirits.  These infamously charming nieces of Cardinal Mazarin became known as the Mazarinettes, and soon found themselves invited to all the most important court functions.

One daughter, Marie Mancini, did not share this good fortune, for she lacked the beauty and grace of her sisters – who, along with her mother and even Cardinal Mazarin, eventually came to dislike her, for they felt she spoiled the family image.  They tried to persuade her to enter a convent, where she would be less of an embarrassment, but she refused.  Instead she applied herself to her studies, learning Latin and Greek, perfecting her French, and practicing her musical skills. On the rare occasions when her family would let her attend court affairs, she trained herself to be an artful listener, sizing people up for their weaknesses and hidden desires.  And when she finally met the future King Louis XIV, in 1657 (Louis was seventeen years old, Marie eighteen), she decided that to spite her family and uncle, she would find a way to make this young man fall in love with her.

This was a seemingly impossible task for such a plain-looking girl, but Marie studied the future king closely.  She noticed that her sisters’ frivolity did not please him, and she sensed that he loathed the scheming and petty politicking that went on all around him.  She saw that he had a romantic nature – he read adventure novels, insisted on marching at the head of his armies, and had high ideals and a passion for glory.  The court did not feed these fantasies of his; it was a banal, superficial world that bored him.

The key to Louis’s heart, Marie saw, would be to construct a mirror reflecting his fantasies and his youthful yearnings for glory and romance.  To begin with she immersed herself in the romantic novels, poems, and plays that she knew the young king read voraciously.  When Louis began to engage her in conversation, to his delight she would talk of the things that stirred his soul – not this fashion or that piece of gossip, but rather courtly love, the deeds of great knights, the nobility of past kings and heroes.  She fed his thirst for glory by creating an image of an august, superior king whom he could aspire to become.  She stirred his imagination.

As the future Sun King spent more and more time in Marie’s presence, it eventually became clear that he had fallen in love with the least likely young woman of the court.  To the horror of her sisters and mother, he showered Marie Mancini with attention.  He brought her along on his military campaigns, and made a show of stationing her where she could watch as he marched into battle.  He even promised that he would marry her and make her queen.

Mazarin, however, would never allow the king to marry his niece, a woman who could bring France no diplomatic or royal alliances.  Louis had to marry a princess of Spain or Austria.  In 1658 Louis succumbed to the pressure and agreed to break off the first romantic involvement of his life.  He did so with much regret, and at the end of his life he acknowledged that he never loved anyone as much as Marie Mancini.

Protecting from Unnecessary Hurt

By Donald W. McCullogh

Taken from “Write to be Read” (Reading, Reflection, and Writing) by William R. Smalzer

Verna claims that I said her baby was ugly.  I can’t imagine being that insensitive, though it was a long time ago and my memory isn’t exact in these matters.  I do recall Verna holding up her newborn and saying, “Isn’t she cute?”  And I, seeing a splotchy, scrunched little face and being committed to complete honesty, must have said something like “Well, she really is … a baby?”  Or maybe, “It takes an infant a few months before she can really be considered cute.”  Or I suppose there is a small possibility I said, “Strictly speaking, she is kind of ugly at the moment but will undoubtedly become a ravishing beauty.”

Nearly thirty years have passed, but whenever I run into Verna she reminds me that I called her baby ugly.  I don’t know her daughter; for all I know she became Miss Universe or perhaps my words lodged in her tiny subconscious and she has spent the last fifteen years in psychoanalysis working on low self-esteem.  In any event, I now wish I had lied.  It would have saved all of us a lot of grief.

Occasionally, courtesy calls for a lie.  Let me hasten to stress I’m talking about white lies, not black or gray or even off-white lies.  Show-white lies.  But even so, I realize I’ve just launched this chapter into very dangerous waters, with though ethical questions all around us.  We had better navigate through this subject very carefully, wit a firm grip on the tiller…

… How can we speak truthfully about lying?  The ancient philosopher Aristotle may be of help to us.  He said that honesty was more than unloading everything to everyone.  Rather, it is speaking the right truth to the right person at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

Not every truth is mine to tell: a truth shared in confidence and a truth that would needlessly hurt another is not mine to tell.  Not every person has a right to know the truth.  Some willfully distort what they hear; some use facts to cover a larger, more important truth: some have blabbermouths with unrelenting and undiscriminating tongues.  Not every time is appropriate for the truth: some seasons call for tactful silence: they day your friend’s daughter dropped out of school is not the day to tell her about your daughter making the honour roll.  Not every way of communicating honours the truth.  Sometimes the manner in which something is said subverts reality, as when a preacher says all the right words about God’s love but through a tone of voice and a concluding string of “oughts” (therefore we ought to do this and we ought to do that) that makes you feel guiltier than ever.  Not every reason deserves the use of truth: some motives for telling the truth are simply too destructive to deserve the respectability of being clothed in the truth.  Some expressions of “honesty” are really attempts to demean and belittle another person.

When it is the wrong truth or the wrong person or the wrong time or the wrong way or the wrong reason, a white lie may have more integrity than a facile, insensitive “honesty”.  But when does a white lie begin to turn a slight shade of gray?  When does it cross over and become an immoral act of dishonesty?

Perhaps a good test would be to ask, Does this lie protect the other person or does it protect me?  Let’s waste no time in admitting that it’s not easy to tell the difference.  On the surface, a lie may appear t protect another person from unnecessary pain; on closer examination, however, it’s actually an attempt to save me from uncomfortable exposure.  In Graham Greene’s “The Heart of the Matter”, a police officer in a West African colony during the war has an affair, and in an effort to “protect” his wife from the pain of the truth, walks down a road of falsehood that leads to disaster.  Greene’s story may be fiction but it’s a profound truth reenacted everyday.  It’s easy to convince ourselves we’re guarding the feelings of another when we’re only trying to protect ourselves – and this sort of deception often ends in more complication and more lying and more pain than we could have ever imagined.

But just because it’s difficult to tell the difference between and appropriate lie and a morally unacceptable lie does not mean we give up the attempt to make the distinction.  Life, after all, is difficult.  So we press on, doing our best, knowing we’re not God, and counting on the grace of God when we blow it.  Though committed to honesty, we know that sometimes courtesy calls for creative stretching the truth.