Spirit Kerneling Through this Husk of Stones

What are we? A Being aware of our own becoming? Or Newton's old toy converted into a perpetual motion holy war cash machine?

Where do you get the idea that the cosmos is a machine? If it is, then where does that machine stop and you, a living being, start? Isn't it obvious?

Our intentions materialize our realities. My intentions right now are altering my environment--and now yours, dear reader--as a plant grows through stone: from within.

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From Scott Horton this morning in his Harper's blog, No Comment:

Nerval: A Man and His Lobster

Eh quoi, tout est sensible.
—PYTHAGORE.

Homme ! libre penseur—te crois-tu seul pensant
Dans ce monde, où la vie éclate en toute chose?
Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose,
Mais de tous tes conseils l’univers est absent.

Respecte dans la bête un esprit agissant…
Chaque fleur est une âme à la Nature éclose;
Un mystère d’amour dans le métal repose:
Tout est sensible!—Et tout sur ton être est puissant!

Crains dans le mur aveugle un regard qui t’épie:
A la matière même un verbe est attaché…
Ne la fais pas servir à quelque usage impie.

Souvent dans l’être obscur habite un Dieu caché;
Et, comme un œil naissant couvert par ses paupières,
Un pur esprit s’accroît sous l’écorce des pierres.

All things feel.
–PYTHOGORAS.

So you alone are blessed, you free-thinking man,
In a world where life sprouts in everything?
You seize the liberty to dispose of the forces you hold,
But in all your plans a sense of the universe is lacking.

Honor in each creature the spirit which moves it:
Each flower is a soul moved by Nature’s face;
In each metal resides some of love’s mystery;
“All things feel!” And all you are is powerful.

Beware, even the blind walls may spy on you:
Even matter is vested with the power of voice…
Put not make it serve an impious purpose.

Often in the most obscure beings resides yet the hidden God;
And like the infant’s eye covered by its lid,
The pure spirit forces its kernel though the husk of stones.
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–Gérard de Nerval, Vers dorés (1845) in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 739 (J. Guillaume & C. Pichois eds. 1989)(S.H. transl.)