The long run: Daniel Clarke Flynn’s Thought for the Week

‘The longer I live, the less I know.’

The longer I live, the less I know, and the more capable I am of seeing whatever I hadn’t noticed before. Knowledge can be a barrier to learning, and I sometimes feel that I have to let go of what I know in order to see more. ‘Seeing’ gives way to ‘vision’. Life becomes most fulfilling as an adventure of life-long learning. My attitude becomes, ‘I don’t know, others might, I need to listen’. That takes humility, openness, curiosity, imagination and intuition. Such practice leads me to choice, which some call free will, our highest human capacity, not yet found elsewhere in creation. Challenges and failures become stepping stones to seeing from broader perspectives.

Life is a gift from power greater than me. It continues to sustain me in this temporary existence. As the Benedictine monk and Zen Buddhist teacher Willigis Jäger wrote, we are each unique, temporary and necessary manifestations of Creation. We each have a role to play, and my job is to discover that role each day.

I have come to believe that my primary calling is to express gratitude for this free gift, through caring for myself, others, and creation. I can do that by practising being fully present in the here and now, to learn more from that power greater than me, which some label Consciousness.

Meeting for Worship enables me to momentarily access Consciousness – Light, Being – when I engage in it regularly, relaxedly, and repetitively, just as an athlete trains. ‘Train don’t strain’ is a mantra I heard early on in my decades of long-distance running and I have come to see that it applies in my spiritual practice as well.

The longer I live and the less I possess, the more I am able to accept all that life offers. I was born into the benefits of capitalism, marketing, and consumerism, which in fact distracted me from the simple essentials needed for a complete life. The purpose of marketing is to make us feel dissatisfied. Some of the most profitable investments of capital are in products and services that are addictive, such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling, sugar, and processed food. Marketing has exploited addictions to sex and violence to sell films, video games, fast cars and even their tyres.

The longer I live, the faster time seems to go, the less permanent all material things appear to be, and the more I am called to experience unity with infinite Being and eternal Wisdom. The Gospel of John talks about order over chaos. George Fox talks about light over darkness. Vito Mancuso, the theologian and philosopher, talks about our personal wisdom being our instinctive intuition towards the harmony within the energy of creation. We have a unique ability in creation – choice – he says, and he chooses positive: ‘I define my philosophy of life as “dramatic optimism”. Optimism because I am convinced that life has meaning and that this meaning can be discovered through experience… dramatic because this meaning can only be grasped through work…Without consent, there is no meaning. And consent requires investing energy in the system of life.’

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Comments

I attended a lecture on line yesterday on th e Scientific and Medical Network on the .work of David Bohm.  Everything is connected. I can connect with everything but I must value the livingness in me and in others. I tune into the flowing energies of inter-relatedness. I see the movement of the clouds with my whome being. I rebegin the relatedness with frequent conscious breathing. I am open and empty. My conditioned me’s try to take me over but I smile and let them go. I can choose the way of wonder…  especially in music!
Richard Thompson
Valence
France

By Richard Thompson on 2026 03 26

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Merci beaucoup, Richard, et bonne continuation. Dan

By Daniel Clarke Flynn on 2026 03 28

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In my 84th year I thank you for expressing my thoughts so clearly.

By bronxite1910 on 2026 04 07

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