For this special birthday show, DV and Dr. H discuss a singular letter from Thomas Jefferson to newborn Thomas Jefferson Smith. What is especially noteworthy about the letter is Jefferson’s largesse and sense of cosmic continuity. The letter, well-crafted, is a gift to an infant, four generations (in Jefferson’s sense of 19 years) removed from Jefferson. Jefferson, as it were, passes the torch to young Smith, as the particularity of his own existence is soon to end, but he leaves behind to the infant, prior to his passing, some words timeless.
That is perhaps Jefferson’s greatest gift to humanity, as we celebrate his birthday: recognition that while each of us has a finite existence, each of us is an essential part of something divine and timeless. In sum, there is a particularity to human existence as well as an universality. Each of us is part of deity’s plan in the unfolding of cosmic events-that is for Jefferson something we feel, not cognize-and we praise best deity when we live and pass as cognizant and sensitive beings, aware of, and in celebration of, the cosmic flow of events. We are to trust God-to “murmur not at the ways of Providence.”
7 апр 2024
