The Uncommon Touch by Tom Harpur

After reading some of Tom Harpur's other books (The Pagan Christ, Prayer, Life After Death, Finding the Still Point - A Spiritual Response to Stress and The God Question), I plunged into the The Uncommon Touch with great anticipation. I have long been interested in the spiritual aspects of healing - be it powered by the individual's faith or by external intervention by a healer person or by some invisible force that the healing is attributed to. I must immediately admit, I am not the ideal unbiased observer in this area as I do firmly believe in the ability of people to have significant influence on their own and others' recovery from physical, mental, spiritual or emotional trauma.

The Uncommon Touch is an expertly organized, well-balanced examination of the phenomenon of spiritual healing. Tom Harpur, a prolific Canadian spiritual author, journalist and TV host, first attacks some familiar stereotypes: TV evangelists who exhibit faith healing are mostly charlatans. Harpur's premise is that spiritual healing is an enabling and powerful ally, rather than an opposition to conventional medicine; and spiritual healing includes all those patients as well who "simply" believe they will get the cure, and do, as opposed to those individuals who give up all hope and die. Harpur cites abundant testimony on historical figures such as Godfrey Mowatt (the famous "blind healer"). He then references the work of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and student of Freud who postulated "orgone energy." Orgone energy is a massless universal life force that is, perhaps, tapped into through the laying on of hands. (The Star Wars series' references to the "Force" may also have its origin in the concept of Orgone energy.) Harpur gives also an account of the Canadian biologist Bernard Grad's attempt to measure orgone energy in the laying on of hands of a contemporary healer, Oskar Estebany, with double-blind experiments involving mice. Wounded mice that Estebany had handled recovered more rapidly than the control group. There's also discussion in the book on what one might call the "positive thinking" aspect of prayer. Welcome evidence for those inclined to embrace it.


Seven Principles of Cosmic Spirituality (from Tom Harpur's own web site):

1. The entire cosmos is the manifestation of Divine Mind-every molecule, every cell, every creature, every rock, tree, mountain, planet, blazing star, whirling galaxy and universe of galaxies.
2. We are all an integral, interconnected part of the whole cosmos and our own inner world is a holograph of the cosmos within us.
3. One basic datum underlies every religion under the sun, the principle of Incarnation. The Word or Logos, God's self-expression made manifest, has given the light of its divine spark to every mind/soul coming into the world. Christians call this the Christ or "Christ in us." Other faiths have different names or modes of expression for this same inner reality.
4. Every religion whose ethical core is summed up by the word "compassion" or "loving-kindness" to all other creatures without exception has a vision of the truth and is a valid "way" to Transcendence.
5. No one faith or religion-whatever its claims may be, alone has The Truth.
6. True cosmic spirituality is steeped in, flows from, and derives its most powerful analogies and metaphors from the natural world -- from the tiniest bit of dust to the spiraling stars above.
7. The core aim of cosmic spirituality is radical transformation, both personal and societal.

Merry Christmas!

I wish you and your loved ones a Blessed Christmas!

It's a small world

Yes, indeed. My wife's nephew spent a few months with us earlier this year. We initiated him into the world of martial arts by signing him up for a month at the Academy we attend. Upon returning to Hungary, he signed up for some Karate classes at the dojo nearest to where he lives. Now I just learned, the chief instructor of his art Shito ryu in Central Europe (Zsolt Szénási) and I were classmates!

A new laundry room

I have recreated our laundry room into my wife's pottery supplies storage and work area. She loves it. So do I. The room has been ready for a while I just never got to making a picture of the final product. Here it is now...

All You Need Is Mozart!

According to various music therapy researchers, the number one composer whose works have been most frequently "prescribed" is, not at all surprisingly, Mozart. What is perhaps interesting though is the wide range of healing properties (for a variety of neurological diseases and brain function enhancements) Mozart's music is supposed to have. Don't take me wrong, I love Mozart's music, and can listen to it almost any time. I have myself, on a great number of occasions felt his music revitalize me, relax my busy mind, or helped me meditate and fill me with positive energy.

There is even some scientific evidence that there is something really special (and spatial) about Mozart. The "Mozart effect" as it became to be known, first came to light in a 1993 paper in Nature, when neuroscientist Fran Rauscher showed that college students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for 10 minutes performed better on a spatial reasoning test than students who listened to some new age music or nothing at all. (Interestingly, there were numerous attempts to replicate the original results but mostly without success. These resulted in a series of authors dismissing the "Mozart effect" as mere hoax or as a self-propelling reflection of a "deeply-rooted but generally unspoken human impulse, to 'get something for nothing'" as Norman Weinberger puts it.)

The term "Mozart effect" was coined by Dr. Alfred Tomatis for the alleged increase in brain development that occurs in children under age 3 when they listen to the music of Mozart. He (and Mozart) even helped French actor Gerard Depardieu to transform a young delinquent and wanderer into a leading actor capable of such performances as his Cyrano or Bernard Granger in Truffaut's Le Dernier métro.

"Before Tomatis," Depardieu says, looking back, "I could not complete any of my sentences. He helped give continuity to my thoughts, and he gave me the power to synthesize and understand what I was thinking."

So, if it helped Depardieu, I might as well use its benefits, too. In order to test the claims, I am going to recreate one of the chart breaker Mozart Effect CDs with the following main features from my own CD collection:

For Intelligence & Learning
1. Allegro, Violin Concerto No.3 in G Major, K. 216
2. Allegro, Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Major, K. 107
3. Rondo-Allegretto grazioso, Sonata in F Major for Violin and Piano, K. 376
4. Rondo-Allegro, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in D Major, K. 525
5. Andante grazioso, London Night Music No. 1, K. 247
6. Molto Allegro, Symphony #14 in A Major, K. 114
7. Presto, Divertimento in D Major, K. 136
8. Allegro, Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218
9. Church Sonata in C Major, K. 336

Maszat

Our late dog, Maszat came into my mind this morning.

Fly little white dove, fly

I recently discovered a musical treasure that just makes simple-sweet melodies continually buzz in my mind causing me to hum even in moments others may not find all that appropriate for humming. This treasure's name is 'The Bells', a Canadian band that was formed in Montreal in the same year I was born on the old continent. My newest favourite is their hit song from 1970, Fly little white dove, fly.

When we're stuck in troubled days
We must learn to love each other
Instead of going different ways
We must try to get together

Chorus:
Fly little white dove, fly, way up high
Spread your wings, sing out your cry
'Cross the universal sky

If we love the Human race
Peace should be your aspiration
Let’s make this a better place
Spread the word to every nation

[Chorus]

When a simple word is spoken
It should be our guiding light
If vows for peace are never broken
Then the whole world will unite

[Chorus]
(repeat until fade)

Soul of the Samurai

"In all things, uncertainty exists because of not knowing. Being doubtful, those stay in your mind. When the principle is clarified, nothing stays on your mind. This is called consummating knowledge and perfecting things. Once there is nothing on your mind, everything becomes easy to do."

from Martial Arts: The Book of Family Traditions by Yagyu Munemori

Firewalking

Finally, a couple of pictures from the firewalking event I participated in a while ago (see my earlier entry). I feel I want to repeat the experience.

"For tyrannosaurs - love was a dangerous game"

Being a dinosaur has always had its drawbacks. The most prominent being early extinction, of course. And now here's this one about dying prematurely due to sex among all things!

As US and Canadian researchers have published it in Science, under the cryptic title of "Tyrannosaur Life Tables: An Example of Nonavian Dinosaur Population Biology", tyrannosaurs had trouble coping with midlife crisis. With their overaggressive lifestyle (rivalry for mates, constant abuse of lesser species, and the mandatory abuse socially aware father T-Rexes had to expose their child dinos to), excessive eating, and the occasional over-fasting while nesting all are among the causes of an increase in the mortality rate among those tyrannosaurs that enter the age of sexual maturity. So, when life finally becomes really interesting, you die.

"For tyrannosaurs - love was a dangerous game" states Gregory Erickson, "death awaited those entering the breeding population".

My contribution to today's science will be an extension of Erickson's statement: Love is a dangerous game. Period. No exception to this rule, no matter how idealized a view one holds about love. It sure bears a great deal of danger for all "those entering the breeding population". Just think about the black widow spider or the praying mantis from the animal kingdom. We have examples in great abundance among humans as well: Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, Helen of Troy and Brad Pitt, or the Adam-Serpent-Eve triangle, for that matter.

For a summary of the article, go to:
http://bio.fsu.edu/~gerick/sciencemag/
Full article can be accessed at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/313/5784/213

My roses in bloom

Charisma:

Golden showers:


Lavaglow:


Princess Margaret

Judo with Words: An Intelligent Way to Counter Verbal Attacks by Barbara Berckhan

Verbal attacks can cause injuries the same way physical attacks do, only without visible scars. Many of us are so dumbstruck when verbal attacks occur that we do not even find words to express our emotions. Only significantly later, when the attacker has already moved on to other, equally unsuspecting and vulnerable prey, can we recompose ourselves and find some of the words we could have or should have said. Others of us retaliate immediately thus entering the classic viscous spiral of escalating the conflict possibly even to the level of physical conflict.

As a student of Aikido (the classic non-resistant martial art) and other martial arts, I can fully appreciate what this little book can do for people who want to be better prepared in such situations. In this unassuming book (180 pages with minimalistic illustrations), Barbara Berckhan presents 12 basic tactics one can use in our everyday life when we find ourselves in a verbal attack situation. The book promises the reader to acquire self defense techniques to intelligently recognize the best way to stay out of a potentially escalating conflict, deflect and diffuse an obviously malevolent attack, or to stop a behaviour that if unchecked can resurface in increasingly hostile forms.

Even though the book will probably never earn its author the fame of being the most refined writer of the century (lots of vague statements and repetitions of trivialities), I still recommend it for those wishing to icrease their self confidence when attacked verbally. Some techniques may be a bit difficult to apply due to oversimplification.

People do mellow with age

"Elderly people may be better at perceiving happiness and worse at perceiving fear" suggests the New Scientist based on a study by Leanne Williams and colleagues (Westmead Hospital in New South Wales, Australia). The researchers asked the study subjects to view pictures of people showing various facial expressions ranging from fear to happiness and from anger to disgust and sadness. Why exactly this is still largely unknown but it was found that older people more accurately recognized happy expressions while younger subjects were better at spotting fearful expressions.

My layman explanation is that in the societies of our ancestors it was typically the role of the younger people to participate in activities directly related to the survival of the community (hunting, fighting off invasions, etc.) in which recognition of such expression as aggression or fear could substantially contribute to the success of such expeditions.

Whichever way it is, I sure am looking forward to mellowing and recognizing only happy faces around me.

The Da Vinci Code - my 2 cents

There. Finally I saw it too. I managed to avoid the initial suicidal rush so as to experience the movie without lineup or being stuck in the last row next to the snoring virtual technician and young couples desperate for some privacy whatever the show. The movie brought some ambivalent feelings to me.

The fuss. This movie is a good fast-pace thriller based on a vague speculation, namely that Jesus sired a bloodline, which itself is based on some other people's vague speculations (lawsuit pending despite judge Smith's cryptic verdict). Many people are up in arms about the movie and the book from which it was made as they supposedly attack faith and are heretic. Some countries even banned the movie from showing. Makes for great publicity.

Let me add my two cents worth to the plethora of opinions on the subject. This movie and the book are fiction, not statements of doctrine or historical facts, even if presented in that fashion. (I am not even sure I'd turn to Dan Brown or Ron Howard for enlightenment on any contentious topic of Christian doctrine or unbiased accounts of medieval history, anyway.) Still, a great number of people take it that way. I believe one does not go to the books of Poe, Doyle, Christie, Carr, Queen, Simenone, or Grisham for historical facts or theological truths but for some light entertainment and a good thrill. Dan Brown, a talented writer of some excellent suspense-thrillers (Deception Point, Digital Fortress) is simply riding the now popular anti-catholic, antichurch, anti-institutionalized-religion, anti-whatever media wave. Bluntly stated, he simply wants to sell his books. And he's doing a darn good job at it, too (40 million copies worldwide and counting).

Let's not confuse the ambitions of an author of conspiracy thrillers with the truths of one's belief. Faith is a transpersonal relationship with God or a higher power. It is an internalized hope about something awaiting us all after our deaths, and a realization of this conviction into the conduct of our daily lives. Faith is based in thousands of years of tradition and the teachings of enlightened individuals whose minds and charisma shine through countless generations. Faith is well beyond the reach of a thriller, however well written it might be.

Acting. I am sorry to report that the best acting was not exhibited by Tom Hanks (Langdon) or Audrey Tautou (Neveu). Not even by Jean Reno (Fache). But by Ian McKellen (Teabing) and Paul Bettany (Silas). No sparks are flying between Langdon and the beautiful Neveu. It appears Dab Brown has some issues with describing one of humankind's most natural phenomena, the falling in love of a man and a woman. Fache is overtormented and overacted. Teabing, however, is excellent. Shows the joviality and the deep obsession leading to horror expected based on the book's character. Silas, though I find the director is overemphasizing the role of self flagellation, is portrayed magnificently.

Directing I very much wanted to see what Ron Howard did with the story that I quite enjoyed reading. Well, he followed the story fairly closely (to the extent possible within the confines of a two-hour movie) but this ended up in a film with so much dialogue that if you didn't read the book, would be hell boring. This indeed was the case for my wife who confessed having hard time to keep her eyes open at some points during the movie.

Our garden

Here are some recent pictures from our garden. Of course, the one with the Rhododendron is a tad older than the others. The plants all appear to be enormously excited about the arrival of the Summer and want the world know just how beautiful they are. And I tend to agree with them.

Brown belt

Brown belts have been handed out to me, my wife and a few of our friends at the Energy Martial Arts Academy. This is great joy we all have worked very hard for this. Of course, we also know this is not the arrival at any desination, simply a marking of where we are on our journey to bettering ourselves and bringing strength, piece and harmony to our lives and those we interact with.

"Like a rolling stone..."

His Bobness (a.k.a. Bob Dylan [born Robert Allen Zimmerman]) is 65. Bob Dylan's 65th birthday celebration at Toronto's Hugh's Room will feature The Dylan Tree, a very cool band formed of four really fine Toronto musicians I heard this morning on Breakfast Television. I am very much looking forward to seeing them live!

http://www.hughsroom.com/

Firewalking

A good friend of mine invited me to a firewalking event over the weekend. This was his first time as well, so neither of us knew much about what to expect or what firewalking is all about, anyway. I was mostly driven by curiosity and a desire to walk the fire as another way of defeating my own fear of things unknown.

I was quite surprised when the instructor lead our preparation not into the direction of what or how we will be doing but toward us defining intentions we can very strongly identify with and visualize to a degree that it becomes an irresistible force toward action to make our intentions manifest externally. It is exactly the power of this intention that allows the mind to get distracted from the glowing coal (1200-1600 F) under one's feet. It's not really the heat of the coal one has to conquer. Rather it is the fear of it. We have individually been taught for decades to stay away from fire. As humankind, we have trained ourselves to keep away from the flames for millions of years. An extremely strong instinct has been, as it were, burnt into us all. And for a very good reason, too.

Firewalking has become to me the freeing of oneself from this very specific fear, and about braving a powerful instinct. But the real goal, I find, is not within conquering one's fear of walking a few steps across hot coal, though that can be a serious challenge itself. It is rather far beyond this single incident. It is in finding the ability to free ourselves from self-limiting beliefs that, like towering obstacles, block us from reaching the goals and ambitions we want to realize in our lives.

It's what awaits you on the other side is what makes this experience so amazing and powerful. It does not matter whether you know anything about the heat conductivity properties of the skin on the sole of your feet. It also has no relevance how long you wait before starting your walk. The magic lies in the ability and willingness to believe, against our instinct, that we can do it! That we have the capability to open up to the possibilities beyond those of our ordinary lives. It is one step on a journey to becoming extraordinary.

(I have yet to receive pictures taken by others so I can show myself walking the fire.)

Two pictures I took at my recent trip to Hungary. There are plenty more. I just have to make time to publish them in a fashion befitting the beauty of that country.

Book review -- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

My most recent expedition into the realm of fiction was the reading of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. A friend of ours lent it to my wife, and of course, if there is a book lying around, I have to pick it up and read it. This time, my spending the time on this fairly short novel paid off handsomely.

This is a book one could perhaps compare to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupèry . The richness of their story telling while keeping the language simple, the imagery, the clear lessons given, the heavy emphasis on finding one's true treasure, and listening with one's heart are all common themes between these two beautiful books.

The story itself is as follows (not to worry, I will not give away enough of the story for anyone to think there is no more need to read the real book): Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. He leaves Spain to literally follow his dream, and along the way he meets many spiritual messengers. Santiago learns about the alchemists--men who believe that if a metal were heated for many years, it would free itself of all its individual properties, and what would be left is the pure "Soul of the World". Of course, he does eventually meet a real alchemist, and the ensuing student-teacher relationship clarifies much of the boy's misguided agenda, while also emboldening him to always stay true to his dreams. "My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," Santiago confides. "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself," the alchemist replies. "And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." The treasure will be found in a strange twist that I will not spoil for those who will want to read this rewarding book.

Through dreams, symbols, signs, and adventure, Coelho's book speaks about growing up, not about remaining childlike, like the hero of The little prince. Santiago has to peel away his immature fantasies about the treasure and immerse himself in the spirit of the world. The spirit that speaks through everyone and everything. One just has to learn listening to its voice and understanding the meaning. Once one put himself or herself in complete harmony with the way of nature, of the world spirit, one can realize that: "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true".

Rating (out of 5): *****

LADIES send your Ostrich Feathers to G. EMERSON

I found this ad in a 1910 edition of the The Society Blue Book of Toronto, Hamilton and London. A Social Directory. The Blue Book was like the Yellow Pages today. If you weren't in it, you weren't in.

Book review -- Prey by Michael Crichton

Yes, another Crichton book (2002). And yes, as most, this one is fast paced, engaging and highly enjoyable techno-corporate-thriller. One that is most difficult to put down. Assuming, of course, you actually decided to pick it up, which is a hard decision to make in a world filled with such a wealth of great literature. But read the first page or so and you are sucked into it.

Prey will probably not bring Crichton much closer to the Nobel Price for Literature for brilliance of style or powerful character development amidst sociopolitical turmoil. Still, this certainly belongs in the list of recommended reads.

In style, Prey is reminiscent of The Andromeda Strain, anther one of Crichton's classics, but with a much faster clock and a lot more twists and turns in the story line. It mixes in a spoonful of gender conflict and office hocus-pocus, some charade and extramarital affairs as well as some of the archetypical good guys against bad guys motif. All this in the context of the rapidly evolving nanotechnology industry.

The story - no worries, I will not kill it for you - begins with the scenario that if we and our all-powerful machinery have physical limitations in building extremely small gadgets, such as a bunch of molecules put together for a certain task, then why don't we turn to those natural factories, that have been doing exactly this type of manufacturing for millions of years: bacteria. And of course, this, the beginning of a strikingly elegant solution, is exactly where the deadly problem also begins. Since H. G. Wells we know microbes are fatal allies. They may serve and survive by killing. But of course, they themselves may have their greatest enemies in the world of microbes.

Such experimentation brings with itself the inherent serious risks. This is the usual warning of techno-thrillers. Messing with technologies, if not controlled properly, can and will lead to serious environmental hazard, even to destruction of life.

Crichton knows perfectly how to play this theme. In Prey this danger is represented the runaway experiment of the nanotech company Xymos. In The Andromeda Strain this danger came from outside the planet, in Timeline death comes in the face of the time machine, in Jurassic Park and The Lost World, another runaway experiment with recreating a long-gone era causes disaster, and in Crichton's latest, State of Fear it's the 'environmentalists' themselves messing with our understanding of our own planet who bring massive trouble.


Chris Phoenix has an interesting overview of the "exaggerations and mistakes in science" and the reality of the nanotechnology capabilities as related to Prey:
http://www.nanotech-now.com/Chris-Phoenix/prey-critique.htm

Rating (out of 5): ***

Cactus Flower

My Astrophytum myriostigma (more commonly knows as Bishop's Miter or Bishop's Cap) is finally blooming. It is beautiful, and I am very proud of it.

This amazing plant is one of the genus Astrophytum, also called "Star Cacti" for their interesting shape. Some have spines, others have warts. Some have hair, some are twisted. Some have white flecking while others are completely 'nude'. They all seem to have unique personality as well. Alright, I know it's just me projecting some of my own into them but still. They sure are magnificent and unique.

Good source of information on cacti (or cactuses if you do not want to have to deal with the proper plural) is: Plants of the Cactaceae Family by desert-tropicals.com


Good reference books on cacti and other succlents:

• Simon & Schuster's Guide to Cacti and Succulents
• Cacti and Other Succulents by Keith Grantham
• Cactus Basics : A Comprehensive Guide to Cultivation and Care by Tony and Susan Mace

Book review -- Destination: Void by Frank Herbert

I have just finished reading Frank Herbert's Destination: Void (1966 - unfortunately, out of print).

It deals with the problem of what consciousness is, how it can be possibly created artificially, how its awakening can be deliberately achieved, and how dangerous this very act could be. In the context of the story of Voidship Earthling, a spaceship and her crew destined for a planet orbiting Tau Ceti to colonize it for human life, the book muses over the possibility of merging of human and computer consciousness. It brings in a lot of philosophy (and sometimes a bit tiring mathematical speculations) to explore questions of destiny, free will, and the relationship between religion and society, among other subjects.

The classic Herbert style shines through: very explicit separation of words and deeds from those thoughts that generate them; multiple levels of communication and meta communication; the amazing vision of the emergence of a new consciousness. All these are reappearing themes in his books: the transformation of Paul Atreides into Muad'Dib, the worm-man-god whose consciousness reaches back millennia trough his ancestors' memories and forward into the remote future through chains of possibilities shows a rather similar metamorphosis in the Dune series.

There is, however, one sentence, that I distinctly remember from the whole book (a mere 190 pages): "Isn't a man just a machine's way of making another machine?" An interesting twist of thought, a vague reflection on an old philosophical model (Plato's Allegory of the Cave in The Republic) on us not being able to perceive the world's true reality, our true nature and our own reason for existence.

Also notable: "The thing about computers—it's like training a dog. You have to be smarter than the dog. If you make a computer smarter than you are, that has to be accident, synergy, or divine intervention."

I am now looking forward to reading the rest of the series: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor (all of the out of print :( ).

Rating (out of 5): ****

Ki látta Tarnóc Jánost?

A Hallelujah az egyik legkedvesebb dal számomra Leonard Cohen és Rufus Wainright előadásában. Ahogy most is hallgattam, egyszercsak ezen a szakaszon akadtam meg:

"Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah"

És eszembe jutott régi kedves ismerősöm (és feleségem angoltanárja) Tarnóc János egyik csodálatos verse.

Ki látta Uriást?

Vér tapad a királyi kézhez.
De ki látta, ami történt? És
ki látta Uriást?

Dávid fölkelt a fekhelyéről.
Kényelem.
A hatalom évek, évtizedek
szolgálata volt.
Aztán meglátta az asszonyt.

Kerestelek Betsabé, ezer nő között.
Iszonyú erő volt szépséged.
Egy idegen felesége? Ki a
felebarátom?
A halotti lepel fátyol.

Izráel a harcban van, s én
uralkodom e néptelen város felett.
A szolgálat nem uralom, mégis
király vagyok. Jóáb,
küldd hozzám a hettita Uriást!

Amikor az igaz ember szenved,
a szertartás pózzá merevül
és a közös étkezés hazugsága,
mint a méreg, átjárja a
testet.

Nem véd az engedelmesség.
Meztelenül jövünk és távozunk
mélyvilági küzdelmeken át.
Beállítva az arcvonalba
meghalt a hettita Uriás is.

A fegyver hol ezt, hol azt
pusztítja el.
Szemünkben lángol a napfogyatkozás.

-

Ki látta Tarnóc Jánost?

What is a saint?

"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

Leonard Cohen -- Beautiful Losers (1966)