phase change is an excerpt from RUNNING CONTRA DICTION and the flight of a soul athlete – available on Amazon and all good bookshops
One school lesson that made an impact on Ed – probably because he drank so much tea – was about boiling a kettle. And the transition from water to steam known as “phase change”. He learned that water boiling at 100°C needed more and sustained energy to become steam. In order to become stable it had to make the leap, and it was as if the water had to be cajoled and persuaded until it finally surrendered.
So Ed could feel wretched and be dumb and mistake-ridden, but that was no reason to pull the plug on all his efforts, it could still all be progress. It’s just that the change had to be complete, all the way through, before it was noticeable. For courage and perseverance he liked that quote from Thomas Merton:
Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.
Sometimes difficult outer circumstances were required for the inner strength to manifest, and to purify our being. Frustration was a signpost, not a dead end.
phase change is an excerpt from RUNNING CONTRA DICTION and the flight of a soul athlete – available on Amazon and all good bookshops.