Lately I have been connecting to my love of computer programming and to teaching it, which I do for courses that I write for my company Object Innovations. For me an elegant computer program or a very clear explanation is art. This was a nourishing realization, because it helps me to understand that there really does exist a bridge between technology and MOFSA, the spiritual art foundation I founded in memory of my wife Marianne.
And like other art, it takes time to do it right! I remember a line from a poem I memorized in childhood, “Art is long and Time is fleeting”. I learned to appreciate poetry as a child because both my parents did. They each had a copy of One Hundred and One Famous Poems, which contains the poem with the remembered line.
A Psalm of Life By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,— act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o’erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.