Böcker av Elizabeth Clayton

"A crown is but the open flower in sunshine's bright." Inside our thought holds most of the riddle of existence; we interact primarily with the objectively real, but always in companionship with the part of ourselves that is like an unclear halo. We know it is truly our own, but, in great part, clouded. It is the marvelous self that is non-corporal. It is the spiritual unit of our being, and while troubling and source to much sorrow, it is triumphant, as we die to its revealing, we, then, rising, as the grande phoenix out her ashes to the upward. It is truly a source of secrets, an entrance, however painful, for the Holy into our being; it allows a concept of beauty to blossom in heinous circumstance, and allows night to be born into a knowing glory, solitude, in onliness, to present honorable messages of truth. Therefore, the bog, the marsh, the heath, in purple or grey - the bramble, yet the swamp - these are familiar settings for research and truth. Our cognitive skills and their enlightening studies in classrooms, everyday walks, traumatic events, as well as alternations in natural rhythming - these we bring inside ourselves to see what we may see - perhaps a rose; the rose grows into much of itself, into its rarity of beauty, within the dark, and as a metaphor of truth, more out of solitude and personal embracing of ultimately finding.

Hard reality is a construct that is heavy in its actuality. All individuals bend under its weight and thrash about, often helplessly, to be free of its truth. At times, our behavior reverts to violence; at others, to prayer; and at times, we seek the comfort of the wisdom of those who tell of their methods of finding relief. Fable and myth are ancient steps taken to soothe troubled circumstances. Rainbows, gold, and goodness represented in beauty have often taken about themselves the power of salvation, as the white hart representing Christs' presence here on earth.

While The Myth of Being is a gentle recording of the authors earliest impressions and memories transcribed when she was a young adult, these verses, from the period of three or four years of age until her second marriage and especially difficult struggle with bipolar illness (1970s), an aside might be added; at a level beyond effective description and playful illustrations, which do reveal the activity of beautiful memory, one can find very early, deep pondering of the meaning of our existencebeingits beauty to hold briefly, but ultimately for the author, coming dark.