SLOUCHING TOWARD BETHLEHEM? THE FULL FLOURISHING COMMUNITY. FOR REINER. FOR SO MUCH ELSE.
There is a famous poem which starts, Slouching toward Bethlehem. In other words, this is not about 3 wise men who know exactly where they are going, guided by a star showing the way, night after night, and coming to a stop in exactly the right place - though perhaps a somewhat surprising place, a stable. But in they went, and there they found what they were seeking, and gave their gifts.
I don’t remember the famous poem. I do remember those first words, Slouching toward Bethlehem.
I have the sense that many of us, facing so many mind-boggling things - including the rottenness of the justice system, the medical system, the media system - and keeping going anyhow are sometimes doing something like Slouching toward Bethlehem. Sometimes we are passionate and certain, sometimes confused, sometimes despondent.
It’s in that world, with so much that is mind-bogglingly rotten, that we find ourselves. What do we do?
A couple of weeks ago, I started the Full Flourishing Community - for us to connect around Reiner, and around other issues about which we are passionate - like 400 ostriches, like Ed Wackerman, like reaching people who seem mind-frozen.
If you’d like to be part, send me an email: elsa@fullflourishing.com
The meetings are on Tuesday, at 2 times:
Tuesday - 2 pm Eastern (New York time), 7 pm UK, 11 am Pacific.
Tuesday - 7 pm Eastern (New York time), 4 pm Pacific, WED 9 am Sydney Australia.
All the best to all of us,
Elsa
Posted, May 11, 2025
In the poem, a rough beast was slouching toward Bethlehem as indeed we see today with the quality of the political class in the West: beasts with no subtly of mind or scope of understanding. I followed Reiner’s work from early on. He may not have stopped the beast but he slowed it down and helped many avoid the poison. I for one will always be indebted to him.
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?