Zeno Journal

THE ORCHARD
October 2001

Imagine a beautiful orchard, abound with trees bearing fruit.
As the sun takes his course and the weathers do their work, the fruit mature, being found in all states of development imaginable.
Some may thrive to sublime perfection, to Man and Creation’s delight - nourishing us all, thus passing on the radiant force they have absorbed in a lifetime and beyond, from the elements and age-old experience. A feast, both earthly and divine will be held at their appearance and harvest. It is the Essence bearing fruit…
Some may not grow to ripeness but stagnate, be it from bad seed or bad soil or a location in a sunless valley or a waterless fallow. Those fruits will be picked merely to still the hunger of the many, as they mainly carry the power of the soil.
Some fruits may wither upon conception, deprived of the delights of maturity. They fall un-plucked, the seed of another chance to come, soon buried by leaves and earth in a temporary grave.
They came to live on future promise and die on failings of the past. All fruits within the boundaries of the orchard have a clear and distinct end in life, although most have forgotten about it, now encaged within the requirements of physical survival - oblivious of the very seed that brought them into existence and keeps them alive after being born. This core is buried under legions of shells of personal history, leaving the skin as the ambassador of a whole array of fruity personal aspects, which form what we call the complete personal Being.
However, nothing of this takes away from the beauty of the orchard, with its boundless fertility, which only is what it is by means of the diversity and development of the fruits growing within its prolific boundaries. Every single fruit in this orchard is essential to make it a truly fruitful place…

Zeno Roth

“Let us distinguish between “Feeling” and “Emotion”.
Feeling is an inherent part of our human makeup as children of this Creation, whereas Emotion is an altogether more “mechanical” (and psychologically conditioned) affair. Some people with a lot of feeling might seem calm and detached on the outside, while being warm and compassionate inside, whereas others with lots of emotion might seem lively and “fiery” on the surface, while being completely cold inside, which means in terms of substance.

We express our “deepest feelings” towards a suffering fellow human, but would we express our “deepest emotions”?
A guitarist displays “Feeling”, when playing a solo, which touches us, but where does “Emotion” leave us where Art is concerned?
We love God, Creation and Nature from the bottom of our Heart (which is the abode of our Feelings), but no emotion, however “deeply felt”, will ever come close to the core of our existence, or even touch the very source of the Divine Passion we are capable of as Human Beings and the Principle of Love our human existence is rooted in.
So trust Your feelings, but be aware of Your emotions, which means: Trust Yourself (in a timeless sense), but beware of Your Psyche (and therefore Your accidental individual features within one life).”

Zeno Roth

To me, Goethe was (IS) one of the greatest poets who ever lived, along with Dante and Shakespeare.

Goethe was the first author I really became “hooked on”, so when I was 18 or so, I ventured to read ALL of his writings – an undertaking, which is still ongoing, as he wrote a vast amount of incredible literature. In any case, it was at that time when I began to take up writing, my own thoughts as well as my first “poems”, which only much later began to take their own individual shape.

He also “introduced” me to the philosophy of PANTHEISM (Spinoza, Stoicism etc.), which I always deemed one of the most universal (and comprehensible) “religions”, reflections of which can be found in virtually all “established” forms of worship.
Here is just a little, but most beautiful account of Goethe’s encounter with Nature (from “The Sorrows of Young Werther”):