“On our part, I was playing for effect, watching, criticizing him. The Sherif’s rebellion had been unsatisfactory for the last few months … and my suspicion was that its lack was leadership: not intellect, nor judgment, nor political wisdom, but the flame of enthusiasm, that would set the desert on fire. My visit was mainly to find the yet unknown master-spirit of the affair, and measure his capacity to carry the revolt to the goal I had conceived for it … During the physical struggle when singleness of eye and magnetism, devotion and self-sacrifice were needed, Abdulla would be a tool too complex for a simple purpose …”
- Seven Pillars of Wisdom, chapter VIII, by T. E. Lawrence
Like Lawrence in the desert, do you search and seek for that idea, those words, that book, that man or that God Who will fan the flames of enthusiasm in you heart?
A personal revelation: I have been actively seeking and desperately searching, for at least since that night twenty-five years ago, laying in a field and staring up at the celestion. A few times, I think, I have found what I am looking for, though the embers of passion quickly cool, a fault I lay squarely at my own feet, and not those of the Other.
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