The Complete Works of Kahlil Gibran

12 books in one, though read long before, re read it now, and it was the 64th of 2021. 

The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known in the English speaking world for his 1923 books. The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture

Unfamiliar words

•      yonder - being at an indicated distance, usually within sight

•      myrtle - any of several evergreen shrubs or trees; an aromatic shrub native to the Mediterranean region and western Asia

•      rend - to tear or split apart or into pieces violently

•      unabashed - not embarrassed; poised.

 Synopsis of The story

The Coming Of The Ship

•      The Coming of the Ship talks about a man called Al Mustafa who had been waiting for twelve years for his ship to return and take him from the island where he was .

•      It talks about the mixed feelings leaving behind his life there and finally doing what he had dreamed about. He speaks about pain, the pain that he has suffered during his life on this island for 12 years and how much it has carved his soul.

•      People of Orphalese sad over the leaving of Al Mustafa. Almitra asks Al Mustafa to give truth to the people of Orphalese before his departure.

•      People ask one by one about twenty-six questions regarding various aspects of life.

aspects of life consist of:

Love                                     Marriage    

Children                              Giving   

Eating and Drinking          Work   

Joy and Sorrow                  Houses    

Clothes                                Buying and Selling    

Crime and Punishment     Laws     

Freedom                             Reason and Passion    

Pain                                      Self-knowledge  

Teaching                             Friendship    

Talking                                Time    

Good and Evil                    Prayer    

Pleasure                              Beauty    

Religion                              Death                                     

The Farewell

On Giving :

•      This part of Khalil Gibran masterpiece tell us about the meaning of giving. He starts telling the story by quoting the rich man inquiries about the meaning of giving. And Mustafa answers it using some metaphors to tease the rich man as well as giving them the lesson.

•      According to Mustafa the meaning of giving for a rich man is only a piece of cake giving, they only give a little from their belonging, they only give what they do not need it anymore, not the valuable thing they have. In contrast, for a poor one giving is to give all they have.

•       In addition to this, giving for Mustafa can be in the form of joyful or pain in which it has the same detonation to show the gratitude. He also gives a critic to the receiver who only give a praise when there is a givers. At the end of the story he states that the truly givers is God

On Teaching

•      this story starts by giving the inquire of teaching. Mustafa then answers that the principle of teaching is giving a knowledge and wisdom to others but One person's knowledge cannot give another person wings. Everyone stands alone in knowledge and must be alone in his knowledge

•      Astronomers can talk of space but not give anyone their understanding. Musicians can sing but not grant anyone an ear or voice. Physicists can talk of weights and measures but not conduct anyone away.

On Children

•      In this story Mustafa want to open the parents eyes on how to threat our children. In his opinion, although our children is come through you, they are not belong to you.

•      We as a parents can give them our love, but we cannot  give out thought because they have their own thought of life. Moreover, we cannot insist them to be like us, because they have their own choice.

•      Mustafa illustrates that parents and children is like a bow and arrow. Parents should let their children  to go far to find their goals while parents’ obligation is just to watch  them.

Most Striking Part

•      Giving : And there are those who have a little but give it all

•      Teaching : The astronomer may speak to you of his under standing of space, but he cannot give you his under standing.

•      Children : you may give them your love but not their thoughts, for they have their own thoughts

Connection in the Real World

Giving

Nowadays, rich people ignore the important of giving, they live in hedonism which bring them to the individualism life. Even they do not know the meaning of giving itself. In contrast, the poor one really know about the meaning of giving in which they always give what they have if ones need it.

Children

Recently parents sometimes do not know how to threat their children, they always want them to follow what they want. Through this story Gibran want to teach parents that actually children have their own choice of life. We as a parents can get a lesson on placing our self as a parents as bow and archers. Parents should take a position as a bow and let their children have their own choice to go like an archer

Teaching

This story has been applied in current teaching and learning approach which place the teacher as the facilitator of learning not the dictator who can change the students knowledge and behavior. Recent approach in teaching also give autonomy for the students to stand with their belief and explore their potential in learning

Marriage

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?

     And he answered saying:

     You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

     You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

      Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

     But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

     And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

 

     Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

     Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

     Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

     Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

     Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

     Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

 

     Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

     For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

     And stand together yet not too near together:

     For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

     And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

~ The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Farewell

Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken. But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in you memory, then I will come again,

     And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.

     Yea, I shall return with the tide,

     And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.

     And not in vain will I seek.

     It aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.

     I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness;

     And if this day is not a fulfilment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day.

     Man’s needs change, but not his love, nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs.

     Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.

     The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain. 

     And not unlike the mist have I been.

     In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,

     And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.

     Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.

     And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains.

     I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires. 

     And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers.

     And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.

     But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.

     It was the boundless in you;

     The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews;

     He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.

     It is in the vast man that you are vast,

     And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.

     For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?

     What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?

     Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms in the vast man in you.

     His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.

     You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.

     This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.

     To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.

     To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

     Ay, you are like an ocean,

     And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shoes, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.

     And like the seasons you are also,

     And though in your winter you deny your spring,

     Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended.

     Think not I say these things are in order that you may say the one to the other, “He praised us well. He saw but the good in us.”

     I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.

     And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?

     Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays,

     And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself,

     And of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion.

     Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom:

     And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.

     It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself, 

     While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.

     It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.

  

     There are no graves here.

     These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone.

     Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand.

     Verily you often make merry without knowing.

     Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory.

     Less than a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me.

     You have given me my deeper thirsting after life.

     Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turns all this aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.

     And in this lies my honour and my reward,—

     That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty;

     And it drinks me while I drink it.

     Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy to receive gifts.

     Too proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts.

     And though I have eaten berries among the hills when you would have had me sit at your board,

     And slept in the portico of the temple when you would gladly have sheltered me,

     Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?

     For this I bless you most:

     You give much and know not that you give at all.

     Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone,

     And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.

     And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness,

     And you have said, “He holds council with the trees of the forest but not with men.”

     He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city.”

     True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places.

     How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?

     How can one be indeed near unless he be far?

     And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said,

     “Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests?

     Why seek you the unattainable?

     What storms would you trap in your net, 

     And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky?

     Come and be one of us.

     Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine.”

     In the solitude of their souls they said these things;

     But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain,

     And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky.

     But the hunter was also the hunted;

     For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast.

     And the flier was also the creeper;

     For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle.

     And I the believer was also the doubter;

     For often have I put my finger in my own wound that I might have the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you.

     And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say,

     You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields.

     That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.

     It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety,

     But a thing free, a spirit that envelopes the earth and moves in the ether.

     If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them.

     Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end,

     And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.

     Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.

     And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?

     This would I have you remember in remembering me:

     That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.

     Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?

     And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?

     Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,

     And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.

     But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.

     The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,

     And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.

     And you shall see

     And you shall hear.

     Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.

     For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,

     And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.

    After saying these things he looked about him, and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance. 

     And he said:

     Patient, over patient, is the captain of my ship.

     The wind blows, and restless are the sails;

     Even the rudder begs direction;

     Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence.

     And these my mariners, who have heard the choir of the greater sea, they too have heard me patiently.

     Now they shall wait no longer.

     I am ready.

     The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother holds her son against her breast.

     Fare you well, people of Orphalese.

     This day has ended.

     It is closing upon us even as the waterlily upon its own tomorrow

     What was given us here we shall keep,

     And it if suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.

     Forget not that I shall come back to you.

     A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.

     A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.

     Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.

     It was but yesterday we met in a dream.

     You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.

     But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.

     The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.

     If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

     And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.