1.Life, free to soar

　　by Wayne B.Lynn

　　One windy spring day, I observed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites.Multicolored creations of varying shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds darting anddancing. As the strong winds gusted against the kites, a string kept them in check.

　　Instead of blowing away with the wind, they arose against it to achieve great heights. Theyshook and pulled, but the restraining string and the cumbersome tail kept them in tow,facing upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled and kept them in tow, facingupward and against the wind. As the kites struggled and trembled against the string, theyseemed to say,” Let me go! Let me go! I want to be free!” they soared beautifully even as theyfought the restriction of the string. Finally, one of the kites succeeded in breaking loose. “Freeat last,” it seemed to say. “Free to fly with the wind.”

　　Yet freedom from restraint simply put it at the mercy of an unsympathetic breeze. Itfluttered ungracefully to the ground and landed in a tangled mass of weeds and string againsta dead bush. ”Free at last”, free to lie powerless in the dirt, to be blown helplessly along theground, and to lodge lifeless against the first obstruction.

　　How much like kites we sometimes are. The heaven gives us adversity and restrictions, rules tofollow from which we can grow and gain strength. Restraint is a necessary counterpart to thewinds of opposition. Some of us tug at the rules so hard that we never soar to reach theheights we might have obtained. We keep part of the commandment and never rise highenough to get our tails off the ground.

　　Let us each rise to the great heights, recognizing that some of the restraints that we may chafeunder are actually the steadying force that helps us ascend and achieve.

　　自由的代價

　　在一個有風的春日，我看到一群年輕人正在迎風放風箏玩樂，各種顏色、各種形狀和大小的風箏就好像美麗的鳥兒在空中飛舞。當強風把風箏吹起，牽引線就能夠控制它們。

　　風箏迎風飄向更高的地方，而不是隨風而去。它們搖擺著、拉扯著，但牽引線以及笨重的尾巴使它們處于控制之中，并且迎風而上。它們掙扎著、抖動著想要掙脫線的束縛，仿佛在說：“放開我!放開我!我想要自由!”即使與牽引線奮爭著，它們依然在美麗地飛翔。終于，一只風箏成功掙脫了?！敖K于自由了，”它好像在說，“終于可以隨風自由飛翔了!”

　　然而，脫離束縛的自由使它完全處于無情微風的擺布下。它毫無風度地震顫著向地面墜落，落在一堆亂草之中，線纏繞在一顆死灌木上?！敖K于自由”使它自由到無力地躺在塵土中，無助地任風沿著地面將其吹走，碰到第一個障礙物便毫無生命地滯留在那里了。

　　有時我們真像這風箏啊!上蒼賦予我們困境和約束，賦予我們成長和增強實力所要遵從的規(guī)則。約束是逆風的必要匹配物。我們中有些人是如此強硬地抵制規(guī)則，以至我們從來無法飛到本來能夠達到的高度。我們只遵從部分戒律，因此永遠不會飛得足夠高，使尾巴遠離地面。

　　讓我們每個人都飛到高處吧，并且認識到這一點：有些可能會令我們生氣的約束，實際上是幫助我們攀升和實現(xiàn)愿望的平衡。

　　2.A New Look from Borrowed Time

　　By Ralph Richmond

　　Just ten years ago, I sat across the desk from a doctor with a stethoscope. “Yes,” he said, “there is a lesion in the left, upper lobe. You have a moderately advanced case…” I listened, stunned, as he continued, “You’ll have to give up work at once and go to bed. Later on, we’ll see.” He gave no assurances.

　　Feeling like a man who in mid-career has suddenly been placed under sentence of death with an indefinite reprieve, I left the doctor’s office, walked over to the park, and sat down on a bench, perhaps, as I then told myself, for the last time. I needed to think. In the next three days, I cleared up my affairs; then I went home, got into bed, and set my watch to tick off not the minutes, but the months. 2 ½ years and many dashed hopes later, I left my bed and began the long climb back. It was another year before I made it.

　　I speak of this experience because these years that past so slowly taught me what to value and what to believe. They said to me: Take time, before time takes you. I realize now that this world I’m living in is not my oyster to be opened but my opportunity to be grasped. Each day, to me, is a precious entity. The sun comes up and presents me with 24 brand new, wonderful hours—not to pass, but to fill.

　　I’ve learned to appreciate those little, all-important things I never thought I had the time to notice before: the play of light on running water, the music of the wind in my favorite pine tree. I seem now to see and hear and feel with some of the recovered freshness of childhood. How well, for instance, I recall the touch of the springy earth under my feet the day I first stepped upon it after the years in bed. It was almost more than I could bear. It was like regaining one’s citizenship in a world one had nearly lost.

　　Frequently, I sit back and say to myself, Let me make note of this moment I’m living right now, because in it I’m well, happy, hard at work doing what I like best to do. It won’t always be like this, so while it is I’ll make the most of it—and afterwards, I remember—and be grateful. All this, I owe to that long time spent on the sidelines of life. Wiser people come to this awareness without having to acquire it the hard way. But I wasn’t wise enough. I’m wiser now, a little, and happier.

　　“Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour.” With these words, Walter de la Mare sums up for me my philosophy and my belief. God made this world—in spite of what man now and then tries to do to unmake it—a dwelling place of beauty and wonder, and He filled it with more goodness than most of us suspect. And so I say to myself, Should I not pretty often take time to absorb the beauty and the wonder, to contribute a least a little to the goodness? And should I not then, in my heart, give thanks? Truly, I do. This I believe.

　　第二次生命的啟示

　　拉爾夫.里士滿

　　十年前的一天，我坐在一名手持聽診器的醫(yī)生對面?！澳愕淖蠓稳~上部確實有一處壞損，而且病情正在惡化”——聽到這里，我整個人一下懵了?！澳惚仨毻Ｖ构ぷ髋P床休息，有待觀察?！贬t(yī)生對我的病情也是不置可否。

　　就這樣，事業(yè)方面方興未艾的我仿佛突然被人判了死刑，卻說不準何時執(zhí)刑。我離開醫(yī)生的辦公室，來到公園的長椅上坐下。這也許是最后一次來這兒了，我對自己說。我真得好好整理一下思緒。

　　接下來的三天我把手頭的事務(wù)全部處理完畢。我回到家，躺到床上，然后把手表從顯示分鐘改為顯示月份。

　　兩年半的時間過去了，在無數(shù)次的失望之后，我終于可以離開病床，艱難地向從前的生活狀態(tài)回歸。一年之后，我做到了。

　　我之所以談起這段經(jīng)歷，是因為那段度日如年的歲月讓我懂得應(yīng)該珍惜什么，信仰什么。那段歲月讓我明白一個道理：牢牢抓住時間，而不是讓時間將你套牢。

　　現(xiàn)在我終于明白，我生活著的這個世界不是等待我去打開的一扇牡蠣，而是需要我去抓住的一個機會。每一天我都視若珍寶，每一輪太陽帶給我的嶄新的二十四小時都鮮活而精彩，我絕不可將其虛度。

　　從前，我終日忙碌，無暇顧及生活中某些重要的細節(jié)，諸如水波上的光影，松林間的風吟——現(xiàn)在，我終于學會去欣賞它們的美好。

　　如今，我仿佛重返童年，又覺得自己所見所聞所感的一切都那么新鮮。當我臥床數(shù)年后重新將雙腳踏在大地上的那一刻，腳下那久違了的松軟土壤讓我激動得情難自抑，仿佛重新?lián)碛形也钜稽c就失去的世界。

　　我現(xiàn)在時常舒舒服服地坐著，提醒自己要記住當下的每分每秒，因為現(xiàn)在的我健康、快樂，能努力做自己最愛做的工作。這一切如此美好，卻終將消逝，在如此美好的生活消逝之前，我一定要倍加珍惜。在它逝去之后，我會記得曾經(jīng)擁有的美好，并心存感激。

　　這一切改變都得益于我在生命邊緣徘徊的那幾年。智者無需被逼到如此境地也能明白這些道理——可惜我從前太愚鈍?，F(xiàn)在的我比從前多了幾分睿智，我也因此更加快樂。

　　英國詩人沃爾特·德拉·梅爾曾說過：“時刻記住，最后看一眼所有美好的事物!”這句詩正好總結(jié)了我的人生哲學與信仰。上帝創(chuàng)造的這個世界——這個人類時常試圖毀滅的世界——是個美麗奇妙的家園。這里充滿了上帝所賜予的美好事物，超過我們大多數(shù)人的想象。我于是常常自問，難道自己不應(yīng)該去細細品味這些美麗與奇跡，盡綿薄之力去創(chuàng)造世間的美好嗎?難道我不應(yīng)心存感激嗎?我確實應(yīng)該——這就是我的信仰。

　　3.I Wish I Could believe

　　by C. Day Lewis

　　"The best lack all conviction,

　　While the worst are full of passionate intesity."

　　Those two lines of Yeats for me sum up the matter as it stands today when the very currency of belief seems debased. I was brought up in the Christian church. Later I believed for a while that communism offered the best hope for this world. I acknowledge the need for belief, but I cannot forget how through the ages great faiths have been vitiated by fanaticism and dogmatism, by intolerance and cruelty, by the intellectual dishonesty, the folly, the crankiness or the opportunism of their adherents.

　　Have I no faith at all, then? Faith is the thing at the core of you, the sediment that's left when hopes and illusions are drained away. The thing for which you make any sacrifice because without it you would be nothing - a mere walking shadow. I know what my own core is. I would in the last resort sacrifice any human relationship, any way of living to the search for truth which produces my poem. I know there are heavy odds against any poem I write surviving after my death. I realize that writing poetry may seem the most preposterously useless thing a man can be doing today. Yet it is just at such times of crisis that each man discovers or rediscovers what he values most. My poet's instinct to make something comes out most strongly then, enabling me to use fear, doubt, even despair as creative stimuli. In doing so, I feel my kinship with humanity, with the common man who carries on doing his job till the bomb falls or the sea closes over him. Carries on because of his belief, however inarticulate, that this is the best thing he can do.

　　But the poet is luckier than the layman, for his job is always a vacation. Indeed, it's so like a religious vacation that he may feel little need for a religious faith, but because it is always trying to get past the trivial and the transient or to reveal these as images of the essential and the permanent, poetry is at least a kind of spiritual activity.

　　Men need a religious belief to make sense out of life. I wish I had such a belief myself, but any creed of mine would be honeycombed with confusions and reservations. Yet when I write a poem I am trying to make sense out of life. And just now and then my experience composes and transmutes itself into a poem which tells me something I didn't know I knew.

　　So for me the compulsion of poetry is the sign of a belief, not the less real for being unformulated ... a belief that men must enjoy life, explore life, enhance life. Each as best he can. And that I shall do these things best through the practice of poetry.

　　我希望我能相信

　　塞(西爾)·戴·劉易斯

　　“優(yōu)秀的人們信心盡失，

　　壞蛋們則充滿了熾烈的狂熱。”

　　對我來說，葉芝的這兩行詩概括了今天的現(xiàn)實，信仰的貨幣似乎已經(jīng)貶值了。我是在__的熏陶下長大的。后來有一段時間我相信共產(chǎn)主義給這個世界帶來了最大的希望。我承認信仰的必要性，但我無法忘記歷代的偉大信仰是如何因其擁護者的狂熱、教條、褊狹、殘忍、學術(shù)欺詐、愚蠢、偏執(zhí)或機會主義而遭到損害的。

　　那么，難道我就沒有信仰嗎?信仰存在于你的心靈深處，當希望和幻想漸漸枯竭，沉淀下來的就是信仰。為了它，你甘愿做出任何犧牲，因為沒有它，你的存在就毫無意義——你只不過是一個會行走的影子。我知道我的內(nèi)心深處有什么。在別無選擇的情況下，我愿意犧牲任何人際關(guān)系、任何生活方式去尋找使我能創(chuàng)作詩歌的真理。我知道很有可能我寫的每一首詩在我死后都不能流傳。我也明白詩歌創(chuàng)作在今天或許是一個人所能做的最荒謬、最無用的事情。然而，正是在這樣的危難之時，每一個人才能發(fā)現(xiàn)或重新發(fā)現(xiàn)他最珍視的東西。于是我那詩人渴望創(chuàng)作的本能在胸中涌動，使我能讓恐懼、懷疑，甚至絕望激發(fā)自己創(chuàng)作。在詩歌創(chuàng)作中，我覺得我和人類，和平凡的人緊密相連，他們堅守著自己的崗位，直到炸彈落下或是海浪席卷而來將他們淹沒。堅守是因為他相信這是他最能做的事情，盡管這信仰難以用語言傳達。但詩人比普通人幸運，因為他的工作始終是他的天職。他就像肩負著一種宗教使命一樣，或許并不需要有宗教信仰，但因為詩歌或是不涉及瑣事和瞬息即逝的事物，或是將它們作為本質(zhì)和永恒的意象，詩歌至少是一種精神活動。

　　人需要有一種宗教信仰使他的生活有意義。我希望我也能有這樣的信仰，但我的任何信念總會充滿困惑和保留看法。然而，我寫詩就是努力發(fā)掘生活的意義。偶爾，我用詩歌表現(xiàn)自己的經(jīng)歷和感受，從中也明白了我不曾意識到自己已經(jīng)懂得的道理。因此，對我來說，詩歌創(chuàng)作的沖動表現(xiàn)出來的，不是因為不系統(tǒng)而不太真實的東西……而是一種信仰，那就是，人必須享受生活，探索生活的真諦，提高生活的品質(zhì)。人可各盡其能，而我則通過寫詩盡善盡美地完成我的使命。