Renaissance

Uncover the best about oneself
Seek deep peace and live it
Let excellence and creativity out
Serve all creation as oneself, with love and reason

The Wisdom of the Renaissance

Such is the wisdom left by the last Renaissance. Although it occurred over 500 years ago, its brilliance and truth shine today – and always shine, whenever hearts and minds are open! Whilst the Renaissance began to sprout in the Italian city of Florence, its seed was planted hundreds of years earlier, and its blossoming spread far, far beyond.

What is still available today are the fruits of all its gardening endeavours. Some great yet quiet gardeners-of-wisdom, watered that seed. How? By searching the words above for their real and living meaning. In seeking this, a great flowering that we call ‘the Florentine Renaissance’ occurred. How does that happen? I don’t know. It’s a mystery, said a Shakespearean actor.

The Search for Truth and Meaning

What is known is that the search for living truth and meaning cleanses the heart and mind in ways that can’t be quantified but can be recognised.
Yet, if we think that in renaissance Europe, war had ceased, and all life was a recognisable harmony, then we have a mistaken notion of renaissance or ‘rebirth’! The idiosyncrasies of the world’s life, and ours, may well continue! Yet the renaissance wisdom-gardeners know to look behind the movement and mayhem for the real source or centre of our rebirth. Then, as now, wisdom-gardeners seek to join what TS Elliot calls the still point of the moving world, the unmoving centre. They seek to know, to love and to live within and from that, whilst being in the movement, the dance, of creation.

When a renaissance occurs on the world’s stage, a leading gardener also rises to the surface to act as teacher. In the Florentine renaissance it was Marsilio Ficino; yet he was also part of a significant philosophical gardening team! He described them as a company of discerning citizens desiring tranquillity and real freedom, a festive company of noble minds.

Renaissance Master Teachers through the Ages

Different master teachers have appeared in different renaissances: Hermes in ancient Egypt; Plato in ancient Greece; Christ in the Middle East; Rama and Krishna in the South East, and so on. Yet each of them speaks of one universal teaching; and each renaissance expresses that teaching in a garden suitable for its place and time.

Meanwhile, the flowering of these renaissances remains available in the gardens of their words and works. They offer humanity a renaissance or rebirth in the only real time: now! How? In the study of wisdom’s words amongst noble company; in the application of these words as service to all creation; and in the contemplation of their beauty and truth in the garden of the arts and architecture – still visible today, for example, in Florence.