Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Via White Crane Institute \\\ OSCAR WILDE
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| This Day in Gay History | |||
May 27 | |||
1895 -
OSCAR WILDE was imprisoned for sodomy on this date. He would write his De Profundis during his stay in the Reading Gaol prison as a letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas. It would not be published in its entirety until 1962.
Today's Gay Wisdom  - TODAY'S GAY WISDOM From Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its secrets for me also. Of course all this is foreshadowed and prefigured in my books. Some of it is in THE HAPPY PRINCE, some of it in THE YOUNG KING, notably in the passage where the bishop says to the kneeling boy, 'Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art'? a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than a phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom that like a purple thread runs through the texture of DORIAN GRAY; in THE CRITIC AS ARTIST it is set forth in many colours; in THE SOUL OF MAN it is written down, and in letters too easy to read; it is one of the refrains whose recurring MOTIFS make SALOME so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'Pleasure that liveth for a moment' has to make the image of the 'Sorrow that abideth for ever' it is incarnate. It could not have been otherwise. At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol. It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the artistic life. For the artistic life is simply self-development. Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the world its body and its soul. In MARIUS THE EPICUREAN Pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion, in the deep, sweet, and austere sense of the word. But Marius is little more than a spectator: an ideal spectator indeed, and one to whom it is given 'to contemplate the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions,' which Wordsworth defines as the poet's true aim; yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a little too much occupied with the comeliness of the benches of the sanctuary to notice that it is the sanctuary of sorrow that he is gazing at. I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true life of Christ and the true life of the artist; and I take a keen pleasure in the reflection that long before sorrow had made my days her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in THE SOUL OF MAN that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell, but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the world is a song. I remember saying once to Andre Gide, as we sat together in some Paris CAFE, that while meta-physics had but little real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its complete fulfillment. | ||
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 |
Via Daily Dharma: The Gift of Challenges
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation \\\ Words of Wisdom - May 27, 2026 🍒
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Tuesday, May 26, 2026
The Aéroplume //// How much helium does it take to lift a person?
The Aéroplume, in France, is a helium blimp sized for one person. €60 gets you half an hour's flight. I had to try it. ■ More about Aéroplume: https://aeroplume.fr ■ This isn't sponsored: I paid for my flight at the normal price, I was the one to contact them asking permission, and Aéroplume had no editorial control. I am, however, amazed that in the ten years this has been going, no-one's ever told me about it before!
Via Daily Dharma: Your Entire Existence
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Via FB /// Interesting read……Here are 10 Questions I Always Like to Ask Republicans:
1. If being gay is a choice, and you find it "morally reprehensible," name the point in your life where you were tempted by a homosexual attraction toward someone of the same sex, but you chose not to act on that impulse due to your morality — not your desire to have an intense episode of homosexual lovemaking — because of your conviction to your morals, not your lack of attraction to someone of the same sex. Since, you know, it's a choice.
2. If the Founding Fathers meant for this nation to be founded on Christianity, then why isn't there a single mention of Christianity, Christian, God, or Jesus Christ anywhere in the Constitution? Are you telling me if the GOP could rewrite the Constitution, they wouldn't include a single mention of Christianity anywhere? And, knowing the fact that there isn't a single reference to Christianity anywhere in the Constitution, doesn't that seem more intentional and by design considering the very First Amendment speaks to the freedom of religion?
3. Speaking of Christianity and government, if you do believe that our nation was founded on Christianity, which version? Considering there are multiple denominations of Christianity, and they can be very different from one another, which one do you believe the nation was founded on?
4. If the Civil War was really just about "states’ rights," then why do so many of the Confederate states in their declarations of why they chose to secede from the Union cite their belief that enslaved people were to be owned as property because they were inferior to whites? Most of the states have clear references to this belief in their outline of why they left the United States.
5. Considering Republican presidents have added more to the national debt than Democrats by a significant portion — and no Republican has balanced the budget since Eisenhower — how can the GOP be the party of "fiscal conservative responsibility"?
6. Can you name how someone being transgender has directly and personally negatively impacted your life by choosing to live their lives? Additionally, what Constitutional freedoms has someone being transgender prevented you from having?
7. If Republicans currently control the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House, along with the majority of the governorships in the 50 states, how are Democrats rigging elections? Are they rigging them to help Republicans win?
8. Please name the last time a Democratic president inherited a strong, growing economy handed off to them from their Republican predecessor.
9. Not counting the 2020 recession caused by COVID, as that would be unfair, the last four recessions since 1981 happened while a Republican was president (1981–1982, 1990–1991, 2001, 2007–2009). How is that possible if Republicans are better for the economy than Democrats? Especially 1981–1991, when that was 12 years of GOP leadership from Reagan to George H. W. Bush.
10. Are you aware that "One Nation Under God" wasn't added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954 and that the pledge was written by a Christian socialist? Additionally, "In God We Trust" wasn't adopted as the nation's motto until 1956 — so neither has anything to do with the founding of this nation or "proof that we're a nation founded on Christianity"?
That's it for now — I await all the answers from Republican voters.
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