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You forage for yourself
Posted June 20th, 2010 by Normand Bo...
Dear Gloria,
in HL #3499 (yet unpublished) God writes:
«Would I ask more of you than to choose as best you can? When you are two years old
you choose one way. When you are twenty-two and so on, you choose another.
As a child of God, you forage for
yourself.
So what if you climb the wrong tree? Climb back down, move on, climb another tree.»
By "you forage for yourself" do you mean to dig by yourself, experience on your own or to dig to find or discover yourself?
Thanks
Normand
Beloved Normand, I love a
Beloved Normand, I love a question like this, and thank you for posting it.
My understanding of the verb forage is to look for, rummage, scavenge. A panda might forage for leaves. I might forage for berries. A hunter might forage for cattle.
I am unable to locate unpublished Heavenletters by number. I send Theophil unpublished Heavenletters. He numbers them and puts them in a queue. I do give the Heavenletter its title, however, so if you give me the title of the Heavenletter, I can forage for it! I would look in my Sent folder or I could go to the file from which I sent the entitled Heavenletter to Theophil.
Foraging doesn't necessarily mean finding! It does mean taking some responsibility.
You gave me good context for how the word was used. I would feel more confident to be able to read the entire Heavenletter.
It is beautiful how you and Jean-Christophe have taken over translating Heavenletters into French. One minute Christine was taking care of French translations. I thought she would be forever! You and Jean-Christophe appeared and then Christine regrettably had to move on. She was able to leave the French translations in good hands. There is no doubt in my mind that God sent you and Jean-Christophe.
Huge thanks to all translators.
Forage for yourself
The letter title is FULL OF GRACE.
Tell me if I can post all the letter in the reply. I prefer to wait for your answer. Anyway I did a temporary attempt by translating the equivalent of : «you explore by yourself and for yourself».
Yes things went fairly smoothly in the transition process. Few little glitches that are unavoidable when you transfer operations from one software to the other and just getting familiar with Heavenletters Web site meanders (I would not dare to say "idiosyncrasies"). Christine, Jean-Christophe did synchronize marvelously.
I told Santhan that he does a marvelous job. Even if the Web Site seems sometimes a little complex, I can tell you that for the amount of information, forums, archives, newsletters and other services provided on HL Website, it is amazingly neat, clean, intelligent and very well organized.
Big hug to you and Santhan.
Thank you for the title --
Thank you for the title -- and a good one too!
Not necessary to put the whole Heavenletter, dear angel. Once you gave me the title, I went to my Sent box. I clustered all my emails to Theophil. Almost instantly, I saw the title Full of Grace. And a good title it is too! I foraged for the Heavenletter and found it!
I just went to my wonderful old dictionary that gives etymologies. It says that forage comes from a French word! F fourrage Old French feurre meaning fodder. In English, for forage as a verb, we always say forage for. The for always comes after. The word explore (in English) has a direct object after it. Does the etymology open up new possibilities? I don't know anyone who has an understanding of language as much as you, Normand!
What a vast comprehensive mind Heaven Admin has to organize such a web site as ours. Somehow he keeps it all in mind. It is amazing to me how one thread leads to another. I don't know how he does it. Heaven Admin is another miracle God organized. I can't even imagine all the forethought that goes into designing such a web site. What a wonder the new upgrade is going to be!
Gloria, you can always click
Gloria, you can always click "Heavenletters Listing" under "Admin Tools" on the right margin. It will give you the titles of all upcoming Heavenletters, sorted by numbers. If you know the number, you can find the title; if you know the title, you can see the number.
How simple is that?!! You
How simple is that?!!
You have to know the reason why Theophil -- and Annette before him -- enter the numbers of Heavenletters. I can't seem to type numbers without making a mistake here and there and not catching it. Let's say we were in a series of numbers beginning with 1800's, carelessly I would, for example, type 17 instead of 18 and and from then on do 17 and not notice until someone, probably you, Jochen, pointed it out to me. So words work better with me than numbers any day. Numbers are a little like computers to me. They are so precise and left brain whereas I'm so much more receptive and reliable when it comes to words.
I'll add too that I seem to be unable to remember numbers whereas words I can remember. But a number, for instance, I have to go back several times to remember a number from one place to another -- and there is always the danger that I will transpose a number.
forage
From my digital dictionary, just to round out the picture:
Dictionary
forage |ˈfôrij; ˈfär-|
verb [ intrans. ]
(of a person or animal) search widely for food or provisions : gulls are equipped by nature to forage for food.
• [ trans. ] obtain (food or provisions) : a girl foraging grass for oxen.
• [ trans. ] obtain food or provisions from (a place) : a man foraging a dumpster finds some celery.
• [ trans. ] archaic: supply (an animal or person) with food.
noun
1 bulky food such as grass or hay for horses and cattle; fodder.
2 [in sing. ] a wide search over an area in order to obtain something, esp. food or provisions : the nightly forage produces things that can be sold.
DERIVATIVES
forager noun
[ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French fourrage (noun), fourrager (verb), from fuerre ‘straw,’ of Germanic origin and related to fodder .]
Thesaurus
forage
verb
Colonel Kendricks sent out a small party to forage for provisions: HUNT, search, look, rummage around, ferret, root about/around, nose around/about, scavenge.
noun
1 forage for the horses: FODDER, feed, food, provender.
2 a nightly forage for food: HUNT, search, look, quest, rummage, scavenge.
I happened to translate
I happened to translate Heavenletter #3499 this morning and used "search" or in Dutch "zoeken".
I searched for my self and found my Self. Seek and ye will find! Knock and the door will be opened. And this is so true!
By the way, the link you, Jochen, gave me some time ago is often very helpful.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/
In German it might be
In German it might be stöbern. How about snuffelen, rommelen?
No, dear Jochen, you don't
No, dear Jochen, you don't "snuffel" for yourself. You "zoekt" for yourself.
But I know for sure that if ever I really can't find the correct translation, I will turn to you!
Your help is very much appreciated, as always.
Thank you
Thank you for all your efforts, dear translator helpers.
Indeed Forage, in english, comes from french 'fourrage' which itself comes from Fränkisch (cf. Old English 'fodor', ancester of "food"). Basically it is related to the search for food. (By the way, you must know that french is the most germanic of latin languages and french was the language of the Francs from where comes "France".)
But this doesn't help me much in the translation of 'As a child of God, you forage for yourself.'
Gloria, you still have to clarify for me this sentence, because I can hardly connect it to what preceeds and what succeeds it. The only meaning I can extract from that sentence is that 'As a child of God, you are searching or digging to find yourself'. Does it make sense?
Beloved Normand, I think God
Beloved Normand, I think God means we have free will. Therefore, in life, we forage for ourselves. We are responsible for ourselves. We have decisions to make. It is like being in the woods, foraging for berries. We don't know for a fact when and where we will find berries. We are foraging for our lives, so to speak. We are rummaging around in our lives. It's not a big deal.
We make decisions with incomplete and imperfect information. I don't think it means we're digging to find ourselves. We're simply living life as best we can.
"It is not always clear to My children what My Will is, yet you know My Will enough that you know in general what My Will is not. When you are in a difficult situation and you have choices to make, you may not know which exact choice I want you to make. I want you to choose from your own free will. You are not a robot to whom I give precise directions. Would I ask more of you than to choose as best you can? When you are two years old you choose one way. When you are twenty-two and so on, you choose another.
"As a child of God, you forage for yourself. So what if you climb the wrong tree? Climb back down, move on, climb another tree. You had to make a decision, and you made it. Congratulate yourself that you made a decision. The fact is that you are making decisions every moment. You are accountable for your choices, but that does not mean you are to stew or grieve about them. Even when you make a choice you later regret, you cannot be sure your choice was wrong. It may be wrong in everyone’s eyes, yet who can say with finality that it wasn’t, in the myriad of life decisions, the right choice at the moment. The wonderful thing about all the choices you have to make is that you can make new ones."
Right now we're foraging for an understanding of this one sentence! Forage is a metaphor here, of course.
I think foraging is an expression that we can't hold too tightly.
I don't think its meaning is delving. It's not hard searching. To me, it's like we're on our way somewhere, and, by the way, we forage. I have a sense that it's a light statement. As children we might be up in our aunt's attic and we forage through the trunks up here. It's not a heavy duty thing we're doing.
We forage for the right answers to our life in passing. There is nothing dire here. We forage and don't HAVE to find.
It's past my bedtime. I don't even know if I'm making any sense!
Thanks Gloria. This is
Thanks Gloria. This is helpful.