I recently had the honor of “discovering” the late Beatrix “Betsy” Murrell’s essays and writings on her Stoa del Sol blog which has graciously been preserved and maintained at this website: http://www.bizint.com/stoa_del_sol/index.html.
As is often the case, my discovering such an impassioned, intelligent, devoted seeker and instructor was quite by accident. After being exposed to Henry Corbin’s thoughts on the Imaginal Mundi earlier this summer and reading a few books about him, I got “caught int he web” as my husband says and came across her far more educated and intellectual discussion of Corbin’s work on her blog posts discussing The Imaginal Within The Cosmos.
I couldn’t stop clicking around and learning more about this blogger. She was quite the prolific blogger and essayist and intellect. As I am clicking around and learning more about her thoughts and those who influenced her, I finally found the name of the author of these splendid essays and Googled her name.
I was saddened to learn that the kindred spirit I had just “discovered” on the Web had passed away on April 8, 2014 at the age of 79. Luckily, her obituary was still online and I learned that she was more than just a casual blogger but had degrees from Ohio State University, Edinburgh and Duke Universities, Princeton Theological Seminary and George Washington University. I also learned that she had retired from serving in the CIA for 30 years in 1992. It was in her retirement that she became the essayist and blogger that I “discovered” during my Google search of Henry Corbin and the Imaginal. This means, she was around 57 years old when she began blogging and publishing on the web her essays and ideas and academic and spiritual interests. Gives me hope as someone having steadily stepped into my 50’s finding myself drawn to do the same thing.
RIP Beatrix Murrell – 6/19/1935 – 4/8/2014. Your love for God, for knowledge, for the cosmos, for learning and the wondrous way you served the cosmos through your prolific blogs, especially the Stoa del Sol blog, definitely garners you a place on the Stargazers, Seekers, Pilgrims, Angels and Saints Liturgical Calendar. Here at Angels of the Nativity we will honor you on June 19, the day that such an inquisitive, bright, beautiful soul began their earthly journey in the cosmos and shared with so many their love for seeking, for knowledge, for God and for understanding the cosmos.
In the Entelechy and Archetypal Information post from her Stoa del Sol blog, Beatrix introduced me to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas on entelechy. I love Tielhard de Chardin’s work when it is watered down and not so lofty that my comprehension is blown away. How Murell introduces it with the quote from Jean Houston’s THE HERO AND THE GODDESS: THE ODYSSEY AS MYSTERY AND INITIATION, brings it down to a level that is palpable to me and rich in understanding and meditating upon.
“He noted that ‘it is inside of you, like the butterfly inside of a caterpillar.’ Then he asked the young teenager: ‘What is the entelechy of Jeanne? A great word entelechy. It means the dynamic purpose that is coded in you….”
What is the dynamic purpose that is coded in you? There is a dynamic, wonderful purpose coded in each of us by God. Beatrix Murrell seemed to have found hers and shared that bright purpose with so many. May we continue to nurture our souls in this journey and allow that awareness and discovery of our own dynamic purpose unfold in our life and remain faithful to that purpose as we journey forward.
Beatrix Murell, pray for us and intercede for us to God and the angels to remain faithful to the our own entelechy with as much dedication and fervor as you did to yours. Amen