Label: own ideas.
A. I intend, if it is possible, and if there is any reason for it to not be desirable, to never be negatively surprised by God. It seems to be in his character never to do the same thing in the same way more than once. Strangely, (according to GKC's Orthodoxy) the mundane and the repeated seems to be a delight of his. I'll write him off as just being rather big. At any rate, I'll not be surprised by surprises, but the surprises can surprise me...it makes sense, i promise... I will not be surprised when bad things happen to me, and struggle ensues. Religion is NOT, contrary to evolutionary belief, something to make the masses feel good. It has nothing to do with feeling good. God is all about going to whatever ends, no matter the cost on his and our ends, to make us free to draw near to him. Spirit-awakening, character development, these deep things do NOT commend themselves to comfort, the easy life, relief.
No no my friends. I think if God is to be God at all, he is to be something deeper.
He can't be the invisible, distant, vague, elusive thing i've imagined him to be. He must - it makes sense that if he is, he'd have to, not to assume that i'd have come to that myself, - must be emotional, connected, relevant, profoundly understanding and inside - . He must work through the world he's made, not in spite of it or because of it. He must life IN his people, and not because he has no other way of communicating to others, but because he has chosen it - he sees closeness to them (us) as his highest good, and pursues it violently, fervently, relentlessly.
Frikkin terrifying.
But given that picture of God, my reactionary thought can hopefully come to think along these lines: increased turning toward, peace and intimacy when increased heat. Not turning away, not bitterness, not deep confusion. It's like when Jesus told his disciples he was going to die. When it actually happened, they were shocked (the men, not the women). Well, pay attenting to what he says, and you need not gasp, you can simply nod.
If my motivation for delighting God is love-sickness, and my reason for turning toward and not away from him during the pain/rejection he allows is because I'm in it for him, not for what he can give me, it would seem his delight in me and - at given points - bestowed on me - would be as overwhelming. I'm not looking for a correlation between the two, beyond just pointing out that surprise can occur in both directions. (Ach, wish I had the words to fit the ideas.)
B. I intend to stop preaching, which is an intellectual effort I am not up to right now in my young life; and to be very willing to be very honest with myself. This only brings about good. It makes you start at the basics, and slowly - with humility - grow into maturely-held positions on significant matters. The humility comes hand in hand with freedom: by submitting that you only think this currently, you are not commenting about absolute truth existing or not (for my part, i think it does not exist for humans but does exist -oh Plato you infiltrist- and can be attained in a non-certain manner by us, probably via wisdom...), you are simply being simple, and letting yoruself think what you think and feel what you feel. I guess probably less fettered by insecurities of others' opinions of it, and especially of the consequences to your self of being real - structural consequences. It ends up demanding change. Demanding change, but providing - if you listen - the HOW to go about it, and in WHICH direction. By preaching I guess I mean repeating what I've heard and found an affinity for. What I want instead is what has worked its way all the way down into my heart. Then it'll be rooted, and come back again with fruit, if you like a tree analogy.
Like Lyra's Alethiometer (Pullman trilogy); she grasped it intuitively immediately, but at the end of the series she entered adolescence and lost the ability she'd relied on so heavily. The drama was over at that point, though, and she didn't need it - she chose to spend her life devoted to re-learning what she had once simply understood. I guess i'm saying she 'got it' intellectually before, and now had to completely re-learn the whole thing adding her heart. (and some concentration, discipline, sweat, time.)
I could go on and on with examples of THAT. Some other time. And I want to figure out what i think about truth some other time too. And what the masses think, and what God thinks, and what Christians think.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
The After-Life
(To Be Edited)
Dancing. It's something I do. Tonight, I met lots of new people, and enjoyed the old - avoided the less experienced dancers, and appreciated the admiration of the elders present. Most of whom fear knocking out their titanium hips if we dance too close to them. (A bunch of us young-uns carpool, and it's ballroom and 50/60s but we throw in a lot of swing, if you care.)
On the ride home I talked to a girl, N, who confirmed to me from her experience something I've been suspicious of a while. Something that makes more sense of the picture of reality after college than the one painted for me and swallowed by me. Something closer to practice than theory. Something...a lot less pretty. That thing is that graduating from college is not easy.
A friend of mine (D) recently realized that it's not going to be about getting into the career D wants to the rest of D's life, but finding some way to get by, and ideally be in a pleasant location.
If I lower my standard of expectation for life post-college, lower in a sense at least - by not expecting everything to work out the way I want it to, and in the time I want it to - I run a chance of being happy. Being free to be happy.
There's a lot of adjustment, which naturally includes pain and struggle. The first challenge is looking for a way to sustain yourself, the second eliminates existential crisis no. 1, that is, by realizing you don't have to find the one rut - excuse me, path - you'll forever continue in, but that anything will do.
Up til now it's been you following others' decisions for the large percentage of what comes your way. Even if it's not a conscious obedience to direction, you hark back to what someone told you is a good idea to do when such and such comes up. Not that we haven't learned to think for ourselves - sure, sure, but I haven't learned to think for myself that I can be content in just any given situation. And that's what (according to N) is about to present itself to me. In contrast to what 'they' say, and 'in yo face' to the American dream: you CAN'T do whatever you want, the world is NOT at your fingertips. I suppose it's an optimistic mentality. Duly appreciated. But it's not the final say.
So learn to enjoy the process. The getting there. That's what I'm hearing from all directions. Biggest post-Cartesian lie no. 1: only product matters. (Extrapolate that.)
Du. Das Leben ist schwer. Life is hard. Like playing all 7 verses of Jesus Loves Me for a baby's funeral. But then it's glorious. Like teaching autodidactic 7-yr-olds introductory piano, like pushing yourself and your partner to dance the last 5 exhausted minutes of an evening. Hauptsache du lebst - the main point is, you're alive.
Hey - if i can eat lychee, and dance my soul out some weekends with people who are super - even if I end up getting my money by making male and female corn plant parts to make love, - that could work, for now.
Dancing. It's something I do. Tonight, I met lots of new people, and enjoyed the old - avoided the less experienced dancers, and appreciated the admiration of the elders present. Most of whom fear knocking out their titanium hips if we dance too close to them. (A bunch of us young-uns carpool, and it's ballroom and 50/60s but we throw in a lot of swing, if you care.)
On the ride home I talked to a girl, N, who confirmed to me from her experience something I've been suspicious of a while. Something that makes more sense of the picture of reality after college than the one painted for me and swallowed by me. Something closer to practice than theory. Something...a lot less pretty. That thing is that graduating from college is not easy.
A friend of mine (D) recently realized that it's not going to be about getting into the career D wants to the rest of D's life, but finding some way to get by, and ideally be in a pleasant location.
If I lower my standard of expectation for life post-college, lower in a sense at least - by not expecting everything to work out the way I want it to, and in the time I want it to - I run a chance of being happy. Being free to be happy.
There's a lot of adjustment, which naturally includes pain and struggle. The first challenge is looking for a way to sustain yourself, the second eliminates existential crisis no. 1, that is, by realizing you don't have to find the one rut - excuse me, path - you'll forever continue in, but that anything will do.
Up til now it's been you following others' decisions for the large percentage of what comes your way. Even if it's not a conscious obedience to direction, you hark back to what someone told you is a good idea to do when such and such comes up. Not that we haven't learned to think for ourselves - sure, sure, but I haven't learned to think for myself that I can be content in just any given situation. And that's what (according to N) is about to present itself to me. In contrast to what 'they' say, and 'in yo face' to the American dream: you CAN'T do whatever you want, the world is NOT at your fingertips. I suppose it's an optimistic mentality. Duly appreciated. But it's not the final say.
So learn to enjoy the process. The getting there. That's what I'm hearing from all directions. Biggest post-Cartesian lie no. 1: only product matters. (Extrapolate that.)
Du. Das Leben ist schwer. Life is hard. Like playing all 7 verses of Jesus Loves Me for a baby's funeral. But then it's glorious. Like teaching autodidactic 7-yr-olds introductory piano, like pushing yourself and your partner to dance the last 5 exhausted minutes of an evening. Hauptsache du lebst - the main point is, you're alive.
Hey - if i can eat lychee, and dance my soul out some weekends with people who are super - even if I end up getting my money by making male and female corn plant parts to make love, - that could work, for now.
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