‘My idea of God is not the divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time.
CS Lewis.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
The Paradox
I have found the paradox... That if you love until it hurts.... There can be no more hurt.... But only more love...
Mother Theresa
Mother Theresa
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Highest Things
The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.
Soren Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard
Monday, February 28, 2011
The Cure
I found the cure for the blues. (Not whiskey sours and tequila shots like I first thought).....
It's a good cure.
Works every time I've used it..
The problem with it... however.... is that in every way it's a paradox.
To get the cure... first you have to stop trying to get it...... and then do something else entirely.....
•
When I realized it was the cure.... it surprised me that it didn't come from some of the places that I first thought it might.
It's not religious like a lot of people think. And it's not spiritual in the sense that you have to light candles and meditate on it....
If you're reading about it (and it's not the first time you've read about it... even from a Holy book).... then you're still along way off of it.
Its not a philosophy... or a theology. And it's not made for seminars or sermons....
It IS existential in the sense that... just knowing about it means nothing...
All the concepts of life...... joy......... freedom..... happiness....
They all have no meaning unless you experience the cure.
You have to jump off into it.... Immerse yourself in it.
In the end you have to do it.
And it doesn't work.... if you do it with strings attached..... like if afterward.... you think people owe you....
•
I heard a guy say once that if you give....
then you'll receive...
But it turns out that for it to work you have to live in the front end of that phrase... (give)...
and completely abandon the back (receive)......
•
Within the last few years I learned something from an old church friend who adopted a little girl from Ethiopia. He did it because he says God told him to... (crazy?). But he also did it because he wanted to.
He wanted to provide food and shelter ... and fatherhood... and a family (mother... brothers...) to a child who wouldn't normally have those things.
No strings attached.
(despite my crap with the churchy's...... it turns out..... not all churchy's are always Churchy)
•
A few days ago I took advantage of a moment and listened to a lady (single mom) talk about how at one very desperate time in her life... the money she received from the government... saved her (and her children's) lives.
She took the money... used it to live and go to school...
She's working now... paying taxes.... living a normal life..... doing Tae-Bo.
And instead of bitching about it.... About how we all get screwed by the government....(I want my tax money... just like everyone else does)..... I just took in the moment... and realized that through my taxes.... in some indirect way..... I helped this woman... maybe even saved her life....
She seemed very grateful.
•
The biggest paradox in the cure is that it's both very natural and very unnatural at the same time...
I'm very protective of me and mine.... And sometimes people can get hurt from trying to get at my stuff. (Check out Libya while they move closer and closer to civil war... At stake??? Someones Oil.... Power..... land.... world influence..... the usual).
Sometimes as I get closer to taking the cure.... it feels like I'm dying. It's just not natural for me to give my stuff away like that.
But then.... after I do..... it seems very natural to me.... like maybe it was something I was supposed to do all along... like maybe this is the way the world was supposed operate.
Like... if I did this often.... in some freaky way... (by Gods grace).... it might save me.
Save us.
I don't mean.... whisk us off to heaven to escape life.......... I mean really save us. Right here... Right now.
Like take away our bitterness... and anger.... and hurt.... and hate...
Like.... heal up our wounds... make us live together.... teach us to respect each other...
take away our blues.
It's a good cure.
Works every time I've used it..
The problem with it... however.... is that in every way it's a paradox.
To get the cure... first you have to stop trying to get it...... and then do something else entirely.....
•
When I realized it was the cure.... it surprised me that it didn't come from some of the places that I first thought it might.
It's not religious like a lot of people think. And it's not spiritual in the sense that you have to light candles and meditate on it....
If you're reading about it (and it's not the first time you've read about it... even from a Holy book).... then you're still along way off of it.
Its not a philosophy... or a theology. And it's not made for seminars or sermons....
It IS existential in the sense that... just knowing about it means nothing...
All the concepts of life...... joy......... freedom..... happiness....
They all have no meaning unless you experience the cure.
You have to jump off into it.... Immerse yourself in it.
In the end you have to do it.
And it doesn't work.... if you do it with strings attached..... like if afterward.... you think people owe you....
•
I heard a guy say once that if you give....
then you'll receive...
But it turns out that for it to work you have to live in the front end of that phrase... (give)...
and completely abandon the back (receive)......
•
Within the last few years I learned something from an old church friend who adopted a little girl from Ethiopia. He did it because he says God told him to... (crazy?). But he also did it because he wanted to.
He wanted to provide food and shelter ... and fatherhood... and a family (mother... brothers...) to a child who wouldn't normally have those things.
No strings attached.
(despite my crap with the churchy's...... it turns out..... not all churchy's are always Churchy)
•
A few days ago I took advantage of a moment and listened to a lady (single mom) talk about how at one very desperate time in her life... the money she received from the government... saved her (and her children's) lives.
She took the money... used it to live and go to school...
She's working now... paying taxes.... living a normal life..... doing Tae-Bo.
And instead of bitching about it.... About how we all get screwed by the government....(I want my tax money... just like everyone else does)..... I just took in the moment... and realized that through my taxes.... in some indirect way..... I helped this woman... maybe even saved her life....
She seemed very grateful.
•
The biggest paradox in the cure is that it's both very natural and very unnatural at the same time...
I'm very protective of me and mine.... And sometimes people can get hurt from trying to get at my stuff. (Check out Libya while they move closer and closer to civil war... At stake??? Someones Oil.... Power..... land.... world influence..... the usual).
Sometimes as I get closer to taking the cure.... it feels like I'm dying. It's just not natural for me to give my stuff away like that.
But then.... after I do..... it seems very natural to me.... like maybe it was something I was supposed to do all along... like maybe this is the way the world was supposed operate.
Like... if I did this often.... in some freaky way... (by Gods grace).... it might save me.
Save us.
I don't mean.... whisk us off to heaven to escape life.......... I mean really save us. Right here... Right now.
Like take away our bitterness... and anger.... and hurt.... and hate...
Like.... heal up our wounds... make us live together.... teach us to respect each other...
take away our blues.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Danish Blues
For my Danish friends (2nd highest of my pageviews next to the US)...
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his/her heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
Soren Kierkegaard
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his/her heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
Soren Kierkegaard
Friday, February 18, 2011
Julia part 5: Jumping... Is that Crazy?
Nothings guaranteed in life. According to the physics scientist Werner Heisenberg, even the smallest particles can't be pinpointed with absolute accuracy. It turns out that we're too big and awkward to be able to know things absolutely on a quantum level. A particle at one time might be in one place moving along a predictable path, then suddenly end up on another path altogether, and we don't know how or why. The universe is filled with ironies; as it turns out, it's our own attempt to study the quantum particle that actually gets in the way.
It's too small.
If we don't study it, we can't know it absolutely. But if we study it, we get in the way...... and so we can't know it absolutely. And so everything in the universe hangs on the the probability of an educated guess....
Or an act of faith.
As I was falling back to myself.... it was obvious to me that I had already made my choice. Somewhere way back in the back of my mind..... even in the worst of it all..... I made my choice.
Between burning and jumping?.... I chose to jump.
And so when the cord loosened... my breath (and voice) came back.... I told her... Yes.
I told Julia.... Yes I do... I do believe in God.
And just like that.... quantum-like...... I was running along another path....
I told her that I believed that if life were a big painting... from our perspective... it would look like chaos because we're standing too close to it. In fact we're in the picture. All we would see are the apparently meaningless darker (tragic) or lighter (happy) strokes around us. But if we could step back.... away from it...... get a look at the whole thing. Then it would make more sense...
And that's all I had said to her...... because I wasn't trying to convince her...
And she nodded........
Not like she had bought it....... But more like she understood why I was saying it. And that's all she said. Because she wasn't trying to convince me either...
•
In reality... it's hard to say who's right. Reality for people is the difference between the leap of a brain chemical along some freaky path on a neuron.... Get it right....?... and the world is just as it should be.....
Get it wrong? And some freaky clown (actually an IV pole) is yelling and cursing at you and rummaging through your purse for a toothpick..... or some "liquid handcuffs"..
(true comment from a patient...... happened just yesterday).....
It all reminds me of the comment of a guy I used to read who said that some people believe in God and some don't. And while everybody thinks they can prove it either way..... nobody really can.
That's just the way it is. Everything is faith.....
Thats where I tend to land these days....
Believing or not believing in God is like jumping between two different synapses of a neuron... It turns out that one ends up a lot more crazy than the other...... but it's hard to know which is which.... when it's all happening inside your head. (we trust our own reality far too much).
Don't get me wrong. There can be evidences and arguments given on both sides. Many...... reasonable and rational. Some.... of course..... better than others....
But deep down.... The choice to believe doesn't happen on that level. It happens subconsciously.... quantum-like..... there in room 7616... with joyful tears and bruised outstretched arms waiting on us to move.
Deep down...... The choice to believe happens while you're hiding in the bathroom reading a Catcher in the Rye..... trying not to explode..... and praying that the the patients and the crazys will stop calling your name.
Deep down the choice to believe happens on the 40th floor....between the choices to either trust and jump..... or.....resist.... and burn.
.......(I've done my share of burning........ BTW... when you've fallen and crashed..... it's hard to jump....... in fact...... some days it's just hard coming out of the bathroom)......
•
I have 3 children now.
They're our own. (I mean.... My sperm.... Lisa's ovaries....)
They didn't come from a petri dish...
One day... we were walking around the park.... laughing.... living.... vomiting.... (Lisa started having morning sickness at a state park in Amarillo Tx.)
And the next day..... we were pregnant. (There was sex involved..... at some point.... of course)....
I can't explain why that happened.... (except the sex part............... I totally get that).... anymore than I can explain terrorist attacks or snow storms.....
To some...... it's all the randomness of life. It just is what it is....
But to some (of us) they're more like labor pains for the next thing that's coming... a thing that's starting right here and right now... with it's peace-making and tolerance..... it's healing and forgiveness.... it's unconditional love for one another...
A picture painted by a bigger hand.... and a smarter mind.... than mine.... with a better look at the whole thing....
A better picture than the limited... unfinished picture that we see right now.
That's what I believe at least.... (on my better days).....
That's what I told Julia...
Is that crazy??
It's too small.
If we don't study it, we can't know it absolutely. But if we study it, we get in the way...... and so we can't know it absolutely. And so everything in the universe hangs on the the probability of an educated guess....
Or an act of faith.
As I was falling back to myself.... it was obvious to me that I had already made my choice. Somewhere way back in the back of my mind..... even in the worst of it all..... I made my choice.
Between burning and jumping?.... I chose to jump.
And so when the cord loosened... my breath (and voice) came back.... I told her... Yes.
I told Julia.... Yes I do... I do believe in God.
And just like that.... quantum-like...... I was running along another path....
I told her that I believed that if life were a big painting... from our perspective... it would look like chaos because we're standing too close to it. In fact we're in the picture. All we would see are the apparently meaningless darker (tragic) or lighter (happy) strokes around us. But if we could step back.... away from it...... get a look at the whole thing. Then it would make more sense...
And that's all I had said to her...... because I wasn't trying to convince her...
And she nodded........
Not like she had bought it....... But more like she understood why I was saying it. And that's all she said. Because she wasn't trying to convince me either...
•
In reality... it's hard to say who's right. Reality for people is the difference between the leap of a brain chemical along some freaky path on a neuron.... Get it right....?... and the world is just as it should be.....
Get it wrong? And some freaky clown (actually an IV pole) is yelling and cursing at you and rummaging through your purse for a toothpick..... or some "liquid handcuffs"..
(true comment from a patient...... happened just yesterday).....
It all reminds me of the comment of a guy I used to read who said that some people believe in God and some don't. And while everybody thinks they can prove it either way..... nobody really can.
That's just the way it is. Everything is faith.....
Thats where I tend to land these days....
Believing or not believing in God is like jumping between two different synapses of a neuron... It turns out that one ends up a lot more crazy than the other...... but it's hard to know which is which.... when it's all happening inside your head. (we trust our own reality far too much).
Don't get me wrong. There can be evidences and arguments given on both sides. Many...... reasonable and rational. Some.... of course..... better than others....
But deep down.... The choice to believe doesn't happen on that level. It happens subconsciously.... quantum-like..... there in room 7616... with joyful tears and bruised outstretched arms waiting on us to move.
Deep down...... The choice to believe happens while you're hiding in the bathroom reading a Catcher in the Rye..... trying not to explode..... and praying that the the patients and the crazys will stop calling your name.
Deep down the choice to believe happens on the 40th floor....between the choices to either trust and jump..... or.....resist.... and burn.
.......(I've done my share of burning........ BTW... when you've fallen and crashed..... it's hard to jump....... in fact...... some days it's just hard coming out of the bathroom)......
•
I have 3 children now.
They're our own. (I mean.... My sperm.... Lisa's ovaries....)
They didn't come from a petri dish...
One day... we were walking around the park.... laughing.... living.... vomiting.... (Lisa started having morning sickness at a state park in Amarillo Tx.)
And the next day..... we were pregnant. (There was sex involved..... at some point.... of course)....
I can't explain why that happened.... (except the sex part............... I totally get that).... anymore than I can explain terrorist attacks or snow storms.....
To some...... it's all the randomness of life. It just is what it is....
But to some (of us) they're more like labor pains for the next thing that's coming... a thing that's starting right here and right now... with it's peace-making and tolerance..... it's healing and forgiveness.... it's unconditional love for one another...
A picture painted by a bigger hand.... and a smarter mind.... than mine.... with a better look at the whole thing....
A better picture than the limited... unfinished picture that we see right now.
That's what I believe at least.... (on my better days).....
That's what I told Julia...
Is that crazy??
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