oh.............. hey. My internet just started to work yesterday. Comcast. I have been away, accidentally put on the italics. I haven't done alot of reading of the philosophy lately, which I find disappointing. I've tried to study some spanish language skills, and keep up with the drawing a picture every day. I made this painting in the past week or two. I am working on a new one of a similar style. I dont know how I feel about it. I'm trying to do what comes naturally, maybe. I like to have fun when I make something. My brain has been short circuiting lately and my creative days have suffered. I am trying very hard to stay happy, knowing that I am in control of it. I attended a discussion about prayer last nite (mostly because it took place in my house) that was interesting for several reasons. We were talking about the balance of worship and prayer 'the way you want it' and the way God said He wants it. I think it's easy to say oh I am praying all the time and to keep God in your mind in everything you do - something i generally advocate, and wish was true of most of the things I do. If you did everything for God, everything would be ........ good? maybe. maybe not so much. It seems to me that at the same time, while that is good, God also asked us to be in contact with Him, to spend time with Him. Does that mean you need to sit down and pray in a quiet room for an hour a day? maybe it does. What if you have serious a.d.d.? im not saying i do, but what if you did? anyway. The point i made at the end was that if you look for God in anything hard enough, you're going to find Him, because He's there. What does that mean exactly? There's some good in everything, because it's made by God? Just because you're good, doesn't mean everything you make is good. And sometimes if the thing you make can do whatever it wants, it will do something less than good, like be an SS doctor on the run in argentina (who i was reading about today). God is strange. And also fun.
So that leads me to the next thing - forgiveness. get real. What does it mean to actually forgive someone, to actually love someone else as yourself? There are alot of bad people i know of, but i never felt like there was any need for me to forgive them, because they didn't affect me, besides to maybe make me 'pissed off at the world dave'. They were never directly connected to me, so i didn't need to care what they did (not really anyway), and never really thought about what it would take to forgive them of the terrible things they do, to love a person who shoots another dude for an i-pod. But that has changed. I seem to be learning lately what I am capable of, how bad people can be, how bad i could be, and that forgiving someone for something unspeakable is difficult to do. Just because I know I could kill someone, doesn't seem to help me relate to someone who actually does, maybe I am just not realizing it on a deep enough level. It hurts to rationalize that you're the worst person in the world, if wrong is wrong and it all deserves the same death. But that's the story of sin nature. Does that help you to love other people - we're all fuck-ups, trying to make it work? I think it does, but in a weird way. I feel like I only know it on the surface and it doesn't get inside, and now I am trying to let it. Bad stuff going on close to home has that effect. I was really struggling until someone i love said to me 'who are you to judge? noone.' and this isn't because i have a history of crime but just because it's true. Everybody is great and really terrible. Doesn't that lead right into the idea that we need something extra-personal to really fix us and take away that thing in us that could make us do all of the worst things in history? That we need to get rid of that ability in us to ever really not be able to do those bad things again? oh hey.
1 comment:
Well said. Who are we to judge? To that person I have to extend a congratulations. It is sometimes very hard to remember, in the face of something so far away from our own realm of action, that we are no better than the things at which we scrunch up our faces. Not that we should walk around chanting that we are dirt, but I think we should constantly remember that in comparison to anyone, we are as much their equal as their brother, and in which eye should we look for a log. I am unsure as to the depth of these things to which I can attest, but I think I know them. However I just don't know if I can act on, or remember, them as I know them.
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