passus

i went to a talk that explored this idea (or tried to and kind of failed) and i wanted to think it through a bit with words....

one panelist said that suffering came about because of love and free-will. that when we love we make the decision to do so and from this act of free will, when we choose or not choose to love God (turn towards or turn away from), we can either be absent or full of suffering... but this pre-defines suffering to be the absence of God's love in our lives. and suffering exists now because of those few initial humans who decided to turn away from God and the tendency to turn away is written within our genetic code. but also we must "participate in the fall of adam, in order to participate in the salvation of Christ".

so i wonder. if love is the origin of suffering... this seems to go back to the Buddhist ideal that desire is the root of all suffering. what is the one thing we as humans we made to do and want to do with all our being? we want on the deepest of levels to connect with another human. we want that other human being to share with our experiences in this crazy world. we want to be able to connect emotionally, spiritually, sexually, etc. not only with a human but with the same human being over and over again. i think deep down it is because we are trying so desperately to connect with God that it's the only way we know how - by relating to others that look/think like us, that relate the same way. when we try to form these connections with other people, try to represent what we think is subconsciously our connection with God on this earth, we ultimately fail, because we are a corrupt being. we are not God. we were made in His image, but we are incomplete and imperfect. and i think it is in these key points that we put suffering into our lives.

our broken creation full of broken creatures gives birth to and roots suffering in to our world. Buddha was right that desire is the root of all suffering and we are creatures that want to satiate those desires. however where Buddha says that to end suffering we must end desire, i think that although this is a simple solution, it is a solution that will never happen on this broken world. sure, maybe once we are united with our Creator, we can achieve this kind of level of freedom from suffering, but it is our God who will lift the burden from our shoulders. we are not able to do it alone on this world.

we were creatures designed to make connections. loving each other is the only thing that we have in this broken creation that was apart of our original design. that's it. maybe it's definition has been warped but that's because broken love has brought us suffering. we are not able to offer God the kind of perfect love that he can offer us. and that is because we are not God... but we can offer our love to him nonetheless, free will and all that. we are only so capable and God knows that. he knows that we are not perfect and are broken and failing.

another panelist mentioned that in our asking God questions and demanding answers for them, through all that anger, etc. that once the dust settles and we've asked all that we can, we will become closer to God. i believe this with all my heart. God wants us to question him, to challenge him, to try to understand him, all so we can further the idea that it is so important for him to be in/apart of our lives. that we are nothing without him and that we can not do anything without him. we question God in order to try to love him more. the questions we ask are hard ones for us to answer.

i am most certain that when i questioned or even when i was complacent about the existence of God, it was because i needed to stop wandering in the dark trying to search for a light switch that didn't even exist in the first place. once i stopped searching for a light to turn on and i looked around, the room wasn't as dark as i thought it was initially and it actually got lighter. and then i realized that the light filling the room was coming from God within me.

God gives us only so much that we can handle. He doesn't give us any more or any less.

suffering exists. humans can either turn an eye of compassion towards it or turn an eye of complacency away from it (they can say 'oh well, it's not happening to me').

love also exists. we can embrace it and risk everything for a connection with another human that is only a shadow of the greater connection we need to cultivate with God... or we can close our hearts, deny the truth that we know deep within us, and never take a risk...

..or a leap of faith.

ianua

it seems that confusion and deception are the names of the game, with the game being life.

sometimes it looks as if hope is all lost and certain scenarios just don't exist in our reality. it is a sure thing that something will NOT happen. you've resigned your heart to give up all hope and try to start moving on.

but then one single event contradicts everything you tell yourself and then you are sent back to square 1, starting the whole damn cycle over again.

is this just a product of dreaming too much? spending far too many hours thinking about the endless possibilities that the future holds? maybe it's because of the passive response one takes as an approach to life. if we are not the captains of our lives, steering it on course then any strong wind will blow us where it may.

but i don't know whether i want to be the one that closes the door. i like to keep every door of opportunity open just in case. maybe that's a bad thing because it will feed into my delusions about life. i feel like there have been doors that i've accidentally let go of and they can never be opened again. maybe other doors are just temporarily closed, but after awhile you tend to lose track of them and you can't tell the difference between the locked doors and them.

this all sounds so convoluted and ambiguous. i guess that's just how my mind has been operating lately. i have all these questions to ask and no one to ask them to. sometimes i feel like a prisoner amongst my own thoughts.

consilium

every year starts with the good-intentioned "new year's resolution". every year ends with thoughts of how one could have done a better job of accomplishing said resolution, what went wrong, and how to proceed for next year in order to avoid repeating utter failure once more. such a vicious cycle needs a break.

what if, instead, we throw down this malicious game of inevitable lost conquests and actually try instead for some resolve within our selves and our lives? it would seem that most times, this is essentially what our laundry lists of self-alterations are missing. we make resolutions without actually having any resolve to see them finished to the end of days. ironic, hmm?

i guess i am just thinking about this because of all the changes happening around me. with a coinciding new year rolling along at the same time, this could be a way to start over, start fresh. i so want this. i don't want to be stuck in the same old rut that i've been in for the past few months. it's been a cage for my soul, trapping all creativity or passion/drive for living life. i used to hope for a great many things. now i'm just tired of everything.

or maybe i should remember to live the life that was so graciously given to me. i should open my eyes and see the beauty of the world before me. what's so bad about my life? nothing that really matters. why can't i see that? why can't i move past my own insignificance and work towards something that could really matter in the world? it's possible that my own vanity and pride stand in the way, but i really don't think that they are strong enough to sustain any long-lived obstacle in my path towards spiritual enlightenment. who am i to judge this though? all i am is a meager human being looking for her place in the world.

creating resolutions? no. building resolve? yes, but how to do it successfully?

creatio

i went to a physics colloquium a couple of weeks ago and it was entitled, "is the world out of tune?" nothing but this statement has stuck with me from that colloquium. it was a cosmology talk so most of it was probably over my head anyway. but back to the world being out of tune. is it? wouldn't this mere suggestion of the world being tuned demand that there is a great tuner out there? a tuner of such severe brilliance to allow creation itself to exist? no one except God could take this title.

this begs to ask the question: are cosmologists actually theists?

i watched this interesting debate a few nights ago that took place at king's college (nyc) and was broadcasted on book tv. d`souza brought some interesting opinions/thoughts to the table. he tells us that the compassion in this world only exists because of the compassion that Jesus showed us while he was here on earth. the instinctual desire to help a neighbor in need isn't ingrained on our dna, but was ingrained on our souls by the good of Jesus. it makes me wonder how the world existed before Jesus came to repair it. how did the good samaritan survive in a world lacking basic human compassion?

[interrupted thought]

vide caelum

sometimes i find myself looking to the sky. whenever i am wondering about life or concentrating very hard on a thought, i look up.

yes, the observable sky above us is pretty fantastical, but i don't have to be an astronomer (which i am not) nor do i have to know anything about astrophysics (which i don't) to come up with that conclusion. we could look at it from a scientific point of view and analyze all the things happening in the sky, past that, in space, and possibly further beyond. what would be the point in that kind of depth when the sky we look towards isn't one that you can readily visualize? it isn't obtainable like some mere fact. the sky represents much more to us than what we might expect at first glance. in all its vastness, the sky could draw us in much like the ocean draws us in. that "oceanic feeling" freud describes could also be said for the sky. clouds floating by, the smooth transitions between shades of blue, and other observations, beg us to slow our lives down a little and to enjoy our surroundings a bit before everything changes. the metaphysical benefits that the sky holds for us can be endless.

and i am not talking about looking at the sky, seeing a bunny shaped cloud, and then recalling that you lost a bunny as a child therefore the universe must be telling you that you need to reconnect with your child-like innocence once lost so very long ago. that's all nice and prettily packaged, but unfortunately it's not the way i was taking this examination.

there is just something unexplainable about gazing at the sky above that makes us journey back to the past, forwards to the future, and anywhere else that doesn't seem to be the present.

if you gaze too long at the sky, when you look back to the earth, everything is hazy and blurry. your eyes need a few seconds to refocus from what was above to what stands before you.

[interrupted thought]

verba

if we constantly give everything of ourselves in all that we do,
we will never have to face regret.
we must give with no expectations of receiving anything in return.
we must never lose hope, never worry about things we can't control.
we have to learn that letting go doesn't necessarily mean giving up.
we live in today, not yesterday. things happen,
then we move on to the new tomorrow.

above all, we make mistakes, we learn, we grow, we change.

palpebrae

i was just thinking about this phrase, "close your eyes." it really makes no sense. when we close our "eyelids", we are still looking or seeing. we are just focused on the backside of the eyelids.

what if we had no eyelids? we would be constantly watching the world around us. we would never be able to take a break from the pull of life. we would be able to see everything beautiful in life and everything awful in life. we wouldn't be able to turn away from things of which we are afraid or things that we find to be horrific. there would be no curtain pulled over our vision to the atrocities of daily life. we would have to face them head on.