February 18, 2012

• Unclean

  On my way to work I had a conversation with my past self.  He wasn’t happy.

  Death is when all your moments are gone, and so each moment that passes is a small part of that larger death.  You do not have to think to the future to know what death is; it passes through us even now, taking each moment anew.

  Yet each moment is the only life we shall ever have; you have never been anywhere but the present.  You thus live at the intersection of all the things; every arriving moment declares itself as the only life you shall ever have, and then quickly passes on into being part of the only death you will ever have. 

  The extremity of our position is loud and demanding; but we live moderately, vaguely, sluggishly.

  Of a thing some people ask ‘Why does it matter?’ of which others ask ‘What else could matter?’

  Each of us is a balloon that gets bigger as each person gets to know us.  As they know more and more, we become a large idea, a full orchestra of possible thoughts and actions, a person with deep hopes and cares.  But then a stranger says hello to us and – pop! the whole balloon is gone.

  We have to keep reinflating ourselves with each person we meet.  But it always pops just the same.

  It is a much harder thing to meet people when you are older.  I mean really meet them.  For they have been many places and had many thoughts, thus there is more of them to meet; but it is all lost on dusty bookshelves, rotting in the libraries hidden deep in their labyrinthine caves of thoughts and memories. Only perchance in conversation will you stumble upon the occasional grotto, and pick up a book, and read a line, after which you will ‘hmph‘ and place it neatly back where it was.

  You are called to do the right thing; you are always where you need to be.

  Life is difficult, but there are two kinds of difficulty.  Sometimes there are external things – like other people – that are in the way of what we want to do.  Other times we are in the way of doing what we want.  We know what it is to life a holy life, but our will is trampled by angry crowds of thoughts it is natural to pick up from a thousand places.  The meaning of life is not a public thing.

  I fall apart so quickly.  But I sometimes get stitched together again by a new thought, an unexpected caring word from a friend, a sudden encouragement from God.  It is a wonderful thing to help stitch someone together.

  Do not make a list of the things you control.  You will be depressed at how short it is.

  There is no pop culture.  Each person is their own culture, and the blinking signs and witty words will fade away, and we will find what is left.

  You will meet many people in life, and they will think many odd things about you, about what you mean and why you are as you are, what thoughts you never say, the ways they think it all connects together for you.  If you could view every image of you you would see misshapen, jumbled scraps of clay arranged in every which manner.  Thus it is here you wonder where you are – what you are – amidst this sea of chimerical creatures, each of which you find mysterious and otherly.  And if you strip away your layers of social thinking, the dross that covers everything you see and think, you will find that the heart of you is down in that place people can nearly never see, the place where you hope, and when that hope is combined with your will, the place where there is the you that tries.

  God wants to save each person you conversed with today equally.

  We know so little of what we should be.  When we cannot imagine what our thought lives would be like if we were holy, we cannot see much problem with how they are now.  The goal of life then becomes to be moderately happy.  But if you glimpse the thought of a truly godly soul, one that could approach the heavens and not faint, it brings us to the weeping realization of our total uncleanness.  And the goal of an unclean person is not happiness; it is salvation. 

  Lord, pick us up, for the gravity of filth is stronger than any thought I could rise against it.

  Somewhere there must be a buried simplicity.  I am thankful I got to be alive.

  That there is any hope of salvation ought to make us infinitely happy.

  Always thinking about God, about the universe, about life - what is your actual relation to the world. You are in it.

  I greatly long for and dread the day when I will be able to see my deepest flaws.

  I admit there are some people who seem huge powerful forces that arrange everything that happens in their lives.  They somehow only have good experiences and their life adds up into an amazing chronicle of adventures and meaning.  It seems like they have a control that is making everything happen according to a plan.  These people range from my friends to celebrities.  But all I can say for me is that I haven’t got a clue.  I don’t know how everything fits together.  I don’t know if it will all work out, if things will come together and add up to something; I can only hope that they do. 

  For as creatures of limited sight, what are we at bottom if not hope?  And so tomorrow God will give us a new day and we will try to stand up again, and perhaps out of the oblivion next to us a helping hand will come, and a new stitch will be woven; but a stitch is by nature temporary, and at night we pray that someday we will be made into a new people.

  • 2:11 am
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