I don't want to complain. Today was nice enough. I'm just sick of putting up with one petty distraction after another.
As I absorb more good source material, from Asimov to Niven, I crave to create. I dream of working out great projects. Philosophy texts, novels, sculptures, maybe even amazing works of political science. Yet what am I occupied with? Not with noble tasks, not even with worthy obstacles (which would be more welcome due to their verification of the importance of the work). No, my life is filled with petty distractions.
I live in the shadows of powerful men who at the same time have no more imagination than my cat. It bothers me that interesting work isn't being done more than that I'm not doing it. The tasks are out there to be completed, as they have sprung into my mind fully formed and ready to have capable hands set to them.
*sigh* Who am I to judge? Could it be that I completely don't understand the nature of the grand plan?
Perhaps it is not as I thought, to display the splendor and majesty of his creation. Perhaps there is some purpose in this grey continuum. I understand that stability and even dullness must be tolerated in some areas. For what purpose is countless light years of nearly complete void if not to make the stars more grand?
Would dawn be so beautiful if the night were not so steadily dark?
Yet it is in a Taoist paradox I fit because the night is not total. That is to say everyone isn't living in a persistent world of grey terror. No, others achieve stability in uplifting areas, and thus have option to seek exciting goals.
Is it wrong to want exciting goals?
I have often wondered recently if the call of humility includes a call to ordinariness.
Yet again we find a paradox because why would a good God create a man so unsuited to his task? Would you create a sports car to ferry large groups of children? Or should a bus ferry one man and his dog to the beach? It is not so! With that logic as foundation would it not seem plausible that a man created to stand apart, a man with different motivations than others has purpose more interesting?
I ask not only for myself but for understanding of heavenly reason. For his ways are higher than ours, therefor his reasoning is superior. Indeed he is the alpha and omega, his reasoning isn't JUST superior, it is the final word on the matter.
Yet if we were to take certain things as fact, we must find inconsistencies.
I can't for the life of me find a church document that says anything about how God should act. I thought there would be an error in the creed. There isn't. I thought if I looked up the doctrine of my early teachings in Methodism I would find error. I did not.
So it appears that God does not contradict himself. He merely contradicts what I had hoped for him. Of course I am aware of the classic temptation of grief:
Man says "I am in pain. Oh Lord if you love me you would take it away."
Men of faith and the Lord reply: "Lay your cares on the Lord and you shall have peace"
Man interprets "God has interest in what bothers me, he will save me."
Then, as often happens, God doesn't perform as expected. The pain is not removed, or not for some time. By the time God removes the pain bitterness has set in. The wound has become infected. So even strong men are lost.
Yet I struggle with my desires. I had hoped.... for more. When I chose not to die, not once but many times, I believed he had work for me to do. I do not doubt his plan. I do not doubt his ability. It is who I am that I am unsure of.
Who am I?
Am I more than just what I appear today? Do my deep wells of interests and abilities hold any purpose beyond my own amusement?
Every time I ask questions about his plans I keep coming back to scriptures encouraging those who wait. I think in my heart I struggle with submission. The gift I struggle most to give him is my youth, my hope, my passion. I'm not saying I'm not passionate about following him. Well, perhaps I am.
I don't see how to give him my youth any more than he already has it. He has owned me for decades. He fit me into his plan before I was even conceived, possibly before even my parent's were conceived.
How can submission mean destroying what I understand to be me? How many times do I have to die to who I am until he is satisfied?
I realize now that my dreams have always focused on one level or another around myself. Frankly apart from serving my master (in this case God), I have no other complete loves. I cannot ever love a woman entirely. I lost the trick for loving someone so much that their loss would shatter my soul. Apart from God I will survive. I desire a long life, as long as I can get. That means saying goodbye to friends met along the way.
I don't know how to love a human with my true heart. I can love them partially, even very much to the point losing them would cause me pain. It would not shatter me though. Which is why it centers around my mind, my life, even my body. If the lord so called me I would destroy them all, and as I say that I'm reminded of a thought I had earlier as I contemplated my lack of purpose in his plan:
"If he doesn't have a use for me, perhaps I can at last cease to be. I have no purpose but his, and if he doesn't need me, I certainly don't."
Do you understand what I am saying? Apart from him I am nothing. I can be nothing but which I am. I must even if I pretend for a time to be something other remain the same man under the skin.
Maybe that's the answer. Maybe even though I pretend to be down and out, though I wear a disguise of a lost and lonely man, I remain who I was on course to be before. Can you really destroy gold? Yes, you can melt it down. You may pound it into shape. You may even scatter it or dilute it. Yet gold it remains.
How I wish I were as dispassionate, as cold and as unchanging as gold. For even when men use it to evil, it does not know. It does not feel. It does not question why someone spray paints it flat black and makes a doorstop out of it when it was early on a ring, hoping to someday be a crown.
The thing that hurts most is the reality of his goodness in contrast with the pain of unknowing. Tonight might be the last I hurt of this wound. Today may be my last lived with the shame I cannot shake. Even now he may lift me out, set me right and restore my honor.
Again I have to wonder if humility means a life without honor. Our God himself didn't seem impressed by honor when he visited our planet. He spit in the face of those who believed themselves holy. He dined with thieves and prostitutes.
I don't know. The heart of honor is to do what is right regardless of the outer world. Is that not what being subject to the Holy Spirit must begin as? We are instructed to not act right out of expectation of reward, and that is honor as well.
Perhaps honor isn't the same thing in this century that it was. Maybe it's a romantic custom lost on our modern world. My habits of honor don't seem to make sense to others. Why do what is right if it leads to destruction? Why do your best when a half assed job will do? Because honor is a gift a man gives himself. I don't adhere to my virtue out of service to any apart from me and God. God usually doesn't say much about it.
It remains a mystery to me why I feel I am acting out of character. I don't live in the class this personality developed in. Even there I didn't fit. But I fit better there than I do here.
I see no conclusion. Either he wishes me to leave my dream and chase something else, or wait. I can't say I'm thrilled with either option. As I have said before, I don't think how I feel fits into it too much.
I am interested by the phrasing "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you not to hurt you."
Which me does he mean by this? In the letter he is speaking to many, which is technically "you-all."
Does he mean my body? Does he have a plan to put my hand where it needs to be in a critical moment, and my brain, heart and soul are just along for the ride?
Does he imply my mind? Am I going to solve some problem for him?
Does he mean my soul? He certainly has a plan for it. He has ownership over it in this free will stage by my choice. Further after death he will take this of me somewhere else.
Or is it just a scripture directed at the exiles? He did have a plan there, to return them to Israel, then exile them again, only to bring his only son.
I don't pretend to understand. There is a reasoning here, and it can be understood. Everything can be understood at some point.
As I absorb more good source material, from Asimov to Niven, I crave to create. I dream of working out great projects. Philosophy texts, novels, sculptures, maybe even amazing works of political science. Yet what am I occupied with? Not with noble tasks, not even with worthy obstacles (which would be more welcome due to their verification of the importance of the work). No, my life is filled with petty distractions.
I live in the shadows of powerful men who at the same time have no more imagination than my cat. It bothers me that interesting work isn't being done more than that I'm not doing it. The tasks are out there to be completed, as they have sprung into my mind fully formed and ready to have capable hands set to them.
*sigh* Who am I to judge? Could it be that I completely don't understand the nature of the grand plan?
Perhaps it is not as I thought, to display the splendor and majesty of his creation. Perhaps there is some purpose in this grey continuum. I understand that stability and even dullness must be tolerated in some areas. For what purpose is countless light years of nearly complete void if not to make the stars more grand?
Would dawn be so beautiful if the night were not so steadily dark?
Yet it is in a Taoist paradox I fit because the night is not total. That is to say everyone isn't living in a persistent world of grey terror. No, others achieve stability in uplifting areas, and thus have option to seek exciting goals.
Is it wrong to want exciting goals?
I have often wondered recently if the call of humility includes a call to ordinariness.
Yet again we find a paradox because why would a good God create a man so unsuited to his task? Would you create a sports car to ferry large groups of children? Or should a bus ferry one man and his dog to the beach? It is not so! With that logic as foundation would it not seem plausible that a man created to stand apart, a man with different motivations than others has purpose more interesting?
I ask not only for myself but for understanding of heavenly reason. For his ways are higher than ours, therefor his reasoning is superior. Indeed he is the alpha and omega, his reasoning isn't JUST superior, it is the final word on the matter.
Yet if we were to take certain things as fact, we must find inconsistencies.
I can't for the life of me find a church document that says anything about how God should act. I thought there would be an error in the creed. There isn't. I thought if I looked up the doctrine of my early teachings in Methodism I would find error. I did not.
So it appears that God does not contradict himself. He merely contradicts what I had hoped for him. Of course I am aware of the classic temptation of grief:
Man says "I am in pain. Oh Lord if you love me you would take it away."
Men of faith and the Lord reply: "Lay your cares on the Lord and you shall have peace"
Man interprets "God has interest in what bothers me, he will save me."
Then, as often happens, God doesn't perform as expected. The pain is not removed, or not for some time. By the time God removes the pain bitterness has set in. The wound has become infected. So even strong men are lost.
Yet I struggle with my desires. I had hoped.... for more. When I chose not to die, not once but many times, I believed he had work for me to do. I do not doubt his plan. I do not doubt his ability. It is who I am that I am unsure of.
Who am I?
Am I more than just what I appear today? Do my deep wells of interests and abilities hold any purpose beyond my own amusement?
Every time I ask questions about his plans I keep coming back to scriptures encouraging those who wait. I think in my heart I struggle with submission. The gift I struggle most to give him is my youth, my hope, my passion. I'm not saying I'm not passionate about following him. Well, perhaps I am.
I don't see how to give him my youth any more than he already has it. He has owned me for decades. He fit me into his plan before I was even conceived, possibly before even my parent's were conceived.
How can submission mean destroying what I understand to be me? How many times do I have to die to who I am until he is satisfied?
I realize now that my dreams have always focused on one level or another around myself. Frankly apart from serving my master (in this case God), I have no other complete loves. I cannot ever love a woman entirely. I lost the trick for loving someone so much that their loss would shatter my soul. Apart from God I will survive. I desire a long life, as long as I can get. That means saying goodbye to friends met along the way.
I don't know how to love a human with my true heart. I can love them partially, even very much to the point losing them would cause me pain. It would not shatter me though. Which is why it centers around my mind, my life, even my body. If the lord so called me I would destroy them all, and as I say that I'm reminded of a thought I had earlier as I contemplated my lack of purpose in his plan:
"If he doesn't have a use for me, perhaps I can at last cease to be. I have no purpose but his, and if he doesn't need me, I certainly don't."
Do you understand what I am saying? Apart from him I am nothing. I can be nothing but which I am. I must even if I pretend for a time to be something other remain the same man under the skin.
Maybe that's the answer. Maybe even though I pretend to be down and out, though I wear a disguise of a lost and lonely man, I remain who I was on course to be before. Can you really destroy gold? Yes, you can melt it down. You may pound it into shape. You may even scatter it or dilute it. Yet gold it remains.
How I wish I were as dispassionate, as cold and as unchanging as gold. For even when men use it to evil, it does not know. It does not feel. It does not question why someone spray paints it flat black and makes a doorstop out of it when it was early on a ring, hoping to someday be a crown.
The thing that hurts most is the reality of his goodness in contrast with the pain of unknowing. Tonight might be the last I hurt of this wound. Today may be my last lived with the shame I cannot shake. Even now he may lift me out, set me right and restore my honor.
Again I have to wonder if humility means a life without honor. Our God himself didn't seem impressed by honor when he visited our planet. He spit in the face of those who believed themselves holy. He dined with thieves and prostitutes.
I don't know. The heart of honor is to do what is right regardless of the outer world. Is that not what being subject to the Holy Spirit must begin as? We are instructed to not act right out of expectation of reward, and that is honor as well.
Perhaps honor isn't the same thing in this century that it was. Maybe it's a romantic custom lost on our modern world. My habits of honor don't seem to make sense to others. Why do what is right if it leads to destruction? Why do your best when a half assed job will do? Because honor is a gift a man gives himself. I don't adhere to my virtue out of service to any apart from me and God. God usually doesn't say much about it.
It remains a mystery to me why I feel I am acting out of character. I don't live in the class this personality developed in. Even there I didn't fit. But I fit better there than I do here.
I see no conclusion. Either he wishes me to leave my dream and chase something else, or wait. I can't say I'm thrilled with either option. As I have said before, I don't think how I feel fits into it too much.
I am interested by the phrasing "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you not to hurt you."
Which me does he mean by this? In the letter he is speaking to many, which is technically "you-all."
Does he mean my body? Does he have a plan to put my hand where it needs to be in a critical moment, and my brain, heart and soul are just along for the ride?
Does he imply my mind? Am I going to solve some problem for him?
Does he mean my soul? He certainly has a plan for it. He has ownership over it in this free will stage by my choice. Further after death he will take this of me somewhere else.
Or is it just a scripture directed at the exiles? He did have a plan there, to return them to Israel, then exile them again, only to bring his only son.
I don't pretend to understand. There is a reasoning here, and it can be understood. Everything can be understood at some point.
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