Something in my eye

Doing the same specific tasks over and over tend to lead to learning how to do these tasks efficiently, safely, quickly and what to watch out for.  This summer I mow a lot of lawns.  Between blowing small bits of cut grass, dust and dirt into the air all day, and whipping bits of weeds into my face, I know a bit of something about what to do when you get something in your eye.

My first week on the crew, I got something in there and sure enough, I started rubbing it. Bad idea.  Now I usually just wait it out, and if it’s bad enough that I can’t see well, I’ll go try to flush it out.  You can wear glasses, but those little bits “will find you”.

I was just thinking today about how things can irritate us, and we can rub them, and stomp our feet, and shout about the pain, but it’s only going to do more damage.

The eye is the fastest healing organ in the body.

Rapid Posts: Prayer or Meditation

I have been thinking lately about prayer.  I think about how practically, it makes sense.  The more thought time you spend on something or someone, the more likely that you and others around you will react well in situations or to certain people. Ironically, I have been praying more than I ever have before.  

I don’t think that Prayer is simply thought time.  I think that meditation and prayer are both important and can many times share the same silence, and sometimes the same business.

After thinking on prayer like this, I am intrigued and excited to pray because I find myself helplessly small and humbled to the mystical that winds itself into the daily rub.  The presence of God.

Rapid Posts: Does it matter?

Does it matter?  We all have stories.  I have been reading Les Miserables this summer, and between those stories and my own story, I find myself at odds with the free will philosophy that I have grown up with.  Maybe not at odds, but at an unclear juncture. I guess does it matter isn’t even the question.  I do believe it matters, but am I even in direct control?

Rapid Posts: My mind

This is kind of a pre-cursor to the rapid post series.  I don’t know if I am mentally unstable or what, but I am a totally different person in terms of what I believe now in comparison to me four years ago.  Sometimes I am thinking thoughts I am, and I feel guilty, because they are so “out there.”  I don’t know if that’s just healthy self-skepticism or just a lack of confidence.

This thought is usually quickly followed by my next question…Does it matter?

Rapid posts: Here they come

Some things have been on my mind while I have been mowing.  I probably just need to get them out.  I’m counting on people not really reading this blog.

Welp…here goes nothing.

Worship

For the highest viewing/reading quality click on the title (Worship) that is displayed in red to view the post in it’s own window. Enjoy.

 

Hmmm? What is worship? Music?

HELLO, my name is Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean is all of us.  Jean Valjean has a narrative all his own, but it’s the way Victor Hugo presents Jean that makes his character so relevant.  

I’m currently reading Hugo’s Les Miserables at no pace (very very slowly).  This character who is introduced as a rough, dirty, scraggly, prisoner, is later given back story that reveals a rough upbringing having to take care of his sister and all of her children.  At some point he falls out of work at no fault of his own and finds himself stealing bread, gets caught and ends up in prison.  I am most drawn to the story because what Hugo builds as a ruffian is broken down through narrative to a simple man who tries.

How many people do i see and observe certain specific characteristics that rob them of a chance.  One wise person told me “stereotypes exist because people act in patterns of predictive behavior.”  It makes me wonder if efficient thinking is good.  When do “people” become “persons” with stories that matter?  The difference between “society” and “neighbor.”

Is everyone trying in this life?  Is what sets us apart simply narrative?

After some thought on: Baruch Text

I have thought a little bit about the Baruch text.  After reading my post a few times over, I noticed an unpleasant complaining tone.  I want to be clear with anyone who chooses to read this thing, that I did not like that at all.  As a part of the purpose behind this blog was to read and refine my communication skills. I most certainly DON’T want it to be my nightly complaining session. So… with that said, I wish to address a statement in my former post and purpose a new question.

 ”It is clear that Baruch (Jeremiah’s scribe) did not write this book, as it was past his time.  That is no grounds to excluding such a book from the cannon.  We could really use a writing from the second century B.C.E. or what i was taught was the four-hundred years of silence.  It’s not silence it’s just a closed cannon.”

We could really use a text from the 2nd century B.C.E. and we can.  It’s as simple as I did.  I walk to my desk and open my Oxford Annotated Bible, turn to Baruch, and begin to read.  I then proceed to study, and if I find something significant and want to include a passage from it as evidence to a larger thesis later, I can even reference it!

So I guess the new question is…

When I reference a passage from Baruch for my thesis, whatever it may be, will it hold up the same to criticism if I were to only use traditional cannon scripture?

Contemplative //\ Active

I am currently taking an upper division history class called Age of Renaissance and Reformation as an elective.  For one of our first assignments we read Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for the contemplative life being the most good. He Synchronizes Christian and Neoplatonic thought. This creates an eschatology of heaven as other worldly.  The ultimate good lies outward and upward, and the only way to truly seek the good is in contemplation. In contemplation, one attempts to identify the ultimate good (God), and once identified, one seeks to find cheaper, non-perfected copies of that here on earth.

It was Petrarch, in The Secret, who began to question this completely “other-worldly” mindset, by arguing with Augustine (who by the 1300’s is nearly 1000 years dead).  Augustine is calling Petrarch from his tendency seek “fame and acceptance” through his writings.  Petrarch ironically loses the first three dialogues with Augustine [but not really Augustine, but himself (multiple personalities?)].  In the last, and most important dialogue, Petrarch doesn’t give in to Augustine’s criticism and tries to make a claim that the active life is good, while maintaining that the contemplative is good and reading classics is still redemptive and virtuous. In this Petrarch becomes a catalyst to renaissance thought, becoming the “father of humanism.”

There is a dialogue constantly going on inside of me much like this that Petrarch records in his book.  Much of me wants to delve deep into contemplative study, prayer, and meditation to seek and grow in truth. This side wants to agree with the greeks that humility is not a virtue, rather something that holds a man back from being real to himself and his situation.  This other side that is quick to respond and wants me to seek out the hungry and give home to the homeless, provide a family to those who are alone.  It wants me to do that now, being humble to not speak, but only listen.

I think sometimes our church father’s and even the saints had such an perk in not having modern technology, because they were day-to-day in nature and actually could see themselves as a part of those rhythms in nature.  I wish my contemplation drew me to nature.  That which lives the active-life, building nests and storing food, the same that they did in the year previous to allow them life for another year.  What kind of existence is that? Is that really life? Toiling in the dirt all year long to just do it again the next?  Our God calls it good, and the squirrels seem less depressed than us.  We should go into our back yards and take a lesson from the squirrel.

Peace

Living

What is it about the bamboo in my room that makes me feel so much more at home? It’s just three small pieces of bamboo in some water with a few leaves…isn’t it?