LXXXIX - ontologies

my head is full from trying to understand time. it is a very interesting question. what is time? does it exist a priori, does it exist outside of the mind?

can God undo time?

we never think about it except when we do, but it seems extremely unsatisfactory that there are so many things in life which are difficult to fundamentally understand.

i am inclined to think that Newtonian time is a feature of human understanding. it co-exists relative to the material world and its alterings... but the mind needs time to think, right...

the mind is not then, strictly physical either... is it?

is existence definitional? if you knock on my closed door, am i everywhere in the room at once, or a mixture of it with an exact position? if i look at the past, could i consider a space-time object?

i don't think the past can exist/ if it exists only as memory.

LXXXVII - death exists, not as the opposite of life but as a part of life

frédéric chopin, nocturne op. 9 no. 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZUw78FXpG4

today i was looking at some birds fly, as they sometimes do when it rains. i often wonder why birds do that. i mean, if i think it's cold and stormy, sheesh, what does a bird think, right. but no, birds often fly about quite gleefully when its raining. i think they enjoy it. i think they flat out enjoy flying about in the rain. so as i sat there on the steps looking at maybe three dozen birds flying as they pleased, in a dizzying array of circuitous loops, dives and flutters, i wondered why the hell they were doing it, and as it was drizzling lightly, i came to the conclusion after about fifteen minutes that they must have had been doing it for fun. plain old willy-nilly fun. those birds were having fun. i dunno if that means anything to you, but it seemed uncanny to me. animals have fun too. they enjoy being alive.

and the other side of this coin of life is that there are birds who will never fly. i wondered how those birds feel. i don't know if they feel lonely, but i guess it's just as bad to have the unbearable feeling of never flying. or having the joy of flight taken away from you. miserable and abandoned, defenseless. and i was reminded of the quote in norwegian wood, that "death exists, not as the opposite of life but as a part of life."

and that's where i am right now. i don't look at life and say i want to live everyday to the fullest, i just want to be happy today, i just want the people around me to be happy, i want to do my best as far as i can. that's rubbish. i can't help but feel an unbearable feeling that there are people out there dying. i can't help but feel that life is so meaningless because somewhere out there someone who has only one shot at life is not getting his money's worth. someone out there is cold, hungry, and miserable, and curses life. that is not fair. i can't be, not like this. i can't look at myself in the mirror and wonder where the hell the greater things are. the things i believe in are worthless. i will someday die and the things that i've done are worth fuck-all. the whole world is worth fuck-all. and for the most part i don't care. i don't care that i'm alive. i don't care to be a good full man. i don't care, i don't care! in my empathy i've realised that my whole life is a selfish thing because i cannot share it with someone who doesn't less deserve to have the things i have. how can i live breathe and fly when someone else cannot. how can i be a human being when all this is meaningless. how can the good of God be good if it cannot even surpass what i think is good? what the fuck!

how can i look at birds fly and feel like this? but how can't i?

and so maybe it's fairer if death were the end. i just don't understand it at all. i'm a christian, sure. but how about those who never get to choose without the duresses of life? and for the record, fuck predestination. there's a difference between God knowing that i'm saved and my choosing it. i'm not having this conversation right now.

i think ecclesiastes is right but i wish it were wrong. life really is meaningless. our lot is to live simply and enjoy what we can. oh but i wish it were wrong. look at us. every human has worth. that's all. Somebody ought to be fucking doing something about this.

the answer is Jesus, sure, fine, i get it. but my mind and my heart and strength don't see it.

LXXXVI - this life or the next

i think i know the answer. and it is very sad.

the answer that i have decided is correct is very simple.

we must lose everything in this life in order to gain holiness with God.

i wish that i had the strength to rebel. there are many things that i cannot bear to renounce. i know that to deny these things would destroy me humanly. i cannot bear to give up the good things, the things that i believe in, unless i believe that i give them up for something better; yet i cannot bear to give up these things. i fear that to give up my heart and my head and my strength would empty me. but i cannot rebel. i cannot rebel because my soul knows that there is a God, and it believes in him. i cannot rebel because my soul loves God - as only my faith-filled soul could. i wish i were dead; i would give up everything of me if i could simply die. and so that is my truth. i have given up one extreme and therefore must follow the other. just as Jesus gave up his godhood and became sin's sacrifice, so i am asked to give up my manhood. in the end this life is utterly meaningless.

life is deception
faith is truth
God is love

LXXXV - oh take me back to the start

song of the week: coldplay, the scientist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWLpTKBFcU

it's sobering to know that i am not immune to regretting my mistakes. it sucks to know, actually. it sucks to know.

"... the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

life is different in this light. i'm not sure if i'm good or bad, if i'm the cure or the disease. i'm not sure if i'm doing the right thing, by other people, by me, by whatever.

this is a season of, of all things, regret. it becomes harder to ask, what is the meaning of all this? as if i had lost the right to do so, to live as if i were finding it out.

i was playing this song driving home last night. and i know, you know, i know they say that life is incomparable to the hereafter, life now is like pigs in mud, etc. but whatever happens, at least we were once alive, i think for goodness' sake that everyone deserves to say that with dignity.

and i was driving home and i wished that you were around, dl. i wish that i could share a bit of the world with you. it's not that bad in the right places. it's not even that bad in the wrong places.

i'll try not to screw it up abit more.

LXXXIV

elton john, daniel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFJ2YrztYUg

tell me, dl, is God all that they say he is?

LXXXIII - bible thoughts

song of the week: black sabbath, war pigs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqy4DTHGqg
the energy in these old videos is incredible. absolutely untouchable today.

anyway, this is my favourite bit of pure irony in the bible. it's arguably a pretty important bit, too.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

of course, there was the famous donkey talking bit, the fire on sodom bit, the after-flood rainbow bit... the list goes on. but that first one was pure irony.

anyway i was wondering a little bit about the bible lately. firstly, that Jesus was called to lose his godliness (in taking on sin), which is clearly the most difficult thing conceivable, god-or-man-wise. how can Jesus still be God after that? well, he went on the cross, and the rest is history, as they say. anyway, i guess my calling is to lose my humanity, in a fashion.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

also,

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?"

interestingly, this last verse seems to contradict my point. but i'll leave it at that for now. let's just say it has to do with whose interpretation of "self" is to be believed.

secondly, does the holy spirit give us faith (or materially enable us to have faith) or do we need faith to have the holy spirit? this is a very tricky question, and quite easily answered in circular fashion. apart from any bible-derived answer, my intuition is that it happens simultaneously, but that's terribly illogical. without going any further, and i don't really care for the answer, to be quite honest,

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

thirdly, imagine telling your son not to steal. ideally, he'd listen to you, but the time will come when he has to make that decision for himself, and not merely because you once told him not to steal. now, isn't that a far more meaningful decision than when you tell him not to steal and he doesn't? similarly, God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit. you see, the thing i don't get is, why is choice so beautifully enshrined in Christ, and yet we have the law so full of legal moralism*? what kind of liberty and choice do we retain if the law is so incredibly prohibitive and inhuman? and how are we to choose to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength if we must deny ourselves to follow Christ?

*generally, the four bases for criminalisation are harm (harm to others), offence (e.g. racist propaganda), legal moralism (e.g. pornography, private homosexualism) and paternalism (e.g. drugs).

i'm going to have a lot of hard questions for that day. until then, i really don't know why i'm still alive. i often wonder, what is the meaning of all this. and i feel more human because of it. i feel, neo-human.

LXXXII - i am not denial

song of the week: pearl jam, yellow bedletter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs8y3kneqrs

going through my old stuff, there were at least four things which weighed heavily with me. one was for love past. one was for a mistreated friend. i'll carry those a bit longer.

one was for an old photo of me, as a little boy. i knew it, but i hardly recognised it. i had no doubt that it was me, in fact, i was convinced that it was me. you could pull out any photo of me as a boy and i'd know it was me. but i didn't recognise the look in my eyes; a look of utter vulnerability. i felt like hugging the little boy there. but i'm old now. maybe my mum still sees me like that.

the other was my old journal stuff. some of it was angsty, some of it was about what the younger me thought were really cool dreams, or memorable encounters. but what made more of an impression on me was the idealist, purist christian stuff i wrote. and i didn't reject it, even though i know more clearly the kind of christian i am now, i.e. not so naively purist. i know that i am purist at one level, but i've come to be kinder to the world, for the most part.

and that's been at the back of my mind for awhile. what is the standard i hold myself to? i do think it's a Godly standard at one level, but it's more humanly now, to be precise, it's my standard. i hold myself to a standard which allows me to be fully who i am - an alive human being, trying to do something for this world.

and that contradicts the word. it says, if anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily. and the purist me believes in this denying. whoever seeks his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. i believe it, yes i do. but here's this: how can you deny that which you don't know?

and that's the whammy of it. the more fully i know what life is, the more fully i can choose what to believe in and what to do. and nevermind my inherent interest in freedom and self-fulfilment, i don't think that denying what i don't know is worth more than denying what i do know about life and what i love about it. and i do believe i can do it, that i can lead a Godly life in my own image. the sentence sounds awful, but accept it on the reasons i've given. i do believe i can be my own man, a Godly one at that.

the first and greatest commandment is this: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with  all your soul and with all your strength. nevermind the second commandment, i got that down pat. back to the first, observe this, only the soul is not of this realm. and that tells me - i must know what my heart and mind and strength is before i can love God with them. and now is the only chance i have. and for the record, only my soul fully loves God right now, i can't explain it besides saying that it's how my soul feels to me.

this is too confounded. let's just say that i believe in the good of many things right now.