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| The airport can be a happy place. It can be a sad place. Tonight it is a place of worship.
My flight to Philadelphia has been delayed 1 hour and 15 minutes. I am sitting in the terminal with 10 other travelers, all greeted with an hour long surprise. The woman behind me is talking to her daughter, whom she misses dearly and will now be separated from her for an extra hour. The man across from me, whom I am peeking at over my screen, is reading the newspaper. He looks like he belongs in Philadelphia rather than Columbus. A man across the room has been pacing for a good 20 minutes. Ah, he finally sat down with an American aphrodisiac - an iPod.
All of these people are waiting to arrive at a destination. Everyone here laid their plans out carefully, and all have been frustrated. I need to get a good night's sleep to be ready for work tomorrow. I have been frustrated. But I will choose to take this frustration and turn it to rejoicing.
Although completely true, my delay at Gate 26 in Columbus is a parable for my life in the past year. My efforts to pursue my joy have been frustrated. I've been worn thin, but by what? I haven't had any major catastrophes recently. I think I've worn myself thin.
Tonight I preached the gospel to myself. The gospel is different when you tell it to yourself. When someone else tells the gospel to you, it's usually 4 points and a prayer - which has its place and is a wonderful tool. But when I preached it to myself, its fullness enveloped all of the empty places in my soul. I'm happier than I've been in a long time.
You'll notice that my flow of thought is pretty much nonexistent. Most of this is probably unintelligible. Bad grammar and spelling most likely abound, which is unlike me. Like I said, I'm tired. Happy, but tired. I will make more sense in the future, I promise.
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Inculcating
the various competing - competing, note - falsehoods of the major
faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal. Let
us challenge religion to leave children alone until they are adults,
whereupon they can be presented with the essentials of religion for
mature consideration. For example: tell an averagely intelligent adult
hitherto free of religious brainwashing that somewhere, invisibly,
there is a being somewhat like us, with desires, interests, purposes,
memories, and emotions of anger, love, vengefulness and jealousy, yet
with the negation of such other of our failings as mortality, weakness,
corporeality, visibility, limited knowledge and insight; and that this
god magically impregnates a mortal woman, who then gives birth to a
special being who performs various prodigious feats before departing
for heaven. Take your pick of which version of this story to tell: let
a King of Heaven impregnate - let's see - Danae or Io or Leda or the
Virgin Mary (etc, etc) and let there be resulting heaven-destined
progeny (Heracles, Castor and Pollux, Jesus, etc, etc) - or any of the
other forms of exactly such tales in Babylonian, Egyptian and other
mythologies - then ask which of them he wishes to believe. One can
guarantee that such a person would say: none of them.
- A.C. Grayling
Thoughts?
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| This really spoke to me today, especially the first four lines. Someone
else wrote it, but that's true of a good bit of what is typed into
blogs anyway.
God is love and love is real,
but the dead are dancing with the dead
and though all that's charming disappears
all things lovely only hurt my head
as I gather stones from fields like pearls of water on my fingers' ends
and wrap them up in boxes,
safe from windows, from things that break,
as the night-time shined like day it saw my sorry face,
hair a mess but it liked me best that way
(Besides, how else could I confess?
When I looked down like if to pray,
well I was looking down her dress...)
Good God, please!
Catch for us the foxes in the vineyard - The little foxes.
Turn your ear, musician, to silence because they only come out when it's quiet,
their tails brushing over your eyelids
Wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead!
Or the fur that they shed will cover your bed
in a delicate orange-ish cinnamon red,
ah, I don't need this!
I have my loves, I have my doubts.
I don't need this.
- "The Soviet" by mewithoutYou
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| In God's holy Presence silence would probably be best, but our love for
him should move us to speak. We know that if we hold our tongues
the stones will cry out; but if we are to speak to God, what could we
possibly say? We need to ask God to teach us to know what we
cannot know, because only God's spirit knows Him perfectly. And
where our reason fails us, our faith will support us. Think
because you believe, not so that you will believe.
 | Currently Playing
I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business
By I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business
But When The Little Fellow Came Close And Put Both Arms Around His Mother, And Kissed Her In An Appealing Boyish Fashion, She Was Moved To Tenderness
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