need/want

I have never known what is means to need God.

If you think about it, you only truly appreciate something when you really need it. We don't realize what food means to us until we don't have any. We don't know true thirst until our wells run dry and there is nothing left to quench our parched throats. In that same manner, I can say without a doubt that I take God for granted.

I feel as though I don't need Him, that my life would not be so devoid of fulfillment even if I didn't know He existed. I got along just fine without religion for the majority of my life. Of course, I was a miserable little brat of a child, but my melancholy cannot be attributed to life without God as the confound of the misery of life itself muddies that dichotomy. I'm just beginning to think for myself and wonder if God is what I truly need. Will I ever encounter a moment where I will be so completely without God that I will understand what it means to need Him? I wonder when I can truly be so weak.

I suppose it is for these selfish reasons that I have been contemplating missions trips as of late. Don't get me wrong, I do want to go to Haiti and rehabilitate people who have had their legs crushed by falling cars during the earthquake; I think it would be a lovely experience and one where I would feel as if I was contributing to humanity rather than sitting in my study room playing Starcraft till the wee hours of the morning. I think, though, that if I were to go on a missions trip, it would simply be out of my own personal spiritual desperation, a final, self-initiated alpha course to educate my brain that there is the importance of God. In that respect, perhaps it isn't a missions trip that I need but simply a weekend of solitude in the mountains to reflect and peruse God's righteousness and majesty.

I just want to know if I am forming a relationship with Him out of necessity, or if I am truly getting to know Him with the purest essence of my heart.

I am sad to say that at this point I cannot tell.

Thank You God for this Most Amazing

i thank You God for this most amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings

Fascinating.

The world is so polarized: whydoyouhategod.com.

I was on the bus today wondering if the world was anything more than opinion.

pastoral sorrow

I love meaning. In my opinion, which need not be matched by yours, there is nothing more to life than bringing meaning to it. Every action should have a purpose and everything should be layered with a deeper understanding.

With that preamble, I segway into a profession, nay, a lifestyle that I find impressive. I find pastors particularly admirable because their life is riddled with meaning - they take a concept and run with it and find it in everything. They believe in something beautiful, a meaning rich and laden with lessons and love. I find them so powerful because they have this unwavering faith that everything in their life rests upon, and they are never swayed by anyone attempting to dismantle what purpose they attribute to everything.

On the flip side, I likewise find pastors particularly vulnerable. They base their existence on something that is not tangible. They abide by a philosophy subject to ridicule, speculation, misunderstanding and hatred. They dress in a manner that sets them obviously apart, like the lone Flames fan at an Oilers game. They are the underdog - small in stature but giant in heart.

I speak only of this because I saw God's soldier perhaps at his lowest point today. I was drinking coffee at Tim's and I noticed this small, Filipino pastor sitting alone in the corner window with his noticeable collar and his unassuming black jacket. He sat straight up but his head was bent down as if he was having a bad day. He sported a gigantic white cast on his right hand that looked pretty fresh, and had a tray of a Wendy's Value Meal in front of him. He was rather serious about eating, but the part that broke my heart was when he tried to eat his fries. He couldn't quite co-ordinate plucking his fries with his casted hand, so he simply held it in his left hand and shook the fries into his mouth. He looked so alone and so helpless; I have always seen a pastor orate mightily at his pulpit and have never once seen one at his nadir.

I have never wanted to sit and talk with a person more in my life, but I sat frozen in my spot watching him. I rolled up my rim and it said "please play again" and I left. I did not bring meaning to my day.

You see the irony is that I bet that pastor wasn't alone, because God was sitting across from him sharing his fries and pondering how incredibly awesome it is that He invented an affordable Value Menu at Wendy's.

religious choices

As I was leaving the house this morning, I grabbed my mum's car keys and proceeded to head out the door. I got to the garage and my mum's Camry was nowhere to be found, so I went inside and asked where she was at. My sisters said that she leaves really early in the morning to pray at temple. I thought it was kind of ironic because here she is going by herself to temple when her son wants to borrow her car to go to church.

Pastor Chanh's talk today was on meditation, which I found kind of coincidental. Obviously it means something different to Christians as it does to Buddhists, so I settled in to hear what he was going to orate about. Chanh has this evangelical fire and brimstone way, so you know you are at least going to be entertained, if not partially offended in some way, on what he's going to lecture about.

He introduced the topic by making sure to separate the physical aspects of meditation with the religious aspects: Meditation = f(godliness) as opposed to f(health). He was then rather quick to lump holistic health and eastern religions including Buddhism together, touting them as paths to clearing your mind and reaching enlightenment. This said with a hint of a scoff. He said, "Anyone can meditate on a mechanical level", which I agree with, but he was rather happy to put Christian meditation on a pedestal and not explore the benefits of spiritual cleansing from the Buddhist point of view. Admittedly, this is a church and perhaps that's a talk for another time and place.

So the Christian approach to meditation is to meditate on God's word. He identified three things the Godly avoid according to Psalm 1:1-3:
1. Counsel of the wicked
(thinking, perceiving and valuing those things that are worldly;
Christians hold to their own ideas)
2. [Standing] in the path of sinners
(taking the actions, behaviors, lifestyle of the world;
Christians are not shaped by the world)
3. [Sitting] in the seat of scoffers
(identifying with groups that mock the world of God)

The message I see here is the classic message of deontology - hold to your principles and never let anyone change them. Segregate yourselves from the world because we are "better than that".

So all background aside, what are we talking about here? If Pastor Chanh says that the main purpose of meditation is to "reflect on God's word for the purpose of application", what are we to do? Are we to separate ourselves from anyone who does not stand by God? Are we to alienate those that do not believe in JC? What is the message he (deliberately ambiguous he) is sending to us on what we should do? If there is such a crisis that we must save our fellow man from the clutches of the Devil, how can we do so when we are meditating on how best to separate ourselves from our fellow man?

This is one of my biggest concerns with the Christian way of life. I was so deeply moved by this religion when I first came to it because it was beautiful in its principles - on paper it sets rules and criterion to hold by with answers to every question you might have. A leads to B, and if B then C. Elegant. But the more I deal with Christians the more I see hypocrisy. I see those who live by the way of God, but the ones who stand out are the ones that don't. Then they go and repent, and Jesus absolves them of blame. In ACTION, how are Christians any different from anyone else in the world? How are they so different from Buddhists? How can they stand in front of the church preaching that they are going to Heaven, when my mom kneels in the swirling incense of the temple and she is going to Hell. I see no difference in the lives that they lead that makes me believe their actions are any different. I sat down with God in the pew today and asked him to clarify this for me in the next coming weeks, because it's relevant and important, and central to why I don't call myself a Christian or a Buddhist. I'm opening this up to you because what I talk about with my peers is also what I talk about with God. He's a homey too - gotta tell him about what's going on in my life.

Principles are principles on paper.
Actions are the purpose of these principles.
If actions do not equate to the Word,
I see no purpose in principle.

So I thought it funny when I was walking to my car after sermon, and there hanging from my rear view mirror was a little Buddhist keychain. In front, Jesus. Look in the mirror and it's Buddha.

hey

What's up God?

Listen, I know you and I haven't spoke since like last week, but you know when they talk about how blasphemous it is to turn away from you in times of stress? Well I'm pretty much at breaking point.

Sure, I know it's pretty selfish of me (and quite rude I might add) to doubt you and ask for you to show me a sign, but fuck it it's like you doled out miracles a dime a dozen back in the day. Man, I have been praying for you to show me something tangible for so fucking long. This isn't a threat, it ain't even a curse, but it damn well shows you I'm stumbling. I don't have it in me to be strong for you. Fuck, I don't even have it in me to give a shit anymore. Deontology? Too easy to cave in the favor of apathy. Such a loser thing to say, such an emo way to go, but the truth is I lack the drive and necessity to do anything else.

Let's face it. Things change, I know you know that. As much as I would like to deny it, my relationship with you has changed a lot last year. For the good? For the bad? I'm not sure. What I know is I was seeking to fill a void of emptiness within me and it's still there now, wide fucking open, gaping sucking wound. All I know is that there's nothing there, I've never been so damn miserable in my life, and I'm seriously starting to question everything I previously thought to be so valuable in my life.

Am I just thinking in utility? Am I being selfish and demanding everything go my way? Perhaps. I just don't think any human should live in such depression 9 days out of 10 - it just doesn't sit right with me in my gut. Am I ungrateful?

Yes.

Look, I apologize. You gave me life, you gave me soul, you gave me everything. I know the argument, I understand the debate. This is like a slap in the face right? Let's face it though, you're going to have children that hate you and children that love you. I guess I'm in the rebellious, angst-y litter. I'm ready to move the fuck out and stay gone.

In conclusion, show me a miracle:

Wide fucking open.

meditations

My week-long hiatus is over, and in celebration of end-of-exams my PT class is punctuating our day with brewskies at Hudson's Campus very shortly. In the meantime I figure I'll mention something that struck me last week and I wanted to mention but never got around to it.

Early last week I walked into my mum's room en route to her bathroom where I had left my toothbrush and mouthwash the previous night. My mum was sitting on the floor cross-legged with her eyes closed looking very peaceful, so naturally I asked her, "What are you doing?" My mum opened my eyes and took a second to focus, then she responded that she was meditating.

Now this is a pretty uncommon occurrence. My mum is a fervent Buddhist, my dad probably a lapsed one if he even is concerned by religion at all. Both are pretty liberal people and as such they vote Liberal. Anyways, I think I had just come back from church so I was in the mood to discuss inter-religious practices, so I sat down on her bed and asked her what she does when she meditates.

From what I understand, meditating is much the same as praying, except instead of having a relationship with a higher power, it's demonstrating our frontal lobe functions in evaluating our lives from a metaconscious perspective. She calms herself by monitoring and slowing her breathing and then pretty much just has a cathartic episode, reflecting and evaluating and identifying. She examines emotions, goes over troubles, dreams about future situations - anything you can think of that glosses over your mind and wanders into your conscious domain can be analyzed and dissected. You create and fathom, understand and formulate action.

I thought about this because there are many similarities with prayer. We calm ourselves to talk to Father God, evaluate our lives and what we are thankful for and blessed with, identify what needs help and try to figure out who we are going to pray for and who we are going to help. It's more structured of course, and involves an omnipotent higher power, but the idea is still the same in my opinion.

I think the reason I thought it was important was that even though religions may be different, practices may still be similar. Corollary: Religions may be very similar. Obviously this corollary is a large assumption, because different religions have completely different principles and ideologies and even though we all pray doesn't mean they are the same - I do acknowledge that as a central limitation of this observation. I'm just saying that I think that I've been so focused on learning Christian theology that I've neglected that right in my own home I probably have one of the best teachers of the Buddhist way of life and I haven't even bothered to ask. One of my minor goals I put out at cell group was to learn more about other religions in order to find an answer to that burning question that so often bothers me: If each religion claims that their word is the word of God, whose word is truly the word of God?

britney spears

This has nothing to do with Britney, except that she just happened to make a song titled Lucky. Random, I know, but that's how I've been feeling today. I've been pretty dejected this last few days, mostly because I've attempting to attain my goal that I hammered out at cell group last week. For those who weren't present, it goes something like this:

We were sitting around in a circle at cell group discussing the topic that Jia brought up, which was What should Christians do? It goes a little deeper than that, but basically it asks what Christians are called to do and what is their scope of practice, for lack of a better term. We somehow got into asking each other what we thought God was calling us to do, and Jia got excited and recorded them all down. I figure we're going to do a one-year post-op, followed by a five-year post-op and so on and so forth just to see where we're at with following the dreams God wants for us, so I'll share with you what I've been getting up to:

My goal according to how Jia worded it: Joey Mo: To feel and display genuine love to my friends, the people around me, and totally strangers. I know I don't display the perfect love to my friends, in fact I honestly don't really make an effort to care about them sometimes. I don't really realize this because I guess I'm a little self-absorbed in what I'm doing at the time, whether it be studying or if I have something else that I feel is more important for me to do. I ignore people's birthday parties, show up late to occasions I say I'm going to or don't even bother to show up at all. I ditch friends in social events, or when I get there I don't even say hello to them at all, but hone in on the food table, grab a bite to eat, then leave. I'm often cruel to my family, and am not there for them when they need me. I also walk by the same homeless Asian guy in front of Tim Horton's every day and when he asks me for change I think Change is good and That's a good thing to ask for, Obama would like that, but then I tell him "I don't give change" then go inside and get my extra-large double double like the gluttonous, self-centered, un-sharing beast I know I am.

I've been thinking a lot about how I'm acting towards friends, family, and people in general, and have been attempting to cognitively re-structure my thought process in order to actively recognize what I'm doing and change it. I'm trying to love, but it isn't easy, because I am often compelled to go elsewhere and do other things. It's difficult to love everyone without neglecting yourself.

It seems like I'm being very hard on myself, and I am. So why do I feel so lucky?

I think it's because God has given me wonderful support systems with which to share this learning experience. I was most touched by this one moment after church last Sunday, where Simon started talking to me. He asked me, "Joey, do you have a Bible?" and when I said, "No," he didn't hesitate to offer the one in his hand - his own personal Book of God where he's written all his marginalia and poured his hours and love into - saying, "Here, have mine." This is his gold, the word of God in purest form, and he was willing, so willing to relinquish it in a heartbeat in order to reach someone who didn't deserve it. I said thank you, but one of my personal goals is to find a Bible I really enjoy myself, to just peruse the Bible Store and go through it slowly to find the book for me. But it was this principle, this love for your neighbor that is so far-reaching and touching, even in the most seemingly mundane of events ("dude, it's just a book...") that really hit home.

I feel so lucky that God has introduced Jason and Steve into my life so that I can intersect groups of friends whom I have nothing in common with. These are people well versed in God's walk, and so will be invaluable resources in learning about God and what it means to be a Christian - which I feel I still know nothing about but am learning more about if that makes any sense. Through some strange statistical anomaly that I can attribute only to divine intervention, God's put like the only two people on this continent who actually like talking about neuro on a day-to-day basis into my life so that I can discuss religion, fulfill my goals of meeting and holding down groups of people with which I can share God's love, and also talk about Searle and the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. I've talked about consciousness with Jason at length, and just yesterday discussed with Steve about Crick's (of DNA's famous Watson & Crick) deathbed work on the claustrum and Gestalt-like integration in the sensorium. We discuss Ramachandran and Descartes, Beauregard and Sacks.

Of course, my friend Jia who is often my anchor in the tumultuous waves of my every day reflection, is also very good for stability. I have fought long and hard with figuring out in which direction my moral compass faces, and have often had a heated argument with my beautiful professional debater Magdalene over black and white and the gray that is supposedly between them that I have yet to see. I talk law with Law, pour over the Bible, dissect the Pharisees, the ways of the lawful man, how evil lawyers actually are despite following the law, and evil people in general.

Friends help me clarify where I stand; help me thin(k) and reflect. You give so much of God's love that I can't help but want to give God's love back to you. So with your help, let us try to make some small miracles happen with my fingertips and the relationships around me - friends you are my witnesses and God you are my hands.

***

5333

After about 8 months of searching, I've finally found the church that I will be regularly attending. While learning about anything is largely a personal endeavor, it is largely at the hands of an educational institution to provide you with general guidance and a framework with which to begin the learning journey.

I see it like this - you go to school to learn. There is a framework, a curriculum that guides you in what you must learn and what you must know in what stages. Of course, learning at school is only limited in its reach - mostly everything you learn in school is going to be somewhat of a superficial crash course. You take this knowledge and bring it home, study it, apply it à la Bloom's Taxonomy. The brunt of the learning is through self-motivation and personal experience.

Much in the same way, church is an institution that I hope will guide me in framing my religious future. I'm way behind in my studies and have much to do to catch up, but am excited to be beginning. I'm excited to take what knowledge lies within the sanctuary doors and apply it to my life. You get tested formally in school, but for faith, the testing comes in the form of how it affects your life and how you affect the lives of others.

I have bounced from church to church trying to find a place. I don't demand things of the church, but when I seek a church I am definitely looking for a place I can feel a bond with, a place where I am comfortable to be. For the first time in my life, I prayed so intensely I thought I was going to burst with tears. I sang for the first time in church, not even knowing how the song goes but just wanting to participate in praise, worship. I related to the sermon, thought about it deeply, and thoroughly enjoyed both its content and its delivery. I was humbled and inspired all at the same time.

So there it is, plain as can be. I may still not participate in Communion, but I have found a place where I can love God.

So begins my spiritual journey.

cross maze

Ah, the question. Where is my God? Is God housed in a region of the brain in the temporal lobes? Is religion a product of our consciousness, a fabrication entirely conceived by the marriage of neuronal firing and neural networks? Or is God everywhere and everything and everyone and forever and always? Is He faith and it is but for us to believe in His unceasing majesty?

Gosh, you guys are silly.

God's actually just hanging out on my new Freshjive t-shirt:

questions pt. 2

Mag and I had a long discussion last night which kind of resolved question numero uno for me. From what we deduced, the motivation to live a good life is the same as the reason for going to Heaven.

Correction No. 1: I made the error where I assumed that all Christians immediately go to Heaven. We gathered that God ultimately judges which Christians go to the Holy Land, and that if you are a flaky Christian but still say you believe in Christ without truly, with-all-your-heart believing, God can see through that and will place you unfavorably. I made the mistake of thinking God is a blithering automaton that just places you in Heaven or Hell. God is actually very, very smart and knows, just like Santa knows, if you've been good or bad. Correction No. 2: We also came to the conclusion that truly believing that Christ atoned for your sins and honestly accepting God's love means living a life by Christian principles and subsequently by the Bible. These two principles are mutually inclusive.

While Mag disagreed with the notion that God thinks in dichotomies ("God is not black and white. I don't care if God is a deontologist - that means nothing to me. God is God"), I still see the ultimate goal for Christians is going to Heaven as opposed to going to Hell. The difference for me now is that living a good life does have meaning. Why should you live a good life? Because living a Christian life is a good life.

So be good.

questions

When you are Christian, you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and thus allow him to stand your place in Hell and atone for your sins. This, I have gathered, is the fundamental principle governing whether or not you go to Heaven or Hell. God, therefore, seems very black and white on this ground; a true deontologist.

So what is the purpose of life? In my opinion, it seems like Christians believe the purpose of life is that it acts as a stepping stone to the afterlife. Live life as a Christian and you will go to Heaven and reap your just rewards there. This life is but an ephemeral moment, a transient state that decides your ultimate destiny. Life has a binary output: Go to Heaven or Go to Hell (I'm probably being too narrow, let us just say purgatory is part of Hell. I'm going for the whole Good/Evil symmetry).

On this note, let me ask a question: What point is there to live a good and just life as a Christian? If we simply go to Heaven when we accept that Christ has suffered for us, what could there possibly be to motivate us to be morally righteous? There is no greed or jealousy in Heaven (or so I assume), so being "gooder" won't get you more rewards in Heaven. What is there separating these two Christians: 1. A criminal who has raped and pillaged, 2. A nun/priest who has spent her/his whole life serving Christ? I see no differentiation posthumously as long as you accept Christ. Of course, God judges your intentions in the end and will obviously see whether you have truly adhered to the principles governing the Christian doctrine, but as long as you have Jesus all your sins are forgiven. What could possibly motivate us to be good people?

Let me then ask another question: If Christianity is based on the premise that an individual stands your place in Hell and atones for your sins, what is to stop another religion from placing another figure in the same situation and stating that their religion is the better one? Why is that, from a Christian point of view, if you believe in something else and not in Christ, you will go to Hell? It seems extremely theocentric to see things this way - if another religion had a similar means of circumventing Hell, would it not be equally valid? Perhaps their doctrine may not follow Love as Christians follow love so ideally, but if this life does not matter, then going to Heaven should be the only concern (if I have an erroneous fallacy and my logic breaks down somewhere between question 1 and question 2, let me know).

If I believe in Joey-ism and that the almighty Joey sent his wife Magdalene to die in your place so you wouldn't have to go to Heck, how is that any less valid than what Christians believe? In Joey-ism, Christians would go to Heck.

What do we live for? What is the purpose of life? What ultimately decides what becomes of us in the afterlife?

Is it our choice where we go and what we become? Is it in the hands of a higher power? And which higher power is appropriate?

crisis

I woke up this morning and the existentialist alter ego of mine took over as the main identity in my palette of mixed personalities. I put on my headphones and listened to a variety of thought inducing tracks while I stared out the window: Taylor Swift - Fifteen, Emily Haines - Reading in Bed, My Brightest Diamond - Golden Star, Kanye West - I Wonder, Kings of Leon - Manhattan; soundtrack of my life. I've finally achieved that state of nirvana when doing this, almost akin to when I was staring at the ocean off the coast of Peggy's Cove in Halifax. I'm able to see my thoughts stirring in a pot before me and better control how they appear to me - it's easier to understand yourself when you're omnipotent over your mind.

One thing I noticed lingering over all my thoughts was a cumulus stratus of unease. I zoomed real close to it like you would zoom in on your digital camera, and I found that this was the air of disappointment. Earl, my dissociative existentialist state (I just dubbed him that), realized that this portion of my mind is the choking smog that constantly swirls around me, hovering like the cloud of pollution above industrial countries. It is this air that continuously tells me I will never be enough, I will never be satisfied, I will always sell myself short.

So I pan out and observe my life through the lens of Earl's -5.75 and -5.25 degree glasses, and I see clearly. No ring, no surgical prowess, no semblance of artistic talent, no published works, no subscriptions to Nature Neuroscience, no understanding of social interactions and being part of social constructs, a lousy Scrabble score, an empty bank account, and a person that has never traveled anywhere he's wanted to go in his life. If I was Earl all the time, I'd kill myself.

God, if we are to be humbled, I am humbled so. I understand what it means to be at the nidus of this web of excellence yet be at the nadir of the ziggurat of achievement simultaneously, so please, I beg you, take me by the hand and show me where to go.

a lesson in humility

And so it begins anew:

Hatred bubbles in me, a boiling, curdling sort of hatred that is black as tar, black as midnight. Here is an invisible lesion that festers, oozing the pus of madness, blistering with anger and frustration. I long to find an easy escape, to stab the center to relieve the pressure. It would be all too easy to lash out, to use words that sting more than these emotional nettles that plague me.

I am reminded all too often to take the path less travelled, to walk in the sandals of Jesus or to "be the bigger man." My desktop tells me that the only answer is love, God appears to me in my dreams only to say I must use my heart and not my head, and my only love tells me to love even when I don't feel loved. It is so easy to say it and so difficult to carry out.

I start arguments with bubble tea owners over the intrinsic value of offering a napkin. I mouth off employees of AHS when they berate me for going for a second helping at the free pancake breakfast. If Mag is impatient with me for being dense or stupid or forgetful, I am immediately incensed, raise my voice, and take on a condescending tone. I yell at movie theatre employees and managers even when they are being perfectly nice to me and are following all the rules and regulations they outline in their workplace policy.

If I attempt to be so good, to come to a full stop at red lights even at 2 AM with no cars around, to hold open the door for anyone and everyone no matter how far away they are, to not take advantage of a situation for its utility, I am suddenly faced with the embarassment of the human condition, that I am so mortally full of sin that sometimes I wonder what it even means to try. But such is the battle, and if we give up hope then we are no more than the evil which intends to consume us.

And so I am reminded not to think that I am anything more than an animated sack of water with a handful of mineral thrown in who has been given a world of opportunity by God.

X

Those who know me know that I love The Time Traveller's Wife with all my heart. I'm going on my tenth full reading right now from front to back, specifically to refresh myself before seeing the movie which will be coming out on August 14th, featuring Rachel McAdams of Notebook fame and Eric Bana. I've seen the trailer, and I'm not going to lie, it's possibly going to be one of those movie adaptations of the book that you just wish they never made. Look, I hate those people that are always like, "You should read the book it's always better" because that's not true, sometimes the movie is better than the book, but in this case they would have to do something truly Jesus + Goku + Obama + Schwarzenegger + Rocky Balboa miraculous to save this one. I'm really going to hate it when people who have just seen the movie read the book and then it becomes a huge overrated hype when the book came out long ago and deserved your respect when it first came out.



Rant over.

Everytime I read The Time Traveller's Wife, I always notice something different which makes the book profoundly amazing. For example, I just realized how much Henry likes Helen but he never ever gets with her because he stays with Claire. Anyways, I also notice every single time I read the book that I don't understand the German poet Rilke. At all. The Hundreds discussed a tee that hosted a Rilke tribute and The Time Traveller's Wife features Rilke about a half of a dozen times throughout, so at least pop culturally his influence seems to be rather large. Maybe I'm just not as much of an intellect that is required to understand Rilke, or maybe I'm just not aesthetically sensitive enough to acquire this taste, but I have consistently had my difficulties and I wonder if that will ever pass.



I must admit, however, that I recently found myself relating to one of his lines. At one point, Claire and Henry are discussing religion and science. Henry talks about St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed in both Aristotle and angels, and tried to move towards synthesizing order and reason and God, much like I am trying to do so. I have always said I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive, but it's very difficult to find rational evidence beyond faith and conjecture that the two worlds intertwine. Realists want cold, hard evidence that is scientifically based, and aren't willing to believe that the scientific method is just that - a method - and that many things can fall outside the bounds as simple confounds of being unable to be measured by the scientific method. Anything beyond that is just blind faith and deemed to be ignorance, and it really doesn't help that some people truly ARE ignorant about believing in God and haven't really thought it over, which gives people that have mulled it over a bad name. I really do think God is a confound, and a beautiful one. Speculation, perhaps, but hey I'm entitled to an opinion.

Which leads me to Rilke:

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Every angel is terrifying.

Maybe only Rilke would think to make the central star of Touched By An Angel and Angels in the Outfield terrifying, as if with one word he could spin an entire stereotype of what an angel should be 180 degrees. What a powerful line, that an angel in all its glory and majesty can be such a powerful symbol for turning our world of apathy and Bill 44s on its ear.

hammer on the head of the nail

"Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably. An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose."

Such is God.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

anc(h)o(u)rage

I have this thing that I do where I sometimes sit on the bus or in the car (it's usually when I'm in a vehicle, it facilitates this process I think) and I think about what is right and what is wrong. I think about utility, which means what is good feels good and seems good and what is bad feels bad and seems bad. Then I think about deontology, which means that there's a rule that, if violated, means you've done bad, and if not violated, you've done good. I sit there and wonder sometimes how something so pleasurable like eating five gazillion Kit Kat Chunkys can be so right to a utilitarian, yet so wrong to a deontologist. At the same time, I remember reading about a kid who needed to eat like a gazillion calories a day because he was born three months premature, and so I suppose in a utility sense eating five gazillion Kit Kat Chunkys could be very wrong, and could be considered either wrong or right to a deontologist (gluttony vs. thou shalt not kill?).

I was on the bus today (see!) and reading The Shack, and I thought about utilitarianism vs. deontology. There's this part where Sarayu tells the protaganist that by deciding what is right is judging by your standards and not by God's. I remember having a conversation with Pastor Damien recently, who had this talk with someone he knew who said: "How can God judge what is wrong or right? I should be able to judge." Pastor Damien then responded with, "Well, I'm going to take this gun and put it to your head and shoot you," to which the person frantically replied, "No! That's wrong!" Pastor Damien explained that if people are able to decide for themselves what is wrong and what is right, then he should be given the right to decide if killing the guy was right or wrong.

So who judges?

I suppose God judges.

See, I have a problem with that. Before you attack me, let me just backtrack and say that I feel like God is just a rule. I am not ready to accept the terms of his limitations yet, and I don't feel like my relationship with him is strong enough for him to break the bonds that surround my heart. I feel a strong attachment to those things I like and feel are good things - I feel that I am a good person by nature and so I won't overstep those boundaries anyways, but I'm sure in God's eyes I am no perfect individual and am probably going to Hell. At the same time, I also understand the need for rules, because without rules any Hitler or Stalin can go traipsing about thinking they're right. Definitions need to be made to clarify what is right and what is wrong.

So here is where I stand. I believe in God, but I don't give myself to him entirely. I don't believe in utility. I do, however, believe that a deontological viewpoint can be the only way I can perceive the world and live by it, but unfortunately this view does not include Christianity within its set. I do find Emmanuel Kant's words very attractive in that I think I could live with a categorical imperative, which is that you make a rule and ask if it could be applied to all of humanity, and if it can be done so without violating something very ethical, then it is a good rule.

I can live with being a Kantian, but I don't think all Kantians are going to Heaven. While I still know that God has a chance and that I am learning to embrace God slowly, I know that this Kantian isn't going to Heaven anytime (soon).