*feels better*
This is only an excerpt from what I posted on my blog proper; I just wanted to follow up on what I wrote yesterday. The important stuff is in boldface. Go hunt the full post down if you're interested. But you don't have to be. :)
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I like this Jimi Hendrix quote my friend posted in her blog. It's interesting how it runs parallel to our current discussions in Theology about personhood and vocation, though Mr. Hendrix didn't use the words or phrasings Fr. Dacanay might have:
Now, I believe in myself more than anything. And, I suppose in a way, that's also believing in God. If there is a God and he made you, then if you believe in yourself, you're also believing in him. So I think everybody should believe in himself. That doesn't mean you've got to believe in heaven and hell and all that stuff. But it does mean that what you are and what you do is your religion.
I can't express myself in easy conversation - the words just don't come out right. But when I get up on stage - well, that's my whole life. That's my religion. My music is electric, electric church music, if by 'church' you mean religion.
In class, we've been talking about how man becomes most fully himself. And I agree with the articles and the lectures that there is no or better way to God than the one to which he calls you. You don't have to die for a loved one, or to become a nun or a priest. What I take from the Hendrix quote is what I've taken from all the things I've read on faith: there is holiness in your life if you do what you do, with all of you.
This is whether you're the man onstage or the poor guy in the back row, the man in the white robe or the man with the blue collar, the middle-class man with a family of six to feed or the aging Philo teacher who remained unmarried, the extremely talented kid with all the opportunities or the inattentive daydreamer from some unknown corner of Mindanao. If you do what you do, and if you do it with genuine love, you become fully yourself, you are, as Fr. Dacanay might put it, the true image and likeness of God that he called you to in the first place.
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I like this Jimi Hendrix quote my friend posted in her blog. It's interesting how it runs parallel to our current discussions in Theology about personhood and vocation, though Mr. Hendrix didn't use the words or phrasings Fr. Dacanay might have:
Now, I believe in myself more than anything. And, I suppose in a way, that's also believing in God. If there is a God and he made you, then if you believe in yourself, you're also believing in him. So I think everybody should believe in himself. That doesn't mean you've got to believe in heaven and hell and all that stuff. But it does mean that what you are and what you do is your religion.
I can't express myself in easy conversation - the words just don't come out right. But when I get up on stage - well, that's my whole life. That's my religion. My music is electric, electric church music, if by 'church' you mean religion.
In class, we've been talking about how man becomes most fully himself. And I agree with the articles and the lectures that there is no or better way to God than the one to which he calls you. You don't have to die for a loved one, or to become a nun or a priest. What I take from the Hendrix quote is what I've taken from all the things I've read on faith: there is holiness in your life if you do what you do, with all of you.
This is whether you're the man onstage or the poor guy in the back row, the man in the white robe or the man with the blue collar, the middle-class man with a family of six to feed or the aging Philo teacher who remained unmarried, the extremely talented kid with all the opportunities or the inattentive daydreamer from some unknown corner of Mindanao. If you do what you do, and if you do it with genuine love, you become fully yourself, you are, as Fr. Dacanay might put it, the true image and likeness of God that he called you to in the first place.