wish(fulthink)ing
it is not the words i need to necessarily change, but the meanings. what is God and good and evil and Heaven or Hell? what is it that makes up these things' meanings to me, to my mind? frederick buechner sets out to "define" some things in his book "a seeker's abc," and it has made me think. (not that i am apt to sit around and NOT analyze EVERYFRIGGINTHINGEVERWHEREALREADY - BUT ANYway...) ........
and i go to thinking that as much as i think i do know, i know very little. but what i DO know, can help me figure out the things i may not know very much about at all. what i know experientially, i know because i have witnessed it, heard it, said it, in essence - lived it. what i do not know are those things i speculate about, which i find myself filling with doubt all the time. my skepticism is worse than i even feared. but what must i fear about it? "doubt is the ants in the pants of faith," says buechner, and "faith...is what gets us out of bed in the morning." those ideas and precepts and axioms i have so readily believed and held to and attested as truth and nothing-but-hard-fact may very well be what floats in the river Styx. like, what is my "theology"? what is "Christianity"? where are these people who claim so boldly to know? or maybe i just believe these people exist so that i dont fear so much: if someone knows, then i dont really have to, because it doesnt do me much harm to be ignorant about what is apparently readable in a nice HarperCollins paperback. i fear that i profess and preach too much of what i do NOT know to be true, but what i Hope to be true. hope is that essence of faith that keeps us coming back. when a golfer plays horribly, but had one good shot on the 4th green, he says he'll come back; he hopes for more of the same. i hope that i will stumble upon truth in my life more often than not. "many men stumble on truth. most just pick themselves up and move on as if nothing ever happened," said sir winston churchill. i have a want in me to not deny my stumblings on truth, but to express them in words or actions to myself, others, God. talking about what i think and feel and do with an attentive listener gives me the sensation of a welcome home. i have only the home i make on earth. i hope that my real home will be in Heaven. what is heaven? it is being with God for eternity. eternity? the essence of time, like a wheel of color spun to reveal pure white; time is a wheel consisting of past, present, and future, spun to reveal the essence of it - eternity (frederick buechner).
anyway, maybe i will write something worth while one of these days. i'm gonna go now, b/c what's important to me i have found out - is people. and someone is here to chill.
thanks for listening. i'm in my apt. cya!
and i go to thinking that as much as i think i do know, i know very little. but what i DO know, can help me figure out the things i may not know very much about at all. what i know experientially, i know because i have witnessed it, heard it, said it, in essence - lived it. what i do not know are those things i speculate about, which i find myself filling with doubt all the time. my skepticism is worse than i even feared. but what must i fear about it? "doubt is the ants in the pants of faith," says buechner, and "faith...is what gets us out of bed in the morning." those ideas and precepts and axioms i have so readily believed and held to and attested as truth and nothing-but-hard-fact may very well be what floats in the river Styx. like, what is my "theology"? what is "Christianity"? where are these people who claim so boldly to know? or maybe i just believe these people exist so that i dont fear so much: if someone knows, then i dont really have to, because it doesnt do me much harm to be ignorant about what is apparently readable in a nice HarperCollins paperback. i fear that i profess and preach too much of what i do NOT know to be true, but what i Hope to be true. hope is that essence of faith that keeps us coming back. when a golfer plays horribly, but had one good shot on the 4th green, he says he'll come back; he hopes for more of the same. i hope that i will stumble upon truth in my life more often than not. "many men stumble on truth. most just pick themselves up and move on as if nothing ever happened," said sir winston churchill. i have a want in me to not deny my stumblings on truth, but to express them in words or actions to myself, others, God. talking about what i think and feel and do with an attentive listener gives me the sensation of a welcome home. i have only the home i make on earth. i hope that my real home will be in Heaven. what is heaven? it is being with God for eternity. eternity? the essence of time, like a wheel of color spun to reveal pure white; time is a wheel consisting of past, present, and future, spun to reveal the essence of it - eternity (frederick buechner).
anyway, maybe i will write something worth while one of these days. i'm gonna go now, b/c what's important to me i have found out - is people. and someone is here to chill.
thanks for listening. i'm in my apt. cya!