(no subject)
Suprised that I'm updating? I know. Me, too. I never have the energy or the time to update. I should, though. I've been having some serious internal/psychological/spiritual battles lately, all, I think, going back to my severe lack of spiritual discipline: meditation, prayer, yoga, comtemplation, etc. But that's going to change soon. I'm going to get back to myself very soon. That is, when these two weeks are over and done with. I have a seven-page paper due Thursday, but I was made aware of the topic today. Joy. Two tests next week, a Philoposphy paper due 4/6 and a Pyschology paper due 4/11. Woot woot (Helen: wheat wheat). So annoying. I would've procrastinated anyway, that's true. But it has to be on my terms.
Anyway. So, I started going to church. A gay one: the First Metropolitan Chruch of Atlanta. It's cool. Protestant (it does its job), progressive, open (duh). So, yeah, I like it. I've yet to make it Mass here on campus, something I definitely need to do. But, on Sunday, I'm going to church with my friend, Becky; then we're going to go to a Hindu temple for a Krishna meditation. That's right. Protestant chruch and Hindu temple, all while wearing my Star of David necklace. heh. :D
Fabulous news: Maya Angelou's going to be here on the 20th. Tremendously stoked about that. She's one of the best poets/writers of all time. Says so in the Bible. ::nods::
I still really miss Fabian. He's still sick.
Read this. It's super good. It's by Thomas Merton, my hero and favorite writer of all time. It's long. But it's well worth it.
No Man is an Island
The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.
If I do not know who I am, it is because I think that I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really want to become what everybody else wants me to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think and acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul.
Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if only we knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what were made for?
We cannot be ourselves unless we know ourselves. But self-knowledge is impossible when thoughtless and automatic activity keeps our souls in confusion…We cannot know ourselves until we can see the real reasons why we do the things we do, and we cannot be ourselves until our actions correspond with our intentions and our intentions are appropriate to our own situation. But that is enough. A man can be perfect and still reap no fruit from his work, and it may happen that a man who is able to accomplish very little is much more of a person than another who seems to accomplish very much.
The man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in life, is far better off than one who has much more but who worries about all be may be missing. For we cannot be the best of what we are, if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not….But, above all, we must learn our own weakness in order to awaken to a new order of action and of being---and experience God Himself accomplishing in us the things we find impossible.
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. Music is pleasing not only because of its sound but because of the silence it has in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into works, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.
If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.
Let us, therefore, pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much about what we are missing. It is true that we make many mistakes. But the biggest one of all is to be surprised by them: as if we had a hope of never making any.
Mistakes are a part of life, and not the least important part. If we are humble, and if we believe in the Providence of God, we will see that our mistakes are not merely a necessary evil, something to lament and count as a loss: they enter into the very structure of our existence. It is by making mistakes that we gain experience, not only for ourselves but for others. And though our experience prevents neither ourselves nor others from making the same mistakes, the repeated experience still has a positive value.
---pgs. 125-128.
He gives me intellectual orgasms.
Anyway. So, I started going to church. A gay one: the First Metropolitan Chruch of Atlanta. It's cool. Protestant (it does its job), progressive, open (duh). So, yeah, I like it. I've yet to make it Mass here on campus, something I definitely need to do. But, on Sunday, I'm going to church with my friend, Becky; then we're going to go to a Hindu temple for a Krishna meditation. That's right. Protestant chruch and Hindu temple, all while wearing my Star of David necklace. heh. :D
Fabulous news: Maya Angelou's going to be here on the 20th. Tremendously stoked about that. She's one of the best poets/writers of all time. Says so in the Bible. ::nods::
I still really miss Fabian. He's still sick.
Read this. It's super good. It's by Thomas Merton, my hero and favorite writer of all time. It's long. But it's well worth it.
No Man is an Island
The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.
If I do not know who I am, it is because I think that I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really want to become what everybody else wants me to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think and acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul.
Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if only we knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what were made for?
We cannot be ourselves unless we know ourselves. But self-knowledge is impossible when thoughtless and automatic activity keeps our souls in confusion…We cannot know ourselves until we can see the real reasons why we do the things we do, and we cannot be ourselves until our actions correspond with our intentions and our intentions are appropriate to our own situation. But that is enough. A man can be perfect and still reap no fruit from his work, and it may happen that a man who is able to accomplish very little is much more of a person than another who seems to accomplish very much.
The man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in life, is far better off than one who has much more but who worries about all be may be missing. For we cannot be the best of what we are, if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not….But, above all, we must learn our own weakness in order to awaken to a new order of action and of being---and experience God Himself accomplishing in us the things we find impossible.
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. Music is pleasing not only because of its sound but because of the silence it has in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into works, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.
If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.
Let us, therefore, pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much about what we are missing. It is true that we make many mistakes. But the biggest one of all is to be surprised by them: as if we had a hope of never making any.
Mistakes are a part of life, and not the least important part. If we are humble, and if we believe in the Providence of God, we will see that our mistakes are not merely a necessary evil, something to lament and count as a loss: they enter into the very structure of our existence. It is by making mistakes that we gain experience, not only for ourselves but for others. And though our experience prevents neither ourselves nor others from making the same mistakes, the repeated experience still has a positive value.
---pgs. 125-128.
He gives me intellectual orgasms.