… eyeglasses. I am so blessed to have reading glasses. I struggle without them. Perhaps I could do without other major inventions – the internet, air conditioning, computers, etc. – but I could not survive without being able to read.
Category: Personal
i just wanna see ….
And I just wanna see
If you feel the same as meDo you ever get a little bit tired of life
Like you’re not really happy but you don’t wanna die
Like you’re hanging by a thread but you gotta survive cuz u gotta surviveLike your body’s in the room but you’re not really there
Like you have empathy inside but you don’t really care
Like your fresh outta love but it’s been in the air
Am I past repairA little bit tired of tryin’ to care when I don’t A little bit tired of quick repairs to cope
A little bit tired of sinkin’
There’s water in my boatI’m barely breathin’
Tryna stay afloat
So I got these
Quick repairs to cope
Guess I’m just broken and broke
My life!
be me
I do not use “to-do lists”. I have never used them. But the one item I know will never get done is “be me”. Or maybe, “stop wearing masks”. I am unsure why but I know I hide and censor “me”. Perhaps life has taught me to be more like everyone else? Maybe life has taught me that no one will like “me”? So masks it is – pretending and play-acting something that I am not.
cat!
My first computer was a Dick Smith’s Cat. I started with a tape drive but later got a floppy disk drive – the big one. It was a cool computer to start with and it taught me lots about computing. It had Basic installed so I learned to program. And, if I remember right, I wrote a “V” game with sound.
leave
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
Leave my current context! I know I should, I have been told by people I trust that I need to, and my heart says that this is no longer home. But it is so difficult for me to even think about it.
I say that I will when someone else acts. But it should be me. I have outstayed my welcome and really need to move on.
But …
dies irae
If I wanted a funeral, which I do not, this would have to be part of it. The words and the music!!!!
comformist
No post – sorry. I have not spoken with anyone since the beginning of the year. So, maybe that helps?
I am reading. Lots of different books. I am trying for a book a week – non-theological and non-philosophical. I would like to read more literature. The first one is Never Let Me Go. A little slow at the start but gets a lot better. It has been banned in some states in the US.
Yesterday was a Desert Christian day. The following intrigues me:
We live in a society that is at once deeply individualist and deeply conformist; the desert fathers and mothers manage to be neither, and they suggest to us that the church’s calling likewise is to avoid both these pitfalls.
Williams, Rowan. Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert
The analysis is good. Yes, conformity is the only virtue. Perhaps it goes a little deeper:
Conformity is the tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, or behaviors in ways that are consistent with group norms. Norms are implicit, specific rules shared by a group of individuals on how they should behave. People may be susceptible to conform to group norms because they want to gain acceptance from their group.
Conformity
The modern tendency is to think, “If we can measure it, we can build it”. Perhaps Kierkegaard’s leveling?
Anyway, back to solitude and silence.
Day 0 – questions
With God’s help, I plan to spend January alone. I am praying for a retreat at home.
Sometimes, writing down the question you bring to a retreat is a good idea. So: do I have a vocation to the solitary life? At the moment, I feel like I am using it as an excuse and escape from me. The end of the year was extremely difficult. And I have simply stepped back into old habits and thought patterns. So, to expand the question, do I have a vocation, or am I just running away from me?
I have become more aware of the differences between my view of Christianity and the community/parish. And that has really hurt. I would like to offer the hurt to Jesus as a form of mortification – hand it over to him. But, apart from the spiritual impact, there are impacts on my life-arrangement. In that context, do I have the resolution to start again?
And, to be honest, I feel like it is all me. I am again in a position where I feel I am the problem. In the end, there is no escaping me. Am I, as a person, suited to this life?
So, 31 days of January to work it all out!
institutionalism
What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
Luke 15:4
God leaves the institution to find the individual. Do I escape into the institution to ignore the individual? What happens when people do not fit into my “box”?
What do the “99” think of the “1”?
sometimes …
… it is just that obvious!!!!
