If you have not read Kierkegaard’s parable about the geese, here is a really good version.
Category: Personal
distance and love
Distance! In a physical sense. Love in a spiritual.
I have no neighbours at the moment. One side is the church, and the other is a car park. There is lots of space!
But how am I a good neighbour to those in my life? I make choices that benefit them (or perhaps for their good). And I do that without asking or looking for anything in return. The starting point is not “the good” (an ideal I created) but the good in the other. I have a duty to love, and that duty is to the person, not to an idea. I try to live that with the people in my life. It is not easy and, at the moment, almost impossible.
moving forward
Daily writing prompt
What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
I have reflected on the ” risk ” question in the last week or so. I feel stuck at the moment. Knowing where to go from here is easy; actually, doing it is different. The risk is in the doing, and, to be honest, I am not in an emotional state to take risks.
So I am stuck, down on myself, irritable, and argumentative (it is better to stay in solitude). I am struggling with prayer. All my hope is in the medication I am on, but that has not worked as well as at other times. I am having really strange vivid dreams.
The biggest risk is doing the thing that will unstuck me. But there are no magical solutions and maybe I am simply the problem.
no risk?
Daily writing prompt
What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.
Where is the satisfaction if there is no risk (“guaranteed not to fail”)? And where is the motivation if there is no risk?
While there may be many things I would like to attempt, the risk is what makes them meaningful to me.
waiting
I am not sure if it is a “goal” or simply a way of living. The book of Psalms says, “Wait in hope for the Lord.” That is my goal – to wait. I desire closer communion with Jesus. Yet, there is nothing I can do to merit such a gift – absolutely nothing. So I wait in hope. In other words, “for God all things are possible.” I desire the possibility of God.
It seems paradoxical that I do nothing (in hope) to achieve the goal I desire. Maybe one day!
writers?
I have a whole collection of favourite writers. And they change. At the moment, I am happy with anything by or about Soren Kierkegaard. A love affair that has been going on for some time. I find new things in his writing. Rabbit-holes!
Who else? Nietzsche at the moment, but I have had a major crush on Kafka. Reading The Metamorphosis (Verwandlung) was a major event.
I like journals or diaries. Kierkegaard or Kafka are good examples. Thomas Merton’s 7-volume set is good but, to be honest, can be a little on the pompous side. There was a time when I swallowed Merton’s books whole.
I have been on a little existentialist journey in theology, especially with John Macquarie.
Did I forget anyone? Most certainly.
changing about changing
I have changed my mind about changing my mind. I was confident that it was a sign of weakness – a personal intellectual shortcoming. So, I was stuck in the mud of my own certainty. ‘Answers’? I have them all.
However, life changes. Yesterday’s certainties may no longer be so certain, and my view of the world may no longer be so neat. Changing your mind is a way of living outside of abstractions. Do not put people in boxes and then become angry when they do not act according to your abstration! Try to live outside of right and wrong, in or outside my boxes.
So, I really changed my mind about myself. I do not have the answers, and I need to allow people space to be themselves. And honour people’s choices even when they hurt me.
dentist!?
I have put off going to the dentist. It makes me anxious and very stressed. Yes, there is pain, but I remember the negativity from the dentists of my youth. I guess my doctor constantly reminds me I need to take my medication to stay balanced, which is sort of the same. But a numb face, an aching jaw, and someone telling you what you do wrong simply do not make a pleasant experience. I have found one that is not too bad. Hasn’t said anything about my “brushing habits” yet but has mentioned it as a future discussion. But, to be honest, I would do just about anything than go to a dentist.
Anyway…
let’s drink
SK on solitude
In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means; whereas in the constant sociality of our day we shrink from solitude to the point (what a capital epigram!) that no use for it is known other than as a punishment for criminals. But since it is a crime in our day to have spirit, it is indeed quite in order to classify such people, lovers of solitude, with criminals.
Sickness unto Death
It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the temporality of modern times that nowadays the only way people can think of using solitude is as a punishment, as prison. What a difference from the times when—regardless of how worldly temporality has always been—people nonetheless believed in the solitude of the monastery, when people thus revered solitude as the highest thing, as the category of eternity—and now people avoid it like a curse, so that it is only employed as a punishment for criminals. Alas, what a change.
Jounral Volume 6
