Saturday, December 26, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
I Guess I knew It In Nursery School
It occurs to me how naive I am in over-estimating my own intelligence, intellectual depth and/or mental health. I remember from nursery school days the little tune with the words:
Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream
From the earliest days, I've had this sense of illusion thrust at me. Sometimes this whole Life thing seems so impossible to me that it almost takes an act of faith to believe that there even is an external world beyond my imagining it. Of course, this act of faith is buttressed by the taste of chocolate, the twinges of neck pain that I constantly feel, the warmth from my cats as a nestle in their soft fur, and the warm sense of connection at those times when Matt's eyes meet mine in that oh-so-special way. All these may indeed be the products of my imagination or of some external source playing out this adventure in my mind. However it is, I call such things "Other" and, in so doing, am not alone in the world.
But again, the terrifying thought. If this is the playing out of God's imagination and if All this is, is God, then knowing the truth, really knowing it, would be to acknowledge an Aloneness that seems unbearable to me. I keep coming back to the same points, like a cat chasing multiple tails, all her own. If God is, how lonely, how without peer, God would be. At one level, I certainly don't imput to God, human emotions. On the other, it would seem to me that a God who would feel joy would be a God who wasn't aware of God's own singularity, an ignorant God if you will. Is our (or my) inability to really understand the nature of our (or my) existence a protection of sorts against a sense of utter futility. As long as we (or I) stay locked in our separate egos, we have peers. We can also get a sense of fulfillment when we feel at one with that which we define as God. It would be devastating to be the One and Only God. Except for this: If such an entity became alive Itself through its act of creation. If God is, does God know God's own nature as separate from (or a part of) God's creation. I want to know these things that I am not equipped to understand. Yet I don't want to know these things because the answers might emotionally devastate me. And yet I keep pondering all of this because it is my nature to do so.
Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream
From the earliest days, I've had this sense of illusion thrust at me. Sometimes this whole Life thing seems so impossible to me that it almost takes an act of faith to believe that there even is an external world beyond my imagining it. Of course, this act of faith is buttressed by the taste of chocolate, the twinges of neck pain that I constantly feel, the warmth from my cats as a nestle in their soft fur, and the warm sense of connection at those times when Matt's eyes meet mine in that oh-so-special way. All these may indeed be the products of my imagination or of some external source playing out this adventure in my mind. However it is, I call such things "Other" and, in so doing, am not alone in the world.
But again, the terrifying thought. If this is the playing out of God's imagination and if All this is, is God, then knowing the truth, really knowing it, would be to acknowledge an Aloneness that seems unbearable to me. I keep coming back to the same points, like a cat chasing multiple tails, all her own. If God is, how lonely, how without peer, God would be. At one level, I certainly don't imput to God, human emotions. On the other, it would seem to me that a God who would feel joy would be a God who wasn't aware of God's own singularity, an ignorant God if you will. Is our (or my) inability to really understand the nature of our (or my) existence a protection of sorts against a sense of utter futility. As long as we (or I) stay locked in our separate egos, we have peers. We can also get a sense of fulfillment when we feel at one with that which we define as God. It would be devastating to be the One and Only God. Except for this: If such an entity became alive Itself through its act of creation. If God is, does God know God's own nature as separate from (or a part of) God's creation. I want to know these things that I am not equipped to understand. Yet I don't want to know these things because the answers might emotionally devastate me. And yet I keep pondering all of this because it is my nature to do so.
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