You know, of all the Christian holidays, Palm Sunday strikes me as being a bit weird. I mean, yes, I know it’s the start of Holy Week, and the beginning of the end of Jesus’ pre-death ministry, but I don’t quite get why churches celebrate it with such enthusiasm. Yes, Jesus was riding into Jerusalem in a happy impromptu processional, with people cheering him on and calling him “Savior”, but we kinda also know that five days later, a good chunk of that same fanclub were demanding his crucifixion. Not so much joyful as painfully ironic.
We get so caught up in the way things are now, the state that we live in and our circumstances. Sometimes it’s so wonderful that we don’t want a thing to change, and sometimes it’s so difficult that we despair of relief. And sometimes it’s a rut, and when we are in it, we can’t imagine anything big enough or bold enough to change it. We are convinced that whatever state we’re in is going to last, barring catastrophe. Continue reading Bloom »
So I’m thinking today about emotions, and about conformity.
Which has probably been addressed in other, more philosophical ways, but I’m going to write this one down anyway. ‘Cause for a society that says that it’s okay to feel what you feel, and that we should be emotionally honest, and that we should express our emotions, we seem to be really, really bad at it. Continue reading But how do you feel? »
If you believe that God is Love, how can you believe that there is a hell?
Ah yes. Time for the essay in which I dig around through infuriating topics. Last week I posited that God is Love, and that he loves everyone, regardless of who they are and what they’ve done. Which sounds all well and good when you put it in terms like that; we nod along and say, “Yeah, of course.” Until you start elaborating, and saying things like “God loves Republicans/Democrats” or “God loves pedophiles” or “God loves Nazis.” We jump in, going, “Whoa, there, wait a minute…” Continue reading Have it your way »
I’ve written my weekly philosophical essay. And it is offensive. I know this because I got offended while writing it. So I apologize to anyone who is upset by what I’ve written. I am deeply sorry if this week’s essay digs up terrible memories and pain.
However, I have gone over and gone over what I wrote, and I can’t find anything in it that’s wrong. I can’t any way in which it disagrees with what I believe to be true. And that’s the thing. Truth can be offensive. Not because there’s anything wrong with truth, but because there is a lot wrong with our world.
And from the most inoffensive of premises, too, apparently.
I’ve been mulling for the past week something that Elisabeth Elliot says in Passion and Purity, about how we need to lay down everything that is ours in surrender to God. Everything. A lot of people talk about laying things down and surrendering them, but most of the time we think of it as laying down the bad things. That the surrendering is all about giving up what’s wrong or sinful or dangerous or prideful or a mix of all of the above. But that isn’t right. That’s not what’s asked of us.
I am thinking right now about how there are things that we can’t know.
This is not something I like. I prefer to know things. People have observed this about me, probably because it gets on their nerves. I like to find things out. We’ll be watching something on TV and somebody’ll look familiar and I’ll say, “Where do we know him/her from?” and then I’ll be all over imdb.com trying to find them, and whether we’ve seen anything else in their filmography. Which gets a little embarrassing when I get interested in a particular actor. Combine “wanting to know things” with “extremely good memory”, and suddenly I’m pulling the most bizarre trivia out of nowhere and it starts to sound a little creepy. “I’m not a stalker, honest! I just… know things…”
Last summer as I readThe Weight of Glory, which is a collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, there was one that made a point which is obvious in retrospect, but had me reeling at the time. The essay’s called “On Forgiveness.” The heart of it is this: for there to be forgiveness, there must first be sin. That is to say, if you do something to offend someone, but you have an excuse, the other person doesn’t need to forgive you. There’s nothing to forgive. You weren’t doing anything wrong. You were excused. Continue reading Inexcusable »
There’s been a lot of talk floating around about the advent of the quarter-life crisis and how “what I want to do when I grow up” is becoming a question people ask in their twenties. I’ve thought about it for awhile now – it actually came up in relation to singleness and relationships, the idea of treading water and wondering what I’m supposed to be doing with myself. We’ve got to this point of wondering, “okay, when’s life supposed to begin?” Continue reading Most Important »
I could never survive in the Pacific Northwest. We had nothing but gray skies and fog all week, and it was driving me insane. And then this morning, be it only for a few hours, the sky cleared and the sun rose and I stood in my living room with the blinds wide open and just soaked it in. It was the most wonderful thing.
But the gray, it was so gray! Not even the bright gray that is nearer white, but the heavy dark gray that dulls everything beneath it, with fog no less. So distance was gone and the sky was gone and all the snow was melting into sandy gray hills and it was slushy and muddy and dirty and oh so very gray. Only when the sun came out was it transformed, and even the dirty snow sparkled, and the wet streets shone and the colors of the world were bright and clear at last. Continue reading Fade to Gray »