The short passage of Scripture below this essay is from the prophet called "Second Isaiah." The book of Isaiah was written at two, perhaps three, different periods of Israelite history. Second Isaiah wrote during one of the very worst times in the history of Israel.
He wrote from Babylon, while in exile. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The nation had been dragged on its knees into captivity, Isaiah but one of thousands who endured the humiliating march to Babylon in chains.
The text above is the second of four poems, called "Servant Songs," written by this prophet. In the midst of total despair this prophet cries forth a new song; a song not about rebellion or a call for restoration of kingly glory. Rather it is a song of deliverance by the hand of God through the work of a Suffering Servant.
Given the broken nation, the humiliating despair, the depressing knowledge of being captive in a strange land it came as a plea for hope. Almost no one would listen to him, let alone act upon what he had to say. His message was laughable. Yet, in time, what he prophesied came true.
This short message is both strange and beautiful. And it begins in absolute audacity, for he addresses not just his fellow exiles, but the entire world: "Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!"
And then he lays out his credentials, certainly useless in the present circumstances. But lay them out he does. He tells of his call, his vocation. God called him when he was in his mother's womb, before he was born. God even gave him his name; gave him his identity. But for decades God did not tell him what he must do.
God did give him his only weapon: his voice, his tongue - sharp, like a "sword;" made him like a "polished arrow." And God protected him, hid him "in the shadow of his hand...." God did this until the appropriate time, until now. Now, in full adulthood, God told him what he must do. God gave Isaiah his commission.
He must have often wondered to what task he was called. He must have tried many tasks; tried to discern the nature of his call; tried to figure out what exactly he was to do with this life which God had long ago claimed.
God said to this exiled prophet, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Think about that. God tells Isaiah that he is "Israel." He is the servant who will speak to and for all of the people of the nation. Does this not strike us as ridiculous? This single, exiled, prophet, this nothing will be the vehicle through whom God will be glorified. It is crazy on the face of it.
So it should be of no surprise to us that the prophet tells us that he replied to God not in happy gratitude that at last he knew what his commission was to be, but that he, Isaiah, was unequal to the task. God, it seems, had the wrong man after all.
Isaiah tells us why he felt that way. "But I said, 'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.'"
Surely we can identify with that. God had called the prophet from before his birth; and yet, until now, had given him no commission. God had given him nothing with which to oppose the tyranny of the Babylonian oppression but words. Yes, he had a silver tongue, but it up to now it had done him no good in his counsel to the leaders of the nation.
Up to now his tongue had, by his own admission, been used to assuage his own vanity, his pride; to improve his position among the powerful, and to gain for himself stature and admiration by those below him in position and in power.
And so Isaiah was ashamed. And he felt deep in his gut that he was unworthy of the commission. He felt that he was worthless. And if he accepted this commission he believed that he would only let God down, even as he felt that he had done up to now.
This I can identify with. This I think that many of us can identify with. In my case it feels like deja vu when I read this passage. I have "been there, done that." I have often felt exactly that way.
There was not a time from the age of 15 that I did not know that God had called me to be his servant. He called me then, and again at age 18, and at 23, and again at 38. Yet I did not heed the call. Rather, I ran. I ran from the call.
I was gifted with words. And I used them well, often to my own advantage, and often to feed my vanity. At the time I told myself I was doing it for others, as a public servant. I was not then even aware that I was vain, proud, and selfish. After all, if I worked 70 hours a week for the public it only made sense that I would be given increasing responsibility and increasing exposure to, with praise from, the bigger players in the public policy field. It only seemed right.
By any worldly standard I was a success. I spent seven years in the Executive Office of the President, rising quickly through the ranks. I headed the Federal energy and minerals program at the age of 29; was Deputy Director of the Ford Foundation's signature Energy Policy Project, and was the Director of two divisions within the General Accounting Office, rising to the highest rank possible in the Civil Service by age 35. I was Vice President of a Fortune 500 company; and CEO of a division of that company before the age of 40.
And I woke up one morning and thought, as Isaiah did, that it had all been for vanity. And that I had failed. I felt that I had failed myself, but most of all, that I had failed God.
How about you? This text doesn't just relate to me. This text is not only about prophets and people who at the age of 50 head off to seminary like I did. It is about anyone who reaches out beyond the possibility of doing something just for themselves and doing it as a way to answer a call to service.
It is about all those who have tried to make a difference and yet felt that, in the end, it has all been in vain, who question their motives and their need for approval.
People like these:
--- If you have ever tried to teach a class so well that you were sure that the kids would get the point, and that the parents would be proud of the children's, and your, efforts, and yet the children were indifferent and the parents seemed not to care.
--- If you have ever tried to reach out with help and with your presence at a time of deep crisis in someone's life and they neither seemed to understand nor appreciate what you were doing, and your assistance seemed so futile.
--- If you have ever been enthused about a project or an idea that you just knew would be well received by your bosses, and yet when you presented it you were told that it was considered not worth the effort, or that the company just did not have the time to spend on it, nor the interest in it to make it happen.
--- If you have ever tried to live your working life by the rules, being fair and living up to high moral standards, only to watch others who lie and cheat and dissemble, and who cozy up to the boss, get the promotions and the bonuses.
--- If you have ever tried to raise your children by the virtues of personal integrity and honesty, only to have them ignore your wisdom and turn to their peers for their support and approval, unable to find even the smallest redeeming value in your years of loving care as they grew up.
--- If any of those and countless other seeming failures resonate with you --- then you, with the prophet, have at sometime cried out, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity."
No. This text is not just for prophets and pastors. It is for anyone who has tried to do something noble and good only to feel that the effort has been wasted. It is for anyone who ever has felt that something that they tried would have succeeded if only they had not been so vain, so self righteous, so pridefilled, that they must be the source of the problem.
And the odd thing is that it matters not whether our self-incriminating analysis is true. Likely there is some truth that cuts both ways. Yes, we tried to help others, to serve. And, yes, we were often proud of what we were trying to do, and maybe even just a bit too needful of praise, hoping that someone would recognize that we were making a difference and care enough to say so.
The problem is that God will not listen long to our lamentations about our failures, failures of either character or content. God will not judge us by the standards by which we judge ourselves. And God will surely ignore the standards of success that society assures us are the measure of our real worth.
When God does that, takes us as we are and offers us a new chance, a future that we can move into, without condemnation for past actions or words or mistakes, we will find that grace hard to believe. And we will find that grace hard to accept because we believe that such grace cannot possibly apply to us.
We do this because we too are judging ourselves by the same immediate results that society says we must seek. We too want results. And we want them right now. The sooner the better.
But usually results don't come instantly.
A teacher may never see the results of her efforts with a group of children. That is unless, if she lives that long, one may drop by to see her after a 20th anniversary reunion and say, "I just wanted to thank you, Miss Jones, for helping open my eyes to a whole new world when I was in your class my senior year."
And your constant care in the last months of your dying friend may never yield visible results, unless, if you are lucky and the friend's child is sensitive, he may write to you, perhaps a year later, "Millie, I just think that you should know that Mom told me how important your constant companionship was to her when you were there for her all those times in the months before she died."
Pastors, teachers, spouses, parents, friends, workers, care givers and managers had better be in love with something far more significant than immediate, visible results.
The call, the vocation, the ministry, of care and outreach to others has such lofty goals, the work of God in the sweep of human history is so mysterious and veiled, and the plans of God for us and for this world are so grand, that all we really know is that the harvest of many of the most important seeds we sow cannot occur until years, perhaps even generations, after we have so carefully sown those seeds.
Beyond that we must have faith; faith in God and faith in our efforts to care and to give of ourselves to others.
And so we must hold fast, and say with Isaiah. who said immediately after his lament, "yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God."
And in the marvelous, mysterious wisdom of God we will find that all of our judgments of ourselves, and of others; judgments of performance and results, of winners and losers, are but a human miscalculation of what God values most.
We value and judge by "success." But God judges by "faithfulness."
Isaiah quickly learned this truth, for he immediately says that God has cut through all the hesitation, ignored the supposed "failures" of the past and told Isaiah "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
This commission is mind boggling. It reverses every value that Isaiah had assumed was God's measure of Isaiah's worth. In an instant, in a few very directed words, God shows how little he cares about Isaiah's past failures, real and imagined. For here God treats Isaiah as a man of incomparable worth -- and shows it by giving him an even greater commission.
And so it is with us, my friends. With all our judging of ourselves, with our second guessing, with our listening to the praise and the insults of friends and managers, parents and children, God is prepared to look into a future without so much as a murmur about what we did or did not do in the past.
Only God can decide the success or failure of the things we do when we seek to live a life of love and service to others. It does no good to try to usurp God's authority in this matter. God alone will judge.
God calls us to faithful service, not to culturally defined success. So, if we would live our lives in answer to the call to reach out to others, then we must often be satisfied with knowing that we have made a faithful effort in the vineyards.
In this lifetime we may never know for sure just how "successful" we have been. But the Scriptures tell us, unequivocally, that God's definition of success has little to do with worldly rewards and everything to do with loving kindness.
We each must decide which kind of "success" we seek and whether or not our own self critical eyes will lead us away from or toward the faithful service that God counts as success.
Addendum:
Isaiah 49:1 Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me.
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.
3 And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."
4 But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God."
5 And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength--
6 he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
1435 page views as of 11 15 2009
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Rutilus Extraho
Molly Lilly
Mary Wollstonecraft
JLee Davis
AzureSky
Deargdruchtach
Salon.com
Comments
Bookmarked and Rated!
Rated.
Somewhere John Hus is nodding Yes.
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
--John Milton, "On His Blindness."
(Milton began losing his sight in his thirties and was forced by that to retire from being a mover and shaker in the British government. He dictated the most famous, and arguably, the best, English-language epic poem, "Paradise Lost," to his daughters when he was 55 and had been completely blind for years.)
I needed to hear this today. Try everyday. I take things personally and I should really stop.
denese
The other person your post makes spring to my mind is Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English priest who throughout his entire adult life suffered from what would now be called severe clinical depression. He also wrote poetry, very little of which was published in his lifetime, and which he considered of little consequence.
He never realized that he was approaching religion, madness, and the intersection of sound and meaning in language in a way that had never been done before in English language poetry and which would not be done again for almost a century, that despite his modest output he'd go on to be considered one of the most important poets of the Victorian era, and that thousands of people with mental illness would later be comforted not by his platitudes but by the literal compassion (from the Latin for "suffering with") on display in his "Terrible Sonnets":
NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief 5
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap 10
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
Monte
6 he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
"I am a failure" Despite it being one of your Guy's most famous sayings I am wary of sentences that begin with "I am" (maybe it worked for God because he was wise enough to shut up at that point and stop at just I am). As this bit of your scripture shows the effort is rarely a singular one- god has become my strength- nor is it for personal gain- It is to light a thing-
It is rarely personal strength that drives the altruist but the weight of the need that slingshots us like gravity pulling a rocket past a planet and deeper into space.
Rosa Parks didn't refuse to go to the back of the bus because her legs were tired that day. Or because she didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of being a second class citizen. She planted herself up front because black legs were tired everywhere, everyday of bearing the burden of racism and because she didn't want black people anywhere to suffer being second class citizens any longer. On a personal level it would have been much easier to put her head down and shuffle once again to the back of the bus. The enormity of the need drove her on.
That probably sounds convoluted.....
I'm relying on God's judgement ultimately because I believe that he will see my successes and failures in a more balanced light....with a passionate and perfect love that will not condemn me for being human.
One of my philosophies in life is that I'm doing my best to do as much good in this world as I can....to make up for any wrong that I've done. I'm just hoping that the good outweighs the bad in my life. I'm also trusting what is in the Bible when it says (and I can not quote like others can) "...when I am weak, I am made strong."
Thank you, Monte!
We were always very, very close. I love her so much that when she was born, I thought that God had made a mistake. I just couldn't believe that such a perfect and beautiful little baby was mine - I didn't even feel worthy. This has been the theme throughout her childhood (minus the "worthy" part). We have enjoyed a special heart connection, and have been very very close, until she turned 14.
Last Thursday, I took the kids on a lovely vacation, which I paid for out of my savings. It was only 3 days, but during that time I made sure that each child enjoyed their own "dream vacation" - in short, they could have or do what ever they wanted (within reason) and I would sit back and oblige.
2 days ago, my 15 year old was using my computer. I asked to use it for a sec, so she minimized her MSN conversations and handed it over.
I did something I've never done before - I looked at her private messages.
What I read left me shaking and sick. The girl has been living quite a duplicitous life, and using me as a sucker in the meantime.
She'd even written that she was in a terrible mood because I'd been bitching at her all day. You know what I'd done for her that day? I picked her up from her friend's house, took her to the movie of her choice, bought her lunch, sat with her for half of the movie (I had to come home because I had too much work to do to just sit in a movie theater), I came home, did my work, went back to the theater to pick her up and drive her home and then I let her use my computer. We were having a great afternoon. But she tells her friends that I'm bitching. All day.
And that's just the start of what I read.
My daughter has been lying to me for.... I don't even know how long. And I would have never known. I'd have continued to play the putz, hand over the holidays, the cash, whatever, on her beck and call, had I not read what I'd read.
My daughter, upon realizing that I'd invaded her privacy, ran away.
She's been gone for 2 days but is calling home. I'm pretty sure she's told her friend's mom that I "kicked her out", something she likes to claim here and there. Something I would NEVER ever be able to do and I just loathe those parents who don't call me about it.
I can't talk to the friend's Mom because this woman doesn't seem to exist. She's never available when I call.
My daughter likes to hang out with troubled kids, it makes her feel superior. Plus, she's drawn to the seedier side of life, which also scares me.
She's trying to scare the crap out of me and teach me a lesson. For my part, I'm still numb from what I read and totally at a loss for what I can or should do about it.
I will hold fast to my truth. I know that I was wrong to read her MSN, and I will apologize for it - but at the same time, I never would have known how troubled and in crisis my own daughter is, unless I'd read it.
Parenting. The most thankless job on the planet
Bruce: I too seldom see instant results. I know how strong your calling is and questioning the Creator is something I am intimately familiar with. Hold fast to that call.
Zuma: Me too!!
Walter, thank you. Always appreciate your reading and input. Blessings.
Fab: I much appreciate your kind comments. It is very easy for us to be too hard on ourselves, always questioning, which is natural. But God moves us in the right direction even when we cannot see it at the time. Reassurance is what we all want, but sometimes it does not come quickly. Indeed, you are right. That is where faith comes in.
Faith: you have a good eye. Usually the Servant Songs are discussed as a prediction of the coming of Christ. Perhaps that is the case, but there is no evidence for it. I love the metaphorical beauty of that idea, but when we only look at the Songs that way we miss many other messages that they have for us. Glad that the post spoke to you.
Mission: I am sorry that you feel that way about yourself. I do not believe it. I think that you have brought joy to many here, have shown how to bear up to pain and adversity with courage and perserverence. I am a better person having known you and having you as a friend.
Thanks, Roger. Kind words from one I greatly respect. I think Hus would indeed agree with much of what I wrote.
Leeandra: Thank you for both quotes from two wonderful poets. They are profoundly beautiful and speak so well to the issues of faith, our seeking for God and how thin the line between praise and lamentation.
Hi, denese: I know something of beating ones self up. It is hard to stop doing it. But if we must see ourselves as the problem we at least owe it to ourselves to see that it is possible for us to also be the solution. You take things personally because you have a good heart and you judge yourself too harshly. Let God be the judge. Your job is to reach out to others in loving kindness. Equanimity is good if that balance can be achieved. Few do, however. Passions get in the way. Thanks for commenting.
Thanks, Steve. We each do, as you yourself do, what we can to offset the worldly values with eternal ones. I always am glad when I know you have read and appreciated these posts.
Well, Pilgrim, that is an image that is realistic enough! ;-) These days that saying is made politically correct by quoting it "a bucket of warm spit." Either way, I get your point.
Thanks, Chuck. Good insight in that dialogue with your friend. I was glad when I saw your "coming out" post. Much appreciate that, and of course, your friendship.
Thanks, Cathy. Your constant willingness to read and support my writing always warms my heart.
.Tijo: this of your comment is particularly insightful for me "It is rarely personal strength that drives the altruist but the weight of the need that slingshots us like gravity pulling a rocket past a planet and deeper into space". Thank you. And God bless all those who can see the "weight of the need," for those are few who are willing to work in that vineyard.
Hi, Owl: your comments are much appreciated. Good to see you commenting and I hope things at home are going well now.
Traveller: Harmony is a wonderful way to speak of this issue, particularly since there are very few, if any, who are either wholly successful or wholly failures. And we are all often both at different points in our lives. For me, when we are faithful to our call to be of service to others is when I see the most harmony in our souls.
Patricia, what you are trying to do with your life moves you far along the right path. But try to not be too hard on yourself. I would worry far less about making up for any wrong that you have done, which we who have good hearts often think is worse than it usually is, and more about doing acts of loving kindness because that is the right thing to do. In other words, doing them not out of any sense of guilt but out of a recognition of the need. Guilt can be a powerful motivator and there are times when we should feel guilty. Ironically, though, it is often the really good people who feel excess guilt, and the bad who have no idea of what guilt is. It never crosses their minds.
Karen: I am so sorry about the problem with your beloved daughter. Yes, do stick to your values and the values that you have tried to instill in your daughter. In time she will see them for the good they represent. This is just my opinion but I do not think that 15 year olds have the right to total privacy when they are still under your care. Of course you should respect their privacy as much as possible. But if you suspected she were doing drugs, or getting involved in gangs or any of a dozen other issues, who would say that you are a good mother if you did not try to get to the bottom of it. She may not know it, actually I am sure she does not, but she is still a child; your child and you are both morally and legally responsible for her.
If you would like to have someone to talk to about this further, you know you can PM me.
Good to see you here again, Robin. It is surprisingly hard to accept God's love, isn't it? I have thought about that and have no good answers. For me part of it is thinking that, since I don't always love me very much how could God love me more?
I have just been rewarded for building a moderately healthy congregation by being called to a smaller, struggling church. I suspect I will be helping the church die and the congregation move on to other callings and affiliations. I went a couple weeks ago to "candidate," and I preached to three people (although not really; we sat in a circle and studied and prayed). They asked for a sermon on loaves and fishes, and I couldn't escape the "YOU give them something to eat" aspect of those passages. The denominational rationale is that I can say no, but if I go it will be much easier to attract another pastor to the healthy church than to the dying one. All of that is true, but gosh darn it! I am not young! I want to rest on some laurels!
At the same time, I have found that having a true vocation does mitigate the need to be recognized and rewarded. I am so fortunate to believe, absolutely, that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. How well I'm doing it is a different story, but I know where the temptation to give up originates.
Thank you, WWings, what a nice thing to say. I do hope you continue to read my posts.
Such a wonderful prayer, JR: "God please use me anyway." God bless you for that kind of faith and commitment. I have been always blessed by the stories of the Bible where God chooses to use those with doubts, those of no social standing, the least likely and the most improbable for his tasks. I have often thanked him for being willing to use cracked and broken vessels to carry his life giving water because were he to focus on perfection I would never have had the slightest chance to serve him.
Monte
I am not a complete failure. Not yet anyway.
I do fail often, and dust off my rear and move on.
I hope I have made some sense here.
God bless you.
Monte
"With all our judging of ourselves, with our second guessing, with our listening to the praise and the insults of friends and managers, parents and children, God is prepared to look into a future without so much as a murmur about what we did or did not do in the past. "
Comforting words, Monte - I don't think it is a coincidence that your pieces always appear at the right time for your readers.
Monte, you always provide such a nourishing meal for the mind. I've read this post twice now, and my own thought is that in the sense that I still have no idea what G-d wants of me so in that sense I've failed, but on the other hand I am here, trying to share my gifts, so in that sense I'm still working on it.
I almost always read all the comments along with the post, and I can't help but throw in my two cents regarding Robin's comment and your reply. IMHO, it is so hard to accept G-d's love because it is unconditional and we are not programmed to accept that. I guess we've become too cynical a species.
Bill, you are never late to God's party, or to any post of mine. I do not find it at all unusual that you have not discerned exactly what God is calling you to. He may well be calling you to do what you are doing now.
I do not consider that failure. I caution against labeling it as failure. We sometimes FEEL like that is a failure, and it is that feeling that we allow that makes it hard to be free to enjoy what we are doing, or to explore what else we might do in the service of others. In other words it is WE who are restricting our vision of the possible, not God. When all else fails and I feel that way, which can be frequently, I go with my heart, my intuition, call it what you will. I do that because I am convinced that I cannot think my way out of the box I have painted myself into.
I like your insight that we are not programed to accept God's unconditional love. I am not sure what it would take to get us to accept it. I try and never quite fully get there. I am convinced that if I loved myself more and were far less self critical than I am then I could get closer to believe that God, or any person for that matter, could love me unconditionally. Some of it comes from the fear of being hurt, or disappointed. I guess I think we are afraid of being that vulnerable. Some combination of the above. But I am just guessing, because I have yet to come up with a single, simple answer to it. Perhaps your description "we are not programmed to accept that" could be the ultimate answer.
Thanks to both of you for helpful comments.
Monte
I've given it a bit more thought, and I had a sudden idea that may or may not have merit. I wonder if our "sentient-ness" gets in the way of our acceptance. If G-d gave us the ability to reason and to perceive the world around us, I wonder if the price of that knowledge is our inability to stop reasoning, to simply accept some things as they are.
Not sure I am actually being clear and rational there. I hope you know what I mean. Not being a very religion-oriented person, I can't think of a better way to put it.
Something to chew over a little longer.
Hi, John: I welcome reasonable and civil discussion but will not allow angry, off topic diatribes or other demeaning comments. I want my posts on faith to be a sanctuary for believers. Non believers are of course welcome to comment if they are respectful of those of faith. That has perhaps irritated some of the more rabid haters but I have no time for that kind of trash talking.
Bill: I think you are very close to understanding something importans with this latest idea of yours. Actually, the story of the Garden of Eden is kind of a metaphor for what you are saying. In that story the issue of eating the fruit of the forbidden tree was that in so doing humanity became in some way "like God" able to distinguish good and evil. From there it would be a short step to eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life and they would live forever without any obligation to honor God or anyone else. So God banished them from the Garden.
In other words, the woman and the man became able to think morally, which was not at issue until then. But having done that the price that was placed on humanity was to make those distinctions between good and evil. It was, metaphorically speaking, the origin of "free will." Or, as you put it, "....the price of that knowledge is our inability to stop reasoning, to simply accept some things as they are."
You might not be "very religious" but your thought processes are pretty good with metaphysics. '-)
Monte
Here's another little drop of water for your pool of thought. Part of the problem is we have this overwhelming need to rationalize love. We have to find why we are "worthy" of love. In my opinion, it stems from our need to be acknowledged and accepted. Love, though - especially unconditional love - isn't rational. It isn't something that can be reasoned or bottled.
So (and mind you, this is all supposition on my part, parlor psychology if you will) accepting love from others is easy because it appears conditional, someone loves us because of this or that. It's never simply just "someone loves us".
When we are infants, we feel that parental unconditional love and it helps ease our transition into life. We sense it even though we don't understand it, cannot comprehend what "love" is. It simply is. When we grow older, as with all things that childhood innocence envelops, we lose that ability to just feel it without trying to comprehend it.
So am I still making sense? :-D
I had not put that piece into the puzzle but it does fit nicely. There are a lot of pieces missing in that puzzle still, but we really do believe that someone loves us "for some reason", and not just because we are.
In my own case the issue about love always boils down to the question of trust. I wonder if I can "trust" someone's statement that they love me. I can come to believe that they do if there is evidence over the years that shows consistent love for me.
But there is always that nagging doubt that maybe that love will be pulled away in the future. I know it comes from my own experiences of a hard childhood and how my mother treated me worse and worse as I grew older. Trust issues and the vulnerability that comes with reciprocating love to the one who claims to love me are two big pieces of my own puzzle.
But I think that, as a generalization, ultimately it comes down to not being able to believe that anyone can truly love us, even God. That is where the hang up is. At least that is where I think it is. I could change my mind. We are a complex lot, we humans, and there can be multiple "reasons" why we do what we do and feel what we feel. But, did you notice?, "reasons," are the way we think, yet love is something that "isn't rational" as you said.
Monte
I have often railed against societal definitions of success and have found true success in the very service you describe. Success lies in the widow with two mites, the broken soul who reaches through his hurt to assuage a fellow sufferer, the last and the least who carry the weight of the first on their arthritic shoulders.
Whenever Michael and I notice these ordinary heroes, we quote the character Julian’s line from Accidental Tourist: “I’ll take the turkey.” When the other characters admonish that Rose’s Thanksgiving turkey “may have been cooked at a slightly inadequate temperature” and whisper that it’s “pure poison,” Julian quietly, lovingly states, “I’ll take the turkey,” while gently dishing the turkey onto his plate.
—Melissa
Monte
by the Standards
by which
we judge ourselves...."
Time has accumulated many standards, eh?
Cronkite, Don Hewit dead....
I would like to be time-transported to 1970 maybe...
Jacob's Ladder was pretty clearly seen:
men of the world arguing, laughing, of course drinking...
of course smoking...
Old School...
New School then?
Hippie-dom....a Smell:
clothes and bodies unwashed...
WAR!!!!!!
Well, we lost the oppportunity
to gather the tribes together back then...
that is the current lamentation to the Father:
oh, what an opportunity we had back then, blah,blah...
Well,there's a new Stage:
no hippies...well, some...
bipolars everywhere!!!!
soon:everyone will yearn to be bipolar.
Take t hat Profitcy
to the bank,
old bud...
James E, as "Man of the World"....
Hope things are well with you.
Monte
Monte
In many ways, I do consider myself a failure. I have not achieved the career success I wanted and often feel unfulfilled and frustrated by that. My vocation is gone, and I know I will never work at it as a professional again. I am not financially secure on my own, and for someone who is as independent as I am, that is very frightening. I am unhappy about growing older and losing my looks with all this in mind. Yes, I am vain and I worry about money, but I also feel that so much of my life has been wasted because of the damaging effects of my childhood. Sometimes it seems that I've spent my entire life climbing out of that pit.
I know that I am blessed to have a kind husband, that I'll always have a roof over my head, and that now I have close, and relatively healthy relationships with my small family. But not living up to my own expectations and ideals has embittered me. I haven't been able to forge a new path for myself as yet despite a few false starts.
I guess I feel like a failure most because I lack the courage to just do what it is I want to do. The trouble is, I'm not sure what that is. The sands keep shifting. I'm not making much sense but then again -- that's all part of why I feel this way. Maybe I just need to sit down and start writing whatever comes into my head every day and see what evolves.
I have sent you a PM.
Fondly,
Monte
Monte
it strikes me at this time
I have now lost all of my parent's generation relatives, and people my age are starting to die
if I am going to accomplish more, I feel an urgency to do it now
forget the problems of the past and move on in faith
Monte
Thanks again!
Monte