Why does it seem that in the midst of great difficulty and important papers, I always find the ability and impetus to write? Do I really need the extra pressure of an essay weighing down on my shoulders to get me going? I doubt it.
My theory is that every book on writing has been right all along, that to be better writers we need to write. It seems simple enough until you realize that there is cooking, cleaning, studying, and socializing to do. Then those few brilliant sentences you thought up on your chilly bike ride into town, the one which reddened your cheeks and reminded you why living is so damn important, slip away into some subconscious sea. We may idly hope that we can fish them out again, but most of them are "the one's that got away." Oh woe to my fellow fishing folk, for these ideas are lost forever.
I've been slapped in the face this week with realizations and wretched implications of my gender and the constant struggle and difficulty facing women. I've been caught up in the question of how I ought to interact with the fact that I do have privilege in my society and how I can only begin to imagine what it's like for it to be otherwise. What am I to do about this? What am I to do with a realization that women are quite often treated as second class citizens and, as a man, what do I do about it? In what ways do I propagate this inequality, both consciously and unconsciously? These and a whole host of other questions flicker and shout for attention.
Head is getting worse. I'll need to think about that soon. It's getting to the point where it's affecting my studies. I can't ignore it as much as I'd like to.
These things deserve greater attention than I have time to give them right now. Is it okay that I want to think about these things more than I do Plato's theories of justice? Or maybe that's the point?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Not So Far From Here: The Tree and God
"One day you wake up and believe that there is a tree there, so you walk around it. Then the next day you wake up and you believe that god is there. So you pray to him."
I live on the constant edge of almost-belief. I was told once that when you make a graph of an X squared curve, you end up with a line that shoot upward, moving infinitesimally closer to becoming 1, coming so close that at some point the difference is so unimportant that it does become 1. That move from something less than 1 to 1 itself is mysterious to me.
And so is a change in belief. For more than a year now, I've been chasing down the threads of the Trinity, trying with all my might and less to discover something real in these doctrines and traditions. I feel like that X squared curve, somehow gaining more understanding and belief that God was incarnate in Jesus, but never quite to the full belief in these somehow apparent truths.
But somehow, I'm in the midst of that mysterious change from belief in less than that, to all of that, the move from less than 1 to all of 1. I'm not quite confident in this change, but I'm anxious and nervous and apprehensive in all that this may mean.
I wonder if there is some hidden writing in some later, non-canonical Gospel, describing the meeting between Thomas and Jesus after the resurrection more explicitly. I wonder how Thomas would have explained that moment of realization, that movement from near certainty, to belief. I wonder also if that story says something about all of us, about those odd, in-between moments from our death to ourselves to the moments after resurrection, when we move from faith to belief, and we have become something else entirely.
And so, I've seen the tree and circled it round and round. I lie now beneath it's branches, watching the day's fading light trickle down through the cracks in the leaves. I'll sleep now, below the reaching limbs of this new discovery and perhaps when I wake, I will pray.
I live on the constant edge of almost-belief. I was told once that when you make a graph of an X squared curve, you end up with a line that shoot upward, moving infinitesimally closer to becoming 1, coming so close that at some point the difference is so unimportant that it does become 1. That move from something less than 1 to 1 itself is mysterious to me.
And so is a change in belief. For more than a year now, I've been chasing down the threads of the Trinity, trying with all my might and less to discover something real in these doctrines and traditions. I feel like that X squared curve, somehow gaining more understanding and belief that God was incarnate in Jesus, but never quite to the full belief in these somehow apparent truths.
But somehow, I'm in the midst of that mysterious change from belief in less than that, to all of that, the move from less than 1 to all of 1. I'm not quite confident in this change, but I'm anxious and nervous and apprehensive in all that this may mean.
I wonder if there is some hidden writing in some later, non-canonical Gospel, describing the meeting between Thomas and Jesus after the resurrection more explicitly. I wonder how Thomas would have explained that moment of realization, that movement from near certainty, to belief. I wonder also if that story says something about all of us, about those odd, in-between moments from our death to ourselves to the moments after resurrection, when we move from faith to belief, and we have become something else entirely.
And so, I've seen the tree and circled it round and round. I lie now beneath it's branches, watching the day's fading light trickle down through the cracks in the leaves. I'll sleep now, below the reaching limbs of this new discovery and perhaps when I wake, I will pray.
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