Two-in-One

Written in September 2008

#1
Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, if you don’t love yourself, you can’t love others. It seems selfish, but really it’s the opposite of selfish. In loving yourself, you realize that you have things to offer others through relationships, whether those things be personality traits, qualities, talents, gifts, interests, etc. Being in a relationship is never about “What can I gain from this relationship,” at least, it shouldn’t be. Relationships are exchanges between two different people that can offer one another different things that may not be present in their lives. If I am living an insecure existence, one where I am unsure of my gifts and talents and other unique qualities of mine, then I cannot function in a healthy relationship due to my inability to love. Loving ourselves, in the sense of appreciating what God has done through us and for us as people, is the only way we can learn to love others. If we are judgmental and insecure, we will carry that attitude through all of our relationships. I have experienced this. Everyone knows that the bully in elementary school only resorted to bullying because he or she was insecure in his or her identity or life. My inability to completely appreciate God’s handiwork in myself causes me to have the same judgments on others. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to God, who strived to make me who I am. He is still molding me, and I know that my perception of others will mold along with that. It has in many ways already changed in direct relation to me changing.
My ultimate mission in life is to love people as God loves, and I know that through sanctification, God can change me into someone who can barely come close to loving others as He loved me. I strive for it and pray that God will do that work in me, to love myself in the interest of others.



#2
When Paul and other early apostles spoke the Word, the Message of the Gospel, they spoke it with power. It was a revolution that spoke to people’s hearts, souls, inner-most beings. What have humans done to the Gospel to make it so much less powerful in these days? How can the Word of God have lost any power and authority over people’s lives? How can we have that power over the Word? I guess it’s more about the power we have over each other. But, why would any person believe another person over the Master of the Universe? Who would, in their right mind, put their faith in humans? That’s a terrible idea.

Perspective

Why fear?
My life is a speck, a particle nothing more.
Now is not the end.
We live on, rarely remembered.
This is not the end.
It is just beginning.
The love, His love, it never ends.

Response

I am on a search...
But who am I?
If only I could understand,
If only I could stop searching.
Am I steady, consistent, like the tides?
Or am I like the changing winds, feeling, shifting, raging, whispering?
The answer seems simple, I am me.
But me changes constantly.

KABLAM

Do you ever have a week (minute, hour, day, month, year, etc.) where you feel like your head has exploded multiple times?

This has been that week for me, especially today. Exploded heads are not beneficial or fun in any way. I mean, I can't even write cohesive text messages, let alone cohesive blogs. Or interesting ones, at that. You should stop reading this.

Mystery

Written in July 0f 2008 after visiting Springfield, IL with my family for a Lincoln educational trip during Independence Day weekend. I felt like I was in a rut at the time, and studying American history of Lincoln's time led me to ponder the mysteries of death and war and faith and people.

How mysterious our world and lives are!

I feel that humans could never come to a completely numbed, unaware stage of existence without taking that mystery away. Death provides us with wonder, along with feelings that sting more as we are living someone else’s death. As long as there is death, there is human wonderment, unless we took that away by dehumanizing death, which could happen. But it is not likely that all humans could relate to death in that unnatural, dehumanized state.
Something inside of our souls longs for mystery.

I find mystery in my faith in God, which sometimes frustrates me. Religion seems to offer us all the answers, but faith really provides us with more unknowns and mystery than we bargained for when we came to it. And beauty, what mystery there is when one person may perceive something as beautiful and another perceives beauty as its opposite.

How many people do I know who want to seem mysterious, when really they reveal themselves through relationship? True, humans are complex and none but God can ever fully know one’s heart. I think we can (and should) find a new understanding of human mystery within that relationship revelation and complexity, though. As someone grows to know someone else, more things seem to present themselves as unknown. The mystery grows as one continues to seek to bring light to it. We peel the layers only to discover that one less penetrable lies beneath, so we start peeling the next one. We desire that relational revelation because we know what mystery comes with it. Successful marriages are a prime example of this; those couples that only continue to grow in love for one another understand that mystery grows as more things are revealed. It’s quite the paradox, actually.

And what about love. How much more mystery can one thing contain? Humans all long for it above all other things. Books, movies, television shows... most all media explores the mystery of love and how we can attain an understanding of it, but again, as it reveals itself, we become more perplexed.

God’s love. Back to my faith. Maybe I am feeling so disconnected from God because I have failed to recognize the mystery that is involved in my faith. This past weekend at the museums in Springfield, I gained more knowledge and only found myself more puzzled. Maybe I am trying to simplify things that I can never actually comprehend.

Questioning the mystery of my faith and the facts about the world I have absorbed is not a terrible thing, though. It’s not something that should worry me into losing faith because I am further exploring the mystery of life, humankind, and God. As I continue to explore, more will be revealed, if all the things I have talked about are true (which, judging by my own experiences and those of others, they are true). Knowing the answers and feeling secure and comfortable is not the end, but more the means to an end. In comfort, we must expect that at some point we will no longer be comfortable so that we can truly appreciate every comfortable moment of our lives for what it is worth.

All along I’ve been asking myself what I need to do to get out of this rut. Well, maybe I’m not in a rut at all. I should be appreciating and pondering this mysteriously uncomfortable time. The limit of humankind. The faithfulness of God, even when he seems yet farther in my mind. Knowledge is power, worldly power, but blind faith is a power given by God’s love to his people, which includes me.

I really desire to love all people the way that all people should be loved: abundantly, unconditionally, and equally. God give me the strength. I know that love is what all people long for and need. That need and that love are both mysterious.