Saturday, May 23, 2009

Seeking God Himself, Barking At The Grinning Moon

Back in January, writing about the coming of spring. I did not know that my spring would be marked. I did know that I felt heavy.

Seeking God Himself

I carry this weight
Doing my part as you do
Accepting the chill.
At the edge of me
Is the bud waiting for spring,
Then to swell, intense,
Ready to burst with
Green flames, to look for lifemates,
To seek God Himself.

January 5, 2009 9:00 AM

To burst with green flames...a solution to heart pain.

**************************************

When I encounter the spiritual life I press so hard against the edge of me that I wonder if I can move at all sometimes. There is something about seeing with the eyes of God. That resolves some paradoxes. However living today as I am, another bozo on the bus, all I get is that the paradoxes do resolve. Trust me on this. Right.

There are no answers here, not real answers. There are dogmas, tenets, assertions. There is faith. If you try to hold one horn of the dilemma and then try to stuff the other in beside it, it won't fit until the other falls out. It's the shape of the mind, not even really the size of it that's the trouble. The paradox would fit if it was shaped more humanely or the mind shaped closer to God's shape.

There are something like higher dimensions involved. Those words do not have the right shape either...not higher dimensions, not in the scientific sense but yet these words evoke how the infinite is present in mortal life. So we say that eternity lies at right angles to spacetime and that has to suffice.

Barking At The Grinning Moon

Without God I'm fucked,
Without free will, this also
Screws me to the wall.

There is no matter
More important than my time
And what I might do
Yet nothing's required.
God, how shall I reconcile
Me with paradox?

If you think I know
The answers, then you're barking
At the grinning moon.
He taught me this truth:
It's the questions that move worlds.
Answers will kill them.

January 5, 2009 2:20 PM

9 comments:

  1. "Without God I'm fucked,
    Without free will, this also
    Screws me to the wall."

    This
    quite simply put
    is brilliant.
    The paradox
    lives in me right now
    and doesn't make life very easy
    when you fight against it.

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  2. Ahh Christopher, it just is.

    xxx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, Erin. I wish it was original, but the first part was said in front of me in an AA meeting one time and was so poignant at that moment that it became deeply etched in me as a RIGHT ATTITUDE. The other side of the statement has been a lifelong struggle. I cannot make sense of this world, not at all, without free will as the fundamental challenge of my life.

    That being said, better men than me have pointed out that most of life is not free, that most of my freedom exists in the attitudes I hold. This is so obvious that a predestined life is a central tenet of some versions of religion. They will hold that what little freedom we do possess turns out to be inconsequential.

    Yet for me, I know that my life has hinged on turning points, moments when a free will act changed everything. Choosing for sobriety against all odds was one of those moments. Choosing for the vision at the age of 21 was another. Saying yes to my first job in Oregon was a third. There may not have been many more, but these three alone prove for me that free will is crucial.

    And Michelle, of course it just is. That does not mean that there is not a Promethean strain in some of us. I am a thief at heart, perfectly willing to steal fire from the god and give it to those I encounter if I can. The heart of my spirit is an argument with God. That too, just is. If I try to pretend otherwise, I sicken. If I live it too much forward, then my life is self destruction. I cannot ignore it because then I go to one extreme or the other. I have to steer.

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  4. This one brought a tear to my eyes............

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  5. Crumbling is not an instant’s Act
    A fundamental pause
    Dilapidation’s processes
    Are organized Decays.
    ‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
    A Cuticle of Dust
    A borer in the Axis
    An Elemental Rust-
    Ruin is formal-Devil’s work
    Consecutive and slow-
    Fail in an instant, no man did
    Slipping-is Crash’s law

    Emily Dickinson

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ghost, my friend, thank you for bringing Emily to the table. I heard she is shy and reclusive. Nice of you to talk her out of her rooms like this.

    Nothing is done in an instant but change of direction. If you have a fundamental change of life, there will always be an instant, hidden or in the open, that will be the moment the balance changes, the moment beyond which all returns to the past will be temporary and unweighted, while all forward movements will be more successful. Prior to that moment it will always go the other way, no matter how you try. In getting sober that moment is often not clear but it gives rise to the otherwise stupid statement, you are not done drinking until you are done drinking.

    ReplyDelete
  7. wow! powerfu!

    i always say,
    the path is more important than the destination
    the question than the answer...

    ReplyDelete
  8. HB, living the questions...
    answers are pictures on the wall.

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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