What if the idea that gods are the embodiments of ideals is correct, except there is only One, and the only ideal is Love? We might have hints of such an idea from the Bible, where the God of the Hebrews identifies Himself as “I AM”. No other god is so named: what this is actually saying is, no other god “is”, at all, none other exists. None other can have that name, for He claims it. Then there is one Jesus Christ, who is identified as “Immanuel”, and that is another clue: it means “God with us” — so in other words, He is the literal Son of God. And if one can see, one notices that if we can declare that the Son is good, then God the Father, who is of one substance with the Son, must be good, too. And what exactly is this God? God is love, of course. Jesus Christ makes this point by showing us, not just telling us what we must do to be called His children.

So then, the explanation for everything: the foundation of all things lies in a Creator who is Love. And as Oscar Wilde once said, “the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” That which both everyone understands and no one does. The Creator is then revealed in His creation — not as a capricious entity who does things of whim, but a God of mysterious order. For whim cannot build a universe, not like the one we see. And this is the final clue: when love has been traced down into its constituent particles, and everything about how and what it does has been completely figured out, it will still be a mystery. Because the infinite will always be a mystery to those who are finite, and the transcendent always a mystery to earthly beings such as we.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
– Arthur Schopenhauer

Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.
– Joe Vs. the Volcano

When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.
– Avatar Aang

To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.
– Franklin P. Adams

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.
– Ariel Durant

Sometimes you can solve things by breathing.

The symbol of the New Testament and the Christian Church is a cross, which stands for a love faithful despite physical agony and rejection by the world. No amount of air-conditioning and pew-cushioning in the suburban church can cover over the hard truth that the Christian life… is a narrow way of suffering; that discipleship is costly: that, for the faithful, there is always a cross to be carried. No one can understand Christianity to its depths who comes to it to enjoy it as a pleasant weekend diversion.

what it is like to partake in a miracle:
when is laid bare every path ever taken
and whispers whittle at the stuff of your heart
in geometric beauty starlight dances on the water
all symmetries to bloom from our footprints
and in the heat of the sound, wings furious:
the dawn in the mind of a horizon drawn near
fashioned where there was the darkness of doubt
a cut of light, a newly born and dizzying logic
where the Wheel turned within your know
and left imprinted the sacred name of Love

Joan Miró: Still Life with Old Shoe

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There comes over some of us, sometimes, a notion that perhaps should always be shared, if one is so fortunate to experience it. It is the idea that everything is going to be all right — that somehow, beyond the reach of all mortal hopes, everything will at the end, end well. Though those who have religion have more form to these feelings, a spelled-out prophecy or some kind of formulation that actually describes how things will work out, I don’t believe one has to believe in anything to believe this. I imagine it is somewhat more easily done for those who have faith in a higher order to believe that there is a larger good that circumscribes the most terrible of tragedies, but hope is not monopolized by such faith. There shall always be those who have a kind of trust in the better side of humankind, no matter that they can only look forward to new generations to make amends for those past (and those present) and think not that some great power will create the ultimate justice. Not an impossible thing to hold.

It is, to put it in today’s parlance, the ultimate meme. We can see that it’s been put in songs more than once (Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” says it, for one; do a search for “everything’s gonna be alright” on Google, and you get more than twenty million hits). And it probably shall be put into songs as long as there are songs being written. To those who don’t feel it, perhaps have never felt it, the idea may be shrugged off as lighthearted wish-fulfillment whimsy, made by those who have no grasp of how grave the situation of the world truly is. But that it exists in such forms as the Book of Revelations, I think says differently. It is perhaps to be as in the spirit of a quote by Oscar Wilde, “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” That to fight the good fight is ultimately not in vain, however much the evil seems victorious. It is the idea of turning the other cheek: they cannot defeat us by their violence; we are better than that. It is a sign that says, “This way up.” Everything is going to be all right.

The cross is a challenge: not to love your life more than the purpose your life was for.

The most critical issue facing Christians is not abortion, pornography, the disintegration of the family, moral absolutes, MTV, drugs, racism, sexuality, or school prayer. The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer good news, it is okay news. Christianity is no longer life changing, it is life enhancing. Jesus doesn’t change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore. He changes them into “nice people”.

i am the jack of speed
i sing in the blur
as the jaws of distance yawn
and now from now is born
no constant so priceless
nor bought with idle change
as scenery unfurls
things liquid when fast
the future pouring in
for now from now is born
mysterious is beginning
for now is suddenly not now…
into this universe:
where comes the new idea?
a new thing is merely pattern
a rearrangement, a mutation
as everything decays
and enough time blurs it all
a thousand years in a day
how the eternal and slow
is like the instant quick
as i sing in forever’s tune
traveling nowhere, rapidly
yet with all ceremony
arriving yesterday, tomorrow
i am nothing if not change
i am the jack of speed

It boils down to the two commandments: love God, and love one another as Christ loved us: even his reproofs came out of his love for us, not anger, certainly none of hate. His righteousness came only from love, not from any kind of thinking that one might construe oneself better than anyone else, but instead in the spirit of what one needs to do to do the other good. We are only better than anyone else if we set ourselves lower than them. And if we are to be of his ilk, we are to give people the benefit of the doubt, not having the all of knowledge as he did as to what a person’s motives are. The first instinct should always be to be to forgive, not to judge. Whatever is required of us to love, nothing else. He told us to do nothing else.

They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore:
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls—
But still their Spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to Freedom.

– Lord Byron

Egon Schiele: Four trees

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