I can't remember what my last blog was... maybe I shoulda looked eh? I think I have not sounded... happy lately, but I want to clarify. I'm quite happy, just rather indecisive. Or incredibly indecisive. Anyways...
Let's see... I am still reading the Idiot and have decided to make a studied comparison between Dostoevsky's ideals and Ayn Rand's ideals. And it will be quite interesting.
I've gotten a little tired of following the caucuses too closely for the time being. Too frustrating. By the way, does anyone know the reason Obama wouldn't say the pledge? That's a little odd..
I think January has not usually been as busy as this one has, which is good, it makes it go by faster. Now if only February and March are as fast and then the next 5 months are really slow. I'm ready for the summer now. I'm done with winter.
And I'll finish up later. I'm hungry. peace.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
bucket lists
Today I tried not to think, for the heck of it. Ok, not for the heck of it. Cause I didn't want to. So now I'm kinda hoping the answer to all my life's questions will fall out of the sky in front of me. Maybe answers. I suspect there to be more than one. It's like the little kid that answers "Jesus" to every question he's asked in sunday school.
I watched the Bucket List tonight. It was good, kind that makes my heart a little sore... It made me think, once when I was little we were visiting my grandparents in oklahoma. My grandpa was in the hospital, bad spell of emphysema or something. My grandma was talking about the patient who shared a room with grandpa. Apparently he was something else... quite a grouch or something. I don't know why, but I got it into my head that he must incredibly lonely, why else would he be grumpy? So I felt so sorry for him and drew him a picture. I must've had someone else give it to him, I was pretty shy, but I remember pretty distinctly hearing him talking about it when we went to visit. He acted as though he didn't know who'd done it, maybe he knew, but I was little and if he was acting I couldn't tell. It made me so happy that he'd liked it.
I'd forgotten about that for a while... I've had it on the mind to work/volunteer at a nursing home for a couple of years, I wonder if I should. I think loneliness is more heartbreaking than almost anything to me.
well it's a thought. g'night. blessings.
I watched the Bucket List tonight. It was good, kind that makes my heart a little sore... It made me think, once when I was little we were visiting my grandparents in oklahoma. My grandpa was in the hospital, bad spell of emphysema or something. My grandma was talking about the patient who shared a room with grandpa. Apparently he was something else... quite a grouch or something. I don't know why, but I got it into my head that he must incredibly lonely, why else would he be grumpy? So I felt so sorry for him and drew him a picture. I must've had someone else give it to him, I was pretty shy, but I remember pretty distinctly hearing him talking about it when we went to visit. He acted as though he didn't know who'd done it, maybe he knew, but I was little and if he was acting I couldn't tell. It made me so happy that he'd liked it.
I'd forgotten about that for a while... I've had it on the mind to work/volunteer at a nursing home for a couple of years, I wonder if I should. I think loneliness is more heartbreaking than almost anything to me.
well it's a thought. g'night. blessings.
Monday, January 14, 2008
throwing this out there
Here's the dilemma.... I am trying to decide between South Africa and the International House of Prayer. A couple of my friends told me they think I should do both. I am just trying to decide whether i have a peace about doing either.
I feel so wishy-washy when I'm trying to make a decision. I go back and forth and everywhichway. I always feel like I'm disappointing someone either way I choose. And it shouldn't be about that, BUT people have wisdom which should be weighed. So....
Would someone please make a decision for me?
I feel so wishy-washy when I'm trying to make a decision. I go back and forth and everywhichway. I always feel like I'm disappointing someone either way I choose. And it shouldn't be about that, BUT people have wisdom which should be weighed. So....
Would someone please make a decision for me?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
pacifism
Two posts in one night: I'm catching up, I've been processing for a few weeks now...
So I've been thinking about pacifism. I think I've got part of it solved, part of it completely unsolved.
I watched Blood Diamond for the first time the other night. It was absolutely disturbing. Probably not one I'll ever need to see again..
A friend of mine who was in the army a few years ago said that in training he was taught little ditties to say (or yell like they do in the army) like this one:
What makes the green grass grow?
What makes the green grass grow?
Red blood makes the green grass grow.
Please tell me that that's as disturbing to you as it is to me. Couldn't we have an army (because we do, unfortunately need one, no one's going to say we don't, and I'd never say I don't appreciate them because I do) but could we not have one without brainwashing them? It's the same concept to me, as what the boys had to say in the LRA or whatever it was called in that movie. It's not a good thing to kill someone. It's just not, so don't pretend that it is.
Can violence solve violence? I'd have to say no. It cannot solve it; it may end it but the initial problem will not be solved until there is a change of heart. Eyes need to be opened. When Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek, of mercy, it was for a reason. So is it ever right to use violence to stop violence?
But when it comes to government issues and beyond personal ones, is it right to support that? This is the issue i haven't yet resolved for myself.
Violence instills fear and anger into hearts. Mercy, gratefulness?
Grassroots movements require unending patience.
So I think we can say that we are to show mercy, not violence to those who would harm us. As for war? well, ideally they'd never get to that point. Ideally, the mercy and grace would've been shown long before that point.
Interesting side note, I don't think I've written about this yet... I'm reading the Idiot by Dostoevsky right now. He added a bit of his own story into the beginning of this one. He wrote about a man who'd been pardoned at the very last second from death, as he had before he was sent to the Siberian prison camps like Solzhenitsyn. He wrote that he believed that capital punishment was a punishment much worse than the crime. His reasoning: when a man is attacked by another man he hopes to the last that he will escape or be rescued. For a man who is sentenced to death there is no hope whatsoever. He also reasons that death by torture is better than a quick death which you know is coming. He wrote that in a painful death your mind is drawn from your spiritual anguish to the physical. He uses the guillotine as his example of a painless death. Here there is no physical distraction from what is going on in your spirit. Interesting eh? I mean, not pleasant, but interesting how he reasons.
Well, I think I'm done for tonight. lol. blessings.
So I've been thinking about pacifism. I think I've got part of it solved, part of it completely unsolved.
I watched Blood Diamond for the first time the other night. It was absolutely disturbing. Probably not one I'll ever need to see again..
A friend of mine who was in the army a few years ago said that in training he was taught little ditties to say (or yell like they do in the army) like this one:
What makes the green grass grow?
What makes the green grass grow?
Red blood makes the green grass grow.
Please tell me that that's as disturbing to you as it is to me. Couldn't we have an army (because we do, unfortunately need one, no one's going to say we don't, and I'd never say I don't appreciate them because I do) but could we not have one without brainwashing them? It's the same concept to me, as what the boys had to say in the LRA or whatever it was called in that movie. It's not a good thing to kill someone. It's just not, so don't pretend that it is.
Can violence solve violence? I'd have to say no. It cannot solve it; it may end it but the initial problem will not be solved until there is a change of heart. Eyes need to be opened. When Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek, of mercy, it was for a reason. So is it ever right to use violence to stop violence?
But when it comes to government issues and beyond personal ones, is it right to support that? This is the issue i haven't yet resolved for myself.
Violence instills fear and anger into hearts. Mercy, gratefulness?
Grassroots movements require unending patience.
So I think we can say that we are to show mercy, not violence to those who would harm us. As for war? well, ideally they'd never get to that point. Ideally, the mercy and grace would've been shown long before that point.
Interesting side note, I don't think I've written about this yet... I'm reading the Idiot by Dostoevsky right now. He added a bit of his own story into the beginning of this one. He wrote about a man who'd been pardoned at the very last second from death, as he had before he was sent to the Siberian prison camps like Solzhenitsyn. He wrote that he believed that capital punishment was a punishment much worse than the crime. His reasoning: when a man is attacked by another man he hopes to the last that he will escape or be rescued. For a man who is sentenced to death there is no hope whatsoever. He also reasons that death by torture is better than a quick death which you know is coming. He wrote that in a painful death your mind is drawn from your spiritual anguish to the physical. He uses the guillotine as his example of a painless death. Here there is no physical distraction from what is going on in your spirit. Interesting eh? I mean, not pleasant, but interesting how he reasons.
Well, I think I'm done for tonight. lol. blessings.
paradigms
Paradigms, eh? Don't have any :P. Ha. right.....
I have lots, actually. Do you think, God doesn't mean consistency? Because there are a lot of people reading the same book and they all seem to get a different view. Or, are they looking at different parts and ignoring others? Because I know so many very different people who love God and have really different beliefs about how to live. Not about God himself, He must be constant, although there is so much of him that we can only see some things. Maybe that's the answer. There is so much of life, so many different people that there aren't really different answers but there are a lot of variations? Or... answers... but one answer doesn't cancel out the other.
Like one person may need one thing as solution to whatever life problem they have while the next person has the same problem BUT a different life, so they need something completely different as solution.
But does that mean the ends justify the means? Maybe in order to answer that we'd have to define right and wrong, without paradigms. Without culture. I believe in absolutes, but how do we get them? Are they reliant upon our cultures? No, I don't think so. At least, not at the root. For instance, modesty. In different countries it takes on different forms, but it means the same thing. That was an easy one. So back to the original question, The root of the means should be right, as should the end? But it may take on different forms though it means the same thing? Does that make sense?
This may seem a little obvious, but it's hard to apply to real life sometimes... Which I won't get into. My problems are my own.
A friend put it in a way that makes it easier to understand. Take a pencil. Look at it one way and it's a rectangle. Look at it about way, and it's circle. Is it a circle or a rectangle? It's both. Life to us is one dimensional. To God it's two, but we can't see that way. Thus faith.
So my paradigm, my frame, tells me things. Or, I perceive life only through that frame. I'm the only person with that frame though. You have a different one. thus life.
Peace.
I have lots, actually. Do you think, God doesn't mean consistency? Because there are a lot of people reading the same book and they all seem to get a different view. Or, are they looking at different parts and ignoring others? Because I know so many very different people who love God and have really different beliefs about how to live. Not about God himself, He must be constant, although there is so much of him that we can only see some things. Maybe that's the answer. There is so much of life, so many different people that there aren't really different answers but there are a lot of variations? Or... answers... but one answer doesn't cancel out the other.
Like one person may need one thing as solution to whatever life problem they have while the next person has the same problem BUT a different life, so they need something completely different as solution.
But does that mean the ends justify the means? Maybe in order to answer that we'd have to define right and wrong, without paradigms. Without culture. I believe in absolutes, but how do we get them? Are they reliant upon our cultures? No, I don't think so. At least, not at the root. For instance, modesty. In different countries it takes on different forms, but it means the same thing. That was an easy one. So back to the original question, The root of the means should be right, as should the end? But it may take on different forms though it means the same thing? Does that make sense?
This may seem a little obvious, but it's hard to apply to real life sometimes... Which I won't get into. My problems are my own.
A friend put it in a way that makes it easier to understand. Take a pencil. Look at it one way and it's a rectangle. Look at it about way, and it's circle. Is it a circle or a rectangle? It's both. Life to us is one dimensional. To God it's two, but we can't see that way. Thus faith.
So my paradigm, my frame, tells me things. Or, I perceive life only through that frame. I'm the only person with that frame though. You have a different one. thus life.
Peace.
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