divine goal setting

if i strive for retirement, once i get there...then what?
if my goal is simply to get laid & do...then what?
if i want to run three miles & do...then what?

strive to live a good & productive life.
set as a goal to find & give love.
desire to run the marathon.

lofty goals are good. divine goals are good. goals, unattainable in this lifetime are good.
but don't just take my word for it:

We must not listen to those who advise us being mortal to think mortal thoughts, but must put on immortality as much as is possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which being small in its power and honor surpasses all else. - Aristotle

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. - C. S. Lewis

following the herd

ive noticed a new verbiage used a lot lately. usually its young women that say it. you'll be talking to one of them and you say something emphatically and they agree with you but instead of saying, "oh i absolutely agree with you!" they say...

"i know, right??"

now, im ok with the "i know" part, but the "right??" part throws me.

what do you mean "right??", i said the goshdarned thing, of course i agree with what ive just said! its as though they have highjacked my emphatic idea and have claimed it as their own and now they want to know my opinion of their (really my) opinion.

its weird the way such things catch on. who started this absurdity anywho?

you know, right??

spellbound

i have friends who have this print in their bedroom. the first time i saw it i was spellbound. i couldnt stop looking at it. i wanted to have it...i wanted to ask if they would give me this mystery. i thought, "there is a story here and i need to know what it is!". i asked them about their print but they didnt know anything other than that they liked it. there didnt appear to be any signature on the painting, so no answers there either. its always bothered me. its like a mystery you want to know the answer to but you kind of dont too because it might spoil the enchantment...

yesterday i found out.

Andrew Wyeth, the painter of this work died yesterday. during a news piece on his life, they flashed this very picture. its called "Chritina's World" & it depicts a partially paralyzed girl (from polio) who lived on a farm with her family, near the painter. he was keen on this rural family and painted various members but this one stuck out. searching for more details i found that he technically used his wife for the pose, but it was inspired by watching this scene unfold with this neighbor girl.

ironically, my friends, the owners of the print, have a little girl who also has special needs. she will never be like other little girls shell always be behind intellectually and she'll always struggle physically; yet she too is beautiful. she brings great joy to her parents and is a delight to be around.

something about the print is just so painful and at the same time, lovely. broken yet beautiful. pained yet strong. it leaves me with a weird hybrid feeling consisting of hope & despair.

the curious case of...thankfulness

you know, not your garden-variety "thank you" when some one opens the door for you. thats an obvious exchange. a tangible act of kindness is rewarded by a kind word. it makes sense. its natural. from an evolutionary perspective, my gratefulness keeps people liking me as opposed to killing me and ruining my chance at spreading my seed. its just like sooo obvious (in a valley-girl voice).

but what is curious is the more obscure kind of thankfulness. take thanksgiving day. people of all shapes and sizes and religions and lack thereof get together and proclaim a certain gratitude for things. i once asked such a mixed group about what they were thankful for. mostly they listed non-materialistic and noble things like health, family, children, freedom, love, friends, etc.

but then i asked them to whom were they thankful for all of this. at this the atheists began to feel as though they had been tricked. most declined to answer. a few stated "their lucky stars" or "good fortune" or "good luck"...

whats funny here is their answers now seem highly irrational. they are thankful to randomness or the odds or luck for their situation. does one feel "thankful" for randomness, i dont think so. i mean one day its heads the next its tails. thats how randomness is...i doesnt make sense to be grateful to it. it is like having gratitude to a non-entity.

here we can see that it actually seems more rational to be thankful to an entity or person or God than to some randomness. so here theists are behaving in a more rational way than their atheistic counterparts.

another point. why are people so readily able to detail things of which they are thankful? ask anyone and most will list something. is it natural to feel grateful for our state of being? to what benefit?

maybe its just the way we were created.

george and i

during the Christmas holidays i made an effort to catch "its a wonderful life". to see it every year would lessen the impact of the film, but i hadnt in several years so i set out to reexperience its glory. i was a bit worried that time might have faded its glory. you know, how like when "knight rider" with david hasselhoff seemed all cool at the time but today you watch it and its like "this socks deek".

anyways, "its a wonderful life" didnt fade for me. this year more than ever i really related to it, especially the lead...george bailey. hes the eldest of two brothers...me too! his brother appears to be a couple years younger than he is, check! hes forever wanting to leave the crummy town he lives in, check! despite this desire he seems forever stuck, check! heres where the similarities get downright creepy...hes deaf in his left ear, CHECK!!! its like I'm george bailey!!!

beyond these striking similarities, his internal struggle also hit home. his angst resonated as his dreams and desires slip away with his youth. God & life seem to bring him cruelly to the precipice of success only to have it slip from his grasp at the last moment, all while witnessing his lessers surpass him.

thankfully george's awakening was also congealed in me brain. when he gets angelic insight and perspective on what and who matters in this life. its family. its friends. its people. its life. he learns his life has purpose and is not just a series of meaningless mistakes and strokes of luck. this purpose dwarfs the unfullfilled desires that previously drove him to the bridge.

with strings attached

on occasion ive heard people say things like, "sam can be generous, but watch out because his gifts always have strings attached." you know, like your gran'mama buys you a coupon for movie tickets, but now she expects you to take her and then you have to massage her toe-bunions after the show.

i bought into the notion that such gifts are essentially poisoned, and that it also says something about the manipulating nature of the gift-giver. however, i have recently changed this view (for self-serving purposes, of course). mainly ive discovered that when i give gifts...i too have strings attached.

i did a painting and gave it to someone a year ago. when i would go to their house, i would as inconspicuously as possible (more like "wheres the painting i gave you?"), look for it. it started out being prominently displayed in their living room above their tv. then, the next time it wasnt there, i peeked around the house until i saw it in the corner of their bedroom. then...the next time i went to see if it was still in the bedroom. it wasnt. it didnt appear to be anywhere. needless to say this bothered me some. either they didnt like it or didnt get that it took over 20 hours to complete. "this is not right" i thought "they should have displayed it in a prominent place for all to see my wonderful masterpiece". and those, of course, were my particular set of strings. in the end, its hard to say how much of the gift was about me and my talent and how much was truly about giving.

the whole thing got me thinking though...dont all gifts have strings attached? we want the person to like it, use it, and maybe even thank us for it...well those are the strings. if we gave a gift to someone for Christmas only to have it re-gifted to us the following year for our birthday, we would see our strings appear. a man gives and engagement ring to a woman...expectations (strings) are attached.

this may not be as bad as it sounds. i think God's gifts have strings attached too. afterall, arent blessings meant to be noticed, appreciated, and used to good benefit; not ignored, discarded or returned?