immortal love

i think this is probably my favorite "love" song. in it Sting eloquently puts his love for another above all. above time, place, status, identity...everything. however, what the song leaves out is the "why" of the love. it is solely focused on the permanency of it and unconcerned with describing it or explaining it.

A thousand years

A thousand years, a thousand more,
A thousand times a million doors to eternity
I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times
An endless turning stairway climbs
To a tower of souls
If it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars,
The towers rise to numberless floors in space
I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,
A million names but only one truth to face

A million roads, a million fears
A million suns, ten million years of uncertainty
I could speak a million lies, a million songs,
A million rights, a million wrongs in this balance of time
But if there was a single truth, a single light
A single thought, a singular touch of grace
Then following this single point , this single flame,
The single haunted memory of your face

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head

I may be numberless, I may be innocent
I may know many things, I may be ignorant
Or I could ride with kings and conquer many lands
Or win this world at cards and let it slip my hands
I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times
Reborn as fortune's child to judge another's crimes
Or wear this pilgrim's cloak, or be a common thief
I've kept this single faith, I have but one belief

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head
On and on the mysteries unwind themselves
Eternities still unsaid
'Til you love me

the task driven versus the people oriented

my supervisor appeared cross with me. her words were snappy and she seemed ready to pounce on the slightest weakness. she challenged the content of a recent letter. apparently feeling that i was not coddling enough with my subordinates. she accused, "well that should have been a clue to you...".

a clue to me? why would i look for clues. a person looks for clues if they do not know the answer, which i did. my way, perfectly acceptable. my approach in the letter, unassailable. go to hell.

i did not cower or apologize. i did not defend myself. i didn't nod my head to affirm her evaluation. i no longer had reason to fear. i am now a colleague and not a neophyte. she no longer the expert on all matters, especially social matters.

i just looked at her. an angry look. surprisingly, one of my subordinates shot back at her, "look, we know what we are doing!" my leader was floored. she had had over-stepped. loyalties had shifted. -jk leopold

hierarchy of sins

m.scott peck derails laziness as the lowest of sins. he reasons that one must continue to strive, to fight against atrophy and decay and to do otherwise is death and sin.

others, i think, c.s. lewis, inclined that pride is one of the worst for its impediment. specifically, if one feels themselves better than their fellow man and even God, well it makes communing kind of difficult.

c. stanley discusses blaspheming the Holy Spirit as essentially ignoring God's call to come to Him. a certain pinnacle of sin.

i sometimes think my dad holds smoking as one of the worst sins. whenever he mentions that someone is smoking, he gets an extremely disdained look. He'll be saying, "i saw her out back smoking a cigarette", but his face is saying, "i saw her out back rolling in her own feces." he'll witness to these heathens that they ought not engage in such sin, for their health.

i know a foreign lady and her american lover who think that eating meat is the deadliest of sins. they consider it so for what it does to the human body, the environment, and i suspect most importantly what it does to those poor lil animals. they are fabulous proselytisers and miss no opportunity to preach the figurative fire and brimstone about thier favorite sin.

on a more global scale, the voodoo culture of haiti note that disloyalty and ill-will towards ones family is of the most abominable (at least according to "the serpent and the rainbow"). so horrible is the sin that you may be justly turned into a zombie for the crime.

for some people, sexual sins seem always to be the worst, most heinous of sins. you know, gay sex, pre-marital sex, masturbation, what-not. i wont prolong myself here (pun intended).

i dont know if God weighs sin the way we do. one being worse than another. i may despise one more than another, but maybe thats more about how i was raised or the pain that particular sin caused me or the sin witin me seething beneath the surface.

Jesus seemed to even the playing field of sin when he noted that lusting after another man's wife is as bad as having adultery. Also he tended to focus less on carnal sins and more on those who elevated themselves above other sinners.

i think any and all sin is in essence spiritual disease. some may have differerent symptomotology than others, and a different short term prognosis, but all have the same long-term fatal prognosis.