"The shipwrecked. They are without that which carried them through. They are without that which carried them through a void which is death to them. They are surrounded by the void. They do not know why they live still. They do not know whether they are near or far from home. They do not know why what carried them through no longer suffices. They are at rest but not at home. Without prupose they reflect on the shattered remains of what carried them through. Each plank, deserving or not, receives a severe and unnatural attention that it never received as a floorboard or cabinet. Only as a wreck can they appreciate that which carried them through. They were passengers, pilots even, not shipbuilders.
"Will they build another ship? But they already know that which carried them through would not survive. What can they learn from its shards? Why rebuild it?
"And if they conceived and built something else to carry them through? What then? Where would they sail? Home? Which way would that be? Where they started? Where the old ships are? Ithaca?
"Ithaca is just an island of the shipwrecked to them now."
-- Dienstag, ibid.
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You mean I can quit practicing Rapture Drills?! For true?!
"(I'll try to check in here later--I've got some errands to run.)"
And that, my friends, is the meaning of life for most of us. Wherever our ship is tending, however long it remains above water, the decks have to be scrubbed and the ropes untangled and the galley cleaned up. While the captain and the officers are worrying about the destination and the reefs, we ordinary seamen (and seawomen) keep the ship seaworthy. It's an honorable vocation.
To paraphrase Dumbledore: "How often we friends misunderstand each other when we each think what we have to say is more important than what the other has to say".
I think what works best about these comboxes is our recognition of each other as fellow spiritual seekers. We may not share the same belief in God, and even when we believe in God, we'll all disagree on the HOWs and WHYs and WHEREs, but I see all of us here trying to sort out this business of the gift of life and how to live it.
My personal spirituality relies heavily on "to know God, love God and serve God", however these words have had very different meanings for me.
As a child/teen/young adult I always saw these words thru a filter of "must suffer and give up all happiness in this life". Somehow the idea as I heard it was that his life was merely something to be borne until I could die. I cannot imagine that I was alone in that child's understanding. There was always a "rebel voice" that said "enjoy this life as the gift that it is", and I thought that voice was solely original sin.
A large part of my spiritual recovery has been around considering how I might have misunderstood what I was being taught.
As a Christian, I am 100% with Rod when he says our duty is to live meaningfully and with hope among our companions in shipwreck. The Christian is not, or should not be, an optimist, but cannot be other than hopeful. The essence of Christian hope is not that God will deliver us a happy ending (at least not in our mortal lives), but that whatever we are required to suffer this side of eternity has ultimate meaning. This is why suffering, when accepted and endured in the right spirit, sanctifies.
But I would go a bit further: while suffering is part of this life and a stimulus for spiritual growth (see "know God"), it is equally important for us to exert ourselves to discern God's gifts to us in this life, so that we in gratitude can know joy that we may give it to others, to know love that we may give it to others, to know faith that we may kindle (not forcefeed it!) in others. We fail to love God when we ignore these gifts, and we fail God again when we fail to do the work of passing them on to others.
I think Sig hit exactly the right note.
And thoughts and prayers for Erin re: the loss of her friend.
You WANT the end of the world, Rod? No wonder you're preaching gloom and doom lately.
Lord, no. I wish that it were true that before things get really double-plus super bad, all the Christians would be beamed up to heaven and not have to endure it.
OK -- but you scared me ...
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