Just another day. . . . .

Tonight, one of my wonderful freshman girls asked me to proofread one of her papers for college writing, and I found at the end of the paper, I was crying. It was such a beautifully written expression, about the death of her grandpa, and how she sought expression as a release of her grief. I could not keep from crying as I walked out of her room and out of the dorm, as if something had broken inside me. . . . . . .the need for expression as well. The need for expression of grief and of beauty and of joy and of passion and of everything; as if the only adequate expression at that moment was my tears. I allow myself to go through each day, sometimes just "surviving," I guess you could say; but yet I know that there's so much more to life than just merely surviving. There's more to life and to relationship and to family and friendship and pursuit of the divine than I ever assume, and I don't want to simply survive this life, I want something more.

Painful Beauty

In a book that I'm reading right now, A Severe Mercy, the two main characters have a dialogue about how for both of them, beauty is painful. To witness and see things that are beautiful gives them a longing that cannot be expressed, except in terms of pain. The French philosopher Chardin wrote of how when we witness beauty, it reminds us of something eternal that we have lost, which we desire to recover again.
For me, to read poetry is a sense of something that is not expressed in any other sphere of life. What would drive the great poets to write? Why would Whitman write of the people, why would Yeats write of the poignance of love, why does Dickinson write of eternity, why does Neruda lament over lost and unrequited love. . . . . . . .why are the great ones driven and compelled to express themselves in verse and stanza? Why are we, in all of humanity, driven to create and express? That seems to be an eternal question. . . . . . .

Let me be a raging cynic. . . . .

Tonight is Friday at Bethel (yippee!), and to get out, I went with some buds tonight to see "I Heart Huckabees" at the dollar theater. I must admit, it was quite a delightful "existential" comedy, with a plot that can only be described as bizarre and artistic. The movie didn't seem to just ask ONE question, but almost every question that relates to our existence. Why are we here? What is it that we're doing here? What is this that I'm observing and experiencing, is it just an illusion, that is building up to a greater illusion, or is there some truth in everything that I'm experiencing and living? What is it that I make myself to be in the view of the world, and when all of that becomes broken down, what is left? Dammit, I'm a pessimist, and I know it, and I rather want to embrace it, even though I know it's destructive in the end. But maybe I just wanted to be a realist, and I got lost along the way and fell into pessimism. Damn. If I thought for just ONE moment that there wasn't a God, what would happen? The truth is, I have the freedom to have that thought, call me a heretic. I could ask all kinds of questions, but sometimes I don't dare to ask them, because of what people will think and the standard of "leader" that I have to uphold. But, (turn on some cynicism) if a leader is called to be someone that pretends in order to be an effective (or seemingly effective) leader, then what is truly accomplished? I read a bumper sticker once that said: "It is better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you are not." Ouch. I don't want to be someone who is loved by being a person that I am not, and I know that I might be hated and rejected if I said a lot of the things that my mind wonders.
How do people have faith? It's always been a mystery to me. I mean, honestly, to say that we have apprehended the idea of a divine being, and we are able to experience and "know" this divine being, it sounds almost crazy to the rationalist within me. Look at the world around us, how is it seemingly possible to believe in God in this juxtaposed system that we live in? We say that we search for God, but once we have "found" God, we restrict him to all sorts of theologies, doctrines and systems. How can something mysterious and mystical be put into something so uniform and sterile? It seems illogical, to apply rational concepts to something that is utterly supernatural. And vice versa, the mystical experience of God often seems contrived and formulated, not really leaving much mystery for us who claim to see the divine.
Should I just let myself become overcome by my desires, which Plato abhorred, and said that I ought to be ruled by wisdom? But from what means do I come by attaining wisdom, and who defines what that truly is?
I must stop myself now, because I won't understand reality in my existential crisis here on my blog, but I hope that whoever reads this does not think that I am going crazy, if anything I am gaining clarity in this mess.