Longing

(Yes this is a phone post. It is lengthy because I copied and pasted it from the old computadora.)


We long for God, not because goodness is God; as if the concept of Good were our ultimate object of desire. It is not goodness to which we aspire. If it is, we should cease our pursuit thereof. Goodness - even goodness - cannot fulfill the deepest soul-longings. This is because goodness is not sufficient upon itself; goodness is not its own foundation. If we would draw from it, we would find finitude, even as we are finite. So would be our dissatisfying realization should we seek solace at the feet of this and all virtues in and of themselves, for so they are.

We long for goodness because God is goodness; that is to say,
we seek all of God, wherever we may find him, and goodness is part of the fullness of God. Thus we seek all virtues, because each of them finds their "enspiritment", if you will, in God, for God is spirit. The quintessence of virtues, and of Virtue, is to be discovered in and as part of and proceeding from the nature of God. In seeking any and all Good, therefore, we seek to glimpse at the fullness of God from our perspective. So, then, we long for God because God is goodness; since it is God who is our ultimate object of desire. At this point, where we have obtained but the slightest of the Source, something happens which we, perhaps, might not have forseen.

The finite is but a segment, in the mathematical sense. It exists in its quadrant, fixed between its own beginning and end. It will remain until done away with. There have been attempts by the segment to transcend itself, but they have been frail at best, failing to imprint the least parabolic mark on what has been set in place as inherently limited, and then self-limited. The infinite also is, existing on a plane, and planes, above, beyond, around, and through that of the finite. The infinite is not self-seeking, as if parsimony were ideal. Instead, infinity invites and subsumes and transforms the segment, such that the two become one. The process is sloppy and seems unnecessary, until one comes to understand that the line segment was part of the plane at one time. This process, then, is reunion; the molding of inadequacy into that of sufficiency, unto overflow.

God takes us up into his nature, invited into the totality of the Godhead. The journey is messy, painful, and illogical, but there is no other way by which humanity might be saved. He is the new, and thusly does away with the old. We are the new, by virtue of being found in him. In its pursuit of infinity, the finite is covered and purged by the infinite, and so becomes like the infinite.

posted from Bloggeroid

Don't Go for the Gold

How long has it been since you have given attention to your belly button? I mean really, do you frequently think about your belly button? What is the point of that thing? Anyway,




Today I saw the rain approaching. In that oncoming liquid barrage I saw this rainbow. It may be faint to you because I took the photo with my phone, but one end of the rainbow can be found just to the left of that building with the red roof, extending upward and to the left. The rain was unexpected, mainly because the dry season is starting now. We are entering the season of Harmattan, when the dust from the Sahara Desert moves south and settles over everything. Everything. Even sneezes can somteimes produce only dust! So this short rainfall was a welcome respite before the waves of dust that are intended to last through 2013's first quarters.

To me, the rainbow represents God's promise not to destroy all life again, through a flood. I also remember being told that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, left there by a leprechaun. I am aware, too, that there is something involving the cooperation of light and water, and a separation of the spectrum and whatnot. Now, what I really want to tell you is that I had a chance to learn from two of the gentlemen that work on the compound, Peter and Sakura. Before I told them about my three-faceted knowledge mentioned above, they taught me a thing or two about rainbow folklore from (at least) the Nkwanta area. They told me that its end holds both goodness and evil. Good news first: there is a lot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Now the bad: if you stand in the area touched by the rainbow while its still visible, then "half of your body dies," transliterated. So that is the worst of it. The lesser evil, perhaps, is that the rainbow changes the color of the ground it touches, at least while it is visible. I am not exactly sure what that means, but that is what they told me. I will let you ponder over what is most assuredly unexpected, unsettling information about rainbows that I have heard.

In addition, I want to show you this picture. I took this and the rainbow photo today, about four hours ago.




Those white spots you see are Egrets, the genus and species of which I do not know. Those are some of the birds I briefly mentioned in the last post. There they are in our yard, performing their duty in a marvelous way. Their duty, in case you missed it, is cricket population control. WorldVenture, then mission agency with which I am interning, has a women's conference starting Monday. If we have a cricket problem, then the ten women vounteering their time and coming here from the U. S. A. may not be too keen on an overabundace of little, hopping insects.

posted from Bloggeroid

Forget-thou-not

Remember 12 years ago, today. To be honest, I had to be reminded. I wonder how it comes to be that one forgets...and such a monumental and wide-reaching fact. I have yet to forget one of my elementary school teachers, or a lunch sac I carried then that read "SCHOOL IS KOOL," or maybe "SKOOL IS KOOL." It was red, for sure.

Forgetfulness is a human condition, and perhaps the human condition. I mean, really, if we remembered everything we experienced, then we would still be in the garden of Eden walking with God Himself on a regular basis. We would have said, "No, you silly serpent, God said I would die if I ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How about we just ask him ourselves, since HE WILL BE WALKING BY HERE LATER ON TODAY?!" Adam and Eve would also have remembered that there were two trees in the midst of the garden, the TREE OF LIFE being the other one! "Hey, Eve, let us partake of the tree of life instead, since it is also in the midst of the garden," I imagine the conversation might have gone.

See how much differently this whole situation could have been handled? But, sadly, we forgot.

You know what? In the present day, we forget the point of that passage to begin with. Genesis 2:9, 15-17 and all of chapter 3 looks like the swaying of our First Parents by a talking, deceptive serpent. How could Eve do such a thing? Where was Adam? He ate too?? They were swayed by a snake and some forbidden fruit off a tree.

The Point, though, is found in 3:11:

Genesis 3:11

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

Whereof I commanded.... The woman saw that the fruit was food and beautiful and had immediate and perceived benefits, then she ate. Are these not qualities with which God imbued the tree's innate structure? That is to say, there was nothing evil about the tree. So why was it forbidden? Because God said so. This is the whole of the matter: obedience. Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord their God, and that is why there were consequences. They even knew the consequences, but must have deemed them less offensive to them than the actual knowledge of good and evil. Then came the devastating result.

The two put their new sense to the task right away, sewing up some coverings (the first animal sacrifice, perhaps?) to save their skin. My theory here is that they got it backward; right was wrong and wrong was right to them. Think about it, why would they want to cover themselves (the way God had intended them to be) and hide from God (the one who loved them and whom God intended them to love), as their first courses of actions following the "opening" of their eyes?

We must remember. It is not God who has messed up our lives. It is we ourselves. Sheep are pretty dumb (no, not mute), in case you were not aware. I would know, because I have seen more sheep stand in the middle of a busy road that have no idea what is coming than I care to count. Goats and chickens at least try to run away. Who are we? The sheep of God's pasture. Need I say more?

Also, we can see that God has good things to give us. Note in Genesis chater 2 that every tree that God caused to grow in the garden was beautiful and good for food. So obviously God is not being malicious. But we just have to get the only good that we cannot have. Sound like humanity today? Why were they not tending to the trees somewhere near the edge of the garden or something?

I have an exercise for us. Today I want us to remember 10 good things about God. You can think of what God has done or of who God is or of what God has said in his word. Today I want us to remember.

posted from Bloggeroid