Posted by john on January 31, 2002 at 18:20:30:
In Reply to: Re: 'null & void' and 'nautical concepts' posted by jason on January 31, 2002 at 13:58:51:
: [begin john]*** *** ***
: : Wow, that was quite possibly the largest concoction of mixed metaphors I've ever seen. That actually takes talent, lint and soup and symbolic logic and fate and dreams and shadows and mirrors and bridges and locks and pets. I'm really impressed. If it wasn't that my brain worked very much the same way I'd have absolutely no idea what you were talking about ;)
: [end john]*** *** ***
: So you enjoyed my "recipe for terror" ??
Well, yes I guess I did. If I met you on the street and you were talking like that I would have been scared, but I would have liked you right away. Probably because you scared me.
: Have you ever struggled with a decision and no matter how hard you've tried, you could not choose. Every option presents a logical, viable, and desireable course of action. Then, you make a decision and begin to follow through. Several days, months, years later (depending on the scope of the problem), you find that that the decision you looked at didn't fit the "actual" circumstances of your life. The question was by void... the "right" answer was "null." You look back and realize that you were powerless in a moment that you felt you had to decide.
: So when you look back, you see that your life was following a course in which you decided to move a certain way. If you steer the boat left, it will turn left, but if the wind is blowing from the right direction, you might still move right. Accepting that powerlessness and ackowledging God's wind (while continuing to steer the ship)... therin lies the magik...
Ah, but I am still confused by your use of the term "magik". What does this mean? Perhaps you didn't know this, but "majik" and "magic" are (both in concept and definition) things that I have thought about alot. To me "magic" is simply the trickery we see in stage shows. But to distinguish this from the real power of existence that is sublime and beyond real logical comprehension, I spell that as "majik". This is a long running practice I established early on in my thinking and writing. But you spelled it "magik", so I wonder just what you meant. So why is it magik to realize that we are powerless? Not that I disagree with you, because actually this is a thought very dear to my own heart. I remember reading Jonah about a year or so ago and thinking how it seemed so appropriate to my life.(Now i know this is not the standard historical and theological interpretation of the book or Jonah's motives, but it is how the living word struck me at the time) I kept seeing that despite all of Johnah's protests and attempts to do what he wanted he wound up doing what God had planned for him in spite of himself. Like the old adage/threat, "you can go willingly or you can go kicking and screaming, but either way, you're going." So basically jonah couldn't get out of God's will despite how beligerant, sneaky, stubborn, etc. he got. He even tried to decieve himself about the whole issue, but God kept getting him. The man couldn't even kill himself! He tried but God had him eaten by a fish! This was incredibly hopeful to me. It told me that I was going to end up okay. That I couldn't in the least shake free from God's hand/blessing/will no matter how hard I tried. This is even more important when you take into effect how stubborn I am. I have several times found myself dug in and bulldog set to go one direction despite the whole forces of nature and heaven pushing the other way. I found myself saying I will not be overcome by adversity, when in fact the adversity was only God trying to send me the right way. It usually ends with God absolutley knocking me on my butt and I realize what is going on. So for me it is an extreme comfort to know that even my whole strength hasn't in the least sent me one step from the direction God had purposed for me to go.
Still in some mystery of existence, I think we can go the "wrong way", at least from our perspective, but even then we are exactly where God wants us to be. I guess this means that we both have free will and are totally predestined at the same time. (a paradox to my mind, but not to God's I'm sure). So it is true to say that either path we choose in your example will end us up in two completely different places, but ultimately in the same place since wherever we end up is exactly where God intended us to be.
(This is why I like the zen interpretation that the center of the universe is in the pit of my belly. Why? because the universe[in their definition] is infinite and thereby has no center, since I am the only thing around which I can percieve my movement, my center becomes the center at all times, and at the same time your center is the center as well because in infinity every point both is and is not the exact center.) ((Further add that as Christians we beleive that God dwells within us, therefore God is at the center of the universe, which is right inside me! HA I love it when this kind of thing works out!))
Anyway.
: [begin tangent]*** *** ***
: IMNSHO, God isn't as concerned with the decisions we make as he is with the motives we use to process those decisions. Don't take this literal, though... there are many examples that exist that can override this statement (which is only a shadow of Truth - again, my opinion).
: [end tangent]*** *** ***
Response 1st: In Your (what) Humble Opinion?
Response 2nd: As with many things both the thing and its opposite are true, so no harm no foul in your statement, as long as we both understand this. And I agree totally. I wager that He is far less concerned with many of the things that we attribute to Him. We agonize over the stupidest things, and the most important things, but in the end He is in control, He will effect His own plan, and it will be for His good pleasure, which he assures us is for our good as well, though even if it wasn't there is nothing we could do about it anyway. (Thus proving my statement that for the thinking person there are but two ultimate places to end up: nihlism, or God)((Nihilsm being the state that results from realizing that our entire lives are futile but we are doomed to live them out nonetheless, at the mercy of whatever forces exist. And God being the state that results from succumbing to the sublimity of Truth and allowing ourselves to be absorbed into it. Shorthand: either there is ultimate truth and that we call God, or there is not and that we call futility.))
Thanks for springing me into such wonderful flights of contemplation (which is far from burdensome or heavy when you learn to let it carry you where it will...HA again we tie in! so cool...)
I am thinking of writing a book called something like, "Philosophy for the rest of us...or PBPBPBTHTHTHT" (Sorry, that last part is a sort of inside joke my mentor taught me.) But seriously. anyway.