Posted by Pastor Steven on April 13, 2002 at 12:07:43:
In Reply to: Re: A flower in the desert posted by jonvon on April 12, 2002 at 15:40:12:
: Ah, but if you quit, then a piece of who YOU truly are will have been silenced, and that would suck mightily. Besides, I enjoy picking apart your "pursuits of nuance". There is something in your personality or in the way you put thoughts together that kind of reminds me a bit of kafka and kierkegaard and nietzsche and camus, you seem to often be troubled about stuff. But I think I'm learning, and correct me if I'm wrong, you aren't really all that troubled about any of it. You're jumping mad... but then you turn around and go sit peacefully on a log, or tell your wife a knock knock joke. Something like that. You seem to hover around this "pole of disturbance". It leads you into trains of thought that are probably disturbing to a lot of people. Maybe because they seem so disturbing to you. But, maybe you really aren't so disturbed. I find myself spending energy in moving you away from that darkling pole, getting you interested in the, well, in the flower in the desert. Maybe I want you to fall in love with joy, or at least I want to see you hovering around it from time to time the way you like to hover around your disturbances. But... even assuming I'm beginning to apprehend you, if this were the case, if you did begin hovering around joy (in the context of these writings/conversations), maybe you wouldn't end up writing something like kafka wrote. Maybe the world needs your critical eye. Maybe it helps us to be disturbed from time to time, and maybe you are around to do that.
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As I read Jonvon's post, I couldn't help but see that in some ways John M. and I are quite similar. I often play the devil's advocate (really a bad term; should be "advocate for the opposition" or something like that), and just fully stir the pot, to ruffle feathers, it may seem, but not so; like John, I really want to make people think, and force them to discard their easy answers. This thinking and discarding has been my initial doorway to pursuing wisdom in many ways, and I guess I just think it should work for everyone. ;-) Of course I have been known to go too far sometimes, as has John. Those who understand us (know our motives) are usually unoffended, and they just kind of enjoy the show (or at least wait it out). Those who don't understand could be hurt, though, and history (at least mine) would bear that out. For this I do apologize, but like John, I feel the need to hover around my own pole, though what I would name it I can't apprehend right at this moment. I would not call it disturbance; that is how others would perceive it perhaps. But in the eye of the tempest I find calm. For me it is freedom: my freedom to think, my freedom to be, my freedom to strenously disagree. It is the anchor of my sanity and the fountain of my wisdom. And believe it or not, it is the Eden of my compassion, however flawed and undeveloped it may yet be.