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flor san roman

~ Adventures and Abstractions

flor san roman

Tag Archives: faith

But WHY are we here?

16 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by Flor in Abstraction, belief

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absurdism, faith, me, observations, philosophy

I was told a story of a 13 year old boy who is struggling now between a Bible-based view and a secular, if not atheistic, world view.  And about where he is now seems to be wondering what the point of life is, especially if the Bible isn’t objectively true.  Though young, he sees the alternative society offers up as consumer-driven and ultimately empty.

My first instinct was to feel a little sorry for him that he has to go through this trying time of determining what he believes in while people around him try to convince him to their way of thinking.  But I suppose I should also grant that he is smart enough to realize an acquisitive life is fairly meaningless and promises no satisfaction.  I’ve known too many people who’ve reached middle age and still haven’t figured that out.

The question of why we exist is one that philosophers, religious thinkers, and other intellectuals have struggled with for centuries.  And maybe that’s where I don’t measure up as an intellectual…because I don’t really care very much about the question.  Is it to give glory to God?  Is it to be free?  Is it to serve each other?  Or is it all one big colossal accident and there is no reason?  *shrug*  I dunno.

In Christianity there is the concept that humans cannot know the mind of God.  Whatever His plan is, it IS, and we cannot fathom it.  All we can do is have faith that it will take care of us, probably in some way we cannot understand.

That’s around where I start.  I don’t know if the plan is really detailed to every single life and material object and quark of dark matter or whatever.  Or maybe all of reality IS the plan.  The study of physics and chemistry, etc, is the corner of reality that we’ve been able to shed light on and get a feel for “well at least we understand that XX works like YY and effects us like ZZ under AA conditions.”  And while that allows me  to believe that we’ve worked out a tiny section of the plan, I also feel like we’ve had to simplify what we found in order to make it fit into our language and thereby our mental capacity.  This is very much akin to the simplification teachers have to give to Einstein’s theory of relativity just so us regular people can begin to grasp it.

And I recognize that the question isn’t meant to invoke the physics that got any particular person here, but I bring it up to explain that’s where my mind goes.  There is a vastness to any plane on which this question is tackled, to such a degree that I would never feel like I had enough solid information to go on.  The Bible does specifically say that God created us to glorify him, but what does that mean, really?  *shrug*  I dunno.

I hope no one came here actually hoping for some direction.  I don’t know that 13 year old kid above, I hope he’s okay and grows up solid in his critical thinking, and open to life and the world around him.

It’s just that I probably get the best instruction from the Absurdists (who had a strong tendency to atheists).  The idea that there is no meaning to life, that we’re here by accident is comfortable to me.  It’s freeing as I then feel that my choices to try to move myself and my society to somewhere better, somewhere more loving and more accepting, are truly my choices.  I don’t have to worry about trying to make myself be happy by checking boxes of acquiring any material possessions or even a particular social status – the pursuit of happiness being a completely separate endeavor from trying to live the way I’m supposed to.

The reason people ask the question Why always seems to have another component. Why questions don’t settle matters by themselves, they elucidate information that might answer a more basic question that can be difficult to articulate. And the asking of Why questions tends to reveal more about the questioner and the situation than questions of Who or What.  “Who ate the last doughnut?” is a very different circumstance than “Why did you eat the last doughnut?”   Even though there is a narrow difference between “What did you say?” and “Why did you say that?” there is still a difference.

Asking why we are here requests an answer that would satisfy a hundred Who/What/How questions.  If it’s to glorify God, we have now have a game plan for what to believe.  If it’s to be free, now we have an objective.  If it’s to serve each other now we have a methodology.

Without asking Why we may end up just wandering around, serving our basic needs, and having no idea what to do with the greater capacity we know we have.  We didn’t build cities, establish complex traditions, study our own histories, pursue scientific discovery, create epic poetry and end various diseases on accident – humans have always seen possibilities greater than themselves and sought them.

But the answer to Why questions sometimes feels too conclusive, even predestined.  That is, if the reason we are here is to serve God then all other options are not only sub-optimal, but perhaps morally wrong.  And if the Why of our existence is truly inevitable then there is no way NOT to serve God.  All actions, thoughts and words would be in line with service to Him.  This, of course, does not follow.  Not when the Bible gives a pretty firm code of conduct in terms that let us know it’s possible to break with, at the cost of breaking with fellowship with God.  Eg Anyone who ever took a cookie before dinner and then lied about it knows perfectly well that “Thou Shalt Not Lie” is pretty easy to break.  The Commandments, then, can only be expected to instill in us the scruples to behave in an honorable way.  They do not literally control us.

So then Why we are here ought to tell us a “preferred” way to live, or a philosophy to aspire to.  In other words, the answer satisfies the question, “Now that we find ourselves alive on Earth, what are we to do?”  Enough people over the millennia of human existence have found themselves lost in the wake of this query that I have no doubt as to the great value of a satisfactory answer.  I don’t look down on people who ask it.  I just wonder why I’m not one of them.

I believe in God, but as for what God is, I don’t know.  I believe my human mind cannot fathom God in the same way it cannot fathom the vastness and intricate workings of the universe.  But neither God nor the universe need my mind to grasp them in order to exist.

I don’t have any solution to Why, just an axiomatic idea. The meaning of life is to live.albert-camus-quotes-2

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Waiting

30 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by Flor in belief

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faith, holiday

I suck at waiting. I get restless and I have a hard time really getting into any task meant to fill out the time. It’s absurd – normally, I’m ridiculously good at wasting time, but when it comes to time that just needs to pass I spend it in low grade agitation.

But I am waiting for something that I know will happen. Like waiting for the sunrise. Like waiting for a show to start. It’s going to happen. Just give it the proper amount of time.

I wonder how they waited. They were following an obligation. Give it a few days, make sure no graverobbers came by. Sometimes, in some places there was a kind of a wake to make sure the person they thought was dead wasn’t just sleeping one off. But crucifixion, stabbing, the whipping and the crowning with thorns… No. He wasn’t going to be coming out of his grave. So it was just duty. Tradition.

I mean, maybe someone was thinking resurrection…but I don’t think the guards were. Mary definitely wasn’t when she went to anoint the body, and you couldn’t find a more loyal, faithful, dedicated person among the apostles.

We’re supposed to keep hopeful. And it helps that while they thought they were just filling out the last sad paragraph of a strange story, we know that there’s another chapter and then more besides. There’s a twist to the story so we don’t feel as bereft as people who just lost their friend normally would.

But we still have to wait. And while we wait we’re not supposed to let doubt and general crankiness get in the way of hope. Doubt creeps in though, drifts in under the door, presses in on the shadows. It’s not like I wonder if the sun will rise again, I know it will. But… just…what difference does it make? What does it matter if I wait or not?

The world brings in no shortage of assaults on the idea of waiting, of witnessing. The bigger world tends to find the observances that keep a person from having fun as dumb, if not oppressive. And well, yeah, they are, but the point is there is a time when oppressing the self, making oneself be quiet and restraining one’s impulses – just for a little while – can be very useful, very focusing. But those who have no use for this stillness sometimes like to give voice to their disdain. I know, I’ve chosen to “friend” them on facebook.

And now there’s another dimension to the patience I have to ask of myself. Because I wasn’t already fidgeting enough.

Are we there yet?

How ’bout now?

Inadvertently Becoming

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by Flor in belief, context-ual

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faith, me

Preamble: Today is the Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Perhaps because of a conference, “Ecclesia in America” taking place in Rome and it ending today there is more chatter about it than usual (though it’s eclipsed by the Pope beginning to tweet, which is itself overwhelmed by the noise over 12/12/12). Doesn’t matter, it would be on my calendar anyway, as it has been my whole life.

As Marian devotion has received more attention there has been a lot of disapproval, many calling it idolatry and replacing the word “devotion” with the word “worship.” And that’s how I learned not everyone practices the same way, even when they profess the same faith. At home we’ve prayed the rosary every night except in very strange and usually stressful situations. Marian devotion is profound in the Mexican Catholic tradition, and in particular devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe has been strong enough to lead a war for independence and later a revolution. So deeply ingrained is that specific image of the Holy Mother that when Pope John Paul II visited Mexico he greeted them as “Guadalupanos,” a moniker that some of us still carry out in the greater world because it transcends geography and society.

Marian devotion, in my world, over and within my lifetime has blurred in definition with the shape and scope of pagan traditions, particularly of a general goddess worship. And my sense for the doctrines of the Church has led me to a syncretic position with the Buddhist path.

I can’t tell you how difficult it is to write this out because because I just find it hard to write about spirituality and religion in general. I don’t have a straightforward view and have a tendency to resist developing one. Furthermore, I must admit I feel cowed by prevailing notions of what belief should be. No matter what, straightforward is encouraged so you can carry around one label and not be confusing. I should pick a side, so to speak.

But I don’t think relying on reason excludes my need for God, I don’t think prayers of supplication or intercession foil willworking (though my will is weakest since I use it least), I don’t think magic takes the place of hewing to the 8-fold path, nor does adjusting my approach to the desires in life affect the basic chemistry when it comes to cooking. It’s all horribly relativistic, I know, a disaster of moods and varying ways of talking to something that only talks back by circumstance.

This isn’t the entry I meant to write. I imagine that’s not particularly shocking. For some reason it’s easier to delineate by negatives.

But what do I believe in and how has it made me into me? ah… well. I believe in her brown skin. And I believe in toasting cheese on bread. I believe in the stars of 500 years ago and I believe in evolution. I believe in feeding the hungry and protecting the weak. I believe in going to see the doctor regularly and I believe a community of faith is good for me. I believe that being pushy about faith has hurt a lot of people and that hurt has come back around and hurt me. I believe in wearing a scarf when it’s chilly. I believe I prefer turkey chili to beef and New England clam chowder to New York (though I’ll add cheese to both). I believe I should be gentle with others even when they haven’t been so with me. I believe in magic and put my faith in science. Um… and a bunch other things. I think God is reading this as I write, including the stuff I’ve deleted. And I believe He knows the words in my heart that I don’t want to admit to just yet.

*shrug* I believe in grace.

There’s so much more I could say on the matter, but it would take another lifetime to adequately express it all. I think I’ll leave this hash of a blog post the way it is.

Mysteries, or, The Things We Don’t Know that We Know

30 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by Flor in Theatrical

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Tags

art, dramaturgy, faith, performing, theatre

I don’t even know why I’m trying to write about something that is specifically outside of the realm of what I can talk about. If I don’t know it, how in the world can I write about it?

A better question might be, why open this post for writing at a quarter to 5AM?

I’m in between clowning workshops, having taken one and looking at two more this weekend. And last week I participated in a Butoh workshop, though it was largely meditation and then free form movement set to live music. There’s no one way to do Butoh, I’m assured, so I just let myself go with the only rule being “don’t be perfect.” And as for the clowning… well it was rather a lot like improv but far more freeing in several ways…because in many ways there were more restrictions on what I could do when out in front of everyone.

No great epiphanies – yet – but the returning thought that these are so much easier and solid to perform when I don’t think. Just go on stage with a couple of ideas to rub together and find all the space between the parameters set out by the instructor and… lo and behold I’m performing.

Maybe I’m thinking about it tonight because I got to see Matt Maguire’s Wild Man in Rome. It was thrilling, of course, that’s the central thing. But I sat front row center and watched Maguire work. When you’re that close to performers you really can see them work, fight, push, discover, ride, live their show. And I kept thinking (quite possible prompted by his references to commedia dell’arte) that there’s a lot of clowning that is deep inside this work. But the thing is – and this is why clowning _is_not_ improv – the piece was wordy, a tour of sites of Rome taken at a breakneck speed as The Wild Man races away from Il Diavolo. There were SO MANY WORDS, so many sites to see, so many experiences I couldn’t track them all; but of course Maguire had to. And even as the Wild Man careened through Rome, Maguire had to hold on tight to his performance.

I once wrote about Butoh:

Rather than muscle tension, butoh calls for nerve tension of a living moment. This moment should be created by shattering the higher mind of language. Maro Akaji said, “the thought is that the body gets support and help from…something which is impossible to find with language. The body consequently gets support from something that lives inside of it.”

When I sort out exactly what that means, I’ll come back and tell you all about it. For now, I take it to mean finding a way to get your body to do something without knowing the words for it. Contrast knowing the words (fifth position, plie, jete, fifth position) with there not really being words for each movement (break away from defenders, fake pass, twist, 3-point throw, nothing but net). Of course, when dancers perform they aren’t thinking “plie, jete” they’re simply performing. And basketball players don’t get to high level execution without hours upon hours of training and correction. But performing physical actions don’t need words. You don’t verbally order your arm to lift to pull a book from a shelf. You can’t tell me you know how you do it…but you know how to do it.

I personally can’t think of the word “mysteries” without thinking of the sacred mysteries from the Catholic faith. I grew up praying the rosary with my family and at home it’s still prayed every night. They’re the moments important to the Scriptures – the angel Gabriel announcing that Mary will bear the Son of God, the birth of Jesus, the scourging at the pillar and then His crucifixion, the resurrection and the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles, etc. And then there’s the new fangled Luminous mysteries, taken from the life of Jesus, like his baptism. They’re not all when something spectacular happens like the resurrection, but they all have to do with the idea of encountering God or God’s plan. For example the Visitation is when pregnant Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant with a boy who will become John the Baptist. When Mary and Elizabeth meet the children in their respective wombs leap and they understand the children know each other. There is also the Coronation of Mary, a scene that happens entirely in Heaven where Mary, mother of Jesus, assumes the position of Queen of Heaven.

Obviously all of these refer to stories that require faith. And that’s rather the point. There’s nothing that can measure the objective truth of these claims that can be devised by waking, living intellect. There’s no speaking about these things happening in the same way we can talk about the distance to the moon or manipulating a radio frequency. But from what I’ve gleaned of the Catholic faith, it’s all about living in mystery, the confidence of knowing things that can’t be solidly explained with words but must be lived if we are to express ourselves truthfully.

Maybe that’s also on my mind, again, because of The Wild Man. I kept thinking about how all those medieval and Renaissance artists depicted religious ecstasy – coming into contact with the divine – and how it established cultural semiotics for both what is sacred and what is profane. Art historians have broken it down far better than I ever will, but you and I still know it when we see it.

Maybe…

As for why I’m still writing at 530am. *shrug* Who knows.

On Profession and Professing

23 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by Flor in belief, context-ual

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Tags

faith, fears, voice

Today on Twitter Fr James S Martin (so-called chaplain of The Colbert Report) wrote “Gospel: When Zechariah fulfills what God has asked him to do, his tongue is loosed. When we follow our calling in life we are able to sing.”

Two things come to mind quickly.  First the one that made me happy, that made me want to blog and then second the one that maked me question everything and feel unsure.

First, even though I think I know what I’m good at and what I enjoy doing and I put my effort into making them be the same thing, as well as that thing that pays the bills, it’s quite the juggling act.  I have yet to be successful at it.  More over, there’s still enough play in my certainty of myself that I’m not sure if The Man Above has set me on this Earth to do this.  I mean, I also get a lot out of serving others, helping and solving problems.  Or just feeding people.  Maybe I should be doing that? Continue reading →

Intentionally Outward Facing

10 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by Flor in Background

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admin, communication, faith, me, philosophy, theatre

Hello World!

I like that coding sample. I don’t know much about coding but I know that, and I like it. This entry is mainly to test out the word editor. (And it’s already crashed on me once, inauspicious, WordPress, inauspicious.)  So behind the cut, I think goes more detail about me.  But I won’t toggle to full screen.  I’ve learned my lesson. Continue reading →

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