Interests:people, coffee and other warm beverages, Portland, rain, literature, making music, theatre, National Geographic, scarves, large globes, antique shops, history, falling leaves, art, thrift stores, museums, maps, The World, stories, comic books, bare feet, commando Fridays, belly dancing skirts, the plight of exploding stars, all forms of water, used book stores, the Discovery Channel, libraries, empty frames, letters written by hand, film, cemetaries, dancing in the rain, amazon hair, nakedness, painting Expertise:being awkward Occupation:bouncer
I am in Scotland now and man-oh-man is it beautiful. I've only been here a few days and I think this might be the most beautiful city in the world.
Example:
Yesterday i walked across a faux bridge and when I looked over the stone railing there was, just in front of me, the Edinburgh castle on the left, green hills on the right and the ocean in between. And so close I thought i might touch it.
Today I heard one of the most poignant thoughts by a man that has the least education of any adult I know, not having graduated from high school. He's one of the stylists I work with. A bitty little New York rocker who looks a bit like a tiny Mic Jagger. After a conversation about music and children he said, "I believe in God, but not in any man-made god."
I'm not sure he realizes what a profound and deeply poetic statement that was. It insinuates the realization that God is not something we can name or label. If we're being truly honest about our faith, God isn't even something we can talk about. All we say is only speculation and even our speculations put limits on Him. Our names put Him in boxes. After studying many different religions and belief systems, I wrote a paper for Psychology of Religion making the heretical statement that perhaps the different religions all truly do worship the same God, but simply different aspects that they choose to see. I just started reading Chesterton today. The introduction to The Everlasting Man begins with analogies about pieces of the whole by giving the example of a boy looking at his home from a mountain across the valley. Until then, he never understood what surrounded his home and village and had only seen it from a specific and focused perspective. He is essentially saying that you can't really see anything truly unless you are outside of it. And since we cannot be outside of God, we can never really see him in context. We can only see the portion we exist within.
In Psych of Religion we discussed in great detail the possibilities that we have, essentially, created God into something that he is not by the labels and descriptions we place upon him. It is this God that is so often distorted and this God that Tommy, my co-worker, wanted nothing to do with. And I quite agree. What would be the point of trusting in a God that I can name and comprehend? That would mean there are limits and lines that I can draw. And if I could do that, it would only mean that I could be outside of those lines. That I could be outside of God which is not something I believe possible.
I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this. The sentence he said just struck me.
