blah blah balk sheep...

Here I am, playing with those pencils again...

Welcome to the dearth of time, February. Those calender nerds will point out perhaps that it is in fact January, and I will point out that in fact I didn't ask them, and then they will hit me, and I will hit them back - and then the chairs and statuary....

What I am trying to say is that such inflexible thinking leads to violence and war, and it is time to stop in the name of peace!

I hope I do not disappoint my loyal reader (hi mom!), but what can I say. In the absence of rigorous tutelage, my brain is slowly disintegrating and melting out of my ears. By the way, if there is someone out there who is not my mom you should drop me a note, make me feel less lonely. I don't imagine there is, but we can always dream...

This is, I suspect, one of those meaningless activities, without which our lives would be meaningless! The rituals, the great vaults, the darkened stained glass windows, the gilded tabernacles - none of these truly hold reality now do they? It all at times seems so terribly trite; tacky shadows of a much grander reality perhaps. Or perhaps not, perhaps it is just wishful thinking that makes us think that there is some grander version of reality out there...

Yet these gauche sacraments are made sacred by what they hold in trust. They give that grander reality a space a place to breathe - to dream - to live, and breathe, and have its being. That is why, roll our eyes as we might at all the silly little ceremonies, don't most of us still participate in them? The lights go out and we all sing "happy birthday". Someone sneezes and we say "bless you" Why? The only answer seems to be, "because...."

Well Mom, or anyone else out there - what do you think?

It is times like these that makes a person think of hell. You see, right now it is cold. Really, really cold. In fact its cold as .... well, you get the idea. I would be the first to admit I always had a problem with hell as a concept. Still, in the course of my high priced educating, I have come across some ideas that seem to make a little bit of sense.

The idea is similar to a camp memory from so long ago. On a night time hike I was at the end of the pack. I remember turning around at one point and seeing nothing behind me but blackness. It seems to suggest a possible answer. God is light. Hell is the darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Turn your back on the light, you find yourselves in darkness. If, as I am coming to believe, theology speaks to us about our own human life in relation to God, rather than uncovering some abstract "fact" about God, than it makes sense that hell exists, and is created, within the human sphere. We have, as humans, one power given to us by God. It is the power to turn away, to, like Lot's wife, look behind us into the darkness.

This seems, to me at least, to make more sense. It does not mean it is true of course. There is no guarantee given to us by the universe that it makes sense to us, and I am certainly not one who may expect this kind of expertise, but we have come to expect a certain level of effability. Of course, following Blog rules, there need be no justification or sense to this blog either, much as the reader may wish for it. Cheers for now - I have to defrost my frozen sensibilities.