Empty It

Not a whole lot of worthwhile stuff in the heart.  I've gotta admit that whatever Adam and Eve screwed up, I've always been willing to take it to a new level.  Let me explain why I always seem like I love vice:

I don't love vice.  But I love what I think I must look like when I'm running my hands through my hair and being the picture of cool misery.  I just think I'd fit right in with Edward Hopper's classic painting The Nighthawks.  Alienation.  It's probably a reaction against loneliness.  I pretend I love being alone and get so caught up in it that I stop feeling so lonely and stick with a smooth low.  One of the sadder reactions against discomfort.  It's not drugs, but it's basically shooting up cool.

One of the better moments of my time in Rwanda was when I went to a junky little dive and met this Rwandan guy with a French name that I can't remember.  He was lonely and drinking to fight it.  He stated openly that he had AIDS.  And a kid who didn't have AIDS.  And people just left him there to suffer and try to save himself from his pain.  And I gave him my email address and walked away because I couldn't do more since I couldn't understand him well enough to find him again.  I wonder what a ministry to the lonely looks like.  Probably like every other ministry but more obviously loving.  Everybody just wants it - love.  We all feel marooned and pretend we want something else.  No wonder those are the only commandments - loving God and loving people.  It's the only thing worth offering.  Without it, everything else we've got's meaningless, right Paul?  Right.

I said, "You are gods..."

I said, "You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.

However, you will die like men and fall like any other ruler."

-Psalm 82:6

Mix meditating on that verse, considering eternity, the splendor and terror of humanity, and the idea of the Unified Church standing over time, and it's no wonder my thoughts have been running to the mythical.  Ragnarok.  Elysian Fields.  Celtic Otherworlds.  Shinto folklore.  Humans are bigger than those characters.  Each quisling is more a Judas; each friend is more a Beowulf.  Each action has eternal significance.  Sons of the Most High.

However, you will die like men and fall.

We may be used to affect eternity, but we don't hold it in the balance.  Each of us may act as Atlas, but even he had to kneel on Something firmer.

Funny - this state of humanity.  Our actions are unworthy of us as gods.  Beyond deplorable, we are unworthy of our mighty tasks.  Paradox, baby.  You know you know.

Ragnarok

I'm a big fan of Natural Law Theory - the idea that there is this deeper truth that everything is pointing towards and that everyone thinks in terms of despite their ascribed beliefs.  One of my favorite examples of that is the old Viking apocalypse myth of Ragnarok.

The story goes that, at the end of the age, Odin and Thor and Loki and all the gods come together for this big fight, most of the great ones dying, and after that, through a series of natural disasters, the earth drowns in a great flood.  It is saved by the remaining gods who hold everything together, and it comes out new and clean and unblemished.  And the new age begins.

See a few parallels?  I'm thinking this natural law, the one "written on our hearts" ought to direct us pretty directly to the truth found in the Word, and it seems like the old sea wolves came up with a pretty decent version of the end/beginning.  Not to mention baptism, redemption, and history.

In an infinitesimally smaller way, this blog is the result of a minor apocalypse - the end of my Rwanda blog.  Enjoy it.