Broken

Sometimes we must be broken to serve our purpose. However tempting the path of invulnerability may seem, our hearts are never more open than when they are broken.

Equally Miraculous

To ask for your leg after it has been amputated, that's asking for a miracle.

It is equally miraculous, however, to ask for acceptance about the lost leg. To find peace and blessing in hardship is just as powerful a grace.

Forgetting

There are days that I forget why I'm doing it. Days I don't want to. Days I can't make sense of anything at all.

Now, I'm pretty good at self motivation. Little mind tricks, meditating on the positive, being grateful. But some days it just doesn't work.

I suppose that's where honor comes in. I said I would. Even when I forgot why I said it, I know that I did.

So I push on. Even if this time isn't a game breaker, its good training for the times that really count.

Guilt Farmer

Nobody eats my guilt, my self loathing doesn't purify stagnant drinking water, and no one is given liberty when I wallow in my failures.

Morality is not accomplished by self abrasion. Rather, good work is done or failed to be done by the struggles of human efforts. Sure, my inner world has a ramifications on my behavior, and generally directs my life. But issues of self approval are tools for doing good, not barometers of goodness.

Moral Scope

Most discussions of morality question how much good or bad is being done. While this is certainly an important aspect of the conversation, it is really only part. In my estimation, this question is a question of degree. To what degree are you doing good?

There is also a question of scope. What is the scope of your good? What is the range of your moral actions?

See, an ethical act need only performed on that which is worth ethical consideration. Few would be offended by the breaking of a dead tree branch, for dead plant matter is outside the scope of moral consideration.

But when someone breaks your child's arm, there is trouble. One's children are within the scope of almost everyone's moral consideration. Common moral scopes are self, family, town, nation, particular race, human race, mammal, chordates, all living things.


When pursuing the greatest possible good is is imperative that we not only do good, but that we do it for the good of the most possible things. Actively strive to widen the range of your compassion. Tear down the walls that limit your ethical consideration, and let your love matter for all.

Unburdened

I am not burdened by morality.

I do not see ethical behavior as an onus.

Rather, my calling is a way of life. It is much about the way I see the world as the way I behave in the world. Certainly there are struggles, as there are in any travel. The moral life calls for us to move toward good, and while that road is long, there are few burdens.

The choice to be good is in many ways actually the casting away of burdens. When I do good I cast away the complexities needed to justify my behavior. I simplify my desires, wanting only what is good. The way is hard because it is long and grueling, and at times the provisions are few. But I accept the length of the journey knowing that much of what I once carried is no longer necessary, and that the rest is carried for me.

Revelation

I used to think I had a uniquely clear vision of the spiritual truth of things. I was enamored by my cuteness of my ideas. I also regularly judged people for what I considered the gravest of sins. Shallowness.

I have come to realize I was wrong on all counts.

Many people see spiritual truths, and they aren't all smart. In fact, intellect is only a virtue when it is put in service of God's plan. When it is used to fend off the efficacy of a calling, intellect fails in a mighty way.

Also, my ideas, while cute and often entertaining, are often wrong. Just because they are quaint doesn't make them right.

Finally, shallowness is not the gravest of sins. While I'm not sure what is, I'm certain that intellectual elitism is just as bad (probably worse).

It turns out that the truth is not always complex. Sometimes, though the grace of God we come to know. In fact, just like every other function of our minds, bodies, and souls, knowledge only appears to emanate from our works. In reality knowing is a continued revelation from our divine creator.

I don't need to be brilliant to know the truth. Just humble enough to listen.

Uncomfortable Clarity

Sometimes I wish I didn't know what what was right.

I wish I could live in that cluttered ambiguity of interpretation and self deception.

Even now, I wish there were less overt plans for me in the grand design.

All that being said, a call is a call. You can pretend like its a mood for a time. You can confuse it by interpreting its symbolism for even longer. But eventually, the raw repetitiveness and the return to the basic truth brings it into unquestionable, uncomfortable clarity.

What's left to do? Quit wishing and start praying.

Pray I have the strength to persevere.

Pray for truth always, even when I don't want it.

Pray that whatever the plan, I have the grace to obey even when I don't see the point.

Pragmatism and Hidden Value

Philosophically speaking, don't trust someone claiming to be a pragmatist. They aren't one.

Almost every student of philosophy is lured by the appeal of a pragmatic ideology. Throw away having to defend one idea or another, and instead rely on what works. Just believe what lets you do what works.

But here's the catch. What works is relative. What is effective and efficient is culturally and situationally bound. Check out any culture, and you find underlying values that help shape the manifestation of and assign meaning to the behaviors of the culture's people. So what works, while it sounds prima facia to be a simple application of common sense, is actually an expression of deeply seated normative assumptions.

Said another way, pragmatists still have value directing their ideology. They just hid it behind their culture.

Proof?

Many skeptics want proof in the existence of God. What is the fuss, they ask, if no certainty can be had? They ever seek the that undeniable confidence in divine reality.

But do they really want it? Really? Proof? Beyond a shadow of a doubt?

Honestly, proof scares me a little. I would have to change my whole life in a permanent and drastic fashion.

Sometimes I wonder if the endless search for proof isn't actually the reverse, a confident assertion of uncertainty. Deities with uncertain existences can be kept at arms length.

The Value of Virtue

When I sacrifice, I do for another at cost to myself.

But trust me, I get plenty in return.

When I sacrifice, I am acutely aware of the things I have left to be grateful for.
The pain is ordered by purpose, which fills me with satisfaction, not suffering.
The intentionality sharpens my awareness to the situation at hand.
The act reifies my priorities, making my love for the thing easier to experience.

Virtue, it seems, is its own reward.

Whatever works for you...

It is a very fashionable thing to view religion as beyond any evaluation, with the causal phrase, "Whatever works for you..."

Now, I would like to make it clear that I am a staunch advocate of openness, and that those people who outwardly judge or even subtly judge should move on to more productive and loving activities. But there are two great dangers to dismissing another religion so casually.

The first is that you may legitimize evil behavior! Just because an attitude of violence moves out of religious grounds does not make it justified. Of course, the morality question gets very difficult when dealing across faiths. But even still, an emotional barometer usually gives a basic sense of a warped value system.

But perhaps more dangerous than the admission of evil is the apathy toward good. "Whatever works for you..." can be rephrased, "Go see God wherever you can." Here's the thing. If they really do see God there, and God really happens to be there, then why can't you?

It is the great pleasure of my life to seek God always. Why would I systematically write off many divine experiences by blithely attributing them to someone else's world? Shouldn't I strive to see God there as well?

Look for the presence of God in all things whole, and see the moving power of God's plan in all things broken.

Do unto others...

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Works, but it fails when you realize that different people need different things. You might want people to be blunt with you, but that may be the worst way of relating to certain kinds of folks.

So, perhaps a reversal.

Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.

Better. Admits to the failing of a self focused metric. Only problem here is that some people foster quite a bit of ill will toward themselves, so they aren't always the most reliable stewards of their wellbeing.

It seems a corollary is in order for those who diminish their own significance.

Do unto yourself as you would have others do unto you.

Pretty good, as many who harm themselves desire good treatment from others. It of course, only works if you want people to treat you well. Those who seek abuse would be led astray.

Ahhh! Its kinda like moral chaos around here. My suggestion?

Do. Do as though there was no difference in value between yourself, others, and divine work that created it all.

Grace and Ontological Immediacy

The universe is being created now. Every single moment, every instant of time is a vast birthing of all things. The universe was not conceptualized, built, and set into motion eons ago. Rather, it appears to have a causal consistency because at each moment it is gracefully and brilliantly born into being, seamlessly harmonious with the moments before it.

I am made now. Recreated with all my memories, scars, and traits. In this moment I am free, for in the intimate presence of my creator I am given a single moment of honest being. By stringing these moments together, God creates a place for my deliberation, beliefs, convictions, and emotions.

Freedom

Doing good does not restrict my freedom.

It is not an imposition on my actions. Even if morality dictates one course of action amid many, it did not coerce me into choosing.

Acting morally is an act of the will. It is precisely my will that makes choices.

Being free is not chanting, "I have choices, I have choices, I have choices," but rather using choice to pick a path worth following.

Have you chosen a goal worth pursuing? Worth pursuing with conviction?

The Lonely Road

I once set out to figure out the whole of the universe all on my own.

What an empty, lonely search that turned out to be! And why not? I was the one who decided it should be "all on my own."

As it turns out, "all on my own" is what you call it when you are fit and full of energy, for when you are tired and weak, the exact same arrangement ends up being empty and lonely. I was the one who deemed it should be lonely.

Not only had I hexed the mood of my inquiry, I had filibustered its productivity. Alone, I would only find the truths I had made... leaving out the truths created by communion with others and truths created by God. And come on, when it really comes down to it, those are better than the ones I cook up.

Besides, being with people and with God doesn't make my truths any less true. In fact, it is within relationship with others and the divine that makes my convictions valuable at all.

The Selfish Pessimist

Most cynics don't want to be cheered up.

This is because so long as they begrudgingly ruminate on how the the world has failed to live up to their expectations, they get to enjoy two indulgences.

First, the get to imagine that their standards are so important that other people, the weather, social/political trends, and God himself should all be living up to that measure.  I suppose this also makes the cynic very important to, for having grumped so hard in order to create these categorical expectations.

Second, they get to appear to be aware of the world, despite never actually stopping thinking about themselves.  It is their pain, their inconvenience, their disappointment.  The narrative can move from issue to issue, but so long as the criticisms continue, the self fixation never has to end.

Of course they don't want to be grateful!  Their pity party would have to end.  Gratitude is a supreme act of otherness, as it actually defines our life in terms of the things in it.  

Trust me, gratitude is more fun than resentfulness.  Just another example of how good is its own reward.

Part of the Whole

Each of us a tiny, fragile, unique, and necessary part of a flawless and beautiful whole. We are inrreplacably significant, the only possible and wholly needed answer to the problems we solve, the only one who can fill the roles we take on. We are special, the novel manifestation of a divine plan. We are immeasurably valuable.

Thing is, so is everything else.

Our place in the world is great indeed, but our greatness is not one of dominion. We are amid a holy creation, churning with blessing and providence. We should have no doubt that we are loved, and that our work is good, but at the same time we need not hold ourselves higher than anything else.

So, know that you are needed, and be proud you have holy place in the greatest plan ever made... and at the same time, bask in the glory and beauty of the rest of the grand design, doing good to all things.

Importance

Fight the urge to make your beliefs better than other people's. Rather, work to make your beliefs better.

Your convictions don't need to be older, newer, bigger, simpler, sleeker, more contemplated, or truer than anyone else's. Quit trying to subsume their ideology into your own. Let them represent their own ideas, let them frame them how they will.

Concern yourself with the truth, and how to best work within that truth to do the greatest possible good. Let the value of your ideas ring in your words and actions. If it really is true that everyone should think just like you, then why would all the persuasion be necessary?

Realistic

Beware when you hear the world "realistic" in any conversation that involves morality. Too often are ideals pushed aside to clear a more "practical" way. Uncompromisable virtues are routinely compromised, as pursuing them is seen as to costly.

I'm not suggesting that you not pay attention to reality. On the contrary, the world is where the problem is, so study it as keenly as time allows as you make your decision. Quite often it is the "realist" who isn't paying attention to the world, systematically desensitized to the morally complex situation they are in. Efficiency is a value... not a reality, and those who strive for efficiency beyond all else feel burdened by what they see as the extra mandates of moral actions. Goodness isn't an onerous addition, rather it's the only purusit worth pursuing.

Being realistic and idealistic don't have to be separate mindsets. In fact, no intentional good can ever be done in ignorance of reality. So be realistic.

What you need to avoid is a realism that doesn't allow for change. Don't dismiss a cause simply because it hasn't happened yet. When looking at the history of ideas its pretty clear that huge strides have been made, and we are far from finished.

Also, avoid a realism that minimizes human reality. Solving the problem with homelessness is certainly complex on an economic level, but dismissing the pursuit as "unrealistic" ignores the very real suffering of very real people.