“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Happy new year, Elizabeth. I pray for your safety, fulfillment, and peace.
Forgive me. Pray for me, a sinner.
Depression presents itself in the guise of rational thought.
I am the greatest hypocrite I know.
There’s a chance that I may lead service, in English, for a Filipino congregation at my mother’s church for a short time before I enter the military.
It’s honestly really fascinating just how much confusion there is about terms and concepts in North America. Why Bernie Sanders is so adamant on calling himself and his platform “socialist” is beyond me. That his supporters are so caught up in it is one thing, but Sanders is someone that probably does know what socialism actually is. So to read about Sanders appropriating the name of socialism while explicitly stating that he doesn’t seek worker’s control of the means of production is bizarre, to say the least. In a similar vein, seemingly no one knows what fascism actually is, looking at all the nonsense coming out of the reactions to the BLM movements across NA universities. Yes, some of it is idiotic, yes, some of it is much less than helpful, yes, a great deal of it is populist sectarianism, but in no ways is it “fascist” - say what you will about the misguided essentialism that is inherent in NA identity politic, but it is by large not authoritarian, it is not nationalistic, it is not imperialistic, and it generally is not positive to military action. And regardless of what reservations one might have for some of the events that have happened in some campuses the past couple of weeks, surely one can see that the students have been rising up across the continent out of desperation from not being heard and not being listened to for so long. At the same time, no, even despite all the failures and shortcomings of our western secular liberal democracies, they aren’t “fascist” either. Not yet, anyway.
I deeply regret not asking my late grandfather about his life. I miss him dearly.
I love listening to my grandmothers’ stories. They are so rich and help me understand my family more deeply. There are many things I couldn’t understand as a child about my family that I understand more thanks to my two grandmothers. I’ve been coloring in the character of my maternal grandmother so much lately - the last two walks we had she talked about her teenage years. It was so interesting to listen to her talk about her first love and her first experiences of amorous feelings. It was the first time any one of my family ever spoke about such a topic with me. We laughed as we circled around the pond at the foot of the mountain.
It’s difficult to reconcile the beauty of the world and the ugliness of it all. It is easy enough to understand what Jacob Taubes said when he saw how early Christianity “justified the ugliness of the world” through its radical transvaluation of the world through the Incarnation and the Crucifixion that cleansed the world. It is easy enough to understand this much, and it is easy enough to see, understand, and truly love (and not simply pity) all the myriad of things that are cruelly cast aside like the suffering, the poor, the diseased, the disabled, the orphans, the widows, the refugees, the bastards, the single mothers, etc. But it’s another thing altogether to see the ugliness of the violent such as the murderers, the swindlers, the tyrants, the xenophobes, the false priests, the abusive parents, the impious children, the abusive spouses, the human traffickers, the arms dealers, the greedy capitalists, etc. and to love them in any way. So how does one understand love here? What does love mean at all, and along with it, hospitality, and the pure gift? Surely, even if one is commanded to love the latter kind of ugliness, it is of a different kind than the former, and it is explicit, running from the Old Testament prophets to the New Testament apostles, that one is to give to and protect the former against the latter at all times. But yet still we are to love the latter too, and I can’t understand what that means.
How easily we slide away from our own sins, our responsibilities, to condemn others in our stead.
I am not my soul. I am not my body. I am both, and only when they are together am I who I am. I am not my soul embodied in the flesh, as if my body is merely the vessel for my immanent soul. Neither am I my body that has manifested a soul, as if my soul is merely my consciousness. I am my soul insofar as it is one with my flesh, and I am my flesh insofar as it is one with my soul. It’s a simple thing to see why the Christian must reject absolute materialism, but more dangerous than materialism for the Christian is the Platonic temptation of placing the soul higher than the body and believing that the body is merely a container for the soul, that the soul will ascend and leave behind the body. That such a notion is so common in Christendom today doesn’t change that it’s wrong. The flesh is not ontologically sinful. God’s creation is good, and so our bodies are good. Christ incarnated in the flesh and we are saved in the flesh through him, and we believe in the resurrection of the body. Materiality is justified, and we will be healed in both spirit and the flesh. The body is not ontologically unclean, and it is unclean only insofar as we make it unclean, just as our souls are made unclean as far as we make it unclean. For Christ ascended into heaven in his body entire, and so shall the salvation of the world take place in the world as such, in our bodies as such. For our bodies are not a temple for our souls, but together with our souls our bodies are a temple of the Lord.
It is as hard to forgive you as it is to forgive myself.
When the multiplicity within you, the plurality of the will, takes place as a democracy and one thinks this is good, then one amounts to little more than a confused and irresolute heap. Purity of heart is to will one thing, strength of will requires internal autocracy.
It’s hard for me to reconcile how you are one of the most gentle and loving women I’ve met, and at the same time, one of the greatest cynical hypocrites I’ve ever known. It’s difficult for me to reconcile the fact that you are, above all others, so intimately and starkly aware of the violence that can be inflicted by sex, and yet at once you used me and set me aside like a fucking dildo. If the body truly is sacred, if God truly did breathe life into our flesh, then it was sacrilege. It is almost impossible for me to reconcile that you, who knows violence, you who understands it, interprets it, and has a definite stance on it, nevertheless repeats it. You manipulated my sentiments for you and whenever I remember that it sends a chill down my spine. It’s sad. I don’t know how else to express it. It’s sad that now I can’t help but think that my love for you may have been utterly misplaced. I always thought that I may have been foolish to pursue you because of circumstances, but I never thought that loving you as such was a mistake. But now, I don’t know, and that fills me with grief. I have never once regretted loving someone before in my entire life. Yet I still love you, and it is exasperating.
I cried in private today. I cried at the senseless violence, and I cried at the reprisal violence that will inevitably and swiftly fall upon the millions of refugees stranded in Europe. I cried at how, despite praying about forgiveness for over two years, I’m still too weak of a man to forgive wholly and totally. Hospitality, forgiveness, the gift - all these are incomprehensible to me in the face of the economy of violence. So I lowered my head and prayed that I may be crucified, crucified so that I may no longer live in myself and rather Christ in me.
and yet still one lies, both to oneself and to the other.
Within the realm of scholarship, there is little difference, if there is any difference at all, between reading poorly and listening poorly to an interlocutor in front of you, be it a colleague, friend, lover, or stranger.
