"The World Is Too Big"
Blogging is a conversation. Hopes to be, anyway. And sometimes, there's just no way what to say.
I guess this has been a moment like those over coffee where the conversants go quiet, staring out the window, their attention not drawn by anything particular, but that same attention not held either. A phrase keeps entering my conversations: it's too big. The world is too big.
Much of life as constructed in our mind's eye is as the postmodernists have taught us--illusion born of particular subcultures. Our sense experience overwhelms us, and we must orient ourselves, cordon off vast categories of impressions. There have been in my life certain moments when the barriers fall and I stand gaping at just what life is. Illusions created by the deep need for answers drop away, and I think, what is this thing that is here, presenting itself in this cacophony of experience and creativity? The rhythms of rising and falling breath, waking and sleep, youth and age...we are sentinent beings in an unfathomably giant place, the word universe far too small to describe its scope. What is this? What is life?
I look at my heart, at the chest covering it, and think, "Wow...it goes on and on." Jeff Unplugged. As we all are.
I don't have a message with this post. I just knew it had been too long, and I said I was going to keep going. I have no comment on Michael Jackson's trial or the Canseco book. I don't know what to make of the economy, the emergence of what I'm hearing called the "third place" (home, business, "third place"), or anything else. If I listen to my conscience, it tells me the world is somewhat mad, yet what else is there to do? We must create, for that is who we are. My faith says its because of who made us.
He's the one that's too big. Just too big. Don't we people of faith talk too glibly sometimes? We chatter so easily about the four steps to salvation, or the newest formula to get the Holy Spirit's power in our lives, or in my case, the beauty of Scripture, the need for the desert journey of Jesus to be present in our own lives, and then I slam against the massive epiphany that somehow God is, and that he is said to be love, which is said to be the greatest of things, the most excellent of ways, and I think, "This is just too much. Too much to know much of anything."
I'm a reluctant blogger these days. Everyone seems so sure of everything. Political fixes, religious paths to God (far better than yours), easy roads to riches. Or strong positions on personal motivation, reaching your full potential (Want the meaning of life?--do I have a program for you!), finding your chi.
If you can't find your chi, I'm not sure what to tell you. But surely, by this time next week (maybe if I fast the whole time?), I'll have something to tell you. In the meantime--and I'll post before then, don't worry--hang on to your hat and thank God to have another day to love.
And I will show you the most excellent way...
7:49:55 PM
