various and random things
I watched the movie version of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" the other day, and I really didn't like it. Something about it bothered me very much, and I'm not completely sure what it was. I think maybe it's the way that some people live their lives with the same kind of expectation implied by the name of that movie, and focus on how their lives will make sense after they die. Maybe instead we should focus on the (more than) five people you meet on earth, and what we can learn from them while we're actually still alive and able to do something about it.****************
Tonight while playing piano, I stopped for a moment to dig through one of the boxes of old piano books that came from my mom's house ... and I stumbled across a thin songbook with yellowed, dog-eared pages and the title "Sacred Treasures" written in cursive on the front page. I looked inside and was so happy to see that "Church in the Wildwood" is among the songs in the book. I am looking forward to Friday night at the rest home, and surprising Linda with that song. She has been asking me for MONTHS, and I had given up hope on ever finding the music in print ... but tonight, much by accident, I came across a book that I am sure I played from religiously as a little girl, when I didn't even know about Linda or a town called Sanford.
****************
Tonight, in our women's small group meeting, we talked about how we carry the fragrance of Christ with us wherever we go. Then we launched into a discussion about different scents and the feelings and memories they evoke within us. While the other women talked about perfume and food, I immediately thought of rain and the woods. Am I weird? I have very distinct memories associated with the scent of rain -- before, during, and after (there are different smells!) ... and also with the woods, and dirt, and the ocean, and campfires. I don't have too many memories of indoor scents. Why is that?
****************
I am deeper into Erich Fromm's "The Art of Loving", and I am spellbound. The other night I read the section on the love of God. Fromm was not a Christian, and I think that's why I am so captivated by his words and ideas. He was not afraid to push some boundaries and broach difficult subjects. In this section, he presents the idea that there are both motherly and fatherly aspects of the love of God. The way we view the character of the love of God depends on these aspects, as well as our own maturity and our concept of and love for God.
The patriarchal aspect makes me love God like a father; I assume he is just and strict, that he punishes and rewards; and eventually that he will elect me as his favorite son; as God elected Abraham-Israel, as Isaac elected Jacob, as God electeds his favorite nation. In the matriarchal aspect of religion, I love God as an all-embracing mother. I have faith in her love, that no matter whether I am poor and powerless, no matter whether I have sinned, she will love me, she will not prefer any other of her children to me; whatever happens to me, she will rescue me, will save me, will forgive me. Needless to say, my love for God and God's love for me cannot be separated.Here's a part that really gets me: Fromm suggests that God goes through phases. At first He is a jealous God who considers man as His property ... this is when He drives man out of paradise, and destroys the human race by flood and saves only Noah (his favorite son), and demands that Abraham kill Isaac in order to prove his love for God. Then a new phase begins as God makes a covenant with Noah and promises never to destroy the human race again, thus binding Himself by His promises and also by His own principle of justive (through which He also yields to Abraham's demand to spare Sodom if there are at least ten just men). Fromm goes on to say that God is transformed from a type of tribal chief into a loving father, into a father who is bound by principles that he created ... and even beyond that to suggest that, in the Bible we see God being transformed from a father figure into an actual symbol of those principles (of justice, truth and love).
God is truth, God is justice. In this development God ceases to be a person, a man, a father; he becomes the symbol of the principle of unity behind the manifoldness of phenomena, of the vision of the flower which will grown from the spiritual seed within man. God cannot have a name. A name always denotes a thing, or a person, something finite. How can God have a name, if he is not a person, not a thing.Hm ... things to think about. I am inundated by the idea that my thoughts of God are much, much too small.
... To say of God that he is wise, strong, good implies again that he is a person; the most I can do is to say what God is not, to state negative attributes, to postulate that he is not limited, not unkind, not unjust. The more I know what God is not, the more knowledge I have of God.
... The truly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea, does not pray for anything, does not expect anything from God; he does not love God as a child loves his father or mother; he has acquired the humility of sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about God. God becomes to him a symbol in which man, at an earlier stage of his evolution, has expressed the totality of that which man is striving for, the realm of the spiritual world, of love, truth, and justice.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home