A search for meaning

This is a video I made about life.

Filed under: life, ryan made this, video , humor, life, video

What can die?

So apparently we have an eternal soul.

Great!

… What does this mean?

Would it even be possible for a soul to die? I suppose that depends on your definition of “soul”. Is a soul a soul in the sense of Descartes? Some floaty light thingy that interacts with our body through a specific point in our brain? Or are we merely biochemical processes forming what seems to be conciseness? Because those things, to my understanding could die. And a soul, by the biblical definition, is a thing that does not die.

Can the part of me that thinks die? Can the part of me that feels die?

Please don’t label me as a Neo-platonist, bear with me. What if the soul is the “form” of who we are. As in, it is the organization of materials or the recipe that brings about awareness.

So existence is like a cake. And the soul is like an index card that lists all the ingredients. I can take that index card with me anywhere and have the potential for a cake. You might say that the Descartian view would be saying that the cake itself is the soul and that the atheistic view would be that the eggs and flour and sugar would be the soul. But both of these things can be destroyed. But a recipe cannot be destroyed. As long as the rules that govern the universe that allow it to be so remain, then that recipe will always produce a cake.

Anyways these are just some things I have been thinking about. Any comments/ideas?

Filed under: thoughts , thoughts

Two book titles

So if I write a book. This is what the title of my first magnus opus will be:

“Fiddledy Sticks!” Why Everything you know about epistemology is wrong!

And Ben and I, inspired primarily by the scene that can be viewed below, are working on a four volume epic: “The Gospel according to Goonies” 

Filed under: books, lol , books, lol

A great deal

Apparently Barnes and Nobles has this thing going on where you can buy an author’s best know or most critically acclaimed works in one volume for 12 bucks. So say for example, you could pick up Hemmingway’s “A farewell to arms”, “For whom the bell tolls”, “The sun also rises”, and “The old man and the sea”, in one volume, unabridged. Since my library doesn’t have an unabridged version of “War and Peace” I went ahead and bought the Tolstoy collection. I now have “War and Peace”, “The Cossacks” and “Anna Karenina”, for 14 bucks. A very decent deal in my estimation.

Filed under: books , books

goonies= best movie ever

Filed under: movies , movies

A yawn and then…

Waking up to “blue in green” is like falling in love with a new day.

Filed under: jazz, jazz music, life , jazz, jazz music, life

Transforming take 2 (Random freewrite)

I was at a student life conference this weekend (that I might write about later) and halfway through the last session I had an epiphany moment and realized a much better way of expressing what I was trying to express in the comments section of the post “looking out my window”.

Existing, Or Human existence I should say, Is not being someone so much as it is becoming someone… What does this mean?

In the words of the hyper-talented Ben Folds, “Even the things that seem still, are still changing.”

We are always becoming more like ourselves but are never quite currently who we are.

Let us corporately take a moment to make weird faces and exclaim “seriously… what?”

I don’t know people, I am just fleshing this out. Exploring the ideas and the space. But do you ever just have moments where you are not thinking of existing, you just are?

I think we are always thinking about who we want to be because we know we are not who we are meant to be.

So, I cooked ramen noodles three weeks ago. Was that me? Was that who I am now?

It was me, but it wasn’t who I am now.

I think this has a lot to do with time, and how we exist in it.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the present is the most eternal of the three states of time. I tend to agree. You see, Ramen noodle me is not me. I only exist for a second, by the time I have finished typing this sentence, I will have moved on. I am a vapor. I am constrained to time, to the present. I will never be more real then when I am, not when I was.

This is why God’s response to moses, “I AM”, scares me to death. He is not becoming more like Himself. He just IS. That is a mindblowing concept for me. He is unlike anything ever, He is not becoming more like Himself HE IS WHAT HE IS.

In my daily life I am always trying to be true to what I am, and my concept of what I am and who I am is constantly transforming as God reveals His Truth and changes my life.

“Be not conformed. Transform” Maybe I will write more later. I find this all very interesting. Remember that all these things that I am saying are just theories, just thoughts I have had recently. But I am sure of this, we were not called to conform, when we realize we are a new creation, becoming more like this new thing is what we must do.

Hold on, new thought. If we are new creations in Christ that must change our “base” (i will call it that), it must change the thing we are becoming as we exist. Hmmm. I must go think. Anyways, yes all of those things are theories except for the truth that we must not conform.

ryan

Filed under: God, life, theology, transformation , being, God, transforming

Another poem

The Wave 

Inspiration
In the truest form.
Something in the mist.
On the edge of existing.
The Movement of the water over the sand.
Graceful in it’s quiet, calm, rhythmic, breath.

Pen to Page
Feasible and tangible
on the tip of your tongue
The feeling remains but the words won’t come
Choppy and uncertain. Tensing then relaxing. Belief then unbelief
The vastness of the sea, building, taking shape.

Furious Transposing
The reason and the rhymne are one
The time has come to pass
He whispers as he walks the way, “No one wave is the last”
The Wave, white capped and fierce crashes against the cliffs
Dread fills my heart as the tide comes in, it’s song my spirits lift

Still
The calm must come to carry on, the cadence of the deeps
I find rest, and am challenged by the secrets that they keep
If truly this is the first of many enigmatic waves
I pray that I might be all caught up and in the beauteous torrent be found safe.

Filed under: art, inspiration, life, poetry , life, poetry, thoughts

First Impressions

Momentary beauty
in what may have been a dream
mysterious and lovely
quiet and serene

if in a dream it was we met
appropriation of
all beauty and truth beget
you; mysterious icon

Haunting my imagination
puzzling vapors and remnants
the you of my creation
thought of which leads to divinity

Filed under: life, poem, poetry , life, poem, poetry

Looking out my Window

Whoever said gray, rainy days are dreary needs to open their eyes.

It seems, at least to me, that it has been gray, the variety of gray that only a winter of unrealized mystery can bring. For it seems mystery and transcendence is all around me lately. It is scary, and I like it. For the first time in a long time I am being transformed. Or perhaps it was happening all along and the potential energy of the seemingly meaningless days is exploding in undefinable, kinetic, transformation.

I used to tire of the intellectual and emotional expediency of our new forms of mass communication. Now I know why. All tv except the best tv is a paradoxical escape. We say it is an escape, and in theory it is. But upon closer inspection it is not so much of an escape as it is a way of taking ourselves and placing the issues we don’t want to deal with into an abstract format. For an example, take the news: a politicians phoneyness, a social injustice, an idiot’s mistake, a celebrity over dosing… Why are we so interested in these things? I contend that we are interested in them only because they are our story. We face our issues by disassociating ourselves from our problems. If we project our insecurity over our authenticity onto a politician, it becomes easier to deal with.

Now I am asking myself, “How is this different than the process of reading a book?” Perhaps, and this is just an idea, for I am a student, perhaps the difference lies in Imagination. When I watch an episode of “House” or some such show, I am having that reality, that mythos, that universe, presented to me on a silver platter by actors, directors and cinematographers. But when I read a book… When I read “Crime and Punishment” and am forced to imagine Raskolnikov feverishly making his way around St. Petersburg, wrestling with who he is and what he has become, I have to work, I have to think. And I begin to see myself in the story, I bring it back to myself and how I deal with these issues, about how I relate to this story.

When the world is placed at our feet, when no imagination is necessary, then imagination does not develop. And without imagination to supplement our contemplation, we fall into ruts: emotionally, and intellectually.

We have to be able to face ourselves.

To face our ideas.

And we can’t face ourselves by disassociating and not engaging.

We are conforming if we are not transforming. That seems like an odd thought in light of an unchanging, perfect God; but when you factor in our imperfection then it makes perfect sense. The world is conformed to it’s own pattern of thinking, it’s own way of doing things. Which is basically saying “We are fine on our own, thank you very much”. But one who does not conform is one who is always reexamining herself and transforming; one who is always moving towards being more like the person she was made to be.

Maybe conforming isn’t so much a sin of commission as one of omission?

So what does this have to do with me looking out my window?

I am beginning to see that God will use anything and everything to get to me. Sometimes I just stare out that window, At that gray sky and the quiet darkness of the trees, and let it build. Not everything that is happening is obvious, some of it is going on below the radar. I could say more, but how would that be developing our imagination?

ryan

*if you have a moment I highly suggest bringing up Itunes and downloading a lecture by N.T. Wright called “The Bible and Christian Imagination”. I actually watched it after I had written the bulk of this post. It is an excellent lecture

Filed under: beauty, change, imagination, life, movies, transformation, tv , emotional expediency, imagination, life