(no subject)
Some simple musings, on Kierkegaard and related stuff.
I've read a bit of Kierkegaard today, at the website that bears his name. I'm a little angry .. I should have read him before, before knowing this other person which had read him too so much. I got a sense of what it might be like to dive into the world of belief ... but yet to see oneself being drawn back into the world. I guess in that sense I am fortunate ... I do not want to leave God. I can only think of God's mercy which has inspired this thought. I do not want to partake in "burying" God. It is making me angry how one can submit to the soft and apathetic siren's song of the mind that finds a delectation in "overcoming" Kierkegaard, in seeing his philosophy as something that makes weak. I feel the pull too .. I am only somewhat glad that I get angry at that pull, and that I find myself in that angryness.
Meeting that person changed my life. But if I hadn't found God, if God wouldn't have had mercy ... even that would probably have been in vain. Or it would have ended in a bliss. Do I underestimate such bliss? I would perhaps have learned to see the unseen light again. The one I saw in my youth when I started to smoke in the park, the one I felt in my favourite discotheque. For me, I think I felt this light. I didn't see it as a mere thought, as something I could devote myself to so that I might feel it again. Is it something from God? Do some persons go by it, so that they serve God even when they don't commit themselves to christianity?
I remember my being with the one I had loved first in my life. Her talking of death. Had she been given the punishing and yet loving weariness of life which Kierkegaard wrote about? I guess if opportunity arises I have to see her again. To see what has become of her. Again, this friggin' coincidences. The lover that died, with the name Daniel. My name is Daniel. The lover after me had the name Daniel. What is that? Are we Daniels a mercy? Unless we receive mercy and remain sons of the devil? I wonder if the legacy of the biblical Daniel is the many Daniels in this world. That the faithfulness of the biblical Daniel was a reason for God to gift his mindset upon other people. To serve God in a foreign place, to care for the wellbeing of other societies, to be a tool God can use for the better. This reincarnation thing ... it's not biblical. But God also works outside of the bible, and there is mystery and the unknown. Who knows what God has granted to humans in past and presence, who knows the number and kind of his mercies and lovings?
I worship Jesus ... but in book Daniel Christ's kingdom is described as the last .. yet still it isn't made clear that Christ, as that King, is God and will be God. Perhaps Christ is the key to general mercy that isn't disclosed to anyone, only to those who honestly seek it in Christ.
Yesterday I went back from the hospital to the dram. I was thinking about something and then, in my mind, I saw like a hole that opened to bright like, and I saw a person in dark clothing which held a scepter with a strangely golden thing sticked to it. It was gleaming, and looked a bit like a menorah. And I heard a voice coming from that direction that said "Do not judge !". It was a voice with authority, and although it appeared in my mind rather than me hearing it in the outside like I had heard God's voice in June .. I felt like having to heed this. After all, Christ indeed has said "Do not judge!".
Christ has many facets, according the bible. He loved God, his friends, his enemies. Yet he didn't hesitate to speak out and act against evildoers. He followed the scriptures, they were His authority when God was maybe silent. Or did he just say that he followed the scriptures to give people understanding and to lead them back to believe in the prophets of old, while He himself communicated with God in His own intimate way?
I also found the controversy between Kierkegaard and that bishop Mynster interesting. Kierkegaard wrote in his diary about the bishop being moved so much by Christ saying that God chooses the low and the despised, and that no one laughed. I guess Kierkegaard was a bit enraged about that bishop, because he didn't hold himself to the insights Kierkegaard had found. Well, apparently the bishop despised Kierkegaard too. So both got something .. K didn't become an authority in his life, and the B isn't remembered as an authority in christian philosophy and understanding.
I also think I have new reason to meet this woman I met 5 years ago. The willingness to see the eventual obstacles, but also the willingness to seriously look for overcoming them. The whole issue has so much of everything. There is madness, love, hatred, rejection, denial, tenderness, remembrance, boredom, yearning, laughter, sadness, fear, courage, foolishness, heroism, belief, doubt, anger, amusement, entertainment, rising, falling, seriousness, lightheadedness, sin, deed, remorsefulness, spiritualness, worldliness etc etc. It's got so much of that all, despite the absence of conventional communication. It's got no reasonability, it seems. It took God to tell me to go to her so that I will do it eventually.
I am reminded to this other entry in Kierkegaard's diary. That he had written about his betrothed, that he had called him a rogue for dissolving the betrothal and for telling her that she will soon be married happily. She became married to another man, happily. Kierkegaard called all of this strange. Did I somehow imitate Kierkegaard? When I didn't honestly decide myself for the woman back then, like other people would have? I guess I may not forget Satan. I gave him an opportunity, and he ruined me. I may also not forget God, that God apparently sees a purpose in allowing Satan to make us hate our lives. And I may also not forget that God still loves us anyway, in Christ. The offer's there. Even though Kierkegaard saw a lot of the other .. it appears so magical, so full of light unseen .. I think his understanding cannot replace the doctrines of the bible. Of course he only tried to find back to being truly christian.
I am reminded to this attraction of mine which I had to the last scene in the movie "Kafka", where Kafka spits blood into his handkerchief. I think Kafka longed for mercy .. and maybe found it when his illness broke out. Is heaven a little like this? To be able to keep this .. feeling? Without having to continue living in this world which is actually a punishment? Maybe that is where the movie imagines something with his closing pictures. This look onto the blood in the handkerchief. To really become God's in dying.
I may not forget Jesus. To destine myself for a death in love and prayer. No? What about a real bad stroke where you die immediately? If such would hit you in real life you've got no chance to prepare yourself .. unless you live like that always, in love and prayer. I feel this cowardly prudence crawling into me again, to make a concession and to say it wouldn't be reasonable from God to expect me to spend my life in love and prayer to avoid dying without these things. Looking at other people doesn't excuse. After all, the love and prayer wouldn't be for me alone. Or should it? I remember this old aunt of my mother, who died in permanently telling Jesus to take her up, after living a life in devotion to God and her family, and I guess to other people too. Praying about oneself is one thing. Perhaps Kierkegaard is right and it leads into illness. But I see a teaching in that ... during my schizophrenic episodes my prayer was usually for peace. But what I got was meeting good people who showed care for me. A doctor who didn't give me the right medicine but who sent me a plastic flower. Is the average kindness of the normal busy people something like a plastic flower? I guess God (and life) speak to me in many variants. In life we face love, but we also face our guilt and our punishment. In this connection, of God and Christ, religion and life, and .. art, philosophy, writing .. what is it? .. there Kierkegaard saw something.
There's one thing that gives me a solace. It's something from the bible which I found again recently after having overlooked it for some time. It's what God tells to Samuel " "'Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected but they have rejected me as their king as they have done from the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me for other gods, so they are doing to you'"" If I keep fellowship with God, then when I am doing my duty while God is with me, then when I am rejected God will remain with me. If I tell people to remember God and to love Him and each other, and they do not ... then the not responding to me counts for squat, but the not responding to God carries weight.
Well, I don't have much reason to complain. The people which I find close to me give me their attention, and when I tell the right things about God, they do not despise me for it. God knows how I feel about rejection. Unless someone is really scared of me there is no reason to reject me when I tell the truth.
For now, this should suffice. This is the first time since a long time that I am tired of what I have written about.
I've read a bit of Kierkegaard today, at the website that bears his name. I'm a little angry .. I should have read him before, before knowing this other person which had read him too so much. I got a sense of what it might be like to dive into the world of belief ... but yet to see oneself being drawn back into the world. I guess in that sense I am fortunate ... I do not want to leave God. I can only think of God's mercy which has inspired this thought. I do not want to partake in "burying" God. It is making me angry how one can submit to the soft and apathetic siren's song of the mind that finds a delectation in "overcoming" Kierkegaard, in seeing his philosophy as something that makes weak. I feel the pull too .. I am only somewhat glad that I get angry at that pull, and that I find myself in that angryness.
Meeting that person changed my life. But if I hadn't found God, if God wouldn't have had mercy ... even that would probably have been in vain. Or it would have ended in a bliss. Do I underestimate such bliss? I would perhaps have learned to see the unseen light again. The one I saw in my youth when I started to smoke in the park, the one I felt in my favourite discotheque. For me, I think I felt this light. I didn't see it as a mere thought, as something I could devote myself to so that I might feel it again. Is it something from God? Do some persons go by it, so that they serve God even when they don't commit themselves to christianity?
I remember my being with the one I had loved first in my life. Her talking of death. Had she been given the punishing and yet loving weariness of life which Kierkegaard wrote about? I guess if opportunity arises I have to see her again. To see what has become of her. Again, this friggin' coincidences. The lover that died, with the name Daniel. My name is Daniel. The lover after me had the name Daniel. What is that? Are we Daniels a mercy? Unless we receive mercy and remain sons of the devil? I wonder if the legacy of the biblical Daniel is the many Daniels in this world. That the faithfulness of the biblical Daniel was a reason for God to gift his mindset upon other people. To serve God in a foreign place, to care for the wellbeing of other societies, to be a tool God can use for the better. This reincarnation thing ... it's not biblical. But God also works outside of the bible, and there is mystery and the unknown. Who knows what God has granted to humans in past and presence, who knows the number and kind of his mercies and lovings?
I worship Jesus ... but in book Daniel Christ's kingdom is described as the last .. yet still it isn't made clear that Christ, as that King, is God and will be God. Perhaps Christ is the key to general mercy that isn't disclosed to anyone, only to those who honestly seek it in Christ.
Yesterday I went back from the hospital to the dram. I was thinking about something and then, in my mind, I saw like a hole that opened to bright like, and I saw a person in dark clothing which held a scepter with a strangely golden thing sticked to it. It was gleaming, and looked a bit like a menorah. And I heard a voice coming from that direction that said "Do not judge !". It was a voice with authority, and although it appeared in my mind rather than me hearing it in the outside like I had heard God's voice in June .. I felt like having to heed this. After all, Christ indeed has said "Do not judge!".
Christ has many facets, according the bible. He loved God, his friends, his enemies. Yet he didn't hesitate to speak out and act against evildoers. He followed the scriptures, they were His authority when God was maybe silent. Or did he just say that he followed the scriptures to give people understanding and to lead them back to believe in the prophets of old, while He himself communicated with God in His own intimate way?
I also found the controversy between Kierkegaard and that bishop Mynster interesting. Kierkegaard wrote in his diary about the bishop being moved so much by Christ saying that God chooses the low and the despised, and that no one laughed. I guess Kierkegaard was a bit enraged about that bishop, because he didn't hold himself to the insights Kierkegaard had found. Well, apparently the bishop despised Kierkegaard too. So both got something .. K didn't become an authority in his life, and the B isn't remembered as an authority in christian philosophy and understanding.
I also think I have new reason to meet this woman I met 5 years ago. The willingness to see the eventual obstacles, but also the willingness to seriously look for overcoming them. The whole issue has so much of everything. There is madness, love, hatred, rejection, denial, tenderness, remembrance, boredom, yearning, laughter, sadness, fear, courage, foolishness, heroism, belief, doubt, anger, amusement, entertainment, rising, falling, seriousness, lightheadedness, sin, deed, remorsefulness, spiritualness, worldliness etc etc. It's got so much of that all, despite the absence of conventional communication. It's got no reasonability, it seems. It took God to tell me to go to her so that I will do it eventually.
I am reminded to this other entry in Kierkegaard's diary. That he had written about his betrothed, that he had called him a rogue for dissolving the betrothal and for telling her that she will soon be married happily. She became married to another man, happily. Kierkegaard called all of this strange. Did I somehow imitate Kierkegaard? When I didn't honestly decide myself for the woman back then, like other people would have? I guess I may not forget Satan. I gave him an opportunity, and he ruined me. I may also not forget God, that God apparently sees a purpose in allowing Satan to make us hate our lives. And I may also not forget that God still loves us anyway, in Christ. The offer's there. Even though Kierkegaard saw a lot of the other .. it appears so magical, so full of light unseen .. I think his understanding cannot replace the doctrines of the bible. Of course he only tried to find back to being truly christian.
I am reminded to this attraction of mine which I had to the last scene in the movie "Kafka", where Kafka spits blood into his handkerchief. I think Kafka longed for mercy .. and maybe found it when his illness broke out. Is heaven a little like this? To be able to keep this .. feeling? Without having to continue living in this world which is actually a punishment? Maybe that is where the movie imagines something with his closing pictures. This look onto the blood in the handkerchief. To really become God's in dying.
I may not forget Jesus. To destine myself for a death in love and prayer. No? What about a real bad stroke where you die immediately? If such would hit you in real life you've got no chance to prepare yourself .. unless you live like that always, in love and prayer. I feel this cowardly prudence crawling into me again, to make a concession and to say it wouldn't be reasonable from God to expect me to spend my life in love and prayer to avoid dying without these things. Looking at other people doesn't excuse. After all, the love and prayer wouldn't be for me alone. Or should it? I remember this old aunt of my mother, who died in permanently telling Jesus to take her up, after living a life in devotion to God and her family, and I guess to other people too. Praying about oneself is one thing. Perhaps Kierkegaard is right and it leads into illness. But I see a teaching in that ... during my schizophrenic episodes my prayer was usually for peace. But what I got was meeting good people who showed care for me. A doctor who didn't give me the right medicine but who sent me a plastic flower. Is the average kindness of the normal busy people something like a plastic flower? I guess God (and life) speak to me in many variants. In life we face love, but we also face our guilt and our punishment. In this connection, of God and Christ, religion and life, and .. art, philosophy, writing .. what is it? .. there Kierkegaard saw something.
There's one thing that gives me a solace. It's something from the bible which I found again recently after having overlooked it for some time. It's what God tells to Samuel " "'Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected but they have rejected me as their king as they have done from the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me for other gods, so they are doing to you'"" If I keep fellowship with God, then when I am doing my duty while God is with me, then when I am rejected God will remain with me. If I tell people to remember God and to love Him and each other, and they do not ... then the not responding to me counts for squat, but the not responding to God carries weight.
Well, I don't have much reason to complain. The people which I find close to me give me their attention, and when I tell the right things about God, they do not despise me for it. God knows how I feel about rejection. Unless someone is really scared of me there is no reason to reject me when I tell the truth.
For now, this should suffice. This is the first time since a long time that I am tired of what I have written about.