The greatest pleasure is in God
He hints at his will, then we follow
For the great joy of serving Him
We often wait in vain for His word
Just reflections of an empty hollow
We want to hold Him in our hearts
True purpose, not a cast of a die
Would alight, our inmost feelings
To spring to His cause with joy
An elated mission, for God, not I
God says nothing, leaves us wane
Just heart’s desires, as if divine
Voiceless reason and tired words
Both devoid of God and Humanity
An echoless cause, leaves us pine
The greatest pain is not in God
Nor a tormented life blamed on Him
Nor the old myth of everlasting pain
If pain destroys, do immortals feel
Life feels when pulled at the stem
Stem’s separation, the final feeling
Not everlasting, an instant of eternity
Is God there as you drop of the vine
Does God give grace for your service
Darkness, His absence is a certainty
Something comes to mine: and that is that this is allegorical, as to God’s absence being the greatest pain, and our pain is His. Our blame, for our pain seems to fall on deaf ears, because we do not understand what God is. Maybe god is the Logos behind the Theo, theologos, we have forgotten to speak the language of God, no wonder we can not understand Him, nor He us. Communication on this level has been severed, for now. That’s what I get out of it, I may be off target.
Obe, certainly communication has been severed. That still leaves much study as to His nature, and I am not too pragmatic to study a phenomenon that has no pragmatic use, but I’m slow to go back to studying him.
Dan, I don’t really even have anything to say about it myself, except it was useful for me to write it, to get it out of my system.
That almost reminds me of the relationship between two people.
One could substitute the word God for the name of a loved one.
The relationship which you have described toward god also describes a relationship between two people, especially where one has loved, perhaps not wisely but too much, and deeply - too much worship, too much caring.
After the relationship is over, there is simply absence and darkness and pining.
But can one’s so-called relationship with god in actuality mimic one’s relationship with another human?
If you believed in god and if there is a god, how could you possibly know that this god has turned on you?
You’re thinking from a human point of view but i suppose this is the only way we can think.
And what was your purpose for trying to please everyone, especially god?
It’s a kind of death to be turned away from someone we’ve loved.
Sometimes knowledge of god or another and subsequent belief, is almost certain. But the certainty is dashed when the God is mistaken for circumstances, and then the illusion is created that God has turned away. In fact what has happened is either the context or the perspective has changed. The perspective may include a deal too good to let go. Faith in God needs absolute commitment and the absolute requires it unconditionally.
As with many failed friendships I realized towards the end that we were never friends to begin with.
God was never God to me to begin with, so no turning took place.
I think I know when I know someone, that is I can hardly ever know anyone so for the sake of clarity I use the word ‘know’ very loosely. Now your question is opportune, because it is difficult to not know someone, especially within such a loosely defined construction of knowledge. I can best explain it within contrast, and I hope I’m not repeating what I said on an earlier day: The world is not considered a major life altering revelation at all times because within that context the world has little contrast. A vision or a profound insight is a revelation because of the contrast it sets to the rest of the world.
Now I was living in a world where the orientation towards God’s existence was very much constant and mundane. God was there, but not in the magnificence of a vision of skies parting and white lights, in other words; black on black or white on white. And keep in mind His presence was all there was, He was not as God, though I didn’t know it.
I could be inaccurate, but seemingly plainer spoken if I simply said God existed as an expectation and failing to fulfill it He no longer existed. But, let me go on with the contrast analogy: When God turned on me or to be more accurate I realized he never was facing me to begin with, it was white on black or vice versa. There can’t be a vision, let alone a spectacular one, of an absence. I was in a difficult situation, that wasn’t a revelation, it wasn’t a contrast, all was within expectations of the world for me to be in difficulties, not to say me doing well would have been otherwise; a contrast or a revelation; whether I was to be doing well or badly, it would have been a toss of a coin.
But, God’s presence had to fit into the world as it had always, within expectations, and if one must insist the times of difficulties were the times when God must step up, then fine. But, keep in mind if God were to step up within the scope that was expected of Him, there would be no revelation, only still mundane reality (on a side note if he had fulfilled more than my expectations that would have been a revelation, but my expectations were only what they were, nothing more, nothing spectacular so to speak). So what I’m getting to is that God went far out within my expectations, within a negative way yes, but most importantly I saw a contrast in reality, polar extremes. And there is little way to describe it being that the contrast wasn’t one of descriptions but of expectations.
I guess one could find some convenient psychological explanation for that, that is one that is typically attributed to anyone with an unhealthy need to please, but the best guess as to an answer would be that perhaps I was lacking in intelligence.
I’m sure, but I don’t recall loving God, but then now that I think about it the implication is right there in black and white on my poem.
Exactly. This happens so often with people. I’m not speaking of you here Stuart. When I believed in god, i was also guilty of the same thing. Circumstances/situations/results that come to us are often seen as god’s hand and since we believe that god is all loving and powerful, we ought to be taken care of. We believe that things ought to have turned out differently since after all god is supposed to love us and be there for us. We don’t see that things happen because of cause and effect or because we were not paying attention or listening.
I personally feel, at least for myself, that it can be a great thing when faith in god and that absolute commitment falters and is questioned and sometimes dies. But for everyone it is different. Perhaps that is the point when that is supposed to happen - otherwise, how can we grow out of our childish beliefs, our outgrown beliefs. “The courage to be is rooted in the god who appears when god has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.” (Tillich)
And it’s like little Jonathan Livingston Seagull (have to love that little guy ) "…they call you devil or they call you god.
I don’t think that we can be so sure that there wasn’t a friendship in the first place with people. People are complicated, things happen, emotions and ego get in the way, and people tend to give up on one another at times - turn their back on them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there was never a friendship to begin with.
But that’s not saying that with some people, this isn’t true but i think we have to examine it.
Oh, I must have misunderstood you somewhere. I thought that at one point you had a strong belief in god. Unless you mean that the god you believed in was not the god which you came to know, to disbelieve.
Well, for me, we can’t know people perfectly but we can know some more than others, some more intimately than others. Sometimes we can know another more than we know ourselves. And when I speak of knowing, I don’t nececcarily mean having the facts about them. Truly knowing someone goes deeper than what we know about someone.
But you made that statement so for you perhaps it’s true.
Yes, I think I understand this. It’s also the same with the people we know - with our friendships. Sometimes we get some profound insight or revelation into someone and that makes a great difference. I’m not so sure about the world though. There is always something happening which can have a profound affect on us, either positively or negatively. But from your point of view, you’re right too.
For me, there was no vision of skies parting and white lights either or miracles but the creator god was the most paramount in my life. Everything was a miracle but not in the way people think of miracles. And there was no black on white or white on black. but colors galore - the universe was/still is like a magnicant masterpiece painted in many wonderful colors, especially indigo. i still feel this way though if have no belief in a god.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
.
That’s a very human response though, Stuart. It’s also the same response which many people have toward their family and friends. The thing is, I intuit, that god is nothing (if there be a god) like what we’ve been told so therefore how can we not have expectations and when they’re not responded to, give it. I do not know who is luckier, people like us who supposedly see the light and change our perspective or those who go on absolutely committed as obe said, no matter what. Let me tell you something or try to in a nutshell - the first time i lost my belief in god or began to, and then lost it, i had been attacked. i managed to fight back and won but i was so angry at this god who i was taught to believe loved me so much and was always there for me so therefore why did this god not protect me. I got angrier and angrier and then walked awy. I think at times it is far easier to believe that god does not exist rather than to feel that god has not been there for us and somewhere within that, know that we have been wrong in our knowledge of god.
But I’m not so sure that the journey does not begin before that.
Well, we can’t actually know one way or the other if there is or is not Something. But I understand what you’re saying. But insofar as that white on black and vice versa, there is some kind of a vision or at least one that can be seen as an illusion and then reflected on. And I kind of feel that it is quite spectacular when we’ve come to realize that what we are seeing does not necessarily exist, at least not according to the landscape which might actual be “real”. I may be wrong here but perhaps you were looking for some kind of ecstacy but never found it. It isn’t something which just comes on us, though in actually it does, it’s something that just happens to us, but there aren’t visions but there is something far greater than that, just the normal awe-inspiring beauty of the universe which can turn us into like flowing water which simply wants to rush out to the sea of god. okay.
???
First of all, I am of the firm thought that even if there be a god, the gender must go - no He. But that’s just me. I think that all that does is to make of god a father figure and psychically speaking, this is where most are in their relationship with god.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you here but there doesn’t seem to me to be much of a distinction between god failing us in a small way or a large way insofar as eventually waking up and seeing reality except that when something let’s say catacylsmic happens (if that be the case) it blows us away in a manner of speaking.
Human beings are complicated but I greatly intuit that when we try to please, especially try to please god, it ultimately has something to do with our parents, especially their absence which may not have to be physical absense. And our relationship with a god is so tied in with that. Many people don’t believe this but I sense it but perhaps it is only because i know myself pretty, well somewhat better than some anyway.
I don’t necessarily feel that an unhealthy need to please is because someone lacks intelligence but because they simply do not know where they are “coming from”. The most brilliant mind may have a need to place and if it is so because of his or her past and not simply to manipulate, then it can be said to be more “normal” considering that persons’ past though yes also in a sense unhealthy.
I was thinking of human love there, not divine love.But for someone who always felt they truly loved god and this god turned away from them for some this might feel like pure torture and a living hell.
We cannot feel any pain or pleasure if the love had not been there, Stuart, or atleast we felt it was.
I’ll respond at length in time, right now I simply want to say you’re right about not calling Him Him, my attempt at being PC not only arguably failed, but was also glaringly presumptuous. I think, unless you have a better idea, that I’ll refer to It as It for now, in fact think of it kinds of puts things in a better perspective when I think of It as It. Not to say I can imagine God as an It, in fact It seems to be a robot, an automaton, when I think of It as an ‘it’. The importance is that I could never know God to know It as an ‘it’, a ‘him’ or even a ‘her’, maybe referring to It as God alone would be best.
For the life of me, I have no idea at least at this moment, of what PC is.
It kind of just came to me that anyone who does presume to have or feels as though they have a personal relationship with this concept perhaps ought to come up with some affectionate nickname, rather than simply using the name god for it.
Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” comes to mine - a personal relationship with a Thou or rather with THOU. So perhaps THOU might become the universal word ascribed to the creator of the universe, the creator in whom and with whom one not only believes in but also with whom one has a living and personal relationship with - the THOU.
The more one may experience this THOU as a thou, the more one may come to know the THOU, at least on an intuitive level, if not a completely real one…speaking as an agnostic, that is.
It’s quite remarkable how I had never seriously considered these issues before you brought it up. I had always brushed aside the thought when people suggested that God was She, which was fine when I was thinking of God in terms of Christianity, that is I was occasionally going to a church and reading the Bible. But, I still dealt with God after abandoning Christianity, and it was presumptuous, as I said to assume that the gender made sense. I could very well have referred to Him as thou, and not considered my self with gender, that would have seemed like a more genuine attempt to know God. I now ask myself why I assumed that God was a He as if God had some generic attributes of such gender. But, now it doesn’t matter, God’s meaningless to me.
I could be wrong but it’s possible that god is not that meaningless to you, unless i’m projecting here. We silly humans have a tendency to tell ourselves little white lies and/or to sweep certain things under the carpet so we don’t have to look at them. But seriously, even if you came to find that perhaps god is not as meaningless to you as you thought, it might not be so much about god as about yourself.
I don’t even begin to have a scientific mind, but if we began to question the concept of god from a scientific point of view, only, would we even have to attribute a gender there? With our puny minds, we say we belief there is god, we know there is god - we believe or know there is no god, that god is a he, a she or an it, but if we dropped those thoughts, where would we begin?
And I wonder what “where we would be” would look like or sounds like. What would the experience of “where would we be” actually be?
What?!
You are just now coming back to this? I don’t blame you though.
I sometimes ask the weirdest questions. Either that, or they are so terribly profound.
Maybe this is one of those questions which needs to simmer on the stove of our minds for a bit. But all I can come up with at the moment is - “closer to the truth of it”. Too simplistic perhaps. Or perhaps that when the marble has been chisled away a bit more, bit by bit by bit, we can begin to have a clearer vision of what is not.
But I also sometimes love the questions more so than the answers. They may point out to us where we are on our journey.
Another answer to my question might be: I know so little.
The question is kind of convoluted - it’s like a labyrinth - but I love a challenge. Is there a right or wrong answer for this? Anyway, my answer here is ~
Within “reality” perhaps…we wouldn’t be within reality.
I suppose one could also say “where we were supposed to be”.
But then again, there are a great many windows of possiblity - so - perhaps the answer is “certainly not dead in the water” since we and human evolution is a process.
) "…they call you devil or they call you god.
What?!
