My thoughts are swirling about me tonight. I realize it's not late in the general scheme of things, but I was up until 2 a.m. last night and seem destined for at least the same fate tonight. And this will only accomplish finishing my Early Church Fathers take-home exam--not, unfortunately, finalizing the 150 or so remaining ePort grades that I need to have ready tomorrow so I can meet with John B. and verify some stuff about testing before I actually enter the grades in the system. Just the checking of each student's ePort in the system takes hours and hours. Oy....
It's like sleep isn't allowable in my universe anymore. Instead, my mind rushes with various and sundry thoughts. Such as:
1. I really don't like having to explain Gnosticism. It is complicated to begin with, and it has various sects that believe various different things, and while the response I have written will be sufficient for my professor, I am sure, I don't feel that it is sufficient to the subject matter...and that frustrates me.
2. Morten Lauriden's Lux Aeterna is the most beautiful choral piece ever composed. I remember the first time I ever heard it, sitting under the gorgeous cathedralesque ceiling of First United Methodist downtown, listening to Chambers and the FUMC choir/orchestra send their notes ringing through the air. I remember sitting there, almost short of breath, reading the translations in the program. I have never experienced such a musical/spiritual ecstasy. And I am listening to it now. It's wonderful inspiration.
3. My Jewish apocalyptic readings, and their connections to the Torah and to Paul's recount of the decisions of the Jerusalem Council, make me question certain things. Such as, if the Hebrews were not allowed to eat animals that were killed inhumanely, and whose blood was not quickly drained from them; and if this was because God did not want us to cause pain to even a brute creature, and because we were not to consume the blood, the life force of the creature, as the pagans did; and if the decision in the New Testament Jerusalem Council was that Christians were not bound to the entire Torah (with circumcision and all that), but rather, were bound to the more Noahic laws which still included not eating the blood of animals and the meat of an animal slaughtered cruelly--why do we Christians not live by this today? Dr. Young's answer to my question was that most animals bred for food today are slaughtered in a humane manner, and therefore, before God, we can eat them because we are not causing them pain. But how do we know? Is this something we should be thinking about? I don't know.
4. Don't get me started on the soul and the spirit. I've been thinking about that lately as well--the Hebrew conception that rather than our being of a triune nature (spirit, soul, body), perhaps we are simply soul and body, but the spirit is an element of the soul. I think...ultimately...we can't know. We know there is a part of us that is physical and a part of us that is not physical, and we see that when we die, that non-physical part leaves us and goes (we hope) to God. But who are we to define a difference between spirit and soul? Is it not enough to say that God's spirit touches a part of our soul, as we accept Him?
I don't know. I'm not a philosopher, and if you would have told me even two years ago that I would be up late at night blogging about the spirit and the soul, I would have told you that you were absolutely, certifiably nuts. But here I am.
4 comments:
Can't help chiming in here.
1. Sufficient is rarely satisfying to me, when it comes to my own work (and often that of my students!). It's simply not the same as excellence. I share your frustration.
2. Morton Lauridsen is amazing. He has an incredible ear for the ethereal -- and knows how to make a group of earthly voices something more than they are. My RU choral director loved him.
3. Don't try that argument with your vegan friends -- I've periodically considered becoming vegetarian for those very reasons, but I simply can't afford the lifestyle.
4. And then, maybe it is impossible to discern where one begins and the other ends. Sort of like a molecule -- we can draw diagrams of the relationships of the two atoms involved, but we can't actually see the difference unless we break the molecule. And then it's simply two atoms again.
Ah, but you are a philosopher, in the original (and still truest) meaning of the term: your love of wisdom is apparent.
2. For the most spiritually sensitive setting of scripture texts I've ever heard, check out Brahms' German Requiem (with a translation in front of you). It has a depth of understanding that still awes me.
3. Add to your list under "Books you'll wish had never been written if you read them:" Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle." Best inducement to keep kosher I ever read.
I love listening to the Brahms Requiem, but I admit I haven't ever taken the time to examine the translated texts. I'm definitely going to do that.
As for The Jungle, ironically, it was on my list of "books to read" when I was working on my senior paper (during my depressing-American-literature phase). But I never got around to reading it. I still want to, even though I know it will be disturbing. I'm ok being disturbed every once in a while. :)
Which is why I'm not a philospher: I never have much cared whether the soul includes the spirit or they are separate. I know they both exist. I want to find out how they work. How does God's spirit commune with ours? Are emotions ruled by chemicals in the brain, or is it something else? What else? Is a person's spirit always there and just get's awakened when you are saved, or does God put it there when you are saved? How does He do that? Yes, I never left the 4-year-old "why" phase...
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