Wednesday, October 22, 2008

"Bless those who persecute you.." Romans 12:14
Tonight as I was sitting down at church a high school girl who looked somewhat foreign came and sat by me. She introduced herself and quickly began sharing her story. She told me that her family had just recently moved to America from Egypt to escape persecution. Apparently in the last few years the persecution of Christians has drastically increased. "You know" she said " You Americans can change your religion every day, but in Egypt we die for our religion. If my family had stay in Egypt any longer my family and I would be dead. We have had friends who have been killed and one of my friends was kidnapped for two months- she was constantly raped- just because she was a Christian. You Americans are so lucky. Did you know that 80% of Egyptians are starving to death living in poverty ,( obvious seeing people starve to death on the streets was not uncommon for this girl) only 5% are middle class, and the last 15% own everything." "What?" I thought that Muslims were commanded to take care of the poor?" "Oh", she replied- only one day of the year" What a sick religion I thought to myself. "Isn't it beautiful" I told her "That christian put such a great emphasis on taking care of the needy?" He even went as far as to say that "true religion is this: that you take care of the orphans and widows." "yes" she replied and smiled as she slightly turned her head. "You know" she said " My family ...we would have died for Christ if we had to...we would have never denied Him."
What a beautiful and strong girl. How many families like this die everyday but we will never know their stories because their bodies will be burned and their ashes left sifted into the sand, but whose souls knew the richness of Christ- whose hearts were filled with joy,overwhelmed with such compassion that they even showed love to those torturing their children. What a testament to Americans- whose bodies will be nicely scented and stuffed like thanksgiving turkeys- bodies that are rotten from the worldly pleasures- whose souls are absolutely empty.

The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate roseOf death’s twilight kingdom
The hope onlyOf empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pearPrickly pear prickly pearHere we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
and the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot

Thursday, October 9, 2008

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev

Walking to the bus this morning was beautiful. It was cold and the sun was coming up. Like I was having some freakin existential experience..unexplainable. Somehow I ended up in the park. The truth is that after my first class I decided it skip my other ones..something I rarely do but I knew if I had to hear anymore about nathaniel hawthorne I would vomit in my mouth. What a joke. All he did was frolic around rome with his sissy buddies talking about art trying to create ethical dilemmas like he was some kind of philosopher. I ended up on the bench watching the sun beam through the trees. Watching the leaves take their last breath before winter. I just wanted to lay there forever. Its funny to think about how we grow through cycles. Seasons and years. Time and space. Yet somehow it all just starts running together as if it just mushes becoming undefinable. Today happens again tomorrow like yesterday: and here we go again. Year by year. Thought by Thought. Everything the same but in different packages. All of it so beyond us yet we act like we somehow comprehend it- knowing the alternative would be insanity/ As if we are little children knowing our punishment is coming so we curl up with are hands over our heads trying to drown out the reality pouring down around us.
The other day one of my philosophy professors said "why do we all think everyone would go bad if we did away with morals? We havent always had "morality"
I almost fell off my seat when she said this.
I can just see her now in the jungles of the amazon trying to rationalize with the cannibals.
It made me think about this old russian film I watched a few years ago. It was about this young woman who fell in love with this man, and he was really fond of her but he thought he would corrupt her and such so he cut things off. A few years later he saw her at this grand party and realized that she was married to some hotshot duke. He instantly became infatuated with her and did everything in his power to get her in bed/ Of course, it was evident that she admired her husband but was still crazy in love with this guy. I remember this beautiful scene where they are both ice skating. They are in russia surrounded by snow. The beautiful woman starts skating around and the guy just stands there staring at her and you know at that moment he would give his life to be with her. The movie ends with her sitting down and him on his knees before her begging her to love him. Up until this point its obvious that she loves him back and everyone thinks they are going to get back together. But the end really surprised me : she started crying with him- you could tell she was in a lot of pain- but she told him that she made a commitment to her husband and would never dishonor him. And then the movie ended. It sounds kind of depressing...and trust me it was...but the point was that morality should dictate our decisions. The point was that regardless of how bad the woman thought she wanted the man, it was more important for her to honor her husband and I think anyone who saw this movie would be proud of her because deep down your greatly admired her.
There is something deep inside of us that wants morality- that wants boundaries. How is the married woman who goes around screwing any man she sees any different from an animal?
I dont think my professor really had any idea of what she was talking about. Its ironic how some of the most educated people are the most ignorant. It seems like they just sit around drinking cocktails discussing how they are going to stop world hunger in their ivory towers while in the meantime their are people down bellow in the gutters begging for food.
I just wondered as I sat on that green bench: what keeps driving us into such deep denial about the world around us?