04/26/15

This meeting between the two of you could be moved to a thousand different latitudes and longitudes and still remain the session it started out to be, Indeed, by the motions of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe (if that can be defined), every place - every meeting of matter...becomes a kind of cosmic floating crap game. Location is accidental to its deepest meaning. What really matters is not where we are, but who - what real beings...are with us. In that sense, heaven where we see God face to face through the risen flesh of Jesus, may well be the placiest of all places, as it is the most gloriously material of all meetings. Here, perhaps, we do indeed see only through a glass darkly; we mistake one of the earthly husks of place for the heart of its mattering.
-Robert Farrar Capon, The Heavenly Onion, The Spirit of the Lamb; A Culinary Reflection

This past week I was accepted into Ashland's bachelor plus teacher licensure program.

It's strange to think about the time and the path I have taken from 17 to 27. From a high school guidance counselor helping me plan my career path and college to today as I go back to school finally with an idea of who I want to be when I grow up.

But I wouldn't trade the path for anything. The path gives meaning to the destination. If I could go back in time and get my teacher's license at 22 it wouldn't mean what it will mean to have it at 29.

I never believe that the ends justify the means. I believe the means are everything. I believe it is the path that matters more than the destination. It is good to have the goal the ends in mind but if it is at the cost of the path then it is too high a price.

If it takes death in order to have peace then it isn't peace at all.
If it takes gentrification to fix up a neighborhood then it isn't fixed at all.
If it takes child labor to save money then it isn't cheap at all.

My path to my career is my own. There are millions of teachers but the why is the biggest question. 22 year old me didn't want to teach but after the path I've been on now I have a new understanding of teaching. A new lens.

Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks

04/19/15

If we move to the direction of deification, our human nature, progressing towards God, will somehow carry the created material world with it. If, however, we move to the opposite direction, the created world will suffer with us as well.
-Orthodox Perspectives on Creation, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese

If we move towards Christlikeness we move towards a loving stewardship and servanthood of the Earth that somehow carries all of us towards deification.

It is good for workers to have an appetite;
an empty stomach drives them on.
-Proverbs 16

hunger is good. It is good for man to remain in the tension of hunger. For us to never starve yet never find complete satisfaction. Hunger is necessary to being human.

To be human is to be hungry. To be hungry is to be humble.

Hunger points us to our mortality.
Mortality keeps us aware of our limitations, our dependence.
Dependence on the earth, the community, most importantly on God.

With out hunger there is no humility without humility there is only Pride

Pride goes before destruction,
and haughtiness before a fall.
-Proverbs 16

Pride comes before the fall. Our hungry is was drives us on. It's what keeps us human. It's what keeps us alive in Christ. Without hunger without dependence we have no appetite for grace.

Without the appetite or the understanding of our need we take the place in our own minds of God.

Once we have become our own god we are delusional and no longer living in reality.

This delusion and detachment from what is real creates our destruction.

We store up food, we store up riches we think we don't need God we think we are above need. We, by our own strength have eliminated the hunger for God and in so doing this we take the bite from the very fruit that created our mortality our hunger for God.

To be human is to desire to be our own god and yet to realize at the same time our need for God.

There isn't a question of what would have happened if we didn't eat from the tree. To be human is to eat from the tree. To be human is to have hunger.

twenty one pilots: Tear In My Heart