Down down, up, down, up down.... and so it begins, I have started learning something that will most likely drive my neighbours crazy. In other news, I feel that I have significantly connected with my Irish roots by learning this powerful instrument. I hope to one day be that guy at a gathering who brings a certain kind of ancient life to the party. For now, down up down up down up down up and some fiddly bits.
On future and present tensions...
I delight myself in a time of leisure. I have no job to hold me down, and some money to fix me up for a while until I actually need a job. I am heading back to school in January with three courses in the department of religious studies at UVic. A Franciscan brother asked me about my degree, what I will be doing with it, and what kind of career I will get out of it. Mostly when people ask this I don't feel comfortable enough to explain the spiritual proponent behind my answer, and it mostly ends up with me giving a typical "I don't know, something in academia" kind of response, when really the answer is the very same that I gave to the brother, "I have faith that the Lord will guide me in a direction that is meaningful and useful to the public". The essence of this answer has to do with a certain passion and a certain delight in the awe and terror of existing and choosing between what one is being guided towards (esoterically) and the dread of following yourself into a meaningless state of despair, like what Kierkegaard intended for folks in his book "Either/Or", to choose or to disregard choice altogether. It is through faith that we are guided rightly, and of course it is by our own free will that we choose. Choosing to be faithful indicates a divinely existential circumstance. And that brings us to the next question, what is faith? What makes it divine, if it is in fact divine? Is faith not the image of the Jews at the Wailing Wall, calling God to restore the Temple and restore the covenant? Is faith not the Catholics trusting in the ever human authority of the Church and taking Her teachings as divinely inspired? Faith, as Tillich pointed out, is ultimate concern. What does the ultimate take the shape of? Well, indeed paradoxically, it is a dynamic within a relationship between the person and the sacred, and the ontology of this is astounding. The ultimate is a symbol of what is beyond. This could take the shape of a persona, an incarnation let's say. Lord Krishna you might ask? Indeed. Our deepest yearnings are directed to that which is made accessible to us, ie, the love of God in the person of Christ. The connection between the person and the sacred is what gives faith a divine element. For myself, my faith is in the words of Cornel West "like falling in love my dear brother, jumping off of something and hopefully landing on something". And of course this brings me to my answer to Brother Dan's question that the Lord will guide me, or the Spirit if thou wouldst, to fulfill what I was looking for, to jump off from academia unto something profound is what I hope will happen, and if hope were not a virtue than we would be damned, but it is.
