God is the way to man

I didn't mean for this blog to be a religious update.. and I hope it isn't becoming that. It's just that I'm trying to get into the habits of writing more, so as to become more articulate, and having a quiet time. Combining these two allows, I hope, for accountability and engagement (one of these days I'm going to go mad trying to stop alliterating. it's not a real alliteration a, and e, but close enough) but also, writing for an audience allows me to write better.

Today I was reading Karl Adams. 

Thus spoke mr Adams: 

"The Lover can reach his beloved only through God. God alone can carry him over the dead point which lies between the ego and the alter and cannot be transcended by mere logic... Thus in every genuine, unselfish, serious love belief in God is contained, even really presupposed. No one has expressed this truth with greater profundity than the apostle of Love, St. John: 'Everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God."

I John 4:7-12

God's Love and Ours

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son^b into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for^c our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

two things struck me when I read this

1) mere logic

I have the hardest time understanding how logic, which is implicit in everything we consciously do, can be considered a slight thing. It is obvious that logic is paramount to survival. It takes logic to make judgement calls, to use memory and experience and shared stories and come up with a sound game plan. It takes logic to fix my car. Logic is the foundation of our modern society, built as it is on technology, which is nothing more than a giant string of intertwining 'iff...then...' equations.  It is supporting everything we do. I know my roommate gets off of work everyday at 5 ish. Why? because that is the schedule she is contracted under, and that has been her pattern since I moved it.  Without logic our world would be like an episode of Monty Python or the Mighty Boosh everyday. and those shows are as popular as they are because  they suspend logic for a moment. that vertiginous feeling of loss of logic translates into humor because we know it isn't so. It we doubted it, those shows would have the same depressing quality as french expressionistic theatre. So, we cannot get away from logic. We function in logic. Yet this love of God transcends logic. There are no arguments to be made against it then. It is a simple 'Yes, I believe', or a 'No, I won't' because there are no arguments for it. Arguments are rational. then does that mean the love of God is experiential? something you must be open to feeling? does that mean that experience trumps logic? 

The problem obviously is not to logically disect the verse but to come to a truce in my own life between logic and experience. they are uncomfortable bedfellows at best, oil and water. How does one come to a right understanding about these two? logic and belief? belief cannot be logical, because it wouldn't be belief, yet logic at times helps belief. and humans are not only logical. maybe that's why there are so many depressed people around? we are trained in knowledge but not in intuition, facts not feelings... I could go one, but I would only get more muddled than I already am. It's confusing.  perhaps one must really at one point throw back ones arms and say 'screw it. I'm just going to tell myself it's true'

2) 'man is a mystery. he is a culmination point of an eternal love which issues from God; a point in the actuality of the world where, as nowhere else, the love of God burns.'

to love God first, and then love others. that is the order it should go in.  I don't have any deeper thoughts on this one. the statement above, from earlier in the same text quoted at the top of the entry, sums it up.  It sounds like a Mantra to mention over and over again. how does this fact sink it? how, knowing this, do I go about my daily life? for me, it's easy to love others. the hardest part is to realize that I can say, logically (teehee), that if what is true for 'man' , being a general term for a group, then it must follow that it is also true for every member of that group seperate from the group, ergo: 'Jen is a mystery. She is the culmination point of an eternal love which issues from God: A point in the actuality of the world where, as nowhere else, the love of God burns.' Wow. I wanted to cry a little, but I'm in the public library. I am so far from accepting that statement. but what a goal!  What audacity, I begin to think to myself, for me to claim that! but hang on, self. I'm not just claiming that for me. if the predicate stands, then this is true for everyone. and you've already agreed that it is true for everyone else. in the truest logical fashion, if the term man is defined as including everyone that is human, and I find one exception to the statement, then the statement is false. Ergo, I MUST believe that I am the center of this great love or I make God out to be a liar. both logicaly and experientialy.. 

ok.. so there's my mantra for the day (although it is already 2 pm)

thoughts? caveats? civits? 

actual news:

I am in training for teaching the SAT's a good part time job. I'm also hoping to find another part time job to help me out, but in the meantime have had an interview for assistant manager at a small french bakery downtown. the type of job is right, but the hours are not. It would mean giving up the SAT job, and right now, the SAT job would look good on my resume, as well as help me break into teaching. I've received no training for actual classroom teaching. I'm starting to plan for what I'm going to do once I have my M.A and as usual I'm thinking Global. I just don't know if I have the strength to be in a foreign country.

I've given myself one year to train myself in taking care of myself more. unfortunatly I have an artists self destructive temperament, if not the actual work ethic, and I need to train myself in basic selfcare.

I'm learning to do the little things, although I hate them. I was always more of a bigpicture gal, not one who wanted to deal with laundry, food, cleaning, unless it was for at least 5 people..