June 22, 2009
I’ve been pondering a weighty topic for the last week or so, wondering why a couple of Christian concepts seem to be mutually exclusive, and, moreover, how shall *I* reconcile those?
No, I’m not telling you what they are. I ran across a passage in a book that spoke to my questions (although didn’t answer them, precisely). So I’m just going to post the passage. Character names are left out, as I want it to stand on its own without any preconceived notions.
[The man] smiled. “What does this look like to you, Miss [ . . . ]?” He pointed around the room.
“This?” She laughed suddenly, looking at the faces of the men against the golden sunburst of rays filling the great windows. “This looks like . . . You know, I never hoped to see any of you again, I wondered at times how much I’d give for just one more glimpse or one more word—and now—now this is like that dream you imagine in childhood, when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see those great departed whom you had not seen on earth, and you choose, from all the past centuries, the great men you would like to meet.”
[ . . . ]
“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves—or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“And if you met those great men in heaven,” asked [another], “what would you want to say to them?”
“Just . . . just ‘hello,’ I guess.”
“That’s not all,” said [he]. “There’s something you’d want to hear from them. I didn’t know it, either, until I saw him for the first time” —he pointed to [a third man]— “and he said it to me, and then I knew what it was that I had missed all my life. Miss [ . . . ], you’d want them to look at you and to say, ‘Well done.’”
Dude thinks it comes from the book he’s currently reading.
Y’know, for such a well-read individdle, you surely are stuck in a rut. 😉 Someday when you’re in an especially good mood I should treat you to the best parody ever.
Sorry, but I couldn’t even get past the source to figure out the question. You’d think I’d have the sense to stay out of serious discussions, wouldn’t you? 😛
You’d think!!!
Right now I’m doing something I almost NEVER do: Reading 3 different books at once. It’s kinda driving me to comfort reads. And yes, THAT is a comfort read. 😉
Ahhh. . . 3 books at once? The mere idea makes me dizzy, seeing as how I’m more the compulsive, read-it-straight-through-in-one-night kind o’girl. Does this mean you’re only writing 2 sequels at this time instead of the usual 4? Nothing like harnessing the power of ADD to your benefit, eh? 😀
Uhm, yeah, it’s actually making me dizzy. I’m a read-it-straight-through girl, too, so this is different. I’ve promised these reads to people and it’s not working for me. So I’m going to scale it back to one at a time.
And actually, I’m stuck right now, totally in limbo because emotionally I’m still with Vanessa and Eric, but I need to be vesting myself in Mitch and Cassie. Yet, the big conflict is not coming together in my head. I know what it is, but I don’t know how to execute it yet.
Last but not least, I have been ordered (*ahem you know who you are TwitterCrank*) to read Fight Club. Apparently, the movie is a far inferior product.
There you go. Hence, I turn to my comfort read for some literary stability in my life. You want I should read Marx?
LMAO@Marx. I think this is where I would put on my bowling shoes, pour a stiff White Russian or three, and spend the evening with The Big Lebowski.
Knowing you, indulging in that kind of pointless escapism never even occurred to you. When’s the last time you spent a few hours doing nothing constructive at all? Damn. I bet you think you’re Edison and only need to sleep 15 minutes at a time, too.
I tell ya, we just need to have a love child to combine my laziness with your type A-ness and we’d have the perfect mix! (Don’t worry about fighting over who gets to be on top–it’s all moot since we’re short a sperm between us. 😛 )
You know. . . you’re helping me to totally hijack your thread here. Should I start arguing against the concept of “heaven” just to get everyone else looking the right direction down the track, or is the train already in a heap at the bottom of the canyon?
I watch “So You Think You Can Dance.” Does that count? (But don’t ask me what I’m thinking about when I’m watching it because it might negate your answer.)
Well, it’s not like I offered a prize to whoever gets it. Plus, I’m still percolating on the question itself, much less the answer.
Dude wants to look at his children and think “Well done”. Dude wants other people to look at his kids some day and tell him an MoJo “Well done”
Mostly Dude looks at his kids and thinks “Well, done.”
I didn’t know you watched TV. I thought that was prohibited, like caffeine.
I can’t do more than one book at a time. But right now, my head threatens to explode as I hold the contents of *five* books I’ve just read and all their interconnections in my head for posts I’ll be doing about them. Glad I didn’t post each one as I finished them or I’d constantly be revising the damned posts, boring everyone.
TV bungles up my to-do list, and I usually end up watching DIY shows anyway, which makes me add to my to-do list.
So your 5 books are converging topics, right? They’re symbiotic in nature?
>>>So your 5 books are converging topics, right? They’re symbiotic in nature?
Only two of them are. The rest are innocent bystanders pulled into the relational fray.