A desk, a clock, a picture, a cap, a cup, a telephone book, and sunglasses. A man from a different generation, an eminent surgeon, a professor, a silent man, a wise man, a stubborn man, someone who was organized, firm in faith and belief, yet brave enough to face doubt. Memories of a family, a legacy among children. An experience that encompassed deep joy and tragic sorrow. A father who died moments earlier. The previous post was about seeing linkages … and I promised an answer (listed here at the end). Its that the linkages are all symptoms of something much more fundamental - something I already know (at least when it's pointed out to me), yet daily I am barely aware of it. The problem is, I pattern-match to what I think should be there! So what's this got to do with God and life? Lots! All my senses are tuned to pattern matching. We hardly know how to talk without saying “It looks like”, “It tastes like”, “It smells like”, “It feels like” and “It sounds like”. Our awareness is strongly based on association. Can you look at the following WITHOUT reading the words? Our abilities are so good that its almost impossible to not read the words, to really see the lines for their shape and curvature alone. We don't read words, we scan for patterns. And we apply it to people! Then, when something doesn't fit our patterns, it engenders xenophobia, discrimination, racism, sexism, and a host of other 'isms. I was re-reminded of this by watching Vi Hart's “Twelve Tones” video (she would perhaps shoot me for associating that with religion - sorry Vi Hart - or maybe not, I don't know what she believes. But consider the idea of trying to hear a sound as a sound, and not as part of something else. Try look at something without forming the label in your mind. And especially, try looking at a person without putting them into a preconceived box. In the movie “Her”, Samantha (the newly-sentient operating system) talks of feelings that she does not have words for … she has no label for the pattern she's formed. That's not what I'm talking of here. Samantha has already formed a pattern for the feelings, recognizing them as a 'thing', the frustration is only because these are outside human experience, and so she doesn't have a language to describe them. Of course things are things, there's nothing wrong with a thing being a thing. But an elegant table leg is also a piece of wood, cellulose, a dead tree, the expression of a craftsman, a structural support and so much more. Yet we see … a table leg. How boring. This is an interesting challenge for the Christian in two important ways. We try fit to God into our preconceived / indoctrinated shapes, and we superimpose our shapes onto other people. NOTE: This is the opposite of the two greatest desires God has for us: to love God with all out heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love others as we love ourselves. This requires us to NOT impose our shapes and instead see whats really there. Because God fits no cookie-cutter shape among a pantheon of gods, and people are never clones of our mental categories, and we know we're unique (right?) so we should love others as being unique! Yet we have the cheek to complain when the boundaries of our preconceptions are mis-aligned with what we encounter. Isn't this the source of so many troubled relationships? We want others to fit our comfortable shapes, and when they don't we get angry, complain, and try to impose our idea of who they should be. As when a spouse emerges from the infatuation of accommodating their partners every wish, and begins to express his or her individual identity. When we enter into relationship it is as two whole beings, nothing is subsumed in the other, and together we make a new whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts … at least that's what should happen. So when the wife fails to match the husbands expectation, we get spousal abuse. And when the husband no longer fulfills the ideal of the wife, we get affairs. And vice-versa. Before you know its there's deceit and fracture everywhere. We do this even more with God! We repeatedly make God in an image of what we think he should be. The cheek of it … trying to fit the infinite into our tiny preconceptions. And so we hear the all too common statement that starts “I would never worship a God who would ...”. This is immense arrogance. To make it more awkward, God is completely unchanged by our dislike that he exceeds the boundaries of our notions. God is. Full stop. Our preferences have no bearing on the matter. Whereas in human relationship we might change somewhat to please one we love, God will not change for us. How could perfection change, why should perfection change simply because we don't understand it. To make it even worse, because God just is, God does not fight back, and so any fractured relationship with him is solely our fault. Now turn it all around and try, try as hard as you can to step away from your notions of how it should be, try think about how God sees us. You and I would complain bitterly if someone tried to make us conform to a shape (even while we put others into shapes) -- because we know we're unique. And this is how God sees us … unique. God can look at writing and see unique lines beyond the words. He can see a table for the enormity of all it represents. He sees us not as clones, but as individuals. Perhaps that's what heaven (or hell) will be like, when we can see everything for what it is. Don't get me wrong; shapes are important – land, tree, beach, lion, bird, snake. The problem is when it's only another lion, or only another bird, or only another person. Thats when we stop sensing the uniqueness of reality. Wisdom, truth, love; these are all to do with what's not within the preferred shapes, they're all to do with seeing uniqueness beyond the shapes. Growing up, really growing up, is when we see more than the cookie-cutter shape we'd like. Maturity is reached when we can no longer find a shape that encompasses God, when we comprehend God is not in a shape, he contains all shapes. (Responses to the "things" linked in the prior post below)
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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