Front PageSearching for Meaning
Submitted by bill on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 18:15. creativity Faith, Truth, Love, Happiness and other virtues life meaning purpose in life
We begin our lives satisfying physical and material desires. But eventually most of us will begin an ancient journey searching for Meaning. The first is material, while the second is immaterial—or spiritual. Brian McLaren describes the material quest as “boiling down to earning and buying and selling…eating and drinking and having fun…respiration, digestion, elimination, ovulation, ejaculation, gestation, reproduction, antiquation, expiration.”1 The search for Meaning cannot be so easily described.
When sacred scriptures speak of Death and Life, they very starkly contrast material existence from spiritual living. Death is the absence of Life. While Life is creative, resourceful, and described with phrases like Pearl of Great Price. Death is finite, and Life is infinite. One can be alive, while still dead. Animated flesh on a skeleton is not necessarily alive. For it is not mere animation that proves a living frame—but what is at its core.
Bones represent the the essence of the material being, stripped of its externalities, but they also contain the very essence of the spiritual being—the marrow. Like the kernel of wheat and the yellow of an egg, marrow is the seed from which new beings are forged.2 Dry Bones lack this essential, creative and reproductive core—they are merely a hollow tree, rigid and lifeless. Bringing dry bones to life is what Meaning is about. Find Meaning, and you find Life. Find Life, and you find Eternity.
This thread is about Meaning and Life. Religion and dogma, political structures and tribalism, are the hollow core that's left when the Life giving marrow is gone. To find Meaning we must seek deeper than isms and accords. When Adam looks at Eve and says: “this is bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh,” he isn't goggling over a sexual being, nor referring to a marriage contract. He has found a soul mate. He has come to life. It is from such connection that Life is conceived.
True Life is spirit. And like electricity or other energy, spirit requires a circuit to change from potential (pressure or voltage) to current. Power is the flow of current. This we sense in the glow of laughter among friends, and the flush of creativity among peers. Without such as these, human civilization is a desert of dry bones.
1 Mclaren, Brian. The Secret Message of Jesus. Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2006. ix.
2 This is not a biology lesson. Meaning is the essence of symbols, which are the essence of language. Logic and fact have their place. But algorithm is repeatable; not regenerative. It is is reproductive but not creative. We must look beyond the literal and the logical to find Meaning.
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Spirt of Goodness
Submitted by bill on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 10:16.
John,
I'm sorry that I missed your comment. We were in Austin that weekend, and I posted this thread in a rush the night before leaving. Meeting up with family and friends—coincidently.
You asked: “What is this force? I see it too. I think it could be described....”, regarding the energy in Spirit evident in human creativity and friends and family enjoying one other's company. Well…I struggle to describe it.
The theology that I grew up under would disagree with me adamantly—if not vehemently. To them, the spirit I describe above, and the Holy Spirit that they regard, are very different characters. But I'm convinced that the very Spirit of God is resident in these two human activities—at least.
Creativity and Joy are two important emanations of God. Spirit, the term, is related to invigoration, rapture or ecstasy, happiness, liveliness, vigor, and the like. Creativity is related to power, fecundity, flight, and even divergent thinking. Regarding Divergent Thinking, I'm reminded of Jesus' words to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” We see the results, even though we cannot see its source. I'm convinced that there is a reason that our vernacular, or everyday language uses spirit and creativity in these ways: we know that they are related. We know this relationship existentially.
Hope this makes some sense. I'm no expert, but I've come to respect my intuition these days, at least as much as my intellect. Experience and intuition tell me that the best things in life come through Goodness.
bill
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Spirit as a force of life... Immaterial inside material...
"Death is finite, and Life is infinite."
Have you ever heard of transhumanism? They talk about the effort of improving the human condition and human body itself by direct force, through the use of technology. Maybe there is a way to make our lifes infinate in material... in the future, and maybe retroactively...
"True Life is spirit. And like electricity or other energy, spirit requires a circuit to change from potential (pressure or voltage) to current. Power is the flow of current. This we sense in the glow of laughter among friends, and the flush of creativity among peers. Without such as these, human civilization is a desert of dry bones."
What is this force? I see it too. I think it could be described....