Nov 16 2022

The experience of repentance is a yearning for God. It is a recognition -- lamentation -- of our distance to God. Let it wash over me. Nothing else feels better than the contrition of heart, because it is reconnection with God. We realize our depravity by the same stroke that we recognize God, and it continues as we continue to recognize God. 

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Nov 17

​The idea that something is impossible in practical terms does not stop people from still holding onto the ideal, because the value of the ideal somehow draws strength from the practical impossibility. But I wonder if that is not a product of the way we understand God in the Western philosophical tradition - just unknowable, period. Some false idealism. We have to say, as Christians, that God is knowable, and indeed the very grounds of intelligibility. 

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Nov 21

This ought not to be done to him. But it is. Our world is broken… but the final breaking occurred. And so also the meaning of every instance, every degree of brokenness is revealed. What ought to be done — what is natural — is for him to live. And also for us to live. The consequence of sin is death. But there is nothing that God cannot overcome — and so the same with our death. 

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Nov 22

To say that Jesus Christ is God’s “one and only” Son is to say that in Jesus God is entirely revealed. The question then is what does Jesus reveal about God. Or an even better question, what does Jesus revealing God, reveal about God. 

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Nov 23

The Mother of God being a virgin does not condemn sex but is truly a blessing. While we need it in order to give life, she does not, but the point is still to give life. Perhaps it is something that occurs only after the Fall, but it is still, in our world, supposed to be the manifestation of a unity that already exists between husband and wife, and it is this unity, by virtue of being a Sacrament, that gives life. The Holy Spirit dwells in marriage and participates in the creation of life, just like He brought forth Christ in Mary's womb. At the center of marriage is life-giving love. This is such a tall order, one that tries our hearts and souls. Who can answer this calling...

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​Jan 11, 2023

Why are there so many things that I do not understand while they happen in live time, and only with experience will I see their meaning? 

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Jan 22

The irreducibility of epistemological rules, those that we use when citing evidence, making an argument; you have to make use of a set of logical rules, syllogisms, which are immaterial. That is to say, you cannot “explain” consciousness away (i.e. reduce it to “mere matter”) because consciousness allows for that explanation to occur in the first place. It’s like shooting oneself in the foot. And this is not a “new” insight; I did not come up with it, yet at the same time, it belongs to me. This is the same insight that always compelled me to pray when I was young: whenever I thought about my own existence, the fact that I am me, instead of somebody else, and that evolution could not have explained me, because whatever I think of, I am thinking about it, and therefore it cannot ever explain me. The source of me is then, God. 

 

It is not right to distinguish the mind from the body. The whole “mind-body problem” is futile because of the way it is set up. There can be no “link” or correlation found in between a set of laws governing consciousness and another set of laws governing physical matters. And even if there is such a correlation, the nature of “physical laws,” broadly construed, still must ultimately confront us as a mystery. Our neurons are connected to all parts of our bodies, our hands, our feet, everything. That is how we perceive all different kinds of sensory information that we do. Second, firing neurons do not have a way to distinguish themselves in terms of the types of experiences that we have on the most fundamental level—auditory, smell, visual, etc. It is just the same transmission of an electrical signal, in the same manner. And yet we do have that difference in type, according to experience, even as you read this paragraph, and as I type it down. Third, there is no “center” to which all of our neurological pathways go to, and yet there is a unity that grounds the I. And it is that I that is both the basis and the “product” of a mystical union with God. More on that somewhere else. 

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Jan 24

His Incarnation is being completed by us. Father Andrew said: we are closer to Christ, and in a far more profound way, than when he was a biological individuality in history, two thousand years ago. A state of nature may decay, but the personal realm of existence only perfects in Christ, and it builds up to Christ. He is the telos and consummation of all things. The tearing up of my own soul, I can feel it. Living dangerously, freely – I am unable to withstand it! 

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​Life is not suffering - it is experiencing! So that we may have something to talk about with God. 

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Feb 4

​Laughter is a gift from God for when we miss the mark. 

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Feb 13

Taking pleasure in small things requires a spirit of repentance, for this person who delights in them must be moving on from life, which means that he mustn't dwell on the past. It means that his focus is always directed towards some new goal, some new object, some new insight. 

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May 21

“So that Scripture may be fulfilled” – less of a sense of inevitable destiny, but rather God’s faithfulness to Israel, as it was written. How can anyone say that the covenant with Israel was “broken”? Jesus died so that it is not. The Scriptures of Israel showed a God who would die, if He ever became man, for His people. 

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July 15

Metaphysics: Being, and the Person Who brought me into being. The cross destroyed death, a supposedly simply historic act, gave us full recognition, or at least its possibility, of being itself, and perhaps is thus eschatologically immanent and all-permeating. The cross is first and foremost God's victory over death, and only secondarily, the substitution for our sins. 

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July 23

There is something about the struggle of flesh and blood and evil and good that makes me want to say yes to the danger of making a mistake. There’s something about suffering that affords me the freedom that makes it all worth it. There’s something about pain that gives me joy – or rather, to avoid a masochistic impression (but again, what is masochism if not a distorted human need), reminds me of joy. The sin that we all face is a failure to enjoy. ​

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July 28

Does God understand evil? 

What does it mean to say that God is humble? 

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Oct 16

I think we pray to the Saints because they can see our sins, as those who have once shared in like struggles. They can intercede for us because in the sight of God, their words are like honey, sweet and full of goodness, and He hears them. God only hears the prayers of the Saints – and also when we pray like a Saint. This is an answer to the question if God knows evil. He does not. His Saints, however, understand it as those who have overcome it, and they pray to God for us as those who have overcome it, as well.