Contraries

Thought and action in progression are often caught in contraries, in differences introduced by competent and good people convinced in their conclusions which seem true for them and acted upon by them, but contradicted by the next persons in their context of truth that differs from the previous presenters. 

A column I reviewed several years ago recalled Emily Dickinson’s statement: Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.  The same column quoted Stanley Kubrick of movie fame: The very meaninglessness of life forces man to make his own meaning.  Which is it – meaningless or ecstatic?  Dumb animals have meaning when mankind gives meaning to them – as pets, as labor, as source for products (milk/hides) or services (comfort) needed by mankind.  The meaning for life given to self-conscious human beings is to bring pleasure to God demonstrated in acts and attitudes of love toward mankind and God.  Mankind is to be and do in imperfect miniature what God is and does in large and perfect meaning.  The context fulfills the image of God that, in the creation, makes us his physical children.  When lived through the redemptive process we become in spiritual reality his adopted children in spiritual context from earth’s kingdom to the Kingdom of God.  We are God’s creation in common grace in physical birth.  We are God’s creation in divine grace in spiritual birth.  God the Father, the Holy Spirit the Mother, and Jesus Christ our Divine/human Brother identifying in both heaven and earth what the objective of humanity reaches for in graduating from mortality to immortality.  The point is made in the uniqueness of the spiritual Church – a likeness so identified as fulfilling the analogy of Christ with a Bride made fitting to him in the dowry paid in the price of the cross and suffering to death – for all choosing hope.

God interprets service to mankind as service to him.  That seems for many persons to be too much to ask – that we treat others as we want to be treated.  Criminals do not want to be treated in the way they treat others, but they risk life to murky ends.  One of the keys to right spiritual thought is to trace what I want for myself in anything, and offer to the world that part of the large gift to others without reservation – within my competency to give it and to support patterns.  This goes beyond human rights dictated by the needs of human welfare.  We are now in the realm of human desire to be given something more in better circumstances, health, work and all else that advances progressive contexts to the affirmations of life value, and reduce the negations of life fallibility.  Because mankind in general, without instruction, tends to respond to others in the way those others act, we need some help in the objectivity of giving of self and substance that may be unappreciated.  That service may, in fact, be met with negative reaction that can be fierce.  It takes strong commitment to carry on – to sustain the objectivity of our own pattern for life in the righteous context.  Human response is to react negatively to those who bite the hand that feeds them.  The great value to mankind is that within the story of sacrificial and deliberate life that pleases God, there is life award honoring God’s holy nature – in any humane service.  It is simple in theory, limited in practice.

For some persons human parables may be hard to come by to accomplish our purpose here, but one is very moving for my motivations.  My mother gave herself to her children.  Our father died of tuberculosis when I was seven years of age, but contributed little before that.  She worked from well before daylight to long after dark mothering and hosting enough roomers and boarders so to keep her children.  She remarried some time later during the Great Depression to a man she wasn’t sure she loved, and he accepted her admissions that he would help her with her children, and she would be faithful to him until death.  Both kept their vows. The struggles she went through, especially before the remarriage were great.  I spent some time in an orphans’ home when she fell ill.  The story is lengthy.  When I was grown she made me feel worth when she said she was proud of me.   So appreciative do I feel for her sacrifices that I would not want to violate what she said she had mothered.  On an even higher level God’s life gifts appear.   Issues remain cerebral and emotional, physical and spiritual.  Knowing what God has given in earth and heaven, one treasure being my mother as a gift among blessings.  I must be true to heaven’s immortal blessings.