Awareness 1

I notice that I have not been systematic in my writings.  It is likely that I am repeating myself.  That is something that I will have to accept until such time as I harvest and delete this blog, gathering all the trains of thought and only speaking to particular subjects a limited number of times  using some other tool (perhaps a book, perhaps a wiki).

So the three graces are love, hope, and faith.  At one time, when I only knew the three graces and did not know the commentary (that immediately follows) I would have said that faith was the most important one.  I considered that faith was the starting point, the way that we make the connection (the leap) across the gap from the "world within" to all of exterior reality.  I was never one to assign much value to blind faith.  The conceptual framework that we build around the elements of our faith is very important as to content and structure.

Last night I watched an hour-long interview between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper.  One would not expect to find much in common (aside from politics) but it turns out there are many parallels between their lives.  The interview turned out to be more of a conversation than a one-sided exposition of remarks from one person.

They both lost their fathers just before becoming teenagers.  My father lost his mother at about that age, with potentially greater consequences based on my understanding of his father.  For Colbert and Cooper the loss marked a major transition for each of them.  The word "shattering" (as in broken glass) was used.  Today I read an unkind review of the works of Conrad Aiken (a poet I have read) where it was noted that at roughly that age his father murdered his mother and shot himself, leaving the bodies for Aiken to find.  Cooper's brother killed himself ten years after his father died during open heart surgery.  Two of Colbert's brothers died in the same plane crash with his father.

I was able to wait until my mid-thirties before I experienced that kind of world-shattering grief.  Of course, every subsequent death (of which there were many) is just another blow to the open wound.  We move on, with the realization that the bubble we always took for granted is now deliberate.  Colbert has a strongly developed appreciation for the innate suffering of human existence.  It may be that most of that comes from his strong commitment to Catholic faith (there is that "faith" word again).  Much of the appeal of christian faith comes from the pathos of human existence, as symbolized by Christ on the cross or (alternatively) by the suffering of our lady, Mary.

So Colbert knows about the "grace" of love but that is not what he kept coming back to.  He kept coming back to gratitude, to being thankful for God's gifts and in particular for the gift of life.  Colbert says that everything God dishes out to you is a gift. 

GOD: "Here, take this!"
GOD: "You like that?  Well how about this?"  (Out of compassion I have omitted the Youtube video.)


Until finally one is destroyed, either physically or psychically or else in the depths of one's soul.  The one thing we know is that we will be tested to our utmost destruction - either by events or else by sheer change to the world until we no longer know who we are or why we are what we are.

So then I am forced to say that these blows are the elements of the meaning of our lives, the self-evident result of cause and effect.  For Colbert gratitude is the proper response.  For me it is to be caught up in the beauty, which is synonymous with truth (and so on).  But perhaps they are not so much different.  Either way, we are engaged with the world around us,  whether we perceive it as a gift from God or whether it is seen as the amazing result of an intricate process full of awe, stretching out across aeons of time.  My own vision fills in a lot more of the details but is it really necessary to pursue all that research?

I do not need eternal life to know that my life is not meaningless.  The events of my life are woven into an eternal chain of cause and effect.  I am a participant.