Man lives in some wrong, mistaken way…

* “….. Man lives in some wrong, mistaken way-the real joy of life must be to dwell on earth like a ray of light, warming and fructifying all things …

Man lives in some wrong, mistaken way…

Lots of people have chosen to live the way they want to live, without giving to much attention to others around them. Their selfishness has made them not to worry about mother earth, and lets them be deaf for the cries of that earth in need.

Lots of people do think they have an other opportunity to make the best of their life, in an afterlife. They ignore the writings of the men of God, who did their best to warn mankind for their position and limited time.

The Bible makes it clear

“It is here and now we have to make it!”

We are having only one life. We are born, and then we can use the given time as good as we can. But at a certain point, we shall have to face death in the eyes. When we die, everything shall be over and out for us. We shall not be able to do anything. Life shall leave us, leaving our bodies to deteriorate and become dust.

In death, no way to act or think anymore, we are just like dead animals, having come to our end, to deteriorate or by decay ending up in dust.

The Unanswered Questions of War

Questions of War…

Grabbing love

True love grabs on to what is loved and does not let go for anything, just as death grabs a hold of a person and never lets go in this world. Love knows no bounds in which it will go to show that love.

Scrambling

Sea turtle hatchling racing to the safety of the ocean. Photo by Christopher Farrugia from Unsplash. {I Am the Moment}

Roth Poetry

Life is such a short span when viewed from this end

Seems like we started out together just yesterday

And then I look in the mirror and wonder who that is

staring back at me and looking like an old man

*

For years we struggled to make a living and raise a family

We passed through several lifetimes it seems

Now, in retirement, looking back, the joys and difficulties

passed so quickly and the things we worried about are forgotten

*

Now that we are at the ebb and flow we begin looking forward

again to where we are headed and what it all might mean

Time it seems is that stretch of sand between the dunes and the ocean

where we wait for the Light to show us the way to the next paradigm

*

“We are all just baby turtles

scrambling through the sand

to the ocean

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Paint me in the Shadows

Roth Poetry

When my time has come and I am gone

Take my ashes and paint me in the shadows

Under the oak tree where memories were made…

In the shadows with the fungi and let me watch it grow

And feel the coolness of the wind floating through the leaves

*

When my time has come and I am gone

Brush me smoothly under rocks of overhanging cliffs.

Paint me in the shadows where cool water

Trickles its way gurgling neath the trees

And deer quench their thirst on hot summer days

*

When my time has come and gone

Blend my ashes onto boardwalk pilings.

Paint me in the shadows where I can hear

Excited children walking as the waves roll in

Splashing in the shadows and rolling out again

*

When my time has come and gone

Take me to the farm I loved so long ago

Paint me…

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Where The Lost Things Are

Poetry from John Looker

.
Where The Lost Things Are

.
At the back of the west wind,
where the evening sun wakens a bird-rich isle:
that’s where the lost things are.

Where the hummingbird
quivers at a trumpet dripping with nectar
and clouds of scent rise over a turquoise sea,
that’s where they are, the things that can’t be found.

The golden sovereign that slipped between
the boards in the Tudor Hall; the Hall itself lost at cards
in Venice on the long Grand Tour;
they’re here; this is the spot.

Even the daughter, forswearing carriages and
pianoforte, who was carried away in steam and smoke
for love; and the son gone surfing in foreign lands;
they too are here. They all come here.

And therefore you.
You’ve raced across the foot-burning sand
to float like a starfish in the clear lagoon,
your tequila-on-ice waiting you back in the shade.

If only mine…

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Martin Heidegger Quotes

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Preceding

Some of us are still catching up to what we are.

Existence in the non-existent and non-existence in the existence

Our existence, the world showing up for us and holding up a mirror

I and Thou

In your own heart or outside of it

Modern Living

There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is.

Quoteliv

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.

Martin Heidegger

Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be predetermined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set…

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Our existence, the world showing up for us and holding up a mirror

The world doesn’t just exist, it shows up for us. It appears as the pure experience of the present moment. And one of the most amazing things about the world is that it changes – from age to age, generation to generation, over the course of a human lifetime.

We can not ignore the world. We live in it, and we have to face those things that happen in that world. Today it would even be very difficult to live on a desert island just to live on our own without any interruption or interference from other human beings.

We are here and though others can ignore us, we can not ignore them nor deny our own existence. We have our fleshy bodies within it our brains which enable us to think and reason. From the moment we are born we are confronted with the world and shall have to learn to live in that world. From that first step on earth, time does not let us on our own but however we want, time binds us to itself. It makes hours, days, months and years go by while we have to hold in it and come to the realisation that we are getting older. However, we turn it or turn it and look for the ‘why’ we are here and the ‘how’ we can make it true here, we are pulled in all directions to do this or that or to be here and there.

Sometimes we even wonder not only why we exist, but also why this world and this universe exist. Lots of people also wonder what there would be in outer space. In the darkness behind the horizon, stars and planets get us dreaming of other planets and perhaps also about other living beings. Why should we be the only intellectual beings?

When we see time passing, we often feel as if we are running out of time. Looking at how glaciers melt and how waters rise, but so many in the world do not want to believe climate change is a serious business and that we are heading for an unseen natural disaster if we do not act quickly to combat global warming.

If nothing existed there would be nothing to contemplate existence and no existence to contemplate. Now we have to think about a lot of things. In fact, it happens that our brains don’t let us rest easy and get our heads spinning with all sorts of (sometimes foolish) thoughts.

Why did anything happen?

Why didn’t nothing happen?

Why did all those planets came into existence?

Why does anything at all exist?

What does it mean to exist?

Why did man came into existence and why does he thinks he is superior to all other beings?

Why are we here?

What is life all about? or What is the purpose of existence?

Is that what we think to see realy there? Or is it just an illusion?

Philosophers through all ages have tackled this most fundamental question of existence. Many persons came to practice or investigate the systematised study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. There was and is the searching, the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. We know of major Eastern philosophers, like Buddha; Confucius; Dai Zhen; Han Feizi; Laozi; Mencius; Mozi; Nichiren; Nishida Kitarō; Wang Yangming; Xunzi; Zhu Xi.

But in the West, they did not have to undercut and could in turn make others think and philosophise with a variety of thoughts. There were many Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle and his followers, who brought a whole movement into being,  Aristotelianism. Epicurus and Epicureanism.
The Western world provided lots of major Western philosophers, like Peter Abelard; St. Anselm; St. Thomas Aquinas; St. Augustine; Noam Chomsky; Jacques Derrida; Duns Scotus; Michel Foucault; Jürgen Habermas; Martin Heidegger; David Hume; William James; Saul Kripke; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; John Locke; John Stuart Mill; Friedrich Nietzsche; Hilary Putnam; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Bertrand Russell; Jean-Paul Sartre; Socrates; Benedict de Spinoza; Bernard Williams; Ludwig Wittgenstein, and so many more who request our attention.

Some of those philosophers from the east and west will tell you that everything that we experience as real is an illusion. Especially in Eastern philosophies, we find ‘masters’ or ‘teachers’ who will say this is all a dream.

Could it be that we are part of a dream or living in some surreal universe?

And is there some Being managing it all?

Is there a Creator or Manipulator? And are we just His toys?

We may see all this physical stuff around us, but in which way is it real, or do we get to know how it really is?

Over the years, mankind had to change its views about so many things. More than once, man had it wrong. More often there were groups of people or organisations, who wanted to have control over people and made it a rule or doctrine that people had to believe. The Roman Catholic Church was (and is still) a master in that.

Many people have high ideas about themselves. Sometimes it happens that they suddenly become confronted with themselves and have to come to see that their thoughts and emotions are ‘nothing’. It is all, they will say, the play of pure consciousness. John Locke considered “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind” man’s consciousness.

Pure being is all that really is. Everything else is an illusion created in an ungraspable field of consciousness, awareness and sentience. Some philosophers regarded it as a kind of substance, or “mental stuff,” quite different from the material substance of the physical world. From such philosophers’ ideas many started to believe we exist out of more than one element. They managed to have several people believe that when they die that there is a spiritual element (the soul) that will go to other places (like purgatory, hell or heaven) and another physical element that will transform into another body (incarnation and reincarnation). That reincarnation, also called transmigration or metempsychosis, in religion and philosophy, would be a rebirth of the aspect of an individual that persists after bodily death — whether it be consciousness, mind, the soul, or some other entity — in one or more successive existences. Depending upon the tradition, these existences may be human, animal, spiritual, or, in some instances, vegetable, depending on the way one lived before.

The French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher René Descartes for instance as one of the first to abandon Scholastic Aristotelianism, formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body problem. Because he promoted the development of a new science grounded in observation and experiment, he is generally regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. We all know his expression

“I think, therefore I am” (best known in its Latin formulation, “Cogito, ergo sum,” though originally written in French, “Je pense, donc je suis”).

The medieval English logician St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34–1109), is at the heart of Descartes’s rationalism, the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge, knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. Descartes has an innate idea of Allah Al-Aliyy or Most High God, being The Sublime God as a perfect being. For him, it is clear that God necessarily exists, because, if He did not, He would not be perfect. It is That God Who presides in the great assembly (Psalm 82:1) of human beings, who often think they are greater than others.

Jim Holt, the American journalist, author in popular science and essayist, who often contributed to The New York Times, wrote the nonfiction work and NYTimes bestseller for 2013, Why Does the World Exist?, presented the central question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’, which lies in the domain between philosophy and scientific cosmology. Also the English cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees looked at the big-bang theory of the origins of the universe. By examining the nature of existence itself Holt was following in the path of the philosophy called ‘Existentialism’, which stresses human existence in the world concreteness and its problematic character. for those writers ‘Existence’ is primarily the problem of existence (i.e., of its mode of being); it is, therefore, also the investigation of the meaning of Being. Going back to the intitial thought of previous philosophers

What is Being?

What does it mean to be?

To be is the question!

What does it mean to exist?

What is the nature of being?

For the German philosopher, counted among the main exponents of existentialism, Martin Heidegger, the human subject had to be reconceived in an altogether new way, as “being-in-the-world.” Because this notion represented the very opposite of the Cartesian “thing that thinks,” the idea of consciousness as representing the mind’s internal awareness of its own states had to be dropped. With it went the assumption that specific mental states were needed to mediate the relation of the mind to everything outside it.

Man philosophers had the above questions, bringing them to think about their own being and the being of others around them. Those people thinking and writing about those life questions bring the deep contemplation of what it means to be human. We think no other living being is concerned with such questions. Even pets don’t wonder what their role in the family might be (we think). Even though plants and animals have sentience, we suspect that they have no thinking capacity whereby they would ascertain their essence in this world.

On the other hand, it can well be that one of the reasons that other creatures don’t worry about the meaning of life could be that they don’t seem to have any choice about how to live it. Dogs and cats just live the way dogs and cats live. They respond to circumstances the way dogs or cats generally do. Sure they may differ one to the other, but generally speaking they act more or less predictably like dogs or cats.

But human beings can also be very predictable. We also could say human beings act in a similar way. Many people around us are also very predictable. Though we can notice that even when the majority lives a standard way of living, we can find people who follow a totally different course. There are human beings who stand out and surprise us. We also find several people who do not want to follow the tract the majority follows. They don’t live an ordinary life. They live an extraordinary life, that is remarkably new and different from the norm. And sometimes these rare human beings discover a way of being that eventually becomes the new norm.

Martin Heidegger was convinced that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. He recognised that most of us live as ‘the one’, or that we do generally what ‘one’ does or what would be the general norm to do. Though we are often concerned with what ‘one’ tends to be concerned with.

He spoke about “Dasein” or “being there”, the most fundamental a priori transcendental condition or mode of being not so much to be seen from the point of being there but from the perspective of how the being essentially unfolds. As Heidegger puts it:

“A being is: Be-ing holds sway [unfolds]”.

The hyphenated term ‘be-ing’ is adopted by Emad and Maly, in order to respect the fact that, in the Contributions, Heidegger substitutes the archaic spelling ‘Seyn’ for the contemporary ‘Sein’ as a way of distancing himself further from the traditional language of metaphysics.

We all should be aware that somehow we come on this planet and have to make the best of it. We receive an overdose of information during our lifetime and are fed an untold number of knowledges and rules, with which and by which we try or must try to live. Through all these influences we have to go through, we have to try to build our lives and live a generic human life.

Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, a human being could, if they were heroic enough, choose to live a different kind of human life and could come to live a profoundly authentic and original human life. The American lecturer, poet, and essayist, the leading exponent of New England Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson called such human beings ‘representative’ because their lives represented new possibilities for being human.

I do not think “Life is But a Dream” even when we may dream that we live or imagine our life to be a certain way. When we are dreaming it can well be that we are not aware that we are asleep. But also when we are awake it can happen that we wonder if we are dreaming, because what we encounter seems to be so unreal. How often does it not happen that we must come to the conclusion that we were in a dream-world. And that dream world was not always to our liking. More than once the dream world that comes into our mind, is one that can cause fear, but luckilly there is also that dream world that causes joy, surprise, and myriad other emotions. Dreams take us, seemingly, to worlds we’ve been to and worlds that we have never experienced. In them we re-live what we lived before in that world we should recognise as the real world. But we should be aware that very often we are deceived by the real world around us. Often we do not want to know that this world has played tricks on us.

Every day we have doubts about certain things, often which we should recognise as facts. There and then we once more are confronted with those questions that come up into our mind so often. Oh, so often we are troubled, and question our own self and all the things we see happening around us. Then we might ask

What is our role in this all?

What happens when we become older?

As time passes we start getting in contact with other peoples and other cultures. Mostly how we grow up is decided by our parents and our surroundings. The culture of our homeland, the religion of our parents, and the friends we hang out with, all influence us and mould us in a form we do not mind or which bothers us. In case we do not like the form in which we are moulded we get frustrated and come into a stressful position. sometimes people would love to have been born in an other place or have lived in other circumstances. But the choice is not up to us. We are dropped in a time and place and have to find our way in it.

We have no memory of a previous life, because there is just not such another life.

Could we prove that we have ever lived if we did not have our memories?

No, there would be no way to prove it. There is not one person who ever could recollect and prove some previous existence. Even for those who are born, when young, their memory is too short and after some time they shall not be able to tell what happened in those first years of life. When you would ask a toddler to prove he lives, he would not be able to do so, because he has not enough memory and not enough knowledge. The very young cannot prove they live because they do not have memories. Memory starts to develop a bit later than the first few years of life. Memory is an essential component to the human mind, so important that we cannot say that we exist without memory. Knowledge and memory are two requirements to realise that one is alive and can be. In other words, our very existence is hinged on our capacity to remember. Without our capacity to think, or to have thoughts, we can not remember nor can we analyse. And to be able to know we live we need to be able to think, consider and to review.

Memory, as the encoding, storage, and retrieval in the human mind of past experiences, is unconditionally linked to thought and being. Without awareness, there is no knowledge of being. We can notice this when people have reached an age when they start to suffer from dementia. It is then as if their thinking but also their “being” falls away.

Memory is both a result of and an influence on perception, attention, and learning. It is those thoughts of past events and influences that help shape us, making us who we are. With that awareness and understanding of that event and of that personality we are confronted with, we ourselves are presented with a mirror, in which whether or not we will accept, love or hate that reflection. But dar we will recognise that this is that “I” that we wish, desire or curse.

+

Preceding

With Positive Attitude

There can only be hope when there is a will to be and say “I am”

I and Thou

Our existence..

Leap

To come to live in the peace of fulfilment of our own Divine Identity

What is Existential Ergonomics?

On the Anxiety of Non-Being

Running out of time

Why does the world exist

Our real self ever perfect and free

Life’s Purpose

Modern Living

Quandary of Reflections

Existence in the non-existent and non-existence in the existence

Human experience maintained in a fragile existence

Soul-searching

Vivamos Videre, the more we live, the more we are a witness to life

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Additional reading

1. Immortality, eternality – onsterfelijkheid, eeuwigheid
2. Onsterfelijkheid – Immortaliteit – Immortality
3. About The story of Creation 1 Existing cosmologies
4. Genesis Among the Creation Myths
5. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
6. Creation of the earth and man #14 Formation of man #6 The Uncreated One, neshemet ruach chayim and nephesh
7. Jesus begotten Son of God #11 Existence and Genesis Raising up
8. A Living Faith #10: Our manner of Life #2
9. Ability
10. Ability (part 2)
11. Ability (part 3) Thoughts around Ability
12. Ability (part 4) Thought about the ability to have ability
13. The Opinionated Truth
14. God make us holy
15. Two states of existence before God
16. Self-development, self-control, meditation, beliefs and spirituality
17. Wisdom Quote #21…..seeking within with Carl Jung!
18. Living in this world and viewing it

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Related

1. Who am I to…?
2. Spike the obit
3. Awareness is All
4. Trouble being myself
5. #being as details
6. Conditioning and Consciousness
7. Becoming
8. What Descartes Proved
9. The ABCs of Python: The Identity of “is”
10. When I sleep, I think, I dream [A philosophy post?]
11. Wisdom Collection Collection 26. Human thinking is a creation process with devastating results. Thinking is separation of myself from my source.
12. Mind and language essays on descartes and chomsky
13. Therefore (Quote Series)
14. Essays on the philosophy and science of rene descartes
15. Descartes proof for the existence of god essay
16. My favorites: philosophy ideas
17. I remember therefore I am
18. Descartes, Perception, and Society
19. Strange nonsense
20. Perception and Reality
21. How Ego Disrupts the Cosmic Brilliance of ‘Is’
22. I am
23. What is Left to Doubt?
24. Life is But a Dream
25. In here and out there
26. Confusion of knights
27. Awareness, Consciousness, Experience, Mind
28. Interlude: Descartes’ Role
29. Descartes
30. Consciousness, Personhood
31. St. Borges of Canterbury
32. Spirituality of the Left
33. Breakthrough
34. The floating consciousness
35. Useful Heideggerian Concepts
36. At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell is a biography of existentialism
37. Martin Heidegger, the Standing Metaphor, and the Politics of 1935
38. Time and Being
39. Heidegger and the Question of Being
40. Existential Reflections: The Shadow Side of Human Existence (2)
41. Second Principle- Freedom in Being
42. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
43. The ‘Man for All Seasons’ and Ontological Exigency
44. Martin Heidegger Quotes
45. Religion, Consumerism, and Absurdism: Modernity and the Quest for Meaning
46. Two reviews of The Early Foucault (Polity, 2021) by Colin Koopman and Jasper Friedrich – and a note on Heidegger
47. [Reflections] Why Does the History of Philosophy Matter to Philosophy?
48. Modern Transcendentalism
49. Ralph Waldo Emerson
50. American Voices: Ralph Waldo Emerson
51. Transcendentalism literary origins in america and influence essay
52. Living in Subversia
53. Ernest Holmes and the Science of Mind Part One: ‘Ye Are Gods’
54. What are the main features of Shelley’s Transcendentalism ?
55. Autumn, Concord, and Transcendentalism
56. Transcendentalism : An American Movement
57. Self-Awareness, Self-Reliance and Non-Comformity

Truly, Truly – a #freeverse #poem by Leona

Leona's Creative Corner

Prayers my heart starts to

mumble as the dew

forms graceful drops

across the eyelashes

of the late summer trees

It sprang to mind the hopeful

and expectant posture of

a bride in waiting

calling

oil filled lanterns

how we see the changing times

only to be reminded that

in life there is death

in love there is loss

truly truly say to you

the barren garden will

blossom as the noon day

sun

creeps along the ground

there in the slanting rays

it is easy to remember that

goodness and favor

does come to those

who wait as the tides

change and the earth

shifts

Have I finally found my home?

View original post

Beautiful endings

Nothing is eternal except the Divine Creator. We human beings all have a beginning and an end, and best make all the best of the time when we are here alive on this planet.

We also best enjoy the good things of this earth and appreciate those around us who are willing to share their love with us.

Sliver of Darkness

Enjoy things while they last, because everything ends. Death and the nature of humans promise just that, endings. My grandfather lost my grandmother at old age, he had three wives, but he wept for losing one.

Still, that was a beautiful ending. I love beautiful endings. Pray for a beautiful ending, not eternity, because that doesn’t exist.

View original post

Grief and Gratitude

 

A Day Dreamer's Diary

How do you describe a grief for a person you haven’t met in 10 years or weren’t best friends with, but it just sits heavy and hurt in the middle of your chest for more than a week now but you do know they meant the world for their family.
You remember  their gentleness, their distinct humor, their goodness, their simplicity and a tear rolls down , just like the rain drops on this window glass.
I remember the teenage girl with twinkling eyes and contagious laughter, I haven’t met the wife and mother she became in last decade. Our well being was communicated to each other through our families which are neighbours and friendly.
We were always keen to receive news of the other and wished only goodness.
Her sudden passing  has  shook me deep, out of the autopilot mode my life tend to switches despite my continuous efforts…

View original post 119 more words

Decisions about your own death

Euthanasia is often described as the ultimate expression of autonomy but a former chair of the Danish Council of Ethics Ole Hartling stresses in his book Euthanasia and the Ethics of a Doctor’s Decisions: An Argument Against Assisted Dying, published by Bloomsbury that he does not rely upon “sanctity of life” arguments.

“These lines of thought are metaphysical and easily become dogmatic and hence unconvincing,”

he writes. His arguments are secular and aim to  show that legalisation is simply untenable.

In his essay in The BMJ, he writes:

Decisions about your own death are not made in normal day-to-day contexts. The wish to die arises against a backdrop: of desperation, a feeling of hopelessness, possibly a feeling of being superfluous. Otherwise, the wish would not be there. Thus, it is under these circumstances that the right to self-determination is exercised and the decision is made. Such a situation is a fragile basis for autonomy and an even more fragile basis for decision making. The choice regarding your own death is therefore completely different from most other choices usually associated with the concept of autonomy.

The essay is thought-provoking and well-worth reading.

Leonard Cohen – Take This Waltz (Live in London)

Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women
There’s a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows
There’s a tree where the doves go to die
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on it’s jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallway where love’s never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With it’s very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging it’s tail in the sea

There’s a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it’s been dying for years

There’s an attic where children are playing
Where I’ve got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I’ll see what you’ve chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its “I’ll never forget you, you know!”

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz …
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

And I’ll dance with you in Vienna
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you’ll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist

Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now. It’s all that there is

{Instrumental}

(Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay)

~ Leonard Cohen

I am ungrateful – Czesław Niemen

Life often goes by faster than we can grip it.
Man often forgets his Creator, or does not want to know about Him, Who gives life and all beauty found around. Too often man wants to compare to others, who have gathered more money and success, though who did not always find that happiness they were looking for as well.

Too often man forgets he can not take anything with him into the grave, up to another life, because when man dies everything for him comes to an end. Then it will be too late to change roads or to get on the right track. Therefore, he better find the right track before, and chooses to follow the Right One, instead of the world.

Tylko fotografia

Day by day
As a rapid stream of time
It tightens the circle
My existence
Day by day
He runs away
Further
Further
My false desires
The weave falls

And around
Universe
Boundless, inconceivable
Infinite fertile garden
Eternal thought the Masterpiec!
I would like to respect heaven
Ground forehead to slope
But I am ungrateful
That imperfect …

Nonsense
They feed each other
Comic matters
Wrapped in a net
I am ashamed of these
Which is not ashamed
They forgot
That it is over
The graves will make us equal

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In October-November People often too busy with death and the dead

At the end of October, begin November around cemeteries we can find lots of people on the streets and flower sellers who try to sell their chrysanthemums. Lots of people have their thoughts in this Autumn period by those who are not walking any more on this earth.

From Laura Cyrena‘s blogpost Graveyard Walk

You may not misunderstand us. We feel empathy, and we do understand their feelings, their point of view, their situation. We also know that each of us more than once shall be confronted with death in their life. Birth and death are two main factors in each being his or her life. Once born, nobody can escape death. It is part of life.

All of us shall have to walk a different path and shall have to find ways to make the best out of our own life. We also should know that we too may have an influence in the life of others. Each of us has to walk many miles to reach our goal. We shall have to crawl, walk, climb mountains and cycle many kilometres. Going from one place to another, growing up, we also shall meet a lot of people and become confronted with a lot of circumstances.

We often compare our life to that of others. We have a lot of expectations and sometimes by looking at others do not mind having some jealousy coming up in our minds, wanting things others have.

We put conditions on what we want … we reject things that doesn’t fit our expectations … we get distracted doing other things. {Are You Ready to Receive?}

The world offers us a lot of attractions and often we become blinded by its luring pictures. Most of the time we desire a lot from others and would like to receive even more from the one we call our god. When not receiving enough from one god many make themselves an other or even more gods. All over the world we find lots of people ‘taking care’ of many gods, whilst they forget that there exist A Singular Supernatural Spirit Being Who does not have to be cared for, because nothing can be given to Him what does not belong to Him. He is the Establisher and Master of life. He gives us all the possibilities to walk here on this planet.

When we realize all we have is from Him, when we realize we can’t do it own our on, then He will lift us up. James 4.10 {Are You Ready to Receive?}

Coming to realize Who That God is, does not seem to be so easy for mankind. Lots of people have difficulties to come to recognize that invisible God as the Most High Elohim and God of gods above any other god and above any being. Not many want to see or even look for Him, but that is what He hopes people would do, go looking for Him who is the Only One True God.

Seek Him. He delights when we look for Him and look for what ways He desires for us. We are to look for where He is already at work, and God will bless. Hebrews 11.6 {Are You Ready to Receive?}

Walking on this earth may not always so easy. Often we got a lot of mud on our shoes and clothes, getting wet and tired.

… we should realize that in our journey in life, our shoes get muddied. Life gets messy. Not only our life, but the life of others too. The mud gives insight to what we have gone through and where we have traveled. {Why the name, “Muddy Shoes”?}

Many people on their walk of life love to cling close to each other, and just hang out in one place. A lot of them are just happy where they are and what they do, as long as they do not have to bother about others. Many do not think about the task Jesus has given to his followers, to go out in the world and to tell the peoples about the Good News of the coming Kingdom of God. Many forget that they are to be going into the world, sharing the love, the hope, the grace of the Gospel.

Every year we see a lot of people who think of their beloved who are gone. But at that time when the days shorten they prefer to hold on to fantasies as people becoming stars in heaven, or going to have 77 virgins in heaven. Several parents let their children look to stars to find the proof of death, making their heads

forever fastened gazing up, while final breaths of skyward worlds eclipse with life our fleshly tomb and and fragile pulse. {To stars}

Others have even placed some ashes from the deceased in a teddy bear of their children.Some love to go on the eveningwalks many organizations provide around Halloween.

To have just a taste of the life they once had. Blood in their veins. Breath in their mouth. Tears in their eyes. {Waiting For The Dead On Halloween}

they

are told they might have the stench of the grave upon them. We are told their skin might slough off on our own. {Waiting For The Dead On Halloween}

Lots of people look forward to the Halloween marches and fires, giving them a kick and fanciful ideas they being stronger than those who died. Some of them might think the rotted clothes of the dead might fall from their bones, and they hope to see things to make them scream and at the same time frightening the ghosts as well. It is said by many

On Samhain many lay in wait for the dead.

We are told the fresh decay of our parents and uncles and aunts and grand folk will be the worse. They have had their year in the ground and are beyond any excuse to linger. They are the most reluctant. They have the clearest memories of what it is like to live. They, more than all the others, want it back. They might wish, if they can, to suck life right out of us and feel warm once again.

It is best we disguise ourselves from them.

It is best if we hide our faces with masks and wear clothes not our own. {Waiting For The Dead On Halloween}

Lots of people consider it more important to  honour the dead, because they are afraid they otherwise would do things to them, instead of honouring God Who according to many does not exist. Instead of thinking what really happens to somebody who dies or people having to face the end of their life, and after that life is finished, they not able to take anything into their grave to use it later. For them, as for animals and plants, there shall be just decay, they becoming dust.

All their life they may have thought they had lots of enemies. Now those enemies can not do anything to them. For those who depart us in death there shall be no tears any more. Whilst the living shall shed perhaps a lot of tears.

²⁶ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:26 BRG)

⁴ And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4 BRG)

⁵ For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. (Ecclesiastes 9:5 BRG)

²⁹ All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. (Psalm 22:29 BRG)

¹⁹ For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

²⁰ All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 BRG)

¹⁰ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. (Ecclesiastes 9:10 BRG)

⁴ His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. (Psalm 146:4 BRG)

¹⁸ For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. (Isaiah 38:18 BRG)

Instead of spending so much time going to clean stones in a graveyard talking at another place than home, to those who died, should we not better use several moments of the year to remember those people, and perhaps even talk to them, though with the knowledge they can not hear us and cannot do something for us. But above there is SomeOne Who can hear and see us. Would we not better talk to Him?

Instead of having friendship with the world, should we not seek for friendship with Him? Instead of being from the world we better would be from God, with the knowledge that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. (1 John 5:19) We should not love the world and what it has to offer with all its gadgets and other attractive things, it being ready as a spider waiting for its prey to sting it to death.  We should know that for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh or physical gratification, and the lust of the eyes or greed, and the pride of life and extravagant lifestyles, are not of the Father, but are of the world. (1 John 2:15-16)

 

Bad choices, poor planning, and simply not paying attention. … we wing it, we keep,doing the same thing (thus getting the same outcome and wonder why), we don’t pay attention to what our people are going through and ignore the signs. {52 Hiker Mistakes by Backpacker … and by Worship Leaders}

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Preceding

Measure of loneliness whilst time drags

Facing daily events and exclaiming “Good grief!”

Family happiness and little things we do

The belief of one going to heaven

What traditions/rituals/routines do you have for welcoming Autumn?

Pagan Holidays

Halloween is Satanist Christmas

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Find also to read

1. What is life?
2. A Mundane Existence
3. Dealing with worries in our lives
4. Concerning Man
5. Dying or not
6. October month of witches and spirits
7. Halloween custom of the nations
8. Autumn traditions for 2014 – 2 Summersend and mansend
9. Autumn traditions for 2014 – 4 Blasphemy and ridiculing faith in God
10. Autumn traditions for 2014 – 5 People, souls and saints in the news
11. Autumn traditions for 2014 – 6 Bonfire night
12. All Saints’ Day
13. Thought for November 1: To the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
14. All Souls’ Day
15. Thought for today November 4th Going to graveyards and people going to dust
16. A truth to face often to do with time
17. An Escape Mechanism
18. Are you right down in the dumps? Stop digging!
19. Death
20. Biblical Ambiguity on Death?
21. How are the dead?
22. Realities concerning Human Life and Death
23. Where do we go when we die?
24. Grave, tomb, sepulchre – graf, begraafplaats, rustplaats, sepulcrum
25. Separation from God in death, the antithesis of life
26. Mortal Soul and Mortal Psyche #1 Intro
27. Mortal Soul and Mortal Psyche #2 Psyche, the word
28. Mortal Soul and Mortal Psyche #3 Historical background
29. Mortal Soul and Mortal Psyche #5 Mortality of man and mortality of the spirit
30. Today’s thought “Death by being taken captive” (May 15)
31. Today’s thought “nonsense surrounding the many gods” (July 28)
32. Is there life beyond the grave?
33. Decomposition, decay – vergaan, afsterven, ontbinding
34. We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace
35. Being of good courage running the race

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Where the Tye River meets the James. Unique in its right angle intersection as opposed to a Y-type of most merges. But something happened. It now lays horizontal on the floor of the forest. Photo from Killing a Legacy.

Related

Glenwood Cemetery on Central Avenue Pike in Powell, a very old cemetery located next to a somewhat newer church. – Photo from Life in Every Limb article by Leslie Sholly {Glenwood Cemetery: A Post for All Souls Day}

1. Life in a few Lines.
2. Killing a Legacy
3. You Snooze, You Lose
4. Dreams of Vampires
5. Yesterday … All My Trouble Seemed So Far Away (Our Story Through Music)
6. Another favorite subject
7. Where is the great Beyond?
8. To stars
9. Not Done Yet
10. Farewell
11. Death Death so we want are always greatly interested him.
12. Dead.
13. The Choral of DeathIn Death
14. An afternoon at Père Lachaise cemetery.
15. Why I stopped making up for the dead-Banke Meshida
16. What would be the #meaning of a #limited #life which ends with #dead?
17. Dead Before 40
18. Graveyard Walk
19. SciFriday: Day of the Dead
20. Inktober 2019 Day 31: Ouija
21. Hallow’s Evehappy halloween!
22. Honoring the Dead on Halloween
23. Waiting For The Dead On Halloween
24. Factoid About Halloween
25. Is Halloween a Christian holiday?
26. [tonight we walk]
27. Fences
28. Twittering Tales – Lonely Girl.
29. Decent Substitutes
30. All Saints’ Day/Sunday C: Nov. 1 or 3
31. Ghosts Await On The Day of the Dead / Dia de los Muertos
32. November 2nd Day of the Dead
33. Celebrating the deadChrysanthemums and All Souls’ Day
34. Prayer for All Souls Day
35. Remembering our loved ones – on “Mindszentek” (All Saints’ Day)
36. All Saint’s Day – Visiting a Cemetery in Milan
37. Graveyard Reveries
38. Glenwood Cemetery: A Post for All Souls Day
39. Short Story: A Grave Time for A Cemetery
40. 50 Word Story #25
41. 170 – A glimpse of the quiet Varazdin and Zagreb streets
42. Honoring family
43. Parents honour son’s life with Halloween skeleton but cemetery keeps taking it down – National
44. The All Saints Day
45. Happy All Saints’ Day
46. Cemetery Days
47. Walking around a cemetery alone
48. The Cemetery – Part 3
49. A Few Words on Cemetery Problems
50. The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome
51. Halloween Celebration in the Local Cemetery
52. The Embrace Of Thanatos
53. Alex Williamson cemetery, revisited.
54. Cherry Hill Cemetery
55. A Trip to the West Point Cemetery
56. Mexico City: Free for a Coffee desperate to see a cemetery since roaming through a city of the dead is one of my beloved pastimes.
57. Cimetière de la Cité, Carcassonne, France
58. Buenos Aires – October 2019 – La Chacarita Cemetery

What traditions/rituals/routines do you have for welcoming Autumn?

Cooler air, the changing of the leaves, the crispness in the mornings when you walk out the door on your way to school or work.

… the leaves start to change color, and there is that crispness outside that when you step out the door, you just know it’s Fall. {My favorite months of the year . . . #Autumn #Fall #Harvest}

A blogger from Oxfordshire wonders what people mostly do when Autumn presents itself.

Autumn time brings so many colours and textures that it can be hard not to fall for those beautiful colour palettes nature presents to us. The vegetable garden also presents us with many colourful surprises worth using as decoration. It is the time when we get enthusiastic to go overboard and cover our whole house in all sorts of pumpkins, nuts and leaf garland.

The Oxfordshire Country Living Blog  has been

absolutely loving the change in the season. {5 Things to do this Autumn}

She (or he) normally hates the cold and the dark, but she has been trying to embrace each season for it’s own beauty and welcomes Autumn, drinking hot Apple and Cinnamon Tea.

No drink smells as Autumnal as apple and cinnamon. {5 Things to do this Autumn}

Many communities celebrate the harvest. Christadelhpians also thank the Divine Creator for all the good things we have received throughout the year and how He now also has provided to store enough food to go through Winter. The fullness of summer and abundance of harvest may also be found in the satisfying plenitude of life in Christ. Here in West Europe we may find lots of place which, at times, could be a safe haven for those who wanted to worship God without taking part in heathen festivals and pagan traditions.

The colourful season we are now facing comes for many after they went abroad to enjoy better weather than we are used to in Belgium. Most people consider Summertime the time to pick up vitamin D and to store enough energy for our darker days in Wintertime. After the renewal time for energy our eyes get another renewal time, namely to have lots of fantasies going through our head. Nature offers us such a wide range of smashing colours and special lights, our fantasy can be stimulated, and as such we also feel a positiveness to tackle this windy and rainy season.

When walking through the fields and forests we can breathe an air reminding us of life and death. After a lovely walk nothing is lovelier than having the smells coming from the kitchen, bringing us all sorts of wildlife dishes, warm drinks and herb teas. Pumpkins are the seasonal ingredient for all sorts of dishes and soups. Some herbs from the garden are welcome to be used in a potluck dish to share. [Ingredients including: basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, lavender, lemon verbena, Tulsi (Holy Basil), anise hyssop and garlic.]

For many people in this commercial materialist world the harvest is not so important any more as in previous centuries. Most of the people in the West do not have any problem to buy food. For them there is no shortage. Most of them have also no inner connection any more with the different seasons. Shops are helping to get people over that feeling of seasons, by already presenting Christmas articles from September to October. (Every year Halloween, Sint Nicholas, Christmas and Easter are presented earlier to the public.) Though supermarkets may bring in lots of goods from abroad, in a certain way the vegetables of the season dominate the plate.

There’s always sowing, growing or harvesting going on. Though nothing can beat our harvest in October when squash and pumpkins are ready! {Autumn 🧡 Harvest}

Whether it’s walking along an English hedgerow and harvesting the blackberries, or digging up veg from the garden or allotment, nothing is more heartening than cooking with something fresh out of the earth. Somehow it tastes so much better. {5 Things to do this Autumn}

It’s a time to cozy up in your house, eat delicious stews and soups that are too hot for the Summer, wear fuzzy socks and thick warm robes in the morning while you sip your coffee and watch the sunrise. {My favorite months of the year . . . #Autumn #Fall #Harvest}

When we come back from a walk, often it is already to dark in the house, and as such we want to have some extra atmosphere lights.

Welcoming in the darker evenings by stringing up fairy lights, and lighting candles. Make a little Autumnal display and change up some of the cushions for a cosier Autumnal feel. Try adding warmer tones, and cosier textures, it’s amazing how a change as small as cushions and throws can change the feel of a room. {5 Things to do this Autumn}

At home in a cosy chair we can pick up the Bible and be with our thoughts by the Giver of this all. It is the ideal time to think about Him Who makes everything possible. He Who Creates and Gives. With all that abundance that we receive, let us not forget those who are in need.

¹⁹ “When you are reaping in the field, and you overlook a sheaf, don’t return to get it. Let it remain for the foreigner, the orphan, or the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless everything you undertake.{Deuteronomy 24:19 International Standard Version (ISV)}

Whatever we do let us showing to others how we as children of God are thankful for what we receive from Him and how we can share with others.

Let us also be very careful, having now months coming where certain traditions are not in accordance with God’s Will. We face moments when people go to deep in thinking about death and share ideas about the dead which are not according to what Scripture teaches about them. for some

The veil is thinning between our world and the spirit world. It is time to celebrate the cycle between life and death. Samhain is known as the witch’s new year. {Samhain Blessing and Ritual Ideas}

Many may come attracted by such pagan festivals like Halloween.

There are many ways to celebrate this turning of the wheel. Some celebrate the final harvest, while others focus on honoring the Gods and Goddesses. Still some spend the time honoring their ancestors. {Samhain Blessing and Ritual Ideas}

What may going on in your head now the days are shortening and darkness with strange sounds may be lurking outdoors?

Do you keep to certain traditions?

How do you look at this time of year?

What traditions/rituals/routines do you have for welcoming Autumn?

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Find also to read

1. Fullness of summer and abundance of harvest found in the satisfying plenitude of life in Christ
2. After the Summer-holiday thinking even more about God’s creation
3. Give thanks to יהוה! For He is good, For His kindness is everlasting

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Related

1. The Cream Of The CropThe end is in sight.
2. My favorite months of the year . . . #Autumn #Fall #Harvest
3. Harvest
4. Fall Harvest!
5. Harvest season for hemp
6. Stop….Harvest time…
7. The Harvest is Plentiful
8. It’s Harvest Time!
9. Harvest Time
10. Autumn  Harvest
11. If It’s October, It’s Fall Somewhere
12. October 17th 2019 – Harvest: Alan Davison
13. Fall Reflections from the Farm
14. Celebrate Harvest
15. Crop harvest running just behind normal
16. Fall into Happiness
17. Beating The Winter Blues with autumn shades
18. Let’s do Pumpkin about Food Waste!

Words of Wisdom for the Day – Toil of slavery – Freedom not a gift

1 800th post on From Guestwriters

the winter chill

writings & wildflowers

the winter chill in the air

means it’s quiet overhead

but the silence

of the trees

doesn’t mean they’re dead

just asleep, hibernating like a bear

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The belief of one going to heaven

Banner for the symposium, Blake’s Ancient of Days. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The belief of one going to heaven after death is a doctrine that you will hear almost any church preach today. The majority of people believe heaven is where they will go once death has overtaken them. Where did this belief come from? The belief in a heavenly afterlife was made popular during the Greco-Roman period and was the product of the interaction of ancient biblical traditions with new trends in religion and science. The impact of Greek language and religion on the doctrine of life after death among the Jews was highly influential, and is still a highly influential doctrine to this day.
We must remain cautious of believing in doctrines that originate from man.
Psalms.115:16.The Lord has kept the heavens for himself, but has given the earth to us humans.
The bible clearly teaches a different message from what is being taught among various religions today.

– Virginia Warren

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• On Science & Religion

Facing daily events and exclaiming “Good grief!”

When waking up every day we may be lucky to wake up, to face the day again. In the day we may perhaps encounter lots of things which surprises us and sometimes we call out ‘good grief’

The young Garrick Sinclair “Ricky” Beckett, a U.S. Army veteran honourably discharged as a professional saxophonist in the Army Bands, currently attending Concordia University-Ann Arbor in the Pre-Seminary programme with a major in Christian Thought and a minor in Theological Languages looks at a popular cartoon figure.

He writes

As he hears some bad news, Charlie Brown exclaims, “Good grief!” We often think of this as an oxymoron. Grief can’t possibly be good! {Good grief}

Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the word grief we think of sorrow and distress, even of great mourning and affliction. When having bodily pain or when our mind is being hurt we can be grief stricken. Deep sadness caused especially by someone’s death or by trouble or annoyance grief comes over us. Grievance overmans us when there is a cause of such suffering or a deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement. We can come to grief but than it means we fail in something we’re doing, and may be hurt.

Mary Bringle also noticed

Even the cleverest boy could come to grief alone, in the night. {Collins dictionary on Come to grief}

In Dutch ‘grief’ is ‘verdriet’ and is connected to ‘lijden (suffering), ‘bedroefd zijn’ (grow sad, being sad, be sorry, sorrow) maar ook tot ‘afkeer’ (aversion, distaste, disgust, revulsion,repulsion, repugnance, loathing, abhorrence, abomination, scunner). When ‘come to grief‘ we founder, break down, collapse, fall through, flop (informal), be defeated, fall short, fizzle out (informal), come unstuck, run aground, bite the dust, and even feel that we go up in smoke, come to naught, not make the grade (informal), go down like a lead balloon (informal). In any case it looks like it turns out badly, us falling flat on our face, meeting with disaster. Stuck with grief we may be found lacking or wanting, facing a spiritual miscarry or misfire.

Some people say ‘Good grief‘ when they are surprised or shocked. When we face something that’s actually worth grieving over, we’re often overwhelmed.

From a ‘sukkelstraatje’ (being in trouble/in dire stratis) we can become ailing (sickly) with a ‘sukkelpartij’ (sucker party) receiving ‘zielspijn’ (agony, heartache, profound sorrow) or ‘zieleleed’ (sadness). That ‘zielesmart’ or ‘zielsverdriet’ (anguish, heartache,profound sorrow, misery, unhappiness),  ‘Weedom’ (woe), ‘hartenpijn’ ‘hartenleed’ (heartache, heartfelt grief, heartfelt sorrow, heartbreak), agony consumes us with grief.

We do know we have to cope with it, we have to conquer it or go over such grief.

It’s rather ironic that our culture views grief as a bad thing while it encourages grief over a lot of things. It is encouraged that we grieve over minimum wage, to grieve over what the White Man did to black people centuries ago during slavery, to grieve over what the government did to the indigenous peoples of America… {Good grief}

The savoury on our daily bread is not always pleasant. we may try to begin every day with gratitude, because all we have, has been given to us. This body, heart and mind, friendships, opportunities, challenges, family,… it is all given to us. But honestly we are not always pleased with the confrontation with it.

We may value family where we practice love and sharing.  We may value work where we share our passions and gifts. And most of all we would like to have a good health and value it.

As we align with gratitude, values, dharma,  and who we are as limitless conscious existence, every action we take becomes a contribution to the whole. {Why Are We Here?}

Getting up we notice we face the day and can fill it with words and deeds.

this world we touch but in words

words insulated in plated metal

this world we hold but in teeth

teeth estranged from heart’s palate {This World, A Seat}

Sometimes it looks like every day again we do have to start all over again, going back to these “manifold temptations,” which tour around our face. Every day there are so many things we do have to face, so many experiences we have to go through.

It can be anything in this life that tends to trouble us or haunt us that can bring grief over us.

something that hurts you at the most sensitive and delicate core of your soul, heart, and mind — things that tend to make you miserable.  How do we get past these things? {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}

Facing each day we have to open our eyes and look at all things, seeing them in perspective, trying to understand what is really going on and what sort of place it deserves.

The danger is to just endure our troubles with groans and whines and complaints and not do anything to discover the remedy to the situation.  We come into the danger of thinking, “Why is God doing this to me?” {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}

With “Ricky” Beckett we urge you not to think “why” these things happen to us, but rather to think what.

 Instead of thinking, “Why me,” think instead, “What can I learn from this?  What does God want to teach me?”  And then how:  “How will this make me grow closer to God?”  In short, other than the sinful condition of the world we live in, that is why we suffer — to learn something from God and to grow closer to Him, and then the “why” may reveal itself to you as God works out His progressive revelation in your life.  That’s the short answer, but now let’s discuss the longer answer. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}

Each day again, and again, we should be prepared to learn and to continue our road, up to a better world for us.

We are living in this world and walking on our paths under the eye of our Heavenly Father.

Say to yourself,

“There is a definite plan and purpose for my life.  God has examined me and has adopted me into His family.”

Why does He do this for us?  So that He may bring us into perfection (which is not acquired during this earthly life).  That is His objective — that you may “be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29), as Jesus Christ will say, “Here I am with the children God gave Me” (Hebrews 2:13).  If we do not believe and recognise this fundamental concept of ourselves as Christians, then we are bound to go astray and misunderstand these troubles that happen to us as God’s children. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}

These days lots of people take some time to think about the death and remember the dead.

When death and disaster occur, we are so grief stricken that we don’t know what to do. While all this is going on, we avoid grieving over our sin, which the thing we should grieve the most. It is good to grieve over this because our sin alienates us from God. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). We should grieve greatly over this because the end of our sin is death. But fear not! The Romans verse continues, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Godly grief is good grief, for it leads us to repentance. Godly grief, or good grief, causes us to recognise our need for forgiveness—our need for Christ. By repentance we exercise faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and we are justified by faith (Romans 5:1).

Let us always remember that God may permit all these things we have to face, to happen to us and to the people around us, not for the purpose of making us suffer and watching us squirm, as some would like to believe, but rather in order to chastise us, which He enacts due to our complacency and for our failure.

In 2 Peter 1:5-7, the apostle writes that Christians are to discipline themselves and to supplement attributes to their faith, not merely to be content with minimal faith but for it to be forever increasing.  There are Christians who do not take heed of this exhortation and instead are indefatigable with their complacency and indolence.  As I understand New Testament doctrine, if we do that we should not be surprised if we start to experience troubles — that God perhaps begins to chastise us by shaking us off our shiftless butts. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Chastisement}

We ourselves are also not free from bringing grief to others. We must recognise that we too can do things wrongly. We too can bring pain to others and give them heartache or grief. Many Christians are convinced that as re-born people they cannot sin. But they are mistaken.

First John 3:9-10 says,

“Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God.  This is how God’s children — and the Devil’s children — are made evident.”

 Now, it is easy to misinterpret this passage.  It is not saying that God’s children are incapable of sinning.  After all, even though we’re God’s children, we still sin.

St. John is saying that the one “born of God” — that is, baptised in the Holy Spirit — does not make it his life’s trade to sin.
The child of God does not make it his life’s priority to live in sin, as the children of the Devil do (e.g. the homosexual lifestyle, a murderous lifestyle such as ISIS or serial killers, etc.).

God’s children are not free from acts of sin, but the child of God does not commit to be a servant of sin, but rather a servant of God and His holiness.  Christians are not impeccable; they are simultaneously saint and sinner (simul iustus et peccator).  Sin lives within us, but the Christian is justified by faith (Romans 5:1; Galatians 3:24).  John is not speaking of sinless perfection but of a life imputed with Christ’s righteousness.

We can and shall have moments of weakness and shall sin. Afterwards we should repent, which is doing a work of faith. Only when we do such works of faith shall we be able to enter the Kingdom of God. When not willing to see what we have done wrong and not wanting to repent over the wrongdoing we shall not be allowed to enter through the small gate. The teshuvah or repentance is a necessary ingredient to come to God.

Knowing that God may have a particularly great task set for us we should wonder what we can do in the world God has prepared for us. Facing that world, where we are so many times tested, we should not mind having ourselves tested, when we are standing straight in our shoes, going for the One True God.

So, one may have to pass through a certain trial because of some great task ahead that God has planned for them.  Think of any biblical character that had to endure such a trial.  The first person that comes to mind for me is Jonah.  He was running from God’s calling to preach to Nineveh, and as we know he was swallowed by a great fish; and upon repentance and accepting his calling, God saved his life by having the great fish spit him out onto the land to fulfill his calling.  Maybe a drastic example, but perhaps not as drastic as you might think.  Consider any whales of doubt you might have in your life and what God is doing to bring you through those doubts, or what you ought to let Him do. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – God to Prepare Us}

Facing each day lying in front of us we best remember that we are given the opportunity to be here and that God knows what’s best for us and what we need to experience in order to get us where He wants us to be. Therefore let us give ourselves in His Hands and be thankfull that He was willing to accept the ransom offer from His son.

As our Heavenly Father, God may see the need for trials and prescribe the necessary tools that are destined to make us grow in Him for our own good. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – God to Prepare Us}

With the knowledge that worldly grief produces only death because the world has no hope for a relief from their grief, we do have a better prospect in the hope given to mankind.

Worldly grief abandons the person who grieves. Godly grief is guilt over sin, which this guilt leads to repentance as the sinner recognises the necessity for forgiveness in Christ, which leads to salvation because the repentance we perform is exercised by this faith gifted to us, and it is through this gift of faith that we are saved (Ephesians 2:8-9). {Good grief}

Perhaps we leave it to others to say ‘good grief’ when they see our endurance and come to see we want to present to the world a good example of a loving person, whatever happens to him.

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Preceding

Our existence..

Facing our existence every day

Are you right down in the dumps? Stop digging!

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Additional reading

1. A world in denial
2. Materialism, would be life, and aspirations
3. Dealing with worries in our lives
4. Emotional pain and emotional deadness
5. Fragments from the Book of Job #1: chapters 1-12
6. Fragments from the Book of Job #4: chapters 27-31
7. Isaiah prophet and messenger of God
8. Suffering
9. Offer in our suffering
10. Suffering – through the apparent silence of God
11. Suffering continues
12. Suffering leading to joy
13. Self inflicted misery #8 Pruning to strengthen us
14. Surprised by time in joys & sufferings
15. Profitable disasters
16. Prayer has comforted us in sorrow
17. The soul has no rainbow if the eyes have no tears
18. Every athlete exercises self control
19. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #3 Rejoicing in the insistence
20. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #8 Prayer #6 Communication and manifestation
21. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #9 Prayer #7 Reason to pray
22. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #10 Prayer #8 Condition
23. Continuing Paul’s Prayer Requests
24. Written to recognise the Promissed One

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Further reading

1. Day By Day
2. Grief
3. Throw-back Thursday: Grief is a fickle foe
4. Book Mark: Notes on Friends’ Grief
5. Grief From Across The World 
6. The Well of Grief
7. The unspoken grievance
8. The Five Stages of Grief
9. Sad
10. Memories…and Grief
11. Deviant Deflections – Unrequited Love
12. When part of you is missing
13. No one tells you about the guilt..
14. Monday Morning Grievance: The New Copier
15. After Suicide
16. How To Go On
17. God I miss you. 
18. Letter to you, my little one…
19. That feeling 
20. Heart Holes
21. Waiting For The Dutchman
22. Old Unfinished Post: The 5 Stages of Relationship Grief
23. Grief embraces love
24. 1 a.m. on the Borderline
25. Inside the glacier of my mind
26. Beautiful Reminders
27. Beyond the grey clouds
28. The Mercy of the Morning
29. Here’s to better naked tomorrows
30. It Is God’s Gospel
31. (11/04/2016) Works of the Spirit?
32. Forgiveness and Eternal Life Through Jesus Christ
33. Does Working with Others Lead to Better Results than Acting as an Individual? L 41
34. Leading by example
35. Jesus Models Friendship
36. Saints
37. Mercy in giving
38. 1 Timothy 4:12 (31.10.16)
39. The stories we tell
40. Eulogia
41. “Conformity To The Will Of God”
42. Advice… L38
43. If You Really Love Me
44. Life Changing Moments While Young
45. Good Advice for Us in Today’s World
46. Love as a god

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