Meaning

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Now discontent nibbled at him - not painfully, but constantly. Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields… "What have I contributed in the Great Ledger? What am I worth?" And this isn't vanity or ambition. Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try… Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.

For many years I looked at my life like a case law, a series of proofs… underlying it all there was a presumption that I was moving on an upward path toward some elevation where… I would be justified, or even condemned—a verdict anyway. I think now that my disaster really began when I looked up one day—and the bench was empty! No judge in sight. All that remained was the endless argument with oneself—this pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench. Which, of course, is another way of saying—despair!

It was true, I had always realized it — I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe… that here we are eating and drinking, to preserve our precious existence, and that there’s nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.

If chance be the father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear "state of emergency, sniper kills 10", "troops on rampage", "youths go looting", "bombs blast school", it is but the sound of man, worshipping his maker.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

It is an inspired monologue. God in His provision has arranged for this one book of mere rational philosophy to be included in the canon of Scripture because this too is divine revelation. It is divine revelation precisely in being the absence of divine revelation. It is like the silhouette of the rest of the Bible. In this book God reveals to us exactly what life is when God does not reveal to us what life is. Ecclesiastes frames the Bible as death frames life.

Emotional even as I start reading this.  Not sure exactly why. Seems like my heart letting down it's guard in acknowledgment that I have pursued wrong things professionally for so long; maybe not so much pursuing wrong things as allowing .... I'm not actually sure right now.  I just know I'm not using the gifts Hod has given me for his kingdom.  Something is missing.  Something is wrong. Greek philosophy: pursuit of the Good, the True and the Beautiful Quote: Bono on his work for social justice: "Look, I'm just a singer. But in the end, I want to tear a little corner off the darkness." Deciphering DNA code is a process called sequencing. Quote: we are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we put in place of reality. - Daniel Boorstin    "home" 3/25/11 intro call Ever assignments in NYC? Disruptive to sit in? What do you do exactly? Worldview = the code? Define reality.     Send Keller sermon. Ought, is, can, will Fairy tales. Google.  Most influential institution.   What would it take for them to take our definition of reality seriously? Clockwork orange. Studs in the wall.  Hold the whole thing up but never advertise Can't solve Leslie newbiggen    Church of scotland missionary Fascinating story that explains reality Money.  Don't need our explanation so long as they can define their own reality Swift.  Can't reason a man out of something he never reasoned his way into Abolition of man. Show the fruit of the gospel, without calling it that.  Then you can explain where it came from when asked. Benchmark for success would be to sit on the board at Google 1.  Believe that gospel reality would make everything function better 2. Don't live this way. David brooks Diane vaugn.  Uncoupling Apply ourselves consciously to the work of renewal        Conscious destruction. Take and eat. Only renew by disruption

The kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”

Life is a 'tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Shakespeare's Macbeth

The will needs a goal, and we'd rather will Nothingness than not will, rather believe than not know.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility but with panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of human existence which could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism.

Nature does not, in the long run, favour life. If nature is all that exists--in other words, if there is no God and no life of some quite different sort somewhere outside Nature--then all stories will end in the same way: in a universe from which all life is banished without possibility of return. It will have been an accidental flicker, and there will be no one even to remember it. Present Concerns: Essays by C.S.

The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God.  God created us for union with himself.  This is the original purpose of our lives.

Running, one might say, is basically an absurd pastime upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning in the type of running you need to do ... chances are you'll be able to find meaning in that other absurd pastime - LIFE.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

Our deepest concern should be for first things and our next deepest for second things, and so on down to zero, to a total absence of concern for the things that are not really good. not means to good at all. CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

We have been arguing that every culture gives its members a story about what life is all about, and the story of late modern culture – that life is about individual freedom and happiness – has no place for suffering. But the Christian story, as we will see, is utterly different. Suffering is actually at the heart of the Christian story. Suffering is the result of our turn away from God, and therefore it was the way through which God himself in Jesus Christ came and rescued us for himself. And now it is how we suffer that comprises one of the main ways we become great and Christ-like, holy and happy, and a crucial way we show the world the love and glory of our Savior. Tim Keller Pain and suffering

No pure mystic ever loved mere mystery. The mystic does not bring doubts or riddles: the doubts and riddles exist already. We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world. Whatever else we have grown accustomed to, we have grown accustomed to the unaccountable. Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand. The mystic is not the man who makes mysteries but the man who destroys them. The mystic is one who offers an explanation which may be true or false, but which is always comprehensible - by which I mean, not that it is always comprehended, but that it always can be comprehended, because there is always something to comprehend.

When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere; just ask him. If you listen, he'll tell you how he got there--how he forgot where he was going and then he woke up. If you listen, he'll tell you about the time, he thought he was an angel and dreamt of being perfect. And Then he'll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn't perfect. We're flawed because we want so much more. We're ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.

What is the question? If there is no question, there is no answer.

If one puts aside the existence of God and the survival after life as too doubtful...one has to make up one's mind as to the use of life. If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here form and how in these circumstance I must conduct myself. Now the answer is plain, but so unpalatable that most will not face it. There is no meaning for life, and [thus] life has no meaning.

Postmodernism opens with the sense of irrevocable loss and incurable fault—a death that 'begins' with the death of God and 'ends' with the death of ourselves. We are in a time between times and a 'place which is no place.'

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering world is to suffer...The one who does not see God's suffering does not see his love. So, suffering is down at the centre of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our world. For love is meaning. And love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of history. We are all one in suffering. Some are wealthy, some bright; some athletic, some admired. But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. Blessings to those who mourn, cheers to those who weep, hail to those whose eyes are filled with tears, hats off to those who suffer, bottoms up to the grieving. How strange, how incredibly strange! When you and I are left to our own devices, it's the smiling, successful ones of the world that we cheer. "Hail to the victors." The histories we write of the odyssey of humanity on earth are the stories of the exulting ones-the nations that won in battle, the businesses that defeated their competition, the explorers who found a pass to the Pacific, the scientists whose theories proved correct, the athletes who came in first, the politicians who won their campaigns. We turn away from the crying ones of the world. Our photographers tell us to smile. "Blessed are those who mourn." What can it mean? One can understand why Jesus hails those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, why he hails the merciful, why he hails the pure in heart, why he hails the peacemakers, why he hails those who endure under persecution. These are qualities of character which belong to the life of the kingdom. But why does he hail the mourners of the world? Why cheer tears? It must be that mourning is also a quality of character that belongs to the life of his realm. Who then are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day, who ache with all their being for that day's coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is no one blind and who ache whenever they see someone unseeing. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one hungry and who ache whenever they see someone one starving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one falsely accused and who ache whenever they see someone imprisoned prisoned unjustly. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who fails to see God and who ache whenever they see someone unbelieving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who suffers oppression and who ache whenever they see someone beat down. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one without dignity and who ache whenever they see someone treated with indignity. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by “the veil of familiarity”. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves.

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

The wood...taught us about survival, about overcoming difficulty, about prevailing over adversity, but it also taught us something about the underlying reason for surviving in the first place. Something about infinite beauty, about undying grace, about things larger and greater than ourselves. About the reasons we were all here.

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end... but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature ... And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth! -

Quote: It was true, I had always realized it--I hadn't any "right" to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential buzzing. I was thinking...that here we are eating and drinking, to preserve our precious existence, and that there's nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.

Quote: You know, more and more I think that for many years I looked at life like a case at law, a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove how brave you are, or smart; then, what a good lover; then, a good father; finally, how wise, or powerful or what-the-hell-ever. But underlying it all, I see now, there was a presumption. That I was moving on and upward path toward some elevation, where — God knows what — I would be justified, or even condemned—a verdict anyway. I think now that my disaster really began when I looked up one day—and the bench was empty. No judge in sight. And all that remained was the endless argument with oneself—this pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench. Which, of course, is another way of saying—despair. And, of course, despair can be a way of life; but you have to believe in it, pick it up, take it to heart, and move on again. Instead, I seem to be hung up… And the days and the months and now the years are draining away.

I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying…But Father Martin made me understand the stories that came before it–and there were many–were simply prologue….

But he never disagreed with her. Maybe to her destiny was “something”; that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was “someone.”

Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t. Chapter 16. A Man Who Was Ove and a Truck in the Forest

Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her. Because that was the only thing in this world he really knew. Chapter 24. A Man Called Ove and a Brat Who Draws in Color

As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, ‘The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels.

We’ve got –you’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?’ ‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later –or sooner.’

‘Follow what may, great deeds are not lessened in worth,’ said Legolas. ‘Great deed was the riding of the Paths of the Dead, and great it shall remain, though none be left in Gondor to sing of it in the days that are to come.’

Spiritual hygiene includes ends like these —goals, purposes, primary intended consequences. The point of our lives is not to get smart or to get rich or even to get happy. The point is to discover God’s purposes for us and to make them our own. The point is to learn ways of loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves and then to use these loves the way a golfer uses certain checkpoints to set up for a drive. The point is to be lined up right, to seek first the kingdom of God (Matt. 6: 33), to try above all to increase the net amount of shalom in the world.

Like some mad charioteer, we now run our lives with more speed than direction. We become off-track racers, amateurs who have lost sight of the finish line. 66 Even in little ways we keep corrupting others and ourselves. Worse, unless arrested by the graces and disciplines of God, we tend to gather momentum in this program: sinners who lose spiritual purpose and control eventually descend into a spiral of increasingly grave assaults on civic and personal integrity.

Ultimately, the only human beings we know are people who have been created to please God and build shalom but who, to a greater or lesser degree, mysteriously live against the purpose of their existence.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. For this reason the gravest question before the church is always God himself, and the most portentous fact about anyone is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. Were we to extract from anyone a complete answer to the question: 'What comes into your mind when you think about God?' we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: you're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.

I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.