The entire purpose of this blog is for me to write when I want to write but don't know about what to write. Right? Right.
Two things preoccupy me, the resulting clash of ideas being the reason for my blog's name and this particular blog's title: This is what comes of Steven Dowdle meditating. I can't tell if I irritate myself with the audacity of assuming that my thoughts are worthwhile, or if they simply irritate me because I have no audience to validate it. At least, with a blog, I can pretend that someone reads.
So far, no one has.
But enough wading through the pity pool; on to the preoccupations, both of which are related but come from different spheres. The first is my maternal grandfather, who is burning up with a fever at UVRMC in Provo right now, held in the cusp of life and death by the skilled nurses and doctors and surgeons who are trying to find out what is infecting him, and how to rectify the situation. The second is a line I just read from the incredibly well written Shakespeare's Philosophy by Colin McGinn, which discusses a lot of things, particularly a final line from The Tempest.
First things first: Grandpa S has been a permanent fixture in my life. One of the most important aspects for me as I began to grow out of my family and into my own life was to remain close to that family from which I had moved away. I grew up living close to both sets of my grandparents. Living proof that the statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce, both were (and, at the time of this writing, still are) married and living together--though, of course, the river of marriage never did run smooth, and there have been difficulties. Nevertheless, my Grandparents D are important (we lived with them when I was five years old) to me, as are my Grandparents S (my wife and I actually lived in their tiny basement apartment for the first year of our marriage). And now Grandpa S is, potentially, on his death bed.
He has had many health problems over the years, including issues with his heart (something that I am more keenly aware of now, given my baby's unique cardiovascular problems), so it is not surprising to see that his days may end at a hospital. Of course, that doesn't change the difficulty of watching a loved one pass, even if it is, in a sense, expected.
Facing mortality has already happened to me, though through the avenue of my son and his heart problem. He flirted with death twice—in fact, tonight marks the eve of the one year anniversary from his second emergent heart surgery—and survived. There's no reason to think that Grandpa can't, too.
Then again, the situations are rather disparate, though both are rather desperate. Grandpa is much, much older, and the current state of his body is pretty bad. More pointedly, he has lived a long, full life, with over 50 grandkids to survive him, and 3 great-grandkids as well. Perhaps, then, there isn't as much great a reason for him to remain.
I don't rightly know.
Let me move on to point two for a second, because it harmonizes with this motif, and I don't want to lose the thread.
McGinn cites the end of Shakespeare's last (this is up for debate) solo effort as a playwright, The Tempest. Prospero's famous speech has this sound bite: “our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.” McGinn goes on to note that the concept of life being 'rounded' by sleep is fitting, though—paradoxically—we are struck by the tragedy of the death at the end of life, but not the 'death' of before life. His final line in the chapter: “We were just as dead before life as we will be after it.”
Hmmm. The theologian in me (self-titled and appointed, I'll have you know) is a little torn here. I am happy to see that someone outside of my type of purview seeing the sense in ante-mortality being tantamount to post-mortality. The 'sleep' of death—as philosophy calls it, non-being—seems to be bracketing our existence....including that of my grandfather.
Dismissed from the case is the concept of ontological shock, oblivion, and the unending dissolution of consciousness. Not only do I not believe it, but I find it extremely narrow-minded. It makes reason (as I see it, which is the only reason that I can really be sure of—everyone else, to a certain degree, is suspect) stare to think that it is impossible that life can contain meaning—and, intriguingly, has been imbued with it since before we were born.
So I don't worry or wonder about where Grandpa (or anyone else, for that matter) will go. I have a clear concept of where we are headed—all of us—and I am not so dimwitted as to think that faith should be rejected as a rational basis for a conclusion. No, I don't fear his death, though I would certainly mourn his passing. The suspension, however temporary, of a valuable and meaningful relationship is always worth mourning, I think.
I want to drift back to McGinn's statement about being 'dead', however, because this is where I'm taking the greatest issue. See, I don't view premortal existence as any type of death. If I had to really pin it down with flimsy language, the best I can conjure is a status of wakeful waiting for the cognition of a corporeal existence.
Drat and double drat. I've lost the threads. There was a point, a beautiful tapestry of thought that was going to be woven by these strands, but my bungling fingers and feeble brain lost them in the mire of conflicting thoughts and spousal dissatisfaction (my wife is irked at me because I wanted to type this...story of my life).
So I will just let it unravel until the thesis of my own brand of fideism (which is a philosophy I've been toying around with and am trying to solidify enough to pen; obviously, I have a way to go, if this bungled attempt is any proof of my capacity) can grace the great collection of tubes.
Anticlimactic end.
Two things preoccupy me, the resulting clash of ideas being the reason for my blog's name and this particular blog's title: This is what comes of Steven Dowdle meditating. I can't tell if I irritate myself with the audacity of assuming that my thoughts are worthwhile, or if they simply irritate me because I have no audience to validate it. At least, with a blog, I can pretend that someone reads.
So far, no one has.
But enough wading through the pity pool; on to the preoccupations, both of which are related but come from different spheres. The first is my maternal grandfather, who is burning up with a fever at UVRMC in Provo right now, held in the cusp of life and death by the skilled nurses and doctors and surgeons who are trying to find out what is infecting him, and how to rectify the situation. The second is a line I just read from the incredibly well written Shakespeare's Philosophy by Colin McGinn, which discusses a lot of things, particularly a final line from The Tempest.
First things first: Grandpa S has been a permanent fixture in my life. One of the most important aspects for me as I began to grow out of my family and into my own life was to remain close to that family from which I had moved away. I grew up living close to both sets of my grandparents. Living proof that the statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce, both were (and, at the time of this writing, still are) married and living together--though, of course, the river of marriage never did run smooth, and there have been difficulties. Nevertheless, my Grandparents D are important (we lived with them when I was five years old) to me, as are my Grandparents S (my wife and I actually lived in their tiny basement apartment for the first year of our marriage). And now Grandpa S is, potentially, on his death bed.
He has had many health problems over the years, including issues with his heart (something that I am more keenly aware of now, given my baby's unique cardiovascular problems), so it is not surprising to see that his days may end at a hospital. Of course, that doesn't change the difficulty of watching a loved one pass, even if it is, in a sense, expected.
Facing mortality has already happened to me, though through the avenue of my son and his heart problem. He flirted with death twice—in fact, tonight marks the eve of the one year anniversary from his second emergent heart surgery—and survived. There's no reason to think that Grandpa can't, too.
Then again, the situations are rather disparate, though both are rather desperate. Grandpa is much, much older, and the current state of his body is pretty bad. More pointedly, he has lived a long, full life, with over 50 grandkids to survive him, and 3 great-grandkids as well. Perhaps, then, there isn't as much great a reason for him to remain.
I don't rightly know.
Let me move on to point two for a second, because it harmonizes with this motif, and I don't want to lose the thread.
McGinn cites the end of Shakespeare's last (this is up for debate) solo effort as a playwright, The Tempest. Prospero's famous speech has this sound bite: “our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.” McGinn goes on to note that the concept of life being 'rounded' by sleep is fitting, though—paradoxically—we are struck by the tragedy of the death at the end of life, but not the 'death' of before life. His final line in the chapter: “We were just as dead before life as we will be after it.”
Hmmm. The theologian in me (self-titled and appointed, I'll have you know) is a little torn here. I am happy to see that someone outside of my type of purview seeing the sense in ante-mortality being tantamount to post-mortality. The 'sleep' of death—as philosophy calls it, non-being—seems to be bracketing our existence....including that of my grandfather.
Dismissed from the case is the concept of ontological shock, oblivion, and the unending dissolution of consciousness. Not only do I not believe it, but I find it extremely narrow-minded. It makes reason (as I see it, which is the only reason that I can really be sure of—everyone else, to a certain degree, is suspect) stare to think that it is impossible that life can contain meaning—and, intriguingly, has been imbued with it since before we were born.
So I don't worry or wonder about where Grandpa (or anyone else, for that matter) will go. I have a clear concept of where we are headed—all of us—and I am not so dimwitted as to think that faith should be rejected as a rational basis for a conclusion. No, I don't fear his death, though I would certainly mourn his passing. The suspension, however temporary, of a valuable and meaningful relationship is always worth mourning, I think.
I want to drift back to McGinn's statement about being 'dead', however, because this is where I'm taking the greatest issue. See, I don't view premortal existence as any type of death. If I had to really pin it down with flimsy language, the best I can conjure is a status of wakeful waiting for the cognition of a corporeal existence.
Drat and double drat. I've lost the threads. There was a point, a beautiful tapestry of thought that was going to be woven by these strands, but my bungling fingers and feeble brain lost them in the mire of conflicting thoughts and spousal dissatisfaction (my wife is irked at me because I wanted to type this...story of my life).
So I will just let it unravel until the thesis of my own brand of fideism (which is a philosophy I've been toying around with and am trying to solidify enough to pen; obviously, I have a way to go, if this bungled attempt is any proof of my capacity) can grace the great collection of tubes.
Anticlimactic end.
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