Casting bread upon the waters
Ok, I'll come clean-- I don't know what this phrase (from the Hebrew scriptures I believe) means. I'll have to do a search to find the reference and figure out what it really means.
But anyway, in my current bleary-eyed state, I imagine that it has something to do with recklessly and sacrificially (and messily?) spreading yourself around, in a way that might please God. I just got finished posting a request for advice on a broad technical problem I'm facing at work, to a Yahoo discussion group of my work peers. So what, right? Well, there's a messiness to making this sort of call for help, and one of my big character flaws is a distaste for messes, verging on a phobia at times.
But why should you suffer alone? Why would you imagine that 10, 15, 20 strong problem-solving brains might not come up with a better solution than your one brain by itself?
They say that we're now in an age where the primary "commodity" being traded is information. What does this really mean? I think it means that everything--business, politics, religion, science--is now converging, and merging. And believe it or not, I think that this is tied to Jesus' saying that he who seeks to preserve his life will lose it, and vice versa. And that if a seed is to multiply, it must first "fall into the ground and die".
And--I'm getting excited now-- what is it for a *soul* (or putting it another way, a *self*) to die? It is for the boundaries of that self to disappear. If information can flow freely into and out of a territory, we say that territory has a porous boundary. The self-ness of the territory expands and contracts in a dynamic, mysterious way. The self dies, is born again, then dies again-- on and on.
If there is a moment of "conversion" (and I have a hard time believing there is only one moment, but looked at from a certain angle, there may be) to a regenerated self, a self that has won the prize of "eternal life", that moment might be the first time that a fortified, cut-off, and paranoid self/city-state "surrendered" to the Other, the unknown Outsider, and risked oblivion (no-state, no-self, no-where), in the hope of-- of what?
Of perhaps coming to *know* something *larger than the current self*. The damned-- they are just those who insist on fixing the boundaries permanently, who usurp the divine prerogative of knowing the extent of the Universe of Meaning, i.e. *their* Universe. We all know the eyes of those who mistrust and fear the Outside, who defend against everyone they encounter, in a tragic attempt to protect the sovereignty of their self. And we all know the eyes of the living, because they look right into us, with joyful expectation.
But anyway, in my current bleary-eyed state, I imagine that it has something to do with recklessly and sacrificially (and messily?) spreading yourself around, in a way that might please God. I just got finished posting a request for advice on a broad technical problem I'm facing at work, to a Yahoo discussion group of my work peers. So what, right? Well, there's a messiness to making this sort of call for help, and one of my big character flaws is a distaste for messes, verging on a phobia at times.
But why should you suffer alone? Why would you imagine that 10, 15, 20 strong problem-solving brains might not come up with a better solution than your one brain by itself?
They say that we're now in an age where the primary "commodity" being traded is information. What does this really mean? I think it means that everything--business, politics, religion, science--is now converging, and merging. And believe it or not, I think that this is tied to Jesus' saying that he who seeks to preserve his life will lose it, and vice versa. And that if a seed is to multiply, it must first "fall into the ground and die".
And--I'm getting excited now-- what is it for a *soul* (or putting it another way, a *self*) to die? It is for the boundaries of that self to disappear. If information can flow freely into and out of a territory, we say that territory has a porous boundary. The self-ness of the territory expands and contracts in a dynamic, mysterious way. The self dies, is born again, then dies again-- on and on.
If there is a moment of "conversion" (and I have a hard time believing there is only one moment, but looked at from a certain angle, there may be) to a regenerated self, a self that has won the prize of "eternal life", that moment might be the first time that a fortified, cut-off, and paranoid self/city-state "surrendered" to the Other, the unknown Outsider, and risked oblivion (no-state, no-self, no-where), in the hope of-- of what?
Of perhaps coming to *know* something *larger than the current self*. The damned-- they are just those who insist on fixing the boundaries permanently, who usurp the divine prerogative of knowing the extent of the Universe of Meaning, i.e. *their* Universe. We all know the eyes of those who mistrust and fear the Outside, who defend against everyone they encounter, in a tragic attempt to protect the sovereignty of their self. And we all know the eyes of the living, because they look right into us, with joyful expectation.
posted by Joel GL at 11:57 PM
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