February 11, 2003

• Grapenuts are truly nasty

  
  

  I thought it would be nice to try adding a few of the things that my doctor recommends I include in my diet to improve the state of my health.  I can report that Grapenuts are every bit as nasty as I've always imagined them  to be.  Suckers are to milk like cockroaches are to radiation - unaffected.  The roof of my mouth feels abused and my taste buds are insulted.  Great, now I'm starting off the day with my body irritated at the world in general and me in particular.

  
  

  I hate starting my day in a bad mood.  Left to my own devices I wake up happy, sunny, cheerful even.   I've toned it down over the years, but in the early days of our relationship, it was quite the cross for Tim to bear.  He'd reach for his shades in the morning and I'd try not to beam in his direction with full force until after his second cup of coffee.

  
  

  These days I'm not nearly so rough on the nerves of the naturally grumpy.  In fact, some days I worry that I'm in danger of becoming the naturally grumpy.  Then I take a look around and usually within a very short time I see something completely absurd that tickles my funny bone and reminds me that my life is good and the world is a wonder-ful, whimsical, playful place to be if I'm willing to let go of my small pettinesses and go with it.

  
  

  My dog is approximately 4 pounds (she's a little overweight, but don't say anything to her, I'm afraid she's sensitive on the topic of those hips) of pure attitude.  Tim is 6 feet 7 inches of manly stoicism.  Every now and then, Simone gets the idea that she can take him down.  Last night he played along.  She barked and leapt and pounced (at least that's what I think she thought she was doing, from our point of view it looked like one of those fuzzy wind-up dogs they set yipping in the doorway of the toy store at the mall.)  Tim allowed himself to be "pulled" to the floor where she promptly seated herself on his chest with a ferocious growl to conclude the performance.

  
  

  THYRIO had a marvelous blog last week, I think it was on Friday about the scale of existence between quarks, humans, and God.  Simone probably hadn't read it.  But, she aptly illustrated his point about the absurdity of humanity thinking there's anything we can do to influence God apart from His cooperation with the project.  What's the point of trying to be good, toe the line, live by impresive rules and regulations unless God has the desire, capacity and ability to bend down through the continuum and engage with us in a way that is meaningful.  Even my use for the pronoun His is fraught with absurdity.  For humans to assign gender to God is about as significant to reality as a couple of subatomic particles referring to humans as Positive or Negative.  Simply because their charge is significant to them, as our sex is to us doesn't mean that the use of a gender pronoun in regard to God means anything other than my inability to transcend the language I speak. 

  
  

  Paul Tillich, the masterful theologian, wrestled with the limitations of using language to refer to God.  He said that "the question of the existence of God can be neither asked nor answered.  If asked, it is a question about that which by its very nature is above existence, and therefore the answer - whether negative or affirmative - implicitly denies the nature of God.  It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it.  God is being-itself, not a being."  Before we gather the judges for the heresy trial of a theologian who says God does not exist, I hope we can take a minute to recognize that his statement isn't as absurd as it first appears.  It operates as a repudiation of every form of belief in a finite diety.  Tillich means, not that the term "God" refers to an unreal concept, but that the reality to which the term refers is not merely one among others.  God is not the first or the highest being, but rather the ground and source of all being. Tillich was emphasizing the point that the creator and the created cannot be said to exist in precisely the same sense.

  
  

  The existence of a quark and the existence of a human are not precisely the same.  The existence of Simone and the existence of Tim are not precisely the same.  The existence of God is so far off the scale of existence as we have the capacity to understand it that all the philosophy, theorizing, dogma and doctrine we generate cannot help but revealing the foolishness of man.  No wonder prophets have said that "all our righteousness is as filthy rags" and "the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight." 

  
  

  After all, in a world where we have hundreds of thousands of marvelous tasty delicious things to eat, and still the people who manufacture Grapenuts are making money.  How smart could we be?

  
  

  I feel much better now.

  • 9:39 am
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