Could I get a live in boyfriend for here and a divorce to go please?
I know to a lot of people, living together is just the next step in a serious relationship. It makes such sense, no matter what the studies show. Of course you would want to try something on before you (metaphorically) buy it.
That’s just how our culture is, isn’t it these days? We begin to treat everything in the form of consumerism. Buying a car, buying clothes, buying the proverbial cow. But these are material objects. We don’t (and shouldn’t) create and continue developing relationships with these objects. In fact, when we stop liking them or when they break down, we just get something new. When we treat relationships and marriage like we treat objects, the same thing happens. Hello 50% divorce rate! Relationships, especially marriage, and people will change over time. How can we expect to see what can happen in 50 years of marriage over a year or so of living together? Living together means giving a way out; it’s fear rather than pragmatism.
We don’t treat getting into (and staying in) marriage correctly because most of us don’t know what marriage means. It ultimately means love and hard work but so do most important things in life (children, career, friends, faith…). So what’s different about marriage? Marriage is the combining of two to become one flesh, joined by the Holy Spirit. We call Christ the bridegroom and the Church His bride. That is what marriage is, a deep spiritual union filled with love, as Christ has love for His Church. A bond like that can’t be broken, even by death. (During the marriage ceremony in the Orthodox Church, we don’t have “Till death do us part”.) How is that emulated by simply living together? There are no perfect couples who never have problems; there are only the couples that struggle together with faith and love, knowing they can conquer every rough patch together because they are bound in that perfect way.
We do not reach a state of pride through unceasing prayer… We acquire the blessed state of humility through the Jesus prayer. We say “Have mercy on me”, and we consider ourselves the worst of all. We despise none of our brothers. The athlete of the Jesus prayer is a stranger to every sort of pride. And whoever has pride is foolish.
What I read from this article is not just a writer describing her doubts about God but of her rationalizing the split between spirituality (emotionally driven) and logical thinking. It’s actually very honestly describing a debate with herself over what she would like her faith to be and what it is not, and is not skewed from an angry atheistic viewpoint, which I find refreshing.
However, I realize her rationality isn’t very far from how I used to think a few years ago. I didn’t know what to think, and so I created an almost philosophical system in my mind, similar to what the author of the article does. In fact, I created a concept of God, and therefore rationalized a form of spirituality centered on emotions and abstractions. The author, similarly, delivers a strong emotional aspect in the article (seriously, it is from Oprah.com), where she thinks about her children, her family, basically recalling images that give warm, fuzzy feelings which describes her view of spirituality.
God is not made up of warm, fuzzy feelings emanating from happy events in life like children or love, where you think, wait, this level of emotion must be a deep spiritual experience from Him. (That is a pitfall from which I must stop myself from falling into as well.) Faith should not be made from emotions.
As Orthodox Christians, we seek God, not using what what the mind rationalizes or what we feel, but by clarifying our “nous”, a Greek word which we have no direct translation for in English but means something like “the eye of our soul” or “our spiritual heart” which after the Fall, is now clouded by passions. It is the passions that lead to sin, a self inflicted wound on our soul, a turning away from Life which produces sickness (both spiritual and physical) and ultimately leads to death. Prayer is a direct means to go back to God, to clear our nous. Prayer is a spiritual method which elevates people to God. “… it lifts us up from earth to heaven, overcoming every heavenly object, and name and height. It presents us before God Himself, who stands above every other thing.” (St. Gregory Palamas) God is not abstract, He is personal. We seek God not so He can fix our problems or to be at peace with some feeling of oneness with the world, but because we have fallen away from Him and we’re trying to go back. Spirituality is the experience with the One who is Life.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/angular_momentum.jpg →
so nerdy but cute
How does a fetus mall become a mall? A grand opening!
I was in a car for 18.5 hours straight. that’s right, straight and no sleep. so i will be sleeping for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong while now. gnight all!
Spartan vs. Ninja from SpikeTV
Crappy video but the only one I’m willing to go look for to find that final fight scene. The spartan’s main asset is his armor which the ninja doesn’t have but I don’t think the helmet could have prevented all the glass shards from entering his eyes and that a simple wipe would be enough to remedy that fact.
I swear I will try my best to keep up with this. =)
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