Removed From Us
So I'm blogging now....
Isn't it amazing how living and dying happens in such close proximity of each other. Take St. Louis - some areas of downtown - on one side of the road are million dollar mansions while the other side of the road sports busted out windows on old brick buildings. The question there is which side is living and which side is dying. Even closer proximity - a family who lives in the same house - the young watch the old get older and more set in their ways while the old watch the young try to stay young and search for new ways. The question I guess pretty much stays the same - who is living and who is dying? Closer still - inside ourselves - we struggle to live. We strive for meaning, purpose, sensation, health, anything to remind us that we are alive. Yet death is crouching, growing, pouncing, and very much alive in the fight. So many times I ask myself which part of me is living and which part of me is dying?
Then I remember that verse that says unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die it can bare no fruit. What to make of it I have no clue. Similarly, if anyone loves his life he shall loose it, but if he gives up his life he shall live.... Riddles, I tell you. The impulse to live is so strong. Even suicide I dare say - as distorted as it is - couches some desire to live, a desire to live life unfettered by the death that accompanies it. Deep thoughts. I am so glad to be free to think them and write them and speak them. Where they shall take me I do not know, but it makes me feel alive to think them. Some may say that the feeling of being alive that comes from deep and even dark thoughts is actually no life and I should forsake the thinking of them - allow them to fall to the ground and die - in order to have any true life, and they may be right. But I also think that wheat, weather or not it likes it, dies when it falls to the ground. So too may my thoughts die on the page that in their reading there may be some newness of life.
One more thing, I titled this spot Removed from Us, and I think it may need a bit of explaination. There are a million applications of the title and I may explore different of them from time to time, but for tonight - my first entry - I will tell you where it comes from. It is a beautiful passage in Isaiah in which we are assured that as high as the heavens are above the earth, and as far as the east is from the west - so far has God removed our sins from us! I dare you to read that passage without either weeping or rejoicing. Much love to You all -
Your Friend,
Amy-Ruth Gregory
Isn't it amazing how living and dying happens in such close proximity of each other. Take St. Louis - some areas of downtown - on one side of the road are million dollar mansions while the other side of the road sports busted out windows on old brick buildings. The question there is which side is living and which side is dying. Even closer proximity - a family who lives in the same house - the young watch the old get older and more set in their ways while the old watch the young try to stay young and search for new ways. The question I guess pretty much stays the same - who is living and who is dying? Closer still - inside ourselves - we struggle to live. We strive for meaning, purpose, sensation, health, anything to remind us that we are alive. Yet death is crouching, growing, pouncing, and very much alive in the fight. So many times I ask myself which part of me is living and which part of me is dying?
Then I remember that verse that says unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die it can bare no fruit. What to make of it I have no clue. Similarly, if anyone loves his life he shall loose it, but if he gives up his life he shall live.... Riddles, I tell you. The impulse to live is so strong. Even suicide I dare say - as distorted as it is - couches some desire to live, a desire to live life unfettered by the death that accompanies it. Deep thoughts. I am so glad to be free to think them and write them and speak them. Where they shall take me I do not know, but it makes me feel alive to think them. Some may say that the feeling of being alive that comes from deep and even dark thoughts is actually no life and I should forsake the thinking of them - allow them to fall to the ground and die - in order to have any true life, and they may be right. But I also think that wheat, weather or not it likes it, dies when it falls to the ground. So too may my thoughts die on the page that in their reading there may be some newness of life.
One more thing, I titled this spot Removed from Us, and I think it may need a bit of explaination. There are a million applications of the title and I may explore different of them from time to time, but for tonight - my first entry - I will tell you where it comes from. It is a beautiful passage in Isaiah in which we are assured that as high as the heavens are above the earth, and as far as the east is from the west - so far has God removed our sins from us! I dare you to read that passage without either weeping or rejoicing. Much love to You all -
Your Friend,
Amy-Ruth Gregory
posted by Amy-Ruth Gregory at 6:03 PM
3 Comments:
I love you, A-Ru! (I have never spelled your nickname before) I am so glad you took the leap! I love the title of your blog...I look forward to reading your thoughts from the other side of the US.
Alina
I had similar thoughts as to those you started this post with during my trip to Brussels last week. Here is a city that is home to the European Union, and at the same time has huge swaths of run-down streets and neighbourhoods. The EU buildings are very modern architecture, shiny and new. Next door, however, you quickly remember that the skies are grey, and that this is a worn country in many respects. Is the EU, a burgeoning bureaucracy, a symbol of life to these people, or, as the Member of European Parliament that we spoke to, is it sounding the death knoll of national sovereignty? Are the people who hole up in their worn Flemish pubs, drinking Belgian beer and dancing on the tables til the early hours, part of a dying breed...or are they part of a culture that cannot die, though their own lives may go unnoticed?
I see little reason to remind myself that I am alive right now - perhaps it is my station in life a the moment that dulls my reflexivity. Or, perhaps it is because I see no reason to counterpose death to life. Maybe it's death that makes little sense to me. Why do people so often equate death with an end? Death certainly does signify that something is not what it once was, but I see no reason why that thing can't go on to become something else. Should we therefore rejoice when something dies, because it is now free to enter a new form of existence?
That, I assert, is a personal choice. I for one would not rejoice, at least, not without mourning and being content at the same time. We are constantly dying and being born, as is everything around us. I prefer to see it, however, as that we are constantly realigning ourselves with existence, thus taking life and death out of the picture. It is by taking part in and watching others go through this process of realignment that I get the full force of, as you say, 'the feeling of being alive.'
Hello dear friend. Glad to see you've joined the blogworld. I sure do miss you!!
Mari Ellen
Post a Comment
<< Home