Thoughts inspired by the film 'Adjustment Bureau' in which Matt Damon unfortunately dons a fedora.

fe·do·ra

(The good, the bad, the maybe)

Dear friends,just be wise.

Oh the beauty and comedy in life!

I have recently been revisiting Thoreau, and his idea that all good things are wild and free, something that i resonate with on a deep level, however, there are moments when I am able to surpass my Randian snobbery and delight in this 'us' of humanity. The hilarity of who we are. Much akin to those moments when you catch your reflection getting out of the shower on one leg reaching for a towel, watch a rather gangly individual run, or are surprised by a hiccup; when it hits you so strongly just how funny humans are.

This delightful collection of images are from photographer Alain Delorme's Totem series.

Hail to the queen; the Exquisitely Painful; Billie Holiday

"There's two kinds of blues; there's happy blues and there's sad blues."

She stripped down the popular common songs rather than dressing up the lyrics, it feels raw, and real, and like reading a book that transports you to a depth of emotion and suffering you have never been. She is the jazz trumpet, “If you find a tune that's got something to do with you, you just feel it, and when you sing it, other people feel it, too,” (Holiday)

The general feel of her music reminds me of a line from the film 'Anna and the King', when the king's concubine Tuptim is about to run away to be in the monastery, (disguised as a man, so as to be near the man she loves) and responds to Anna's questioning; "Love is not a choice, If love was a choice, who would ever choose such exquisite pain?"

It is that old existential fetish of mine coming out that i connect this to Jasper's thought that life is painful, but not embracing life (despite it's pain) is a worse aching to endure. Holiday's music expresses this bravery, but is paired with an honesty of emotion and desire which is uncommon if not completely extinct today.

Q: What is the greatest thing in life?   -me
  A: That which is sought for its own sake.   -Aristotle

"He who saves one life saves the world entire"

Bonhoeffer....the theologian Thoreau?

For Bonhoeffer, at least from that which i have read of him (being Discipleship) he feels that the true Christian is essentially a confessing believer who has totally immersed his life in the secular world, becoming a secular Christian. Bonhoeffer in an interesting view, especially considering his involvement in a plot on Hitler's life and writing on ethics at the same time, rejects the objective unalterable moral standards of the Bible by proclaiming a situational ethics -- that right and wrong are determined solely by the "loving obligations of the moment."

When i read this something felt familiar, and i realized that the source of this resonance comes from Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience in which he claims that we should be men first, and subjects afterward for it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. To boil it down, he holds that as a human "the only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right."

Perhaps there is some sort of citizenry which comes as a believer, though we do not always have the power or ability or conscience to follow what the body of believers decides. Our duty as a follower of christ is not always evident, and thus if you do not know for sure with God's will, and you have asked but cannot feel anything affirmative, then all we can do is throw ourselves out into the void, making the best possible choice according to the 'loving obligations' we feel directing, asking for forgiveness all the way.

The instigation of "at any time" is of the utmost importance, for in retrospect many decisions are straightforward while in reality...Life is simply not clear cut.

Where Ayn Rand and C.S Lewis agree...

"There lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing." (Weight of Glory, Lewis)

It is not the intensity of our pursuit of happiness which causes so much trouble in the world, but rather the weakness of it or the denial that it is within our right to be seeking it. If we could but accept "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life"(Atlas Shrugged, Rand) wholeheartedly and unashamedly, without apology for refusing to sacrifice one's soul on the alter of altruism, then one could strive after what would satisfy us....yet this is where Rand and Lewis part ways, seemingly to never realign; for which direction they feel this pursuit ought to lead.

"We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." (Weight of Glory, Lewis)

WE ARE FAR TOO EASILY PLEASED

..."And so we settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight." (Dangerous Duty, Piper) because who would have thought that GOD'S PASSION TO BE GLORIFIED AND MY PASSION TO BE SATISFIED ARE NOT AT ODDS? Who would have thought that perhaps "delighting in Him may be the work of our lives?"(Richard Baxter)... that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him?.... that the purpose of our lives may be pleasurable and self seeking in the sense that pursuing joy and fulfillment is synonymous with pursuing God?... that joy is obedience?

Who would have thought that in obedience and giving up all for Christ we can look back upon our lives, at the shedding of all those "fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose"(Augustine) and TRUTHFULLY say with Livingstone,"I NEVER MADE A SACRIFICE."