The Beginning

There are no limits to new beginnings I don't think. One can feel a "new beginning" most powerfully, with joy, or with dread and foreboding. But usually we think of new beginnings as a new start, an opportunity to move in a new direction, to do "it" differently, to not make old mistakes.

It is said that God's grace to us is most perfect in the fact that each day we can get up and try again. Indeed, we can fail miserably day after day at the same task, yet at the dawn, feel the grace of a new page, a clean slate is proffered.

For many, such a thought is undoubtedly the main factor in having the strength to get up and do it all again. The endless cooking, cleaning, filing, typing, driving, writing, washing , raking, carrying, shopping, organizing of it all, doing it again and again for no seeming reason at all, for in the end what does your clean house mean? Yet somehow, the drive of the human psyche to continue no matter how difficult, no matter how painful, boring, useless it all seems, the drive pushes us forward. Why? In truth, because what is there else to do? We can lay in a puddle and die, but what is the point of that either?

God it seems to me, fills the void in a way that gives meaning and sense to life. We struggle for a reason, we put up with insult, and injury, hatred, betrayal, broken promises, lies, innuendo, all the vagaries of human social interaction because God is there, always pulling for us, always offering help, always (we hope and pray), clearing the way making our way just a bit more even, than it would otherwise be. We take solace in that.

As we struggle through the evil that permeates the very marrow of our government, we must trust in something. We trust in God's ever working for good out of the chaos of the present. We trust because we would dissolve into screaming masses of flesh otherwise. Some of us believe in the pie-in-the-sky plans that mean God produces lots of pain and misery on the way to paradise.  Others of us, me at least, believe in a God who is a persuader rather than a commander. For indeed, if God cannot persuade who could? And if God can demand and command, then what is free will?

I begin again to record my thinking about faith, about scripture, about priests and church, pope and cardinal, monk and nun. We shall see what proves fruitful or nay.