certainty

{I usually dont make journal entries of any consequence but I felt the need to share this one...it was while on the floor, choking on my tears, that I felt arms of hope embracing my shaking shoulders}1

Why are you downcast, O my soul?2

Why so disturbed within me?3

Put your hope in God, 4

for I will yet praise him, 5

my Savior and my God.6

Psalms 427

Usually my entries in this space are full of useless ramblings -- expressions of utter boredom. I as a rule reserve more important, personal frustrations, poetry and musings for private folders; but the past two weeks have reiterated   the insignificance of humanity, the fragility of life, the weakness of self... I have long struggled with intermittent hopelessness and despair and have brushed away misery as hormonal moodiness and silly worryings...  Nothing human can haul reality to the surface like death...Nothing human can so utterly confuse and yet clarify like death... Nothing human is so certain, so absolute.  Death is as eternal as we are ephemeral...death is inevitable... (It seems).  In reading my bible (which I have taken to doing more, recently), I have concluded that yes death (though assuming different forms) is inevitable. Human flesh is innately corrupt and will perish. The eternity of death however, is relative... relative to the spirit.8

The only essence in this universe capable of absolute and unconditional eternity is God. And his blood, his essence, his very omnipotent, omnipresent life force     is love. Not the weak expression of emotion we exhibit to each other, not the fearful and guarded "like" we fall into, not lust or conditional co operation. God's love is infinitely above and beyond anything we can possess or express. God's love is THE love.9

Many dismiss God as a theory, a psychological comfort invented by fanatic religionists ... but I say I NEED this kind of comfort and so I believe. I need the comfort of an all-embracing, super temporal creator who, despite my atrocities and transgressions, despite my selfish weakness and stubbornness, despite my constant crucifying of his word and love, this absolute Lord loves me. Loves without condition or limit.... And call me crazy but I need that comfort. I need Him to love me and shield me with that love so that death, though inevitable, will not for me be eternal.    10

I have witnessed (and am witnessing) two people I have come to know and love (in my faulty finite way) as friends, experience loss. The loss of a child and the loss of a brother... experiences foreign to me. And to think I allowed myself to despair over the loss of  a lust filled, fearful human love... imagine my soul crying and longing for something so finite and selfish, all the while ignoring and pushing away absolute 'Agape' love. And death hovers over. We allow such trivia to cloud our impoverished eyes, we build ourselves garrisons of self reliance and mortal strength only for death to kiss our hand and tear away every false assurance and reveal to our hearts a mirror of weak, empty insignificance. Beholding our nothingness, we weep, we despair, and we fall into the depths of self pity... If we would but only glance behind us in the mirror, if only we would forget self, we would see Love's comforting arms outstretched toward us, begging us to cast all care and sorrow upon him; drown every worry in the depths of His mercy and enter his sanctuary of love. 'God will not leave you comfortless. He will come to you.'-john14:18   11

"In silence and quiet the devout soul advances in virtue and learns the hidden truths of scripture. There she finds a flood of tears with which to bathe and cleanse herself nightly, that she may become more intimate with her Creator the farther she withdraws from all the tumult of the world." ~~ Thomas `a Kempis.12

{In life, only death is certain; in God ALL is certain.}13