What Does it Mean
to be Lost?
Being lost in a
a spiritual sense,
turns out to be,
I think, much the same
as being lost in a
mental,
emotional, or physical
sense.
There are times
when we lose hope
emotionally and regard
everything as useless.
We lose our bearings,
our faith, our
confidence.
In such a state, we are
alienated, separated
from all that is
including,
most tragically
and especially,
our own selves.
The Spring
Seed
Catalog,
contains seminal
thoughts about
the kind of
human reunion,
that begins
within.
So swiftly the hours
fly away, ascending
as vanishing colors
to merge with
Gods great carousel
in the sky.
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This,
I feel,
is what it means
to be profoundly
and existentially
lost.
It is a condition
explored beautifully,
with corrective suggestions,
in Paul Tillichs meditation
about salvation as
accepting that
we are accepted
in his book THE SHAKING
OF THE FOUNDATIONS.
It always bears
repeating:
(from p. 162)
... when despair destroys
all joy and courage.
Sometimes
at that moment a wave of
light
breaks into our darkness,
and it is as though a voice
were saying: You are
accepted.
You are accepted ... by that
which
is greater than you, and the
name
of which you do not know.
... Do not seek for
anything;
do not perform anything;
do not intend anything.
Simply accept the fact
that you are accepted.
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The red, red
robins
are bob bob binagain
in Sarasota.
Spring is singing
its sweet love song
of pure, simple being.
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Updating The Book of
Job:
Bad religion begins
with absolute certainty
about everything
that cannot
be known.
In the Coen brothers
movie,
A SERIOUS MAN,
That kind of cheap faith
is nowhere to be found
in the Coen Brothers
movie,
A SERIOUS MAN.
(And, of course, its
rated R,
because of being too
truthfully relevant.)
As in reality,
the story is
open-ended,
so that we, and
the heroes
of the film are left
exactly where all of us
in fact do find
ourselves
as Sartre said:
... alone, and
with no excuses.
Such a conclusion
is not necessarily
godless, inasmuch as
God Himself, in the Book of
Job
(which inspired
and informs the movie)
discounts the possibility
and the need for
ultimate answers.
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Groundhog Day on the
Bay Bridge-Tunnel
It
attacked at the toll booth
My window was
down,
the attendant
protected
by
latex gloves
I
was not
so defended
and really what
could I have done
at my age?
The
first long draft of warmth
the change evident
in a season
of
despair
the infection
immediate
Me
powerless
unable
to do more than
ride the railings across the bay
certainly not to
raise
the window
There it was
of a sudden
the departed come
home
camellia from a
lost garden
sinews stretching
under a younger man's sun
red hair on naked
skin falling
thin blue curtains
brushing
the house
shuddering with opening doors
infants cooing on
creaking swings
rain evaporating
from a hot engine's hood
the wide, wild
wonder of the ocean
shedding the omen
of winter
Some
fragrant stew that was
some
potent inquisitor
When
at last
I
replaced the glass between memory and me
I
sighed a lament
for youth
Not
that it was lost
but that the young
should be so
ignorant of what was in the air
With
no capacity to resurrect moments that have not yet
been
they skim the
surface of a shallow sea
It
is for those with age to know
what ledges and
depths these waters conceal
And
to be occasionally
assaulted and
affirmed
by all that will
not die.
-- Alex Joyner, 2011
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