re-gifting Charles Dickens.

This being Christmas break, and thus this being the time of year when i have the most time to post things under the pseudonym "thewelfareblogger", many of you (although that may only be three of you) could possibly be wondering why in the world nothing has been posted by me of late. Granted, i just assumed many things, not the least of which is the assumption that anyone has actually noticed i haven't posted anything.

The fact remains that i have actually been writing a great deal, just not on this blog. i have done quite a lot of writing for individuals, which i enjoy more than any other type of writing. Since this blog is never really for an individual, it has, to a certain extent, taken the back seat so far over this period of time of having time. This is not to say i haven't thought about many things which i would like to say to "the public in general", which includes you, dear reader, because i have thought a great deal about you. i have thought very much about the subject of gift-giving. i have also devoted much time to thinking about family. i have pondered friends and their respective dynamic relationships. i've thought of football and basketball, but mostly basketball. It's actually because i've been thinking so much that i haven't posted anything. i simply have no idea where to start, and i'm afraid i still don't have an idea, although i had hoped that by this time some clarification would have arisen. i do, however, have an excerpt that i'd like to share from a book i'm reading by Charles Dickens which goes by the name Great Expectations.

"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as i may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault at all today, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain't that I'm proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off the marshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap. God bless you!"

If you haven't read the book, that may make no sense to you, but i daresay that even without having read it, you might just see a great statement about friendship and family and relationships and alot of things i've been thinking about. See, although i don't know where to start as far as saying original things, i will at least let Mr. Dickens do some communicating for me.

"You were sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money."

All i have is one suggestion. Just think for a couple minutes at least on this phrase: "God loves you." It's a phrase that has all but lost it's meaning in our culture to a certain extent, because the overwhelming majority of people who say it on the regular basis give no real-life indication that God loves anyone but themselves.

But it really is one of the most profound statements that anyone has ever made. People (a group into which i fall) struggle with why God loves them, or when God loves them, or if God even loves them at all. Or is God even real?

i personally believe God is very real. i believe He created everything which we call reality, and thus is in ways i don't fully understand more than real. Maybe you don't believe that. Me telling you you're wrong in this blog isn't going to change that. Maybe you'd like even less to do with any sort of Higher Being if i did that. It is, after all, what religious people have done for centuries to no avail. Told others they're wrong. But i'm getting off track. Whether or not you believe in God, please just humor me for a second. When you contemplate what it means that God, the ultimate reality inventor, loves me and you personally, passionately, and actually, then does it not make sense that that fact should utterly challenge and shape the way we live right now and five minutes from now and when i'm taking my exam on Monday? To think about and truly understand that God Himself would Love people in our absolute filth--doesn't that require a paradigm shift?

"the dying day, the dawning night, oh in my soul i'm twilight."

Poetry is simple,
Really
The silent music of the heart
Put to the key of letters and words

And so the dishonest poet
Is really no poet at all
Only a peddler of holes
Fake emotion



i wonder, is it possible to be a good poet in a language other than your "heart language?" Probably it is mostly up to the individual who is critiquing the poetry in the first place, but while i hesitate to make comment on something which i haven't given great lengths of thought, i would say that to me, at least, real poetry is and will always be impossible for me in any other language than English.

Have you ever thought about the difficulty of the balance we as humans must come to between the music of the heart and what turns out to be more of an arithmetic problem of the mind? It's as if we are constantly struggling between the worlds of engineers and poets simultaneously. And perhaps i'm creating a sort of generalization which is true only in my life, but i really do think it's something everyone must come to terms with at certain times. Listening only to the heart's music can have the potential of turning your life into nothing more than mistaking empty illusions for real Love and real Truth and a real God. But then living only inside a math problem which your mind creates pushes you into a life of cynicism and jadedness, of doubt and anger, where you always feel as if the world is simply a cold, white hospital room.

For some reason, the very same God who gave us the gifts of music and poetry and painting and the emotions behind those expressive behaviors also decided to create a universe that operates under strict, complex rules of math and physics and chemistry and the like. i have no explanation for it. But i don't think we need one. i think we Westerners try as hard as we can to eliminate mystery, but the mystery of God is something that no passing of time could ever debunk.

"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?

Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?

Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?

Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?

Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind?

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?"

~Job 38:31-38

Do you see it there? Do you see that the God who set entire galaxies in orbit also had the creativity to paint the very constellations we see each night? The same God who would have us build bridges would also have us sing in the shower. He is one in the same, and it matters not whether you think you are good at art or good at math. They all fit into this crazy life of ours in order to give it a depth which would not exist otherwise. And we don't have to know why that is, because the answer to all those questions God asked Job is "no." An emphatic one at that. Revel in that mystery.