Leonardo, Michaelangelo, and Donatello, make up the group with one other fellow…
Raphael. The creator of the image above which depicts Plato and Aristotle and their differing philosophy of theology or theology of philosophy. I find myself trapped between the two yet find freedom in the person of Jesus. Sometimes I need freedom from my intellect.
From what do you need freedom?
Do you ever find yourself thinking about how lost you are?
Maybe you recognize intellectually that there are some things we just can’t know. Maybe you hear someone talking about religious things and think to yourself… “Whaaaaat?” Maybe you feel like the things you do directly contradict your identity. Maybe you don’t know which way to turn next – if there is a right way, right?
For me, I recognize seasons in life when I stop just long enough to reflect on who I am and rediscover the real me – my identity. I realize that there are many things that are contributing to possessing a sense of being lost.
Sarah and I have been watching all the seasons of the television series LOST. I was hoping or am just now at least recognizing that I should have blogged as we watched. We have been so consumed by continuing to view more episodes that I have not had nearly adequate time to process all my thoughts in writing. I was able to predict relatively early in the show’s narrative that there is an element of shifting and moving through the quite fluid spacial and chronological dimensions of reality. The questions for the characters continue to be not only, “Where are we?” but also, “When are we?” and “Who are we?” I find myself empathizing with the characters’ understanding that being stranded on an island is not the greatest of problems compared to being internally lost and in need of searching to find ourselves. We are enslaved to realities that are that alter perception and skew a clear vision of self-discovery.
How can I avoid season after season after season of sensing a continuous state of being lost? How do I sift through all the competing voices that suggest how I should speak and act? How do I rediscover who I am?
A designer.
A mourner.
A creator.
A questioner.
A lover.
A thinker.
A writer.
A consumer.
A teacher.
A failure.
A mentor.
A peacemaker.
A human.
Intricately created to be who I am.
A final season of LOST may provide some plot and character closure but we, the viewer – the real subject of the narrative, continue struggling, season after season, to accept that we once were lost but may be found – by ourselves.
Found.
As is.
As me.
Are you lost?
A dialogue from the 1995 film Braveheart:
Princess Isabelle: The king desires peace.
William Wallace: Longshanks desires peace?
Princess Isabelle: He declares it to me, I swear it. He proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you title, estates, and this chest of gold which I am to pay to you personally.
William Wallace: A lordship and titles. Gold. That I should become Judas?
Princess Isabelle: Peace is made in such ways.
William Wallace: Slaves are made in such ways. The last time Longshanks spoke of peace I was a boy. And many Scottish nobles, who would not be slaves, were lured by him under a flag of truce to a barn, where he had them hanged. I was very young, but I remember Longshank’s notion of peace.
In what ways is peace made?
There is a contemplative in all of us,
Almost strangled but still alive,
Who craves quiet enjoyment of the now,
And longs to touch the seamless garment of silence
Which makes whole.
- Alan P. Tory
A portion of the morning mediation reading from the Daily Office provided by the Northumbria Community.
