Tapestry

Okay, here’s how I see it, refute as you will.

God is watching over us, this world of ours sitting before him, with time running by as a giant tapestry. He has many different colored threads representing the people of various calibers who could fulfill each completely necessary role within the sphere of history. He also knows to what level he can rely upon these people to use their agency in the way he needs them to, for them to be at specific fixed points in time that HAVE to happen to make the plan work. At time he puts challenges in their way or takes someone out of their life to influence them toward specific points, but he cannot MAKE them choose anything. He’s gently coaxing along events that need to happen, without being able to directly change them through the people themselves, because of their agency.

So he sets up situations, trials, etc. and uses their own personality and normal reactions to guide them toward that point. They can still CHOOSE to walk away from it completely, but the majority of the time they make the right set of choices to fulfill the biggest blessings set out in their P.B.

However those who don’t follow the prescriptions: scripture study, prayer, faithfulness… will not receive the blessings laid out, because they didn’t strive for them.

My own patriarchal blessing is so full of things I can barely even accept the scope of that it’s daunting, to say the least. But it’s exciting too, as I continue living as a disciple of Christ, to see where I could end up…

My Struggle...

I try to push myself and do well until suddenly a part of my brain just seems to shut off, and I stop caring entirely. Sometimes the rest of my brain is yelling, SCREAMING, for that part to WAKE UP and try something! But it won't. I end up in bitterly frustrated tears because I can't force myself to ACT. I feel like a ghost looking at myself in exasperation and wailing in agony as I watch my grades plummet and my life fall apart under my inattentive fingers.

Some days I just want to buy a ticket and hop the first plane home. To just give up, because it stopped being worth it a long time ago. And then... I remember why I'm here. Why I'm pushing myself through this morass of homework and painful self-hatred every single day. Because the Lord loves me and can see my future clearly, the future I can have if I keep trying.

I have days where I feel like the scum of the earth, sucking up people's tithing money and doing nothing useful in return. A parasite on the world. Lower than dirt. Then I remember that I'm a daughter of God, and he has a plan for me. I might be dirt, but he loves that dirt dearly and wants that dirt to be carried on the winds of change, landing in some distant place and growing something amazing...

Plato, Tolstoy, and Art

The way Plato viewed art was very bland and one-dimensional, only because the Greeks "art" was comprised of copying life to the most precise degree. He thought it useless and frivolous, completely necessary even! But we know this isn't true, it illicits such compelling emotions within us that it cannot be called useless.

So what view should we hold to? To my knowledge and in my opinion, Tolstoy's view is much closer to the truth. He says that art is a way to unify the souls of men. To bring them into one way of thinking, to feel together in empathy and caring.

Tolstoy would have us picture a river, this river of religious perception. It is flowing just out of reach, but through emotion and art we can tap into it and pull up a draught or two.



I picture it as having an prism in the center of your being, and every time you experience art it's like a beam of light hitting that prism. Your soul is suddenly connected to another person by that tether, and as you connect to more people it becomes a web of emotional collusion bringing all of humanity together.

Art is the focal point of our existence. The expression and combination of feeling that allow us to interact beyond the barriers that separate us into individuals. We can use art as an access, a portal into the mind and hearts of other beings. Our souls become as one, our purposes become as one, and our divine purposes become more clear.