words

One of my all time favorite sentiments well-expressed in Psalms: (Psalms 103:15-16)
"As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
The wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more."
And an excerpt from another of my all-time favorite passages: (1 Corinthians 13:8)
"Love never fails. But whether there are prophesies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away."

The various fascinations we as humans have.. with the written word, with the created image, with the life of adventure.. do they not all stem from a desire to do something bigger than life; to go beyond oneself?

I might suggest that an adventurous life is like a colorful flower. Some flowers seem a little more beautiful than others and some lives appear to be as well... but that doesn´t for a moment stop the wind from passing over them and the place from forgetting their presence.
A word well written of an image well created is like a flower picked and dried. Relative to other flowers it has done well; relative to eternity that doesn´t seem to really matter.

These things we engage in to distract us from our human condition do just that.. they distract, from the admittance that we are less than we think and the realization that that can be an amazing thing.. and they distract from doing what truly brings meaning. In and of itself a word written can´t bring meaning, an image created can´t, knowledge expressed or shared can´t, a moment remembered can´t. Only love enacted can.

My conclusion: writing for the sake of remembering events has no value. Writing as an act of love has value. Everything has value only if love is present in it.

The other day I was reading through my journal from the first days of this trip in Central America. Already my words had been invalidated by new thoughts and realizations. Yet my words were there, imposing upon the present the things of the past which I had moved on from. Words which called to mind past events that competed with my present ability to love rather than encouraging it. Why write such things, why preserve for the future the things that are best left in the past?

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it" (Isaiah 43:18)

I want to be more selective in what I chose to record... only that which is useful for building up.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14)

Finally, I realized that the time I spent reading about past events in my life -- even the best past events -- was preventing me from engaging in the best present events. A thought I drafted earlire summed it up pretty well; that is, "If each day of my life is well spent, as it should be, then it will constantly be filled with worthwhile experiences and lessons and there will be no need to sit and read about times past, because I will be living out times present, enjoying the beauty that our God has placed upon us and doing the work that he has established for our hands!" (See Psalms 90:12-17).

Yet.. sometimes I write because I still see it as a service of love. To encourage and support my friends or family; to share experiences which I found meaningful and which others often find meaningful as well if I share them. So this is not the end of writing.. just some thoughts on the subject that I found worth putting words to.