Tag: Blaise Pascal

A Heart Inclined

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
~C. S. Lewis

I’ve been following Kathleen Mulhern’s blog “Dry Bones” where she is currently illuminating Blaise Pascal’s fascinating discussions on faith and belief (i.e. Pascal’s Wager).   I am learning how “seeking is as good as seeing” (Julian of Norwich).

What Pascal determines is that one must “incline the heart” toward belief in God, to “desire” to fill that “God-shaped hole” in our lives:

I tell you that you will gain even in this life, and that at every step you take along this road you will see that your gain is so certain and your risk so negligible that in the end you will realize that you have wagered on something certain and infinite for which you have paid nothing.
~Blaise Pascal

If we do not know spiritual hopelessness, we cannot hope. If we do not know spiritual wretchedness, we cannot find the happiness we long for. If we do not see the abyss at our feet, we cannot believe there is a way across it; if we are not willing to descend into its depths, which lie in our own souls, we will never ascend the heights on the other side.
~Kathleen Mulhern from “Dry Bones”

Learning to be Alone

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photo by Josh Scholten

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
~Blaise Pascal

photo by Bette Vander Haak

I don’t do alone well.  Never have.  I’ve always preferred plenty of activity around me, planning gatherings, and filling days to the brim.  Very little of my days is spent by myself and I designed it that way.  But once in a while there comes a time when I must quiet myself, be still, and simply be, with no agenda.  With our children grown and gone, this is happening more often than I prefer even though the love of my life and I commute to work together, eat meals together, spend our evenings and nights together.  It is just so much … quieter now.  So quiet.

Typically I don’t prefer my own company.  I would rather be around those who are positive and encouraging yet when alone I’ll grouse and complain to myself.   There is no glossing over my flaws nor distracting myself from where I fall short.  Alone is an unforgiving mirror reflecting back what I have kept myself too busy to see.

Slowly but surely I will learn to sit within my own skin more comfortably, gaze out through 58 year old eyes attached to an over-capacity brain and begin to appreciate thinking random uninterrupted thoughts as they occur to me.    I might even decide I’m fit company for myself.   Maybe someday.  Probably not today.

Anyone up for a cup of coffee?

My treat.

Frightening Silence

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photo by Josh Scholten

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
― Blaise Pascal

On the opposite coast of our nation from where we live, a storm is spiraling forward in a relentless course to bring well over a foot of rain and upwards of 90 mile an hour winds to the front doors of millions of our people.  There will be nothing silent about it.  It will roar through, like a hungry lion seeking whom it may devour.

Our nephew, who works on power lines in California, is part of a caravan of trucks and power crews from all over the nation heading east to try to help restore power and order over the next few weeks of recovery.

What is more frightening than the surge of the storm itself would be the potential of utter silence in its aftermath.  The silence following a storm would be hopelessness beyond our ability to grasp and hold.  If there is one cry, one call for help,  any sound at all, then there is still hope of rescue.

As the billows of clouds and waves roll in to shore with tumultuous howl and din, may they retreat quickly without leaving a trace behind.  And may all the people sing loud over the rumble of the storm, lifting their voices together to keep silence forever at bay.

photo by Josh Scholten

The Pebble’s Splash

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photo by Josh Scholten

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
~Blaise Pascal

Most days I’m the ocean rocked by the most minute ripples.  The building waves created by forces beyond my control feel tsunami-like though they probably started out small.  I can do nothing but let them flow over, around and beneath me, riding them up and down, trying not to get submerged for long and not get sea-sick.  Lately it feels like a barrage: instead of letting up, the billows roll larger and mightier, at times relentlessly powerful, changing everything in their path.

Instead of being the rippled, I hope some time to become the rippler in a way that can move oceans or mountains or most amazing of all, another soul, just once.  In some tiny way, I hope I can say or do or write something that makes a positive difference in someone’s life, and that person forwards the ripple, spreading the wave a little further, a little broader, a little deeper to affect others.  Traveling far beyond the original thrown pebble, it can never to be pulled back once it is let loose.

I know what it is like for a blog post to go viral, becoming an ocean in churning turmoil, not a mere pebble starting with a least movement.  Instead, I hope to be the most insignificant of change agents, barely there, just moving enough of another heart and soul to start something that will grow and spread by itself, wild and wonderful.

I don’t know what it might be or how I might do it.  Perhaps it is as simple as skipping rocks, choosing the best flattest pebble, rubbing the smooth sides between my fingers, and with a momentary regret at giving it up to the ocean, I’ll haul back and just let it go.  It will skip once, twice, three four five even six times and then disappear below. The surface of the water will never be the same again.

Nor will I.

photo by Josh Scholten

Hole in the Heart

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photo by Josh Scholten

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.
~ Blaise Pascal 

Everyone is created with a hole in their heart that has no murmur, doesn’t show up on scans or xrays nor is it visible in surgery.  Yet we feel it, absolutely know it is there, and are constantly reminded of being incomplete.  Billions of dollars and millions of hours are spent trying to fill that empty spot in every imaginable and unimaginable way.  Nothing we try fills it wholly.  Nothing we find fits it perfectly.  Nothing on earth can ever be sufficient.

We are born wanting, yearning and searching; we exist hungry, thirsty and needy.

Created with a hankering heart for God, we discover only He fits, fills and is sufficient.  Only a beating heart like ours can know our hollow heart’s emptiness.  His bleeding stops us from hemorrhaging all we have in futile pursuits.

The mystery if the vacuum is this:
how our desperation resolves
and misery comforted
by being made complete and whole
through His woundedness.

How is it possible that
through His pierced limbs and broken heart,
we are made holy,
our emptiness filled forever.

photo by Josh Scholten

Light and Shadow

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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.
~Blaise Pascal

During intense election seasons like this one, I find myself seeking safety hiding under a rock where lukewarm moderates tend to congregate.   There is no political convention for us with rousing impassioned speeches or balloons falling on our heads.

Extremist views predominate simply for the sake of differentiating one’s political turf from the opposition.  There is no discussion of compromise, negotiation or collaboration as that would be perceived as a sign of weakness.  Instead it is “my way or the wrong way.”

I’m ready to say “no way,” as both sides are intolerably intolerant of the other.

The chasm is most gaping in any discussion of faith issues.  Religion and politics have become angry neighbors constantly arguing over how high to build the fence between them, what it should be made out of, what color it should be, should there be peek holes, should it be electrified with barbed wire to prevent moving back and forth, should there be a gate with or without a lock and who pays for the labor.   In a country founded on the principle of freedom of religion, there are more and more who believe our forefathers’ blood was shed for freedom from religion.

Give us the right to believe in nothing whatsoever or give us death. Perhaps both actually go together.

And so it goes.  Each election cycle brings out the worst in our leadership as facts are distorted, the truth is stretched or completely abandoned, unseemly pandering abounds and curried favors are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Enough already.

In the midst of this morass, we who want to believe still choose to believe.

There is just enough light for those who seek it.  No need to remain blinded in the shadowlands of unbelief.

I’ll come out from under my rock if you do.

In fact…I think I just did.

The Most Feeble Thing

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photo by Josh Scholten

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Blaise Pascal

I’m not sure which is getting flabbier faster–my biceps or my brain.  As I advance in middle age I tend to avoid overworking both to just get by with only occasional heavy lifting:  a hay bale here, a challenging abstract philosophical commentary there.   Hard work, whether physical or mental, is getting harder.  As a naturally lazy person, I have to be forced into manual and central nervous system labor out of necessity.  Necessity happens less and less often unless I go looking for it.

Given the choice between a physical task and a thinking task, I’ll opt for thinking over lifting any day.  Even so, I find my mental strengths are ebbing.  My brain is less flexible, I can tend to be stiff headed when trying something new, it starts to feel strained if I push it too fast.   There are times when it feels like it just goes into spasm and I need to sit down and rub it for awhile.  Feeble suddenly doesn’t sound like it just belongs to the aged and infirm.

The only remedy is to use it or lose it, whether muscles or gray matter.   So I dig a little deeper each day, even when it hurts to do so.   I purposely stretch beyond the point of comfort, just so I know it can still be done.  I lift a little higher, heft a little heavier, push a little harder.  Being the most feeble thing in nature may mean being easily broken by the smallest effort, but at least I’ll have thought my reedy limitations through thoroughly, chewed on it until there was nothing left and digested what I could.

Eventually I’ll come to accept that my greatest strength is to know what I don’t know.

“I have come to think that if I had the mind, I have not the brain and nerves for a life of pure philosophy. A continued search among the abstract roots of things, a perpetual questioning of all that plain men take for granted, a chewing the cud for fifty years over inevitable ignorance and a constant frontier watch on the little tidy lighted conventional world of science and daily life–is this the best life for temperaments such as ours? Is it the way of health or even of sanity?” C. S. Lewis (in a letter to his father, Aug. 14, 1925)