Room in New York by Edward Hopper
In my ministry I meet many who are frustrated because they are searching for but haven't found the key to becoming "expert human beings."
How many of us are expert human beings? Here's one man's take on the question:
Thoreau's quote, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them" has got me thinking, and not just because it's the end of the semester and I'm up to my eyeballs in reading and papers: how much do any of us avoid the possibility of unknown suffering by clinging to sufferings to which we are accustomed?If that snip from the latest post on Brother Patrick's blog hooks your interest, then by all means read the rest of what he has to say.
Pink Floyd shares Thoreau's sentiment: "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way." Stiff upper lip, lads. How much of my life is extraordinary? ... How often am I genuinely alive, really soaking in the full range of human experience, and not running away from some part of it? ... how many of us are expert human beings?
This run-in I had with a classmate last week (to which I alluded recently) really threw me for a loop, and as intensely painful as it was/is, I'm grateful: it made me realize just how fragile the construct of my world is. I have become an expert at keeping the world stable around me, but when that stability was threatened, how easily my little world fell apart...
-ConcordPastor
thank you for posting this-
ReplyDeleteas I was reading this last night, I thought, this sounds kind of like what Brother Patrick would write...
then when I got to the end and saw that it WAS Brother Patrick, well, I was pleasantly surprised- (well, maybe that's not the way to put it- something like that)
(I commented on his blog also)