Search This Blog

Friday, April 13, 2007

Confliction and Contemplation

A year as a Hospital Chaplain Resident has taught me a lot about... well... me. In this time I have done a lot of inner exploration and discovery. I had the experience to open my mind to different authors and look at different way people understand the psyche. The other day I was listening to the U2/Johnny Cash song "The Wanderer" and the words hit me hard. If you have never heard it, i am sure you can find it at you tube but the imagry is amazing. What strikes me so much about the song are the dichotemies.

I went drifting Through the capitals of tin
Where men can't walk
Or freely talk
And sons turn their fathers in
I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit
They say they want the kingdom
But they don't want God in it

I can't say I know the meanings I just know the confliction, I was watching Reba Yesterday and they broke in with some breaking news thing, it was about this Imus guy. I didn't care and didn't think it should have been breaking news. I read what he said and it appalled me. But does that mean he should be fired. "Where man can't walk, or freely talk."

I think about the direction separation of church and state has gone, I am a fan, believe me, you can't be a true Campbelite without it, but I wonder if there is overkill instead of balance. It tests our freedoms the most when we have to defend people we diametrically oppose. Evelyn Beatrice Hall said Voltaire said, "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Not a direct Voltaire quote but maybe a reflection of his thoughts.

The world is conflicted.

This is the phrase that gets me the most in the song:

I went out walking
With a bible and a gun
The word of God lay heavy on my heart
I was sure I was the one

No comment necissary

But the inner conflict of the world is a reflection of my own inner conflict, my own incongruities. Are any of ya'll incongruent?

This is sort of what my inconcruencies look like.


If you pay any attention to any of my later posts this is a modification of a zen garden of mine that stays pretty constant. The sun that was setting is now bleeding over the water. The raft I am sitting on is now in more conflict with the shadow to the right and light is now shining in the darkness. Light is now battling what Jung called the shadow. The shadow basically is that part of the self that we don't want anyone to see the thing we hide, often even subjectivly from ourselves. Often the shadow is the thing we hate most in others. When I look at people and wonder why in the world they might act or say something stupid, I contemplate what is going on within myself. I wonder what is this in me. Do I do this thing, or do I supress this thing because I like to do it. Does my mentality present an emortional binge and purge? It is like saying, "You can't do that it is wrong," but in truth feeling jealous because in the end they can do it and I wish I could too. facing the shadow is difficult, light must shine in the darkness, and the darkness must overcome it.

I am not so sure about this one, it is just the one I was thinking about. The lines oppose one another, why? I don't know they just do. There is a certain macabre to it. A balance, an annoying balance. Something as much above as it is below. Something just as low as it is high. Opposition... Frustration... like no matter how high one can go there is more burried more within that battles against the self, more that opposes the hights with which one can travel.
For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to
do—this I keep on doing.
So as I travel higher I go lower, I find that in the end my nature is currupt, maybe. Maybe yours isn't but there is a firmament around my true self, my real self... that corrupts me. But I do not stop looking nor do I flee from the things within myself, though it is easier to look to the issues of others and ignore them in me. Both of my gardens represent a battle with my shadow.


I know what your asking, "isn't this too much information?" My responce would be, "probably not, I think you are pretty screwed up yourself."


So how do I arrange this in my mind?

All I can do is just keep looking, because the darkness... well, it just can't stand the light.

Yeah I left with nothing Nothing but the thought of you I went wandering