Thread: Crying
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Old 12.28.2012, 11:49 PM   #20
SuchFriendsAreDangerous
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Quote:
Originally Posted by the ikara cult
I remember the last time i saw my grandmother, she was an incredibly strong woman but Altzheimers reduced her to having to be treated like a 6 month old baby, wearing nappies and being spoonfed apricot mush. Its not how i remember her really. If theres a chance for you to communicate with them as you remember them, its worth it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesus
When you are young you gird yourself and go where you want, when you grow older others will gird your waste for you and carry you where they will..

Jesus gets a bad rap because of Westboro Baptist folks and the whole Crusades thing, but like the parables of the Buddha Christianity is deeply insightful to navigating the traumas of the human experience. When young Siddhartha left the palace, he discovered the first noble truth, life is suffering. As the the French say, "Such is life," and the Arabs in Palestine concur whenever Israel blows some shit up and kills some people, "God is good (i.e. what else can be done?)."

The moral of this noble Truth is that is indeed part of human dignity and nobility to survive these, thrive in these, and therefore sanctify the varying circumstances of life. When we were young children, adults made the day to day sacrifices to their "dignity" for the better of their families which in the long-arc is beneficial to the entirety of our species. In this way, their indignation is in fact the noblest of human dignities, to serve others altruistically. This is also what Jesus meant by His saying this to Saint Peter. What the Church calls Christian dignity is indeed the reality of the Fifth Commandment, reiterated by both Apostle Paul and indeed the Apostle John, "To honor ones father and mother with promise." The life which God or Darwinian evolution or just the shit reality of life is that we are part of families, part of communities which when we were younger sacrificed moments and aspects of their lives to care for us as children, and we are therefore one way or another obligated to return this favor. It was dignified that they labored for love, and out of our moving love for them we then take over as they age. In Christian philosophy, the function of aging is to learn to yield to the outside forces of reality with a kind of optimism and dignity. The struggles of life are the very functions and therefore joys of life.

It is a joy to care-give, and while the ICU or a hospice is simply the most terrifying place in the human experience, even more perhaps than an open war-zone because the adrenaline of the fight-or-flight reaction is subdued, internalized. You can't run away, you can't hide, in fact you have to grow up and face those demons and the demons of those folks suffering together. Together is the key. It is biologically inevitable that human beings die. It is a further biological fact that death in all humans is a gradual process. So we being social creatures, have created an entire culture and society to deal and cope with this reality of human mortality. Our infants need care to survive, they are not reptilian, and our elders need care, and we are not cannibals so by and large human nature coerces the heart to care for the ill or aged as much as for the instinctive cuteness of the infant and the puppy/kitten. A crippled cat is as heart-wrenching in the opposite direction as a ridiculously cute kitten, and the reaction is the same, movement of the heart towards direct action. When we see babies, we are instinctively moved to like them. When we see our dying elders, we are instinctively moved to care for them. Jesus fits into all this even if just as a mythological figure as a living allegory of this process and reality. The Christian life is to learn our best day by day to find meaning, purpose, and hope through the trials and inevitable suffering of human life in all its natural stages and developments, and in particular to face our mortality with a kind of dignity which Richard Dawkins seems to lack in the regard. He strikes me as paranoid. Being afraid of the pain is real enough, but this is what Faith is about. If this Faith is not in God, it is at least a miraculous function of the heart which pushes us each tragic day to stand, to wait, to serve at peoples' deathbeds. If that isn't God what is?

By the way, Stu, Bytor, Ikra, I'm going through it with y'all so much more than you know or I'd care to share. This is the reality of the SYG board, we've been here for long enough years to have went through many of the cycles of life. Much like how American Beauty was a product of the passing of Jerry Garcia's mother and Phil's father, it was a biological reality of the Dead being guys in their 30s instead of 20s, that the music reflect such. Here on SYG, we've all started to hit that wall. Keep it positive SYG y'all, its all sonic love. "Times takes its crazy toll.."
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