blinded by the steady lights

Many unconnected thoughts churns in my mind tonight regarding: Antigone, Natural Law, The Acts of the Apostles, M. Atwood's Alias Grace, the conjugation of the German verb Sein, Dylan's Modern Times, and a conversation I was honoured to have today with a talmudist on Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

I no longer try and place such disparate discussions into one unifying paradigm. I learn everyday and yet sometimes feel further from the truth.

I miss the orderly cosmos of my time as a fundamentalist or even of the time I spend caught up in Calvin Colleges reformed vision of the world.

But, I can't force the world back into any mould. Or to quote the sagacious Bob:

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around


However, I am thankful that I don't inhabit quite the same dark cosmos as Dylan. He seems to turn to the more enigmatic ending of Mark where it is unclear whether Jesus is just gone or has been resurrected:

As I walked out in the mystic garden
On a hot summer day, a hot summer lawn
Excuse me, ma'am, I beg your pardon
There's no one here, the gardener is gone

I believe as Peter proclaimed at Pentecost that God did not abandon Christ's body to Hades but vindicated him. However, that does mean the world makes sense. In fact, by making the cross the pre-eminent moment in divine history it seems to put an end run around human quests for a rational, natural law. Foolishness to the Greeks...

Indeed, it is to the constancy of the God that keeps Israel even if unfaithful, and who did not abandon Christ, the God who we can address in the familiar du bist... that I turn to now to make sense of life that indeed seems at times like a dark pathway.

Indeed it is not unbelief I fear. I believe. And yet, I fear that I lack the kind of certainty necessary for faithfulness: the bold, living, ethical trust in God.

I have one of those questioning faiths so praised in intellectual circles (fides quarens intellectum)

But has this somehow alienated me from the kind of assurance that can stand up like Antigone or like Peter and John and proclaim "it is better to obey God than men."

I am standing in the night wishing to exchange places with Dylan who sings:

Today I'll stand in faith and raise
The voice of praise
The sun is strong, I'm standing in the light
I wish to God that it were night

Indeed, I can relate to this feeling of doubt that surrounds even my greatest assurances. Or, perhaps this hope that end will find me faithful.

I wish deeply to no longer be blinded by light, but to see.

Jodie