Standing on the summit with all those who share in my pain and oppression, we cast our eyes to the valley below.
There, camped, are our oppressors. Those who scheme and devise wicked lies against us in order to shame us into despair and hopelessness. Those who publicly rape our emotions and dreams.
Examining their faces, their posture, their every move, we become horrified . . . We recognize each one of them. They are our kinsmen, our neighbors, the mirrored image of those we fight to save. Frozen in fear and confusion, all clarity, knowledge and understanding seeps into the ground below as if an arrow had struck our hearts and we lay bleeding.
And as that last drop of life giving blood trickles down our cheeks we begin to know with a new knowledge and understanding that comes not from ourselves or advice of counsel, but a Knowledge and Understanding that comes from whence the wind blows, and we know we are not alone.
Please pray for me and all those who share in my suffering and oppression as we continue to live in a world consumed with self-interest. That through our faith in one God - the God of Moses, the God of Issac, the God of all - that Peace may thrive in this Season of Advent and throughout all our lives.
May God Bless.
Gloria Valentine
Originally written on December 16, 2004
23.12.13
17.12.13
9.12.13
Thoughts on Tillich ... The courage to be.
"True worth is in being, not seeming."
- Alice Cary
To be "cut off from creative participation in a sphere or culture"*. To be cut off from what was sustaining and conducive to one's creativeness by external forces beyond ones ability to control or change resulting in "anxiety of meaningless ...the loss of that which gave meaning to all meaning."*
The danger that results, should that which once cut off one from creative participation is removed, is that one now finds themselves in a present period that is so different from the period before the initial cut off, that even though now free to go back to that which was conducive and sustaining, one finds those things no longer exist or are now no longer relevant. Tillich gives the example of artistic expression before the industrial revolution and I would add that possibly more recent, pre-9/11.
"The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt."*
Could it be said that throughout history, those unnamed souls who find themselves collectively in such time periods are the ones who carry the torch throughout the darkest moments of man's existence? That those who live their lives in a non-transitional period, live and create in times of unknown/unrealized luxury while those who exist during periods of transition are the unknown/unrealized pillars and light bearers - keepers of the flame - of human existence, both creatively and spiritually?
-Gloria Valentine
*"The Anxiety of Emptiness and Meaninglessness" from "The Courage To Be" - Paul Tillich
- Alice Cary
To be "cut off from creative participation in a sphere or culture"*. To be cut off from what was sustaining and conducive to one's creativeness by external forces beyond ones ability to control or change resulting in "anxiety of meaningless ...the loss of that which gave meaning to all meaning."*
The danger that results, should that which once cut off one from creative participation is removed, is that one now finds themselves in a present period that is so different from the period before the initial cut off, that even though now free to go back to that which was conducive and sustaining, one finds those things no longer exist or are now no longer relevant. Tillich gives the example of artistic expression before the industrial revolution and I would add that possibly more recent, pre-9/11.
"The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt."*
Could it be said that throughout history, those unnamed souls who find themselves collectively in such time periods are the ones who carry the torch throughout the darkest moments of man's existence? That those who live their lives in a non-transitional period, live and create in times of unknown/unrealized luxury while those who exist during periods of transition are the unknown/unrealized pillars and light bearers - keepers of the flame - of human existence, both creatively and spiritually?
-Gloria Valentine
*"The Anxiety of Emptiness and Meaninglessness" from "The Courage To Be" - Paul Tillich
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