2nd September 2010
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"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on
to finish the work we are in..."
- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
It is the realization that there is absolutely nothing that I have right now that has not been given to me.
And this is true for the whole world.
It is easy to get distracted by thoughts of what is mine vs. what belongs to someone else. And while that distinction is important to remember, for the proper functioning of society, it is also important to remember that none of those things were earned or created by the people who have them. They "belong" to them because they have received those gifts.
It changes how I look at the world when I realize that everything I depend on to live actually belongs to Someone else. Not even my own body is my own, in the sense that I did nothing to bring it into being. I am like a tenant in a house where I don't pay any rent. I'm just allowed to live there out of the goodness of the landlord's heart.
Can anyone say they have life by their own effort, or by their own wit, or by their own wealth? Everything from conception to death is a gift that comes from outside us. We had no part in starting it, and no part in its end. Even the ability to manage the things we have been given is a gift itself.
So the next time someone on the street asks for some spare change, and realizing that everything I have and he has are gifts that belong to Someone else, what should be my proper action? What would be the right way for me to manage the gifts I've been entrusted with?
This cuts both ways. But perhaps that is a topic for another blog post.
Thanks to Project Gutenberg this story, with some others, is available for free online. You can read the story here.
Enjoy!
"Also, I will have a room here of my very own (St. Jerome`s, probably), and look after it myself, and keep it perfectly clean. I will never let any one do anything for me, for every one is just a human being like myself. Likewise I will walk every day, not drive, to the University. Even if some one gives me a drozhki [Russian carriage or wagon.] I will sell it, and devote the money to the poor. Everything I will do exactly and always" (what that "always" meant I could not possibly have said, but at least I had a vivid consciousness of its connoting some kind of prudent, moral, and irreproachable life).
"I will get up all my lectures thoroughly, and go over all the subjects beforehand, so that at the end of my first course I may come out top and write a thesis. During my second course also I will get up everything beforehand, so that I may soon be transferred to the third course, and at eighteen come out top in the examinations, and receive two gold medals, and go on to be Master of Arts, and Doctor, and the first scholar in Europe. Yes, in all Europe I mean to be the first scholar.--Well, what next?" I asked myself at this point. Suddenly it struck me that dreams of this sort were a form of pride--a sin which I should have to confess to the priest that very evening, so I returned to the original thread of my meditations.
"When getting up my lectures I will go to the Vorobievi Gori, [Sparrow Hills--a public park near Moscow.] and choose some spot under a tree, and read my lectures over there. Sometimes I will take with me something to eat--cheese or a pie from Pedotti`s, or something of the kind. After that I will sleep a little, and then read some good book or other, or else draw pictures or play on some instrument (certainly I must learn to play the flute). Perhaps SHE too will be walking on the Vorobievi Gori, and will approach me one day and say, `Who are you?` and I shall look at her, oh, so sadly, and say that I am the son of a priest, and that I am happy only when I am there alone, quite alone. Then she will give me her hand, and say something to me, and sit down beside me. So every day we shall go to the same spot, and be friends together, and I shall kiss her. But no! That would not be right! On the contrary, from this day forward I never mean to look at a woman again. Never, never again do I mean to walk with a girl, nor even to go near one if I can help it. Yet, of course, in three years` time, when I have come of age, I shall marry.
"Also, I mean to take as much exercise as ever I can, and to do gymnastics every day, so that, when I have turned twenty-five, I shall be stronger even than Rappo. On my first day`s training I mean to hold out half a pood [The Pood = 40 Russian pounds.] at arm`s length for five minutes, and the next day twenty-one pounds, and the third day twenty-two pounds, and so on, until at last I can hold out four poods in each hand, and be stronger even than a porter. Then, if ever any one should try to insult me or should begin to speak disrespectfully of HER, I shall take him so, by the front of his coat, and lift him up an arshin [The arshin = 2 feet 3 inches.] or two with one hand, and just hold him there, so that he may feel my strength and cease from his conduct. Yet that too would not be right. No, no, it would not matter; I should not hurt him, merely show him that I--"
Let no one blame me because the dreams of my youth were as foolish as those of my childhood and boyhood. I am sure that, even if it be my fate to live to extreme old age and to continue my story with the years, I, an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as impossible and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as she might love a Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall of a million of roubles.
I am sure that there exists no human being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious, consolatory power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save for the one general feature of magic and impossibility, the dreams of each human being, of each age of man, have their own distinguishing characteristics. At the period upon which I look as having marked the close of my boyhood and the beginning of my youth, four leading sentiments formed the basis of my dreams. The first of those sentiments was love for HER--for an imaginary woman whom I always pictured the same in my dreams, and whom I somehow expected to meet some day and somewhere. This she of mine had a little of Sonetchka in her, a little of Masha as Masha could look when she stood washing linen over the clothes-tub, and a little of a certain woman with pearls round her fair white neck whom I had once seen long, long ago at a theatre, in a box below our own.
My second sentiment was a craving for love. I wanted every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to utter my name--Nicola Irtenieff--and at once to see every one thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me for something or another, I hardly knew what.
My third sentiment was the expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness that was impending--some happiness so strong and assured as to verge upon ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very, very soon some unexpected chance would suddenly make me the richest and most famous man in the world that I lived in constant, tremulous expectation of this magic good fortune befalling me. I was always thinking to myself that "IT is beginning," and that I should go on thereafter to attain everything that a man could wish for. Consequently, I was for ever hurrying from place to place, in the belief that "IT" must be "beginning" just where I happened not to be.
Lastly, my fourth and principal sentiment of all was abhorrence of myself, mingled with regret--yet a regret so blended with the certain expectation of happiness to which I have referred that it had in it nothing of sorrow. It seemed to me that it would be so easy and natural for me to tear myself away from my past and to remake it--to forget all that had been, and to begin my life, with all its relations, anew--that the past never troubled me, never clung to me at all. I even found a certain pleasure in detesting the past, and in seeing it in a darker light than the true one. This note of regret and of a curious longing for perfection were the chief mental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my growth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view of myself, of men, and of God`s world. O good and consoling voice, which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yielded silently to the sway of life`s falseness and depravity, so often raised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well as mercilessly exposed the past, commanded, nay, compelled, me to love only the pure vista of the present, and promised me all that was fair and happy in the future! O good and consoling voice! Surely the day will never come when you are silent?
I find it interesting that when we are young, and even when we are old, the idea of making resolutions and promises, to ourselves and to others, appears to be the sure way forward to making proper changes to our lives. It is tempting for one person, trying to help another, to encourage them to make a commitment of some kind, and once the commitment is made, the job appears to be complete.
Yet I find that the promise is but the easiest step, and often the most false. Promising something does not make it happen. It merely binds you now to the duty of the future. If the duty is not being performed now, a promise won't help.
Perhaps this is something everyone must learn on their own, and part of the reason for life. It seems that there are few things that one truly understands without doing it and living it. I'm sure God knows that about us. I believe He understands our weaknesses better than we do. The faint glimmer of the truth of my own is staggering.
Perhaps this is why the Bible refers to the tongue as a restless evil, and why Jesus tells us not to swear oaths. We can barely control ourselves, let alone swearing by heaven or earth, things we truly have no control over. No sense adding burdens of promises to our own backs when we cannot even carry the burdens we already have.
What a brilliant observation, and I believe that this is a truth that applies to more than just programming or business.
"The selfishness of turning the other cheek..." I never looked at it that way before, but I like the idea.
Andrew Berry filmed the talk, and we recorded the laptop screen for the slides and command line activity. He put it all together in a video which you can download at archive.org.
The lights were off so people could see the screen, so you won't see much of me, but the slides are there.
If you want to grab the updated slides and scripts for yourself, you can download them via git with the following command:
git clone http://foursquare.net/intro_to/.git
Thanks to Khalid Baheyeldin, Andrew Berry, and Bob Jonkman for their help and equipment, and thanks to the Drupal group for their welcome.
I think it is a matter of what I am consuming and what I am producing.
Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Isaiah 58:3
When I consume, I'm seeking my own pleasure. I eat to satisfy my hunger. I play to satisfy myself. I read to satisfy my brain. I spend money to buy things that I want. If I were rich enough to have employees, I would be expecting them to work hard for me to make me money, which I could then spend on myself.
In contrast, the fasting that God wants from us looks more like production. It looks more like the cessation of the very things that make our lives easier. "Fasting from pleasure" if you will. He tells us to untie the bonds of wickedness, relieve heavy burdens, set the oppressed free, break all yokes, feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, satisfy the afflicted, and take care of your own flesh. He knows that we can't produce without consuming some fuel, but consumption should not be our goal.
Similar to how eating means we are "oppressing" plants and animals, doing well in business means "oppressing" employees and labourers and the environment. Indeed, in the drive for more profits, the lowest cost of labour is sought all over the world.
But God tells us to do the opposite, in order to fast for Him. Break those yokes, lighten those burdens, free those oppressed. Yes, we all must consume to produce, but to properly fast, we should be avoiding the food of selfishness. We should be limiting our appetite. We should be treading softly and leaving a small footprint on our neighbours and neighbourhood.
If consuming is our goal, are we not fasting from God? Are we not starving ourselves from the food of God and eating the food of the world? Living the life of a consumer harms our ability to live as a producer.
He tells us to stop speaking vanity, stop pointing the finger, and stop creating yokes for others.
I know I consume much. Not just in food, but in resources, and in pleasure. And while eating is not wrong, gluttony is. What else am I pigging out on in life? Pleasure? Entertainment? Laziness? Am I focusing on the latest gadget? Am I granting myself every desire that comes into my head?
Too often the answer is yes. I often have poor impulse control, and the world and advertisements encourage it every day. "Buy! Eat! Play!" they cry. And it is easy to follow along, especially when I know how fun it is. I consume too much, and often the wrong things.
Let me be a producer instead of a mere consumer, Lord, bearing Your fruit.
That's not to say that I lack entertainment. Oh no. Even without a TV, I can easily manage to waste plenty of time via computer and the internet. It started with a lot of theatre going and much buying of DVD movies and DVD boxed sets of old TV shows. Once that got too expensive, I started visiting the local library. Once that got too tedious, I started downloading TV shows via bittorrent. Once that got too time consuming, predictable, and legally fuzzy for my tastes, I limited myself to free internet TV shows such as those at revision3.com. But there's only so much internet geek TV that one person can stand, and so I've now turned to archive.org.
There are nearly 2000 feature films available for free at archive.org. These are either old films that have no copyright anymore (public domain), or freely licensed works available for public download.
And so I've started at "A" and am going through the archive whenever I decide I feel like watching a movie.
Tonight I stumbled across a beauty from 1936 called A Man Betrayed. The plot just makes you smile the more it unfolds. It is the story of a man who works as a salesman for an oil company, who starts to suspect that the company may not be as honest as he has been telling everyone. He is rather naive, but he has a brother who's in his corner with a bit more street smarts. Which is a bit surprising since the brother is a missionary.
As the salesman gets framed for murder, his future appears to be going straight downhill. Yet hope comes from the strangest places.
I'm sure I'll find more gems as I slowly work my way through the archive. So far, the experience is better than the iTunes movie store. But remember: this opinion comes from a unique individual...
You can grab my OpenOffice slides, as well as the demo scripts I used during the presentation, by using git:
git clone http://foursquare.net/intro_to/.git
If you missed tonight's talk, I'm also booked to give it at the next Drupal User Group meeting on Thursday, July 15, 2010, at 7pm. You can find more details here. That meeting is at 58 Queen St. in Kitchener (across the street from the old KWLUG meeting place).
Special thanks to Paul Nijjar for providing the laptop tonight and the setup.
Another sermon I came across recently was one that talks about the prayer of Augustine:
I find that prayer quite inspiring and liberating. You can read more here.
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