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My immediate reaction is that the ideal is somewhere in between the two extremes.
But it’s a nice image.
Nice to know Mike Yaconelli made it to heaven.
I would certainly be in fear and trembling if I was falling out of a plane….
me too!
Why would anyone want ANY fear and trembling? That sounds like a form of bullying.
Cloud Nine ?
I don’t know Tiggy, (#5) look at the horror movie business, people pay good money to have some fear and trembling.
I’m not one of them!
(a dorky geeky – pop music crossed with aviation terminology – joke coming up)
Now that’s really “Dancing on the Ceiling”
For aviation purposes, the ceiling is the lowest broken or overcast layer or vertical visibility into a complete obscuration.
Hmm, life is hard enough without sado-masochistic religion.
‘complete obscuration’ – good phrase.
Robb @3
He’s not falling out of a plane mate. He’s jumping on a trampoline.
that looks a load of fun!
That’s one hell of a trampoline!
I’ve been thinking about this cartoon overnight.
Fear shouldn’t automatically be regarded as a bad thing. “Fear” is sometimes used in the Bible to indicate reverence for God. Doing something which frightens you can be exhilarating. A friend, on announcing the birth of his first child, used the words “Never been so frightened, never so happy!” Perhaps being positively frightened is associated with being faced with a completely new experience, in which you don’t know what it will be like, only that it will be a good experience. (Maybe entering heaven is an appropriate example?)
But that sort of experience is very intense, and there’s a limit to how much intensity any one person can take — stability and predictability are valuable as well. I’m not quite sure that I’d use floating in the clouds as a metaphor for this — it sounds like a quite intense experience as well!
I’m not sure that the man in the picture is falling, or bouncing on a trampoline — he looks like he’s just floating. A quotation from The Tempest, which I’ve got stuck in my mind at the moment:
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
And another quotation, which I think is Franklin D Roosevelt: “A radical is someone with both feet planted firmly in the air.”
i REALLY like what you write in your comment, Rebecca; thanks!
experiencing many ‘enough!’ moments these days..just sáying the word itself actually is deliberating for me..makes you feel like the man in the cartoon..; thank you Jon!
Great post, Rebecca. Love the quotes.
‘Tis Robb, ’tis indeed
Whenever I see this I wonder if the man is been taken up to heaven in a Left-behind style rapture. That’s a theology which if true would have me filled with fear and trembling. I mean I might get hit by a crashing plane on the way up.
It makes me think of ‘Pleased ta meet ya, Mawry Pawpinns!’
‘Let’s go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Come let’s go – fly a kite!’
Thought Forrest might enjoy that.
Jon this is great and maybe could be one on your desktop!. I am loving how you are fighting to be positive
He looks so happy…and when I try to be happy go lucky…well, I either 1 Feel guilty 2. get made fun of 3. go back to fear and trembling. Then I start the dialogue…”What are you so afraid of…?” …and the answer is: Im afraid that I’ll be turned away…That God will not find me good enough…Puts a damper on my happy go lucky…
Things got really heavy when I was 16 and I pretty much had a breakdown – not that anyone noticed. I was torturing myself over religion. Then I read in the front of the Bhagavad Gita, the quotation ‘The Himalayas of the soul are not for everyone.’ and I realised I should just chill out and that on the journey of life God was telling me to sit down and have a picnic.
Since then I’ve made a deliberate attempt to be superficial, or rather I’ve discovered the true profundity of the superficial. I was really pleased when someone called me ‘frivolous’ because for so long I’d had to cope with the label of being ‘deep’. Hell, my English teacher even used me as an example to explain to the class what she meant by deep. That didn’t exactly help my alienation. Later I deliberately embedded myself in the material world so as to feel more at home here and now I feel everything to be spiritual, whether it’s putting on lipstick or reading a deep novel.
“fear” in the Greek is Phobos. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. There is a translation in the greek for reverance, but the author choosed “fear” not reverance. The two words are very different. If you were afraid of spiders you call it “phobia”, you wouldn’t say “I have a reverance for spiders.”. We must have a healthy fear of the Lord.
LOL Yeah I don’t want a phobia about God. Anglo-Saxon words have tended to be rather lacking in subtlety. Reverance is a whole different ball-game.
Fear is one of those words that has shifted in meaning… I was involved in a public worship event the other week ( a Labyrinth open to the public) and we were trying to think of a way of expressing scriptural phrases for those who had no background in it. We needed an immediate, culturally apt way of saying, “Teach me to walk uprightly in the fear of the Lord.” (What on earth does that mean?!) We came up with: “Teach me to have integrity of soul, and to take God seriously”.
i like happy go lucky!
by the way… when are we getting together? soon i hope.
Shannon – did you see the movie Happy-go-Lucky? I’m such a cynic that I didn’t think I’d like it but Mike Leigh and Sally Hawkins really pulled me into this happy place and I love being there.
I’m afraid the phrase ‘Happy Go-Lucky’ will always remain for me associated with the name of a club for kids with Down Syndrome that our neighbour was involved with when I was a child. I don’t think they’d use such a patronising name today, but I hated it even then.
Maggi, I really like that rephrasing. Do you remember any more?
why are the comments made on this site so often sanctimonious and self-righteous?
Such as?
why are the comments made on this site so often sanctimonious and self-righteous?
^^^a little bit of pot and kettle?^^^
^^^why are the comments made on this site so often sanctimonious and self-righteous?^^^
^^^a little bit of pot and kettle?^^^
^^^why are the comments made on this site so often sanctimonious and self-righteous?^^^
just thinking out loud.
No, I said ‘such as’?
‘just thinking out loud.’
Well try communicating instead.
humm..?
I was trying to say
the comment in #29 was pretty “sanctimonious and self-righteous”…
which inturn is a pretty sanctimonious and self-righteous thing to say.
I was communicating by “thinking out loud”.
when is jons blog going to have a video chat room to save my inability to type in an understandable manner?
email text and blogs all limited to our perception of type.
;]
I wouldn’t like a video chat room. Not only because I’m missing an audio lead at the moment, but because typing gives you time to think. And you don’t have to worry about what you look like. I mean people would know that I’m sitting here in my underwear.
Research shows six out of seven dwarves are not happy.
34. I agree with Tiggy – I am not a huge fan of even using video and skype (though I will do it) because I like the fact that like today I can simply work at home sans makeup (heck< I could even be naked except that would be a bit weird to use a laptop sans clothes
).
#13 – I agree, fear is a very healthy thing. Fear is a necessary survival mechanism and without it we’d all be dead (imagine standing in the middle of a motorway with cars hurtling towards you and not being scared…). It’s what we do about the fear that matters.
But what this means in relation to God – tricky one. I like Maggi’s rewrite @ #25.
C.S. Lewis in his fiction writings manages to convey a picture of God as someone we would feel fear before, but he does it in a way that doesn’t put you off God. I think this is because he ties it in with beauty and awe.
Btw, I was only undressed because I had spilt white wine all down me. Not warm enough for naturism today and my computer is in front of a huge bay window on the main road!
39. It’s worse if you use a laptop – yuck what a mess.
It was extremely cold! I was so busy enjoying my smoked salmon bagel that I forgot I had a full glass of wine in the other hand.
Tiggy – what a decadent image you conjure up – wine, smoked salmon and naked net-surfing!
I believe in decadence and I’m proof that it can be done on a budget. A friend of mine wrote a book where one of the chapters was headed, ‘And God Created Dinner Parties.’ I think it was all about the spiritual importance of having matching napkins – somehow tied in with a theory of aesthetics and non-dualism.