The joy of doing penance

 The joy of doing penance.

 There is such a disconnect between our thoughts, actions, sufferings and joy, that we feel lost and unable to find meaning and purpose in life, and for us, or at least for me, meaning and purpose is all I want from life -  well - speaking only on an emotional and intellectual level.

There are riches and pain on a spiritual level as well, but that is not my subject today, whilst I concede our emotional and spiritual wellbeing are intimately connected. And then there are the physical necessities, which I also do not write about today.

To my readers in Russia.

The self destruction of nations - Part 1

I have written a few times on the self destruction of individuals, but if I look at the self destruction of nations, a notion which recently grabbed my attention quite forcefully, the self destruction of individuals pale in comparison.

The Fall of the Western Empire

 ... or How the West was won.

No, I am not trying to imitate or emulate Gibbon who wrote six volumes on the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire some hundred and fifty years ago.

My aim is to write about the fall of the present West which has started some thirty years ago when the Cold War ended.

A place in the Son

 This is a short spiritual and intellectual note about who God is and who I am - or more generally who we are, because in a certain sense we are all generically and genetically the same - humans floating somewhere in space and time in one of the spiral arms of the galaxy called the Milky Way.

Self inflicted wounds - Part1 - Freedom

I have written a few articles on freedom and my view has always been, and will always be, that everybody cries for freedom and that freedom kills. So I must presume the paradoxical corollary that everyone wishes to be killed, but nobody wishes to be dead is true.

Have you seen the Saviour: a poem by P.K.Odendaal

Have you seen the Saviour

hanging from a tree
Have you watched the Saviour
who died for you and me
Have you heard the Saviour
pleading for the lost
Have you thought the Saviour
wouldn't pay the total cost

God's Dilemma - Part 3

Continued from Part 2 ... 

 So, why can't I apply this principle to my friendship with God. The reason is that in this case God has the authority and it would be up to Him to relinquish that. I studied scripture and came to the following sobering thoughts:

1. God gave up all his authority (dominion) over the earth, in order to be friends with Adam and Eve, regardless of whether they would trade it for an apple or use it wisely.

God's Dilemma - Part 2

Continued from Part 1 ...

It was a very strange and difficult process to unlearn all I had learned in the Dutch Reformed Church. It got so bad that I ultimately realised that all I learned was wrong and I became used to doing and believing all the opposite things  which that Church taught me, knowing that it would be right. There are, of course, righteous people in that Church as well who serve God with all their might, but it did not work for a rebel like me.

The Decay of Lying: a Protest

 I have recently found this gem in the collective works of Oscar Wilde. It is a must read for my readers. After a hundred and twenty years it is still very apt.

A foretaste:

Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One’s individuality absolutely leaves one. ... Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the 

https://celt.ucc.ie/published/E800003-009/index.html

God's Dilemma - Part 1

 In the scheme of things God created everything and that made Him King of the Universe with anything He created becoming subservient to Him ... but it also automatically made Him alone and lonesome with no peer, friend, compatriot, confidante, family, adviser and many other things; not that He needed it, but the human part of Him needed someone to talk to, to confide in, to be friends with, to adore and love Him seriously and unconditionally. To be really one with Him.