Mailbag

Nicholas says:

I’m aquatinted with the Incompleteness Theorem. Within any closed logical system there are certain truths in the system that can’t be proved using only the axioms & theorems of that system. I think all truths are there for our conscious knowledge but we must look inward to our multidimensional self. Logic is only one of myriad ways to find truth. What we are is far more than anything logic could prove.

I hadn’t thought of using Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem on ourselves. I was content to use it as a argument against using logic to prove the existence or non-existence of God. It seems rather zen to turn that around and use it to argue that logic can never find the limits of being human or of life itself.

I love beating around the (burning?) bush that you can never come out and speak directly of because our language doesn’t quite go that far. There is always something else just beyond words, just past the tip of my tongue, that I can sense strongly but have a real hard time describing without using elaborate metaphor and poetic imagery.

In my earlier days I created a sticker that said, “The Grateful Dead: if you have to ask, you’ll never understand.” I don’t believe that to be true–nor did I then–either about the Grateful Dead or about anything else. I believe asking questions can be a good thing, but I also believe that there are more questions than there are answers. Life is a question, not an answer; enjoy the asking.

Quotes

“‘Nature always wears the colors of the spirit,’ Emerson wrote, by which he meant we never see the world plainly, only through the filters of prior concepts or metaphors.” ~Botany of Desire

“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose.” ~ J.B.S. Haldane

“The meaning of life? More for the savoring than the solving.” ~ Anonymous

“Don’t overeat, speak no mean words, and don’t kick no one’s dog.” ~ Herbert ‘Hub’ Miller (on his 100th birthday)

“Consciousness fulfills itself by knowing itself. The knowledge changes it,
in your terms, into a greater gestalt that then tries to fulfill and know
itself, and so forth.” ~ The “Unknown” Reality, vol. 1 pgs. 48-49, A Seth Book (Jane Roberts)

Bells and Whistles

More features have been added: a blogroll which I’ve just realized that I can use as a portal to all of my favorite blogs, and a “Currently Reading” link with a Powell’s search box below it. Enjoy!

Jumping on…

Well, I guess I’ve officially jumped on the bandwagon. I’ve got my own blog…

What turned me on to blogs? Doonesbury has had characters using blogs for some time now. Plus, I like Tom Tomorrow’s web site and keep tabs on the war in Iraq by way of the agonist.org and another blog from a civilian in Kuwait, (which I don’t have handy at the moment.) I’m also familiar with the User Friendly web site, although I really only read the comics there.

I have searched for blogs on Theology in general and Interfaith Theology in particular and have come up empty handed. So I’m going to speak up in the void. I’m a Unitarian Universalist ministerial student attending a Methodist seminary. I spent six years with the Hare Krishna movement, and have practiced Native American spiritual traditions for the last thirteen years or so.

How about some questions to stir things up and test the one thing I’m curious about when it comes to blogs: how much feedback will a little voice like mine generate…

Where and/or when do you most readily experience the presence of God or Divinity or the Majesty of Nature?
If there is a God, is that God compassionate? How/where do you perceive that divine compassion in the world today?
Should religious institutions be involved in politics?

That aught to be enough to stir things up a bit…