Doodles from the Cube, 17th ed.

This is the monster who guards our pantry door.

Doodles from the Cube, 16th ed.

Memorial Day

Hi Everyone!

Ok - this is an apology to my five blog readers out there.  Today is Memorial Day and I have been busy doing other things besides the blog.  So, today EYKIW will be taking the holiday as well.

I promise that I will have something for you guys by Friday to read and Wednesday has a promising doodle.

A big thank you to all of the US service men and women who have served!

God bless!

Sven

Materialism Thought Expeirment: My Take

Here it is 6:15 am on the day that I need a post.  So bombs away!

I said last time that I would throw some thoughts out there on the thought experiment and what it means for me.  In 15 minutes…actually 14 minutes now…that means it will be largely unedited and a bit like a stream of consciousness at times.

The first thing to hit me when thinking of getting plucked from my life now and placed somewhere in the middle of nowhere is that I would not be anxious about losing my stuff.  In fact, I look forward to paring down to just the necessities.  But then at that point, I start to become anxious.

As much as I tout myself as being unmaterialistic, I do lean on materials to be happy or achieve a purpose.  For example, my computer.  Do you know how long it would take to write this post with a stick in the Gobi desert?  To be honest, I don’t really care so much about this particular computer, but the hours of music that I have written and recorded, two books that I have written, and countless other intangible goods of mine are on here.  And they all haven’t achieved their purpose.

Which gets to the heart of my anxiety: I am most anxious about not fulfilling my purpose.  I have this grand scheme of what my purpose is, or at least what I think that it should look like.  I need to have a way to be creative for the betterment of humanity – or so I think.

Then I think through this thought.  I am Catholic, and I believe that all things occur within God’s Will.  Either His Ordaining Will, which is where God explicitly states what should be done, or His Permissive Will, the route where evil is allowed to exist in the
world by us persisting in our sin.  An act of transporting me out of where I am into Mongolia, would be an act of God’s Ordaining Will.  So, some relief that I get from my anxiety is that God is there; I am not alone.  And in so being, there is some purpose for me to be in Mongolia herding pigs (I’m a pork guy).   Even if that purpose is for me to become fully detached from the things of this world, including what I initially considered my purpose of existence was.

In the end, we all die.  We all have to leave this behind.  How much easier it is for our souls to fly to the next life if we are not attached to this planet!  Because even if we live for a purpose, in the grand scheme of things, it will not amount to anything.  Only what we do to help others and amplify God’s goodness in humanity will matter – but even that, credit is not usually given to us on earth.  Any reward will be in heaven.

OK….whew.  Done.  I’m going to load this in for Svetlana to review!

God bless,

Sven

Doodles from the Cube, 15th ed.

Guest Art: Doodles from the Cell

Svetlana and I are pen pals with a prison inmate through the Christian Pen Pals Ministry.  His name is Mike, and he drew these pictures which he included in a recent letter to us.  We've been blessed through this ministry and highly recommend writing to a prison pen pal.  We were amazed at the level of gratitude and loneliness expressed in the letters we receive.  Just a few minutes of our time each week, writing a simple letter, makes such a difference to these fellow human beings who are desperate for communication from "normal" people out in the real world.  It also helps us focus on our many blessings which we often, sadly, take for granted.

The Bonds of Materialism

I was thinking on this stuff this weekend when I made up a little thought experiment.  You want to play?  Read on!

Consider if all of a sudden you were plucked from life as you know it and were dropped in the middle of Mongolia to herd sheep.  Or pigs if you prefer.  You would live in a small yurt and your day would consist only of your herding duties with your sheep.  Or pigs.  What would you feel?

How would you feel not having your bed to sleep in at night?  Or your normal food?  Or any of the modern conveniences such as a phone, internet, modern plumbing, or fifty-three changes of clothes with matching shoes?  How would you feel not having the modern materialistic world around us?

Think about money.  How would you feel not having a cent to buy whatever you want or need?  What about making do with just what you have?  Entertainment as you know it would be gone – no movies, out-to-eat, or concerts.  Even the concept of paper to write on would be too far-fetched.  How would you feel?  Think about being desolately poor.

What about friends and family?  Could you leave them behind?  Would you miss them?

What about work?  That promotion that you were working for is not happening.  That book you are writing?  No one will read it.  The music in your head will be silent – can you leave these goals behind?

I might be off the mark, but I think that most of us would be anxious considering this prospect.  How could we cope?  We’ve gotten used to it and we’ve assumed that it will always be here.

Consider this – we are just as human as every other human in the world.  There are some people who live exactly like I described above.  No modern convenience - life is consumed with survival and making do with the meager materials that they have.  There is little thought to amusement, entertainment, what feels good, what tastes good and the like.  But unlike us, who are bound to modernity, they are free.

So what am I getting at?  Well the first thing is, I need to do a blog post or else I’ll forget how to do one.  It’s been over a week since I finished one.  OK – besides that, my point is that we have imprisoned ourselves with our hubris and our modern lifestyle.  Our modern lifestyle is consumed with materialism, consumerism, and the pursuit of wealth.  We need the latest gadgets and toys, we need to have expensive cars and houses, and we need to grab as much cash as we can.  The harder we hold onto these things, the tighter our bonds become.  We are no longer free to help others.  We are no longer free to contemplate God.  We are no longer able to become the people that God wants us to be.

As for our hubris, consider how much of our lives are tied to vulnerable infrastructure.  Consider how crippled our society is when the power is out during a one-in-five year storm.  Consider how much energy is spent on acquiring money that can in an instant become as useful as toilet paper.  Do we know what would happen to our digital world during a hyper intensive solar storm? Consider that we have only had our level of technology for a couple of decades.  The sun has been around for four and a half billion years.  Do you think that we know every kind of radiation that the sun can throw at us like a one-in-a-million year event occurs?  It is within the realm of possibility that the modern world as we know it can collapse almost instantly, and we all will be forced to herd sheep.  Or pigs.

Now consider standing on the precipice of life, just about ready to die.  That is about the same as the thought experiment – we lose everything that we have lived for.  All those goals that we had will be left unfinished.  All of our wealth will be gone.  Whatever reputation that we had will be washed away in the ocean of time and we will be forgotten.  When all of that is taken away, is there anything left of us?  Can we let go at that point and take the plunge?

The point of this exercise was to identify how materialism is binding to our souls.  We can be called at a moment’s notice to drop everything and do something drastic; do something wonderful – but we can’t if follow through if we are bound.

I could probably write about several aspects of this thought experiment, but I think that I am going to stop here.  I have some thoughts about my situation that actually helped me to move forward in this journey.  I will hopefully share that with you all next Friday.

God bless,

Sven