Michal and I recently returned from a trip on Vancouver Island, specifically the rainforest of Pacific Rim National Park.  For three days, we walked the verdant trails colored in a thousand shades of green, breathing in the pulse of the forest.  We unplugged ourselves from the attachment of all things electronic and we planted our souls and our feet on the hallowed ground of the centuries-old sanctuary of giant evergreens, their branches embracing the sky.  Silvery cedars, weathered and stressed by time and rain, stretched their twisted trunks on our paths across several feet. Old Man’s beard lynches, appropriately named due to their hairy, silvery appearance, hung like tinsel from branches of fir and hemlock, their delicate strands supplying the machinery for photosynthesis.  Sometimes the canopy of branches was so thick and the foliage so dense that sunlight was off limits on these trails.  Above us, branches covered in moss and fungus contorted their silhouettes in intricate, asymmetrical shapes.  Below us, banana slugs unveiled their black-speckled contours as rain was falling gently on the ground.   And the ocean always in our ears…  We walked excitedly allured by the restless buffeting of the waves calling us to praise the One whose voice is like the sound of many waters.  Sometimes we would hear its billows from far away, unleashing their grand fury against the sentinel of rocks.  Ah, if we could hear the secrets of the great waters within the anger of their poundings!  If the ears of our hearts could decipher the agony of the billows…

Walking beneath the cupola of the luscious forest, the ocean beating against a nearby shore, our hearts were melting in thanksgiving to the One who created such grandeur for our delight.  The heavens declare the glory of God -and how vividly we saw His creative majesty in this unparalleled panorama of surreal beauty.  He reveals Himself in the firmament above, in the luxuriant shades of green around us, in the force of the ocean reverberating within us.  How awesome God must be to have authored such splendor!  How extravagant in beauty my God must be to have birthed such grandeur… how pregnant with creative energy is His word to have spoken such a world into existence!  Oh, that the whole world may praise Him for His wonderful works!

I can still smell the colors of the forest as it came alive under a gentle mist that afternoon of August.  I close my eyes and I see the ocean crashing with unstoppable might against the gentle sands of the shore.  I hear the seagulls in their dance across the waters, their delicate song a fit complement to the roar of the waves.  I see God’s heart pulsating with beauty and love in this extraordinary unfolding of color and sound.  Verily it is well with my soul…

“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God”  (Romans 1:20)

“Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalm 107:15)

DELIA ALMAJAN

Yes, We Are!

It is somehow excusable, I think, that someone should be driven to sleeplessness by his own mind… Forgive me, please, for making it sound like an excuse, but there is nothing more I want to do in the deep night, nothing but get rid of my previous day’s tensions, snore by snore, until that giddy sparrow wishes me good morning.  But yes (!), I do make excuses for my sleeplessness and for that tyrannical mind of mine!  How else would I justify the alleged possession of some thoughts if no one else loses a grain of sleep trying to unravel the (also alleged) debt of them? Hmm…  Did I say “debt”?  Here I am again hair-splitting my own hair splits. Let’s try it this way:  I imagine the work of an expressed thought as a hard sphere ricocheting from mind to mind, taking some unexpected routes and reaching some surprising destinations.  Hard spheres, right? Yes, but I also believe that the fluidity of thinking brings a flow. For a flow you need a unifying factor, right?  Something resembling a specific landscape of circumstances that will allow some banks and some velocity between the banks… You got it!  It is reasonable to conclude, I think, or even to postulate that one thought, despite the multitude of ricochets from mind to mind, can’t substantiate a flow.   “Dwell with yourself, and you will know how short your household stuff is.” (Persius, Satirae iv. 52). Okay, but I invite you to agree that “nonexistent” instead of “short” has better application to the idea of one thought, only one, set lose in a mindless tour to nevermore. Not even a genius’ thought can do better, I mean better than nothing, generously assuming that even the idea of a genius can exist in such isolation.

Since we already know from my previous posting that “I reason therefore I am” (Descartes – Part IV of Discourse on the Method) doesn’t make too much sense, we can instead, with a sound mind and sincere heart, shout: YES, WE ARE!  So much for philosophy!  Now let’s take a safer road, a road where we don’t risk stepping on someone else’s toes, a road of meditation that is. It means that via the avenue of this article I have absolute freedom to be different since I chose not to follow a preset system but rather daring to think for myself, as Voltaire would put it.  And yes, it is a dare quite close to folly to think for your own self and record it for others to read and perfectly fit in the flow I mentioned above.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”
― Benjamin Franklin

But here we are again wondering where in the world that unifying factor is? How come we see this unique, peculiar thought of an individual fitting in a flow that we humans are often so proud about?  Then something just hit me and my overheated mind got a hold of something…  Yes, this is it!  What I am seeing is not a flow of thoughts but a flow of thinking.  That’s how I came to terms with the fact that uniqueness without context is a contradiction in terms…  Yes, our thoughts can be absolutely unique, praise God for that, but the process of thinking happens in a totally non-discriminatory context.  This should automatically give as a set of definitions that we can use to even perceive the uniqueness of the unique.

We are equipped by our Creator with similar qualities yet we are so different.  Same bricks, different buildings, you see…  We fit differently in similar circumstances, react differently to similar events.  We are meant for greatness just because we are unique, but without the privilege of being complete in ourselves.  Seeking for completeness implies seeking for harmony, and that also means acknowledging your need for all the rest of us to really be yourself.  Here, we potentially run in to one of the most common and most painful crisis a human being can face:  identity crisis.  Here, I feel free to postulate something:  the more you try to be unique, to be unlike others, the more you lose your uniqueness and the more you suffer the consequences of being measured not by who you are, but by how others perceive you.  What a pitiful place to be!  You are unique by birth according to God’s divine purpose.  Don’t you ever forget that!  Make the best of who you are not of what others want you to be.  I believe there is a perfect place for you and for me.  We either fill it by being who we are or that place will stay forever empty.  Yes, as individuals, each one of us is the centre of the universe as each one of us is meant to be the face of God’s unlimited wisdom.  You and I are not merely entities in a crowd but rather tunes in a divine harmony.

There is no doubt that we grow, that we are influenced by each other, socially shaped by each other – yet never to become copies of one another.  We become, just because of that, uniquely written in bold letters.  And so are mine and your thoughts – unique, meant to fit perfectly in a context.  Sometimes they give birth to an idea, and then they grow into a doctrine or degenerate into a dogma.  They are alive.

Our thoughts are originated and ended in a perception process.  They are sure witnesses to the fact that, just as we are unique, so is our perception of reality.  For  harmony rather than chaos, we need a set of absolutes, which is given for our own benefit by the principle clearly stated by God:

 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord”… (Isaiah 1:18)

SLAVOMIR ALMAJAN