Sometimes we make God into what we are. But sometimes, possibly more unaware, we make God into what we’re not. He’s my flaws, areas I lack in, often: logic and reason. I see myself as the romantic one in this relationship. The emotional one. I turn to him with thoughts and ideas, problems and decision. Rarely heart. Rarely in my moods and to hang out a second. Idea: if you have something you need to pray about, pray about it. But if the time you’ll take for that is in a few days, there’s nothing stopping you from hanging out with God now. Just to chill. Just to be with him.
Tag Archives: ideas
Direction
Yesterday I was walking home through the sunset and I was thinking about how in philosophy, both everything is movement and movement cannot logically exist. That everything is movement makes sense, all atoms are vibrating and spinning and twisting, otherwise we’d fall apart. It’s a solar system in miniature, it couldn’t stand still. But the thought that there’s no such thing as movement, that makes sense as well. The classic example that some old greek dude whose name I’ve forgotten spoke about is of an arrow flying through the air. If you would observe that arrow at any point in time it would be still in the middle of the air. Another moment, it would be still at some other point in its path. But if at any given point it is not moving, how then can it be moving at all?
I’ve been thinking about that because I’m curious about how it’s supposed to work in our own life. Are we supposed to run or stand still? Is everything movement and direction, or do we live better by being empty somehow, content.
There’s argument to be made for both. But I do know that we’re not good at being directionless (and direction must be a form of movement, or at least an indicator of it). You feel it when you have too much time, walking in slight circles, don’t know what to do when you put your phone down. Your direction is off, you’re not exactly sure what you’re pointing towards. That’s dangerous, makes you feel lost.
So about arrows and philosophy or whatever, I side with movement rather being everything. We can not live if we’re not aimed at something, can’t breathe if we don’t have a moment to move into. But then I think it can also be paired with stillness. Actually, what it is maybe – I think I’ve got it now – is this: Movement is a necessity for stillness.
The cure to restlessness is sitting still and letting your mind flow towards something. And it’s not what my prayers sometimes become, an oops-I-thought-about-that-instead, need-to-think-about-God, but it’s the freedom of believing that our hearts are created and redeemed to be aimed at Him. Sometimes you need to control your mind, but sometimes you need to let go of the reigns and believe that when you allow silence, your spirit will know direction.
Idea
Fun fact: Yesterday I got really excited about an idea and I wanted to make a pretty headline for it in my notebook, I googled a picture of a lightbulb and everything, and I almost forgot the actual idea like ten times while making it decorative. (BUT I DIDN’T, I PROMISE.)
Attempt to Abbreviate
The more you think about something (after you’ve let the ideas bloom and bloom and bloom in your mind), the more you’ll start finding the ways of making it simple again. Here are the thoughts of this summer.
(The Nature of a Lifespan)
Death – When our fear of death is bigger than our fear of God, we worry about our time running out.
Questions – Questions are not made to have eloquent answers, but for us to keep wondering around something, they’re structure for construction, suggest that the theme of life is “ongoing”.
Buildings – The clear and well executed visions are nice buildings, but concepts that contain questions build (keep building) skyscrapers.
Doors – You put a door in a wall, not for the sake of the door being pretty, but to be able to move somewhere else. Doors exist not for themselves, but just lead you to a new place.
Death – Not for itself, it just leads you to a new place.
Joy Essential
(Another yesterday’s incorrect thoughts.)
Goodnight.
The Tokyo Project
In a relatively new corner of the world wide web there’s a website called kofi. You could say that it belongs to a group of new websites, some of them not even that new, about crowdfunding and being – through the internet – supported by the very same people who enjoy your work.
Kofi works in the way that you buy someone a coffee, or, technically, you just click a button and 3 bucks are transferred to that person, they can use it however.
I want to use kofi to give away free coffee to people in Shibuya, Tokyo.
In the midst of, or rather right next to, the busiest intersection in the world, there’s a starbucks with a second floor seating area where tourists and locals can enjoy their coffee while looking at the endless stream of people passing by below. I went to Japan last year, and took some time to interview people there, because it’s one of my favourite places I’ve ever been. But this time I wanted to do something different.
I want to connect this virtual reality where everything is buttons and icons, and we sometimes forget that there’s even a person on the other side of the profiles, with the very tangible, physical reality. Don’t get me wrong, there’s beauty in the virtual just as there is in the physical, but it is – above all else – interesting when they meet.
I want someone to be able to sit in front of their computer in America and click a button, and for it to cause me to buy and actual cup of coffee that I’ll give to an actual person out on the street. There’s nothing abstract about that, real cardboard cups and caffeine and money.
This project is a study in two areas I find endlessly fascinating. First of all, different realities versus each other. In this case, the collision and connection of physical and virtual reality. The transformation of something virtual into something “real”. And also the connection and collision between the physical and spiritual. I think acts of generosity change the atmosphere of an area and around a person. And the second area: The great exhange. The way in which we all link up and the constant exhange that is happening, always, whether it comes to money and business or services or compliments. If you’re stingy, no one seems to have enough, but the more generous you are and the more you step into the great exhange, the more you’ll notice it. We’re starting something.
So for now this is just an idea, but when it happens, or well, when I do it, I’ll invite you to virtually give a random person in the Shibuya crossing a fresh cup of coffee.
Wisdom
I wanted to make a ‘thank you’ painting for the school where I worked. I thought flowers, because what you do in a school is basically planting seeds in people and hoping it grows/helping it grow to something good.
Also, let us appreciate technology, where you can edit photos of your paintings and then change your mind before you destroy them in real life (I went with the first background).
And here is the first painting on the theme, that I deemed too weird and stare-y, so I kept it for myself and now brought it to Florida to make people think I’m very fancy and artistic.
Night loves.
(no)tes.
I was going to write something on this blog today.
But then I thought (no).
But then I thought yes. Because I don’t really have anything I feel like saying right now, but I have tons of notes on my phone and on various pieces of paper. So here are some of the things I’ve thought and written down lately:
- Growing up is a bit like biting into a cloud and expecting the chewiness of marshmallows, or the taste of childhood dreams, but just finding your own teeth.
- Fiction is a wonderful way of describing things that are real, through things that are not.
- It’s a big thing, to deal with your feelings and know who you are.
- Oh to not collapse under the weight of your own breathing.
- Maybe we’re all just scared that our demons are the only ones who actually know who we are.
- (There’s nothing under your skin. There’s no one beneath your bones.)
- When you don’t want to have the made up responsibilities associated with being human, remember that you don’t.
Good night, sleep well, sweet dreams.
Externally Internally Processing
I mostly fight with ideas, wrestle with concepts. And when I do, they drip out through everything I say. It will be the perspective with which I listen to you, what I comment on during bible studies. So I walk around mentioning things for weeks, walking in circles around them, until I finally get them and actually can explain how it all goes together in a way that make sense.
The world consists of ideas
This is something I feel like you’re ‘supposed to know’, and maybe I do in a way. Ideas, after all, are the beginning of everything. But I sat thinking about something on the bus today, the random sounds we make. Seriously, what even are words? Sure, we understand them, because our brain makes sense of them, but without that we’re just a bunch of creatures shaping our mouths differently. Or these letters. Lines and dots. We have a deal you know, when I write this, we have agreed what the words mean. If someone disagreed with you, or if everyone did, you’d be a lunatic drawing strange shapes and making weird noises without being able to reach anyone. It’s the same with money. Money doesn’t exist. It’s a freakin’ piece of paper. It would be as meaningless as any other dead tree if you wouldn’t think it symbolises some sort of value, or more importantly, if no one else thought so either. It’s something we know I suppose, but when I heard that ideas make up the world, I thought it was because they were the beginning of everything. An idea that then turns into something real, all that makes up the world. Maybe my mistake was considering just the things real. Ideas aren’t valuable because they come from sudden inspiration and result in something else, they’re valuable, because they are everything, they’re not the beginning, they’re just it. Things start with ideas, but systems are ideas. And systems are deals we’ve made in the hope of creating a better world, now we must all uphold them unless we want it to collapse.
eirians 