What I Have Lived For by Bertrand Russell

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

 

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The Wait is Over

Shortly after my mother was set free from the trials of this life, I found myself sitting on the tailgate of my truck, the wind in my hair, and soft tears in my eyes. I could only imagine what I was doing; I had told someone I was going to wait on a family friend. But the longer I sat there, waiting on our friend to arrive, the more I thought about what I had told my unconscious mother before I went gallivanting across the countryside to lead my father to the hospice: “I’ll be right back; wait on me.”

Of course, Mom never minded very well. She passed about twenty minutes before I got back. As I contemplated this, I remembered the many hours I had spent waiting in the truck for her and also those late nights she waited for me to return from work. Or what about the nine months she waited just to know me?

And now, as I sat on the tailgate of the truck, I realized that I was waiting again. Waiting on the day I would see her again. Waiting for myself to at last grow out of childhood. And as I had done the entire year since we found out about the cancer, waiting for God to make everything better.

What I didn’t realize was that our family friend had already arrived. I could stop waiting when I was ready. In fact, if I was ready, I would understand that my mother never even left me, that I had already begun to leave childhood, and that God had already made everything better.

I’ve been waiting my entire life.

I can stop waiting now.

–Amanda

O Death, Thou Art Dead.

For those who don’t know, after a year-long battle, my mother finally won her fight with cancer. That is, she passed into the glory of God’s Kingdom and left this world behind. That was May 12, 2010.

Call me deluded, but I don’t see her death as a failure; I see it rather as a victory. I wrote a while back that God’s plan for mankind was always eternal life; death, for the Christian, is turned on its head. “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) I really believe this.

Anyway, in the end, I think I’m very mixed up. Because I’m so happy for her; she can finally rest! But I’m so very sad for me; it’ll be quite a while before I can see her again. However, I don’t think she’s quite as far as my mind keeps telling me she is. As I told my friends, mom’s with God wherever she is, and I’m with God here and so she’s much closer than I could ever imagine. Praise be to God, the Axon of Creation.

–Amanda

“God Didn’t Say That.”

I told a co-worker my mom couldn’t move her legs anymore. I said it was pretty much the beginning of the end.

She told me a story about her mother who was told she would be confined to a wheelchair within a couple of years. My co-worker’s mother said: “No, God didn’t say that. A doctor said that. But God didn’t say that.”

I’ve been told over and over that God has a plan and that he’ll take care of me and my mom. And for a while there, I felt very cynical about it; if I keep waiting for a miracle, for God to swoop in and make the cancer go away, I might blame him when it doesn’t.

But my co-worker told me that story. And the social worker from the hospice said this isn’t the time to give up hope; rather, she added, it’s time to change what I hope for. And I hope God will give me and my mother the best days of her life. I have faith that he will.

–Amanda

The Absent-Minded Inventor

(I wrote this on October 17, 2009 in my blue book when I was struck with the absurdity of nihilism, although I see other applications for it as well (i.e.: inspirational aspects and also universalist theology). You can find other blue book entries on the Thoughts page.)

Returning to my deliberations on purpose, I begin a story: Once there was an inventor, a master of machinery and technology. He had his duties and roles to fill like everyone else, but he was most dedicated to his life’s work, his invention.

For years he worked on it. Day and night he could be found in his study drawing sketches, scribbling ideas, or in his workshop tinkering with some gear or metal plate. He loved his invention more than anything. He sacrificed everything he had so that it might be perfect.

Finally, when he was very old and very tired, he revealed his invention to his friends and family. They, of course, were stunned by its magnificence. They had never seen anything so lovely.

But the amazement stopped there when the inventor’s friend asked, “But what does it do?” The inventor had no answer.

Upside Down and Backwards

As a universalist, people have often asked me what the purpose of life is. After all, armenianism seems to propose that life is a test. Spiritual pop-quiz, kids! Who will pass and who will fail?

But I think it’s a rather backwards inquiry. The point was always eternal life, from our very creation in the garden. The real question is: from whence comes death? And I think we owe ourselves for that one.

Our Father warned us– if you eat of the forbidden fruit, you will surely die. And when he saw us shrug and taste its poison anyway, he came down to save us.

As the scriptures say: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (I Cor. 15:55)

Yes, we shall surely die. But by the love and compassion of our Father, death is brought to its feet and we breathe new life.

Penguins,

Amanda