Lloyd Martin – born 1960, still trying to make some sense of it all.
It’s clearly an ongoing journey.
Maybe truth is like juggling 7 balls, if you grab hold of one you drop the other 6. The art might well be to simply keep juggling.
I heard a story once of a wise, old Rabbi who was asked, “Rabbi, what is the meaning of life?” … to which his reply was, …. “Such a beautiful question ….. why ruin it with an answer?”
So, here I sit, having eventually realised that I am exhausted from trying always to be right. As a result I have rather opted towards just trying to be honest.
Have I lost faith? Not at all. In fact I am more filled with the awe of life, a sense of the presence of God, and even in these dark and desperate times a hope that there is indeed order and meaning to everything under and even beyond and above the sun. The eternal nature of life stretches beyond even our wildest understandings. To lock it down to our limited sense of time and space might indeed be a grave error.
Questions do not mean the absence of faith. To the contrary, asking questions about what and why we believe what we do could be more an indicator of true faith.
And what if the questions cannot be answered? … then we ask some more questions.
And what if the questions seem to undermine our faith? … then perhaps it wasn’t faith at all but a decidedly dim view of the present reality. Our reality needs constantly to be revisited and if necessary, challenged.
And what if the questions seem to endorse our faith? … then we keep asking more questions, there’s always more to learn and more opportunity to grow. If God and the universe is infinite perhaps it is wise to embrace infinite as never ending …
So I’m still at it … in pursuit of the beautiful question…..
4 Comments
hey Lloyd – you should just put something less ‘generic’ in your ‘about’ page.
ok, you win!!
Know what I enjoy about being here? I always leave with a smile on my face. you give me confidence to say exactly what I think and feel. You’re a rarity Lloyd Martin. or maybe I just think so, cos my circle is so small:-) – doesn’t matter at all…….whatever………..you encourage me to be courageous. and there’s nothing bad about that:-)
On the matter of asking questions, for me, the best answer comes from the one who asked the first question to Adam even if it is silence. I prefer silence over the superficiality of pretentious noise that would masquerade as genuine passionate zeal whipping up the frantic crowd by cheerleading techniques that seem to be the staple of pseudo-spiritual food served at the troth of most instituationalized “christian gathering places” . At least the silences of God are an invitation to join him and to test our resolve to find answers. On such a perilous journey as life, one has to know the person to whom the questions are asked especially at the crossroads of determinant choices.