Mike King

Have I succeeded?

This morning I read the following quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. The question, "Have I succeeded?", caught my attention. Sometimes I ponder the reality that 50 years after I die no one will remember who I am. Not trying to be morbid or depressing, it's just the truth.

Everyone is talking about Abraham Lincoln these days. Lincoln played a prominent role in President Obama's recent Inauguration. Hundreds of books have been written about him and a new one has just been released. Stephen Spielberg's recent movie about Abraham Lincoln will soon be winning multiple Oscars at the upcoming Academy Awards. Abraham Lincoln has been dead for nearly 150 years but almost everybody remembers him. Most would agree that he was a very successful person.

A century and a half years from now no one will remember me. So the question, "Have I succeeded?", caused me to ponder. My heart rate quickened as I read Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote. I felt affirmed with each statement he made. The weakest link for me was the "garden patch" comment but I have done a couple rounds of nurturing a flower garden, so I'll leave that in. Based on Ralph Waldo Emerson's opinion, yes, I think I have succeeded.

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." Ralph Waldo Emerson

HT to MinEmergent for this quote.

Tragedy and Telling the Truth

One of the things I think Christians should be known for but aren't within our culture is telling the truth.  We live a tragic world where death gets death's way.  Of all people we should put disneyland platitudes aside and tell the truth about brokenness and brokenness' destination - DEATH, because we are told "the last enemy to be destroyed is death" (I Corinthians 15:26).  The reason we must tell the truth about tragedy and death is because we are people who have been promised resurrection.  Resurrection is our hope through Jesus Christ who bodily arose from and conquered death.

For several years I've been intrigued by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.  Benjamin Myers new book Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan WIlliams is out and I'm wondering when I will be able to read it.  This quote of Myers from the book posted in Books & Culture fuels my desire to read this sooner rather than later.

"Where moral reasoning tries to evade the tragic dimension, where it posits an unambiguous good, it becomes an exercise in fantasy and a failure to accept that God's grace is at work in the real, damaged world of human experience."

Just When I Think Lady Gaga Has Slipped Into Total Absurdity...

Just when I think Lady Gaga is slipping deeper into absurdity with what she says and does, she makes a theologically profound statement on the issue of bullying.  At a Harvard event, Lady Gaga was talking about her Born This Way Foundation campaign to end bullying.  She made the point that with this issue we focus on the victim but not the bully and went on to say, “The victim and the bully are on the same playing field. We’re dealing in both senses, with someone who’s going through a tremendous amount of mental turmoil. And how do we say ‘You are both equal members of society. You are both equal members of culture.’ How do we not just save the victim but also save the bully?” (MTV blog)

Sounds like Lady Gaga has been reading Miroslav Volf's Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

Earlier this week I featured the issue of Bullying on a blog post here.

Refuse to Die While You are Still Alive and Embrace the Beauty of Life.

"I don’t deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet."

From Manalive: A Novel by  G. K. Chesterton

No man is an island...

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 

John Donne, Meditation XVII, 1624

Anselm

Meditate on this a while...

“God is greater than can be thought.” Anselm

Power and Love

"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic." Martin Luther King Jr.

How do you interpret and apply this?

African Proverb

“If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together.”  African Proverb

                                                                                         

Tears

"Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it." Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

Easing back in...

I've been thinking about resuming my blog posting.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes