random anxieties of existence

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do." -Edward Everett Hale   "i am going to make a lasting difference with my life!" "what idiocy," frail keith scoffs. "who am i to change this world, a planet upon which there is nothing new under the sun?"  faithful keith timidly responds, "with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."  i know that frail keith will likely have the upper hand again soon. this is my tragic flaw, my achilles' heel: Frailty imprisons Faith and tosses him in a prison of apathy, scorning and taunting, "who do you think you are, to dream of living a life beyond you?" then, licking my wounds in my hypnosis of self-pity and hopeless abandonment, i hear a still, small voice whispering, "beloved Littlefaith, why do you doubt...

faith is a passionate intuition -william wordsworth   as a child i was a master lego-builder. this was back in the day when one could take pride in constructing a lego masterpiece, before all of this "put these three pieces together and you have the entire star wars trilogy." no, sirree, this was manual labour. as the foreman of my building project, i grew very attuned to my materials. i would train my eyes to only see the colour i was looking for, whatever the colour may be. sure, it would still take me a while to find the piece i was looking for, but when it was in my field of vision it would jump out at me because of my expectation of it. to the pure, all things are pure -titus 1.15 .  if you truly desire to see God’s beautiful tapestry being woven in your life, then see it. it is there. we’re not talking about believing in aliens here. the reason we are able to have faith is because, consciously or unconsciously, we have encountered the substantiation of God...

my friend darcie told me tonight that sometimes i remind her of a little boy. at first i was tempted to be offended. after all, i haven’t dedicated myself to goofing off for 23 years only to be mistaken for a little boy. or have i? in a psych class at briercrest we took a survey, and it revealed that i was one of the top two students in my class for highest degree of Positive Cognitive Stimulation. it sounded pretty exciting. i found out it means that i’m quickly and easily excited by almost anything. particularly shiny objects, i’d imagine. kind of like a cat and a laser pointer. simple things have always entertained me, but even more-so when i was actually a child. there was never a more thrilling moment than when i had just borrowed a new hardy boys book from the sault ste. marie public library and knew that i would secretly stay up most of the night (which for me, then, was probably until 10:00) reading in bed with my flashlight and eating crackers and drinking hot chocolat...

"against you, you only, have i sinned and done what is evil in your sight."  whatever Dave. you knocked up a married girl and had her husband killed. there were more involved than just God. or were there? I guess, technically speaking, as fallible human beings ourselves, what actual right do we have to judge others for thier fallacies? maybe there is only one Lawgiver and one Judge after all. i'll never forget a time many years ago, as a young boy, when Emily was struggling with anorexia. as we were going through the gift store, i saw the perfect present for her to show her how much we cared- a mug with a cuddly picture of a bear on it and the words "we love you beary beary much." i was very excited to give it to her. i don't often pick things out for people, so when i do, my whole heart goes into it. we went to her room, and i was nearly bursting my breeches to see her reaction. needless to say, it wasn't what i was hoping for. she said she hate...

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?  Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;  And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:  the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.  And for all this, nature is never spent;  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;  And though the last lights off the black West went  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --  Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. God's Grandeur by Gerard Manly Hopkins This morning, as great frosted snowflakes filled the air, invading the emptiness of space and filling it with their soft light, I came to realize, yet again, how incre...

In Plato's Symposium, the ascent of love of beauty is as follows: Loving the beauty of one body   Loving the beauty of many bodies   Loving the form (ideal) of beauty found in all bodies.  I have loved the beauty of one girl, and I love the beauty with which God has crafted many girls.  Even more than that, I love the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, and the beauty of a woman who fears the Lord.  In fact, I find that it's easier to love the form and the ideal of feminine beauty than to find that one girl that I can choose to love for life in spite of our inadequacies.  It turns out that I don't just want to love the form of all beauty - I'd rather love and cherish one imperfect earthly example, a girl with whom I can share struggles and triumphs, someone who understands me and who will love me in spite of all my manifestations of ugliness.  The problem is not identifying the form of beauty, it is finding t...

today, as i was waiting for infamous route 111 to not show up, i saw a car go by. "that's exciting, keith!" you say. "very odd to see a car go by when standing at the roadside." i'm glad you're so enthralled. you'll be even more thrilled to know that this was no spectacular car. it looked like an older honda accord, its faded blue paint and triangular styling giving it a dated appearance. i suddenly got the impression that this car never stopped. its chugging engine, audible above the other cars on the street, led me to believe that this car was not planning on taking a break until it got a long, long way - until it arrived at its destination, in fact. sure, it probably couldn't do much above 50, and were it to drop below 45 it would probably give up in a huff, but at its temperamental 'happy speed' it could keep on going until everything in it quit or it reached its goal. quite frankly, i saw myself as this car. often i feel that m...

"Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief" -Proverbs While we are earth-bound, there is always a white tinge of joy in every dark cloud, but there is also a dark cloud of sadness staining every sunny sky. We all long to be completely and utterly satisfied, filled with an eternal happiness. Epicurus went so far as to say that  "Happiness is man's greatest aim in life."   I think there's a lot of truth to that. After all, even if you think your greatest aim is someone else's happiness, it is still because it makes you happy to see them happy. In fact, I don't think God would have it any other way. Because He loves us, His greatest desir is to see us fulfilled and happy - with or without Him. We try so hard to be happy without Him and without His ways. All sin is seeking our own happiness apart from God. The problem is not that we're seeking happiness, it's that we're not very good at it. ...

waking up this morning i opened my window and suddenly my room brimmed with life. the sun danced on the walls, the song of the birds provided the musical score, and the crisp February air shocked my senses into the realization that i was, in fact, once again face-to-face with consciousness. it is reminiscent of when i was but a wee lad... springtime on the Island. each day i would leap from my bed, filled with joy at the prospect of setting free tiny rivers to flow without restraint while the world around me brimmed with its Creator's goodness. i would fall in love with a simple blade of grass and there, for a moment, not even Solomon in all his splendor could compare to this magnificent creation. in jaded hindsight, it all almost sounds absurd. what i wouldn't give some days, though, to become that boy who was me in order to experience life without limits again. it's not life that has changed. each moment is bursting with a vividness that only God can compr...

it has been many long weeks since i first stepped foot in this arid desert. my empty water container lies a good three day's journey behind me, without doubt forever lost in the swirling sand. my hair clings matted to my head and my raw skin bears only the salty remains of my last few drops of sweat. i glance down at what used to be my shirt, now torn in two and tied to these chapped and bleeding feet. i know i can't glance down for too long. if i loose my balance and fall with one of these shuffling, stinted steps i will never rise. my throat is parched and every painful breath echoes its rasping call inside my head, only overshadowed by the whistling winds over the dunes. no longer do i even attempt to keep my mouth closed from the flying sand. lips protrude permanently, dry and cracked, no longer able to keep the stifling gusts from tearing apart my fragile mouth. out of this brittle skin all i can do is stare forward with lifeless, empty eyes. dizzied, i stumble. i ...

it's really too bad that there aren't jobs out there for people who are just really good at killing time. and i'm not talking manslaughter here. this is first degree. it would be an ideal position for me, considering i have a general studies b.a. and am getting a bachelor of philosophy. at the end i'll be pretty good at thinking of most stuff, generally. unfortunately, people don't want you to philosophize about their car troubles. they want a mechanic. in the same way, my coursework right now doesn't want me to sit here and philosophize about doing it, it wants a real bona-fide student to sit down and do it. Victor Hugo wrote, "One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation."  John Milton put it this way:  "They also serve who only stand and wait....

is it possible to be a writer without writing? i don't think so. but if it were to be, i'd certainly be one. sometimes i dare to dream of myself as a great writer, one who has changed the flow of history with his great work... novel, prose, poetry... does it really matter? in the realm of metaphysics, it really doesn't. it doesn't change the fact that i have no books in my name.  it doesn't change the fact that i have created a blog but haven't written in it for years now. it is here hypothetically to timidly etch out some of my less-insane-thoughts so that possibly someone, somewhere, can see a side of me that is closer to me (if that were possible) than normally, but a side still removed enough that the reader isn't scared by my transparency and forced to flee into the night at the thought of bearing the burden of someone else's joys and sorrows.  life is a powerful potion, one that can only be taken in small doses due to our distance fr...