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Skill and Gift

I have been thinking much about the various skills and their relationship to the spiritual gifts. In some sense, you can be the best at something perhaps, and still not be a decent person. Yet, I also thinking it is entirely possible for skills to be tied to one's spirituality, and perhaps be vehicles for manifesting faith.

I think, ultimately, one must be morally skilled to be a decent person; or, I suppose ethically skilled if they want to be all secular about it. That means conducting one's work and business in a moral, not just a legal, manner. This means we must respect our collaborators, both their dignity and time. We cannot treat our colleagues as less than though we are, even our subordinates. To treat others as though they are inferior to us is much like praising the table and denouncing the legs.

We have to be realistic, though; not everyone can be placed into a "high" position; nor would the world function if everyone worked on the lower rungs. There must be a synergism between these strata. What is a blessing for some is a curse for others, like the ol' trash and treasure idiom. I've seen too many movies where people swapped lives with someone they envied only to woefully regret it, and admit that the other person has it harder than they thought.

Games

I have been thinking much more critically about the games I play; analyzing each detail and observing what makes the game tick. I think I want to try and write 1 or 2 reviews on my blog each month, and maybe put out that many videos a week.

On Writing

I write for myself primarily, just as women paint their nails and do their hair for themselves; but, I do so with caution, and with the expectation that at some point what I write may be read, or that I may desire to share it later. I do not tend so much these days (as I once had) to write little notes that nobody else will understand, or to scrawl something here or there that is incomplete and non-grammatical. For instance, I don't really make to-do lists or anything like that much.

Disagreements with the Church

It is far too easy to become invested into the beliefs of a particular group, religion, or denomination; but, the thing is, the most penetrative truths can only be discovered alone; they cannot be simply transmitted from one person to another, or inculcated or imparted upon someone instantaneously.

It is helpful to share our deepest convictions, as the best thing that can happen is we may inspire another to walk rightly, and to live right, and experience eudaimondia. However, we should not make agreement the measuring stick of a man's worth.

Consider this: if a man lives more rightly than I, and is equal in faith, and I say to him "you are no better than I," how will he react? He may submit to this, in which case he is no better, or he may reject it, in which case he is still brandishing his egoism and haughtiness. In either case, he is manifesting a failure to be a perfect being – not through his past actions or his history, but in the present moment. All of us remain tarnished to some degree.

I have some disagreements with the teachings of my church, despite the fact that I believe it is the truest church on Earth. For instance, I do not believe that one's kingdom is assigned once-and-for-all and for all eternity. I believe that perfection is the limit of human nature, and we all progress in that direction overtime as a macro-trend, even if we diminish subtly on the way there. However, in the celestial kingdom, we operate on God's time; eternal, and without regard to the cycles of the planets. Therefore, we live at the edge of eternity.

I believe the telestial kingdom improves over time so as to approach the celestial limit, and so to with the terrestrial kingdom. However, for those who make it to the celestial kingdom, there is no wait – they are immediately brought to this most perfect timeless realm of infinity.

Repentence

The focus on other people and their flaws is not to obscure my own faults and follies. I realize that my actions have not kept true to my word. This is something I need much help with, and am working on exercising my free will to improve. I cannot let the traumas of my life dictate my present behavior. Neither can I exalt myself to a place much higher than the others, if higher at all. I am bound, at this juncture, for the telestial kingdom. The best and number one tool I have in my life is repentance. I am so grateful that Jesus died for me. I feel, at times, pathetic and unworthy of this sacrifice; I know, however, that God and Jesus love me, and believe I am worthy of the most divine love imaginable.

This is it

There's a certain time in a (pseudo)intellectual's life where they deem the patterns they have learned and the categories with which they use to think about things as being useless, or I suppose not adequate or even overly simplistic. There is a yearning for some deeper form which underlies the others; we want to move beyond stereotypes; beyond nations, and genders, and skin color, and myths. Yet, there isn't really much beyond all of this. You realize, "this is it," "that's all there is to it," and so on.