{"id":680,"date":"2014-12-12T23:09:57","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T04:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joshuastairhime.com\/?p=680"},"modified":"2018-12-04T22:56:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T03:56:46","slug":"visions-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.joshuastairhime.com\/index.php\/visions-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Visions of Peace (DOP #12 2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the 10 minutes proceeding the writing of this entry, I questioned whether I have\u00a0lost my mind. \u00a0For no apparent reason (other than I had to work this morning) I did not sleep well last night, and decided to catch a quick nap before I attempted to write this entry today.\u00a0 Which would have been great if I hadn\u2019t spent the last 40 minutes of my nap in a pseudo sleep state that lead me to question the very foundations of the universe.\u00a0 I can\u2019t really describe what I saw, because what I saw made no sense, but I had a deep impression of sinking forever into a boundless eternity.\u00a0 The world dissolved around me because there was nothing to hold it together.\u00a0 Pieces of our universe slid frictionlessly away from each other, expanding outward forever.\u00a0 Uncontained, and therefore meaningless. \u00a0For the last few minutes, I questioned if I would ever return from where my mind had wandered.<\/p>\n

\"What<\/a>

What I saw resembled these crystals, but there were more and they were all enveloping. \u00a0They were also detached from each other…more on that later though.<\/p><\/div>\n

I seriously questioned my sanity.\u00a0 I am STILL questioning my sanity.<\/p>\n

I have been trying to assemble cogent thought on what I just experienced (dreamed? hallucinated?) and my first attempt at doing so follows.<\/p>\n

I begin to ask myself, why do we pursue peace?\u00a0 I understand that we feel like peace is a noble goal, that peace is a shining diadem in the crown of accomplishment for our world.\u00a0 Philosophers and laymen alike have striven for it, implored those around them to sacrifice their personal desires to it.\u00a0 Peace stands at the peak of the mountain of enlightenment and beckons us to climb to the summit.<\/p>\n

But why?<\/p>\n

Everything is meaningless.<\/p>\n

What makes peace more desirable than war?\u00a0 What makes it the ideal we strive for and not something else?\u00a0 When we look at the sacrifices that must be made in the name of peace, when we count the cost of what must be surrendered by some to ensure peace, what makes it so worth pursuing?\u00a0 Can pleasure only be attained from the hand of peace?\u00a0 If that were so, crime would cease to exist, war would cease to exist, and our hatred would cease to exist.\u00a0 Pleasure can be derived from twisted pursuits as well as noble ones.\u00a0 Our pursuit of peace is not derived from a pursuit of pleasure.<\/p>\n

Yet many of us pursue peace instead of those easier twisted pursuits, at great cost to ourselves.\u00a0 Our carnal nature shows no disposition towards peace, our very nature seems to speak of the undesirability of peace.\u00a0 We are the most like ourselves when we are the most selfish. \u00a0We are most ourselves when we do not care for others. \u00a0So again I ask you, why peace?<\/p>\n

Everything is meaningless.<\/p>\n

Or at least everything is meaningless in an unbounded universe.\u00a0 The clearest impression I had from my little sleep deprivation fueled vision was that there was nothing holding everything together.\u00a0 There was no jar to hold the sand, and as a result, the sand scattered in all directions.\u00a0 The sand became so spread apart that you could no longer identify it as sand.\u00a0 In a way that I can not communicate, what I felt that I saw was more than this. \u00a0Ideas no longer had a basis, because there was no foundation to set them on.\u00a0 If I had created a castle from the sand, its meaning would have been lost as the sand drifted apart.\u00a0 Peace, and the pursuit of peace becomes meaningless when we remove its foundation.<\/p>\n

Until now I have done little more than drop veiled hints at a higher power directing our pursuit of peace.\u00a0 References to ideas found in the Bible (ie. \u201dtreat others as you would like to be treated\u201d) were quick and provided without drawing attention to the source of the material.\u00a0 I felt that by purposefully eliminating references to a higher power, I was advancing the cause of peace more effectively.\u00a0 I assumed I was reducing the risk of stumbling over theology to those who do not believe as I do.<\/p>\n

I was foolish to do so.<\/p>\n

Without a boundary, without a force outside of ourselves holding the universe together, everything is meaningless.\u00a0 God is the glass jar holding the sand in and giving it the ability to have structure.\u00a0 God is the glass jar in which peace is preferred to madness.\u00a0 There is no structure outside of him, and peace is worth pursuing because the shape he confines us to demands that it be so.\u00a0 To remove that structure or attempt to ignore it results in meaningless pursuit, focused on nothing, capable of attaining nothing.\u00a0 No ideas can be formed by boundless sand.\u00a0 No mountain of enlightenment can arise without the pressure of the jar holding the sides in.<\/p>\n

Without the structure given by the jar, our attempts to climb the mountain of enlightenment would only serve to hasten its destruction.<\/p>\n

Everything is meaningless, unless it is bounded.\u00a0 We and all of our pursuits amount to nothing, if we attempt them from outside of the jar.<\/p>\n

We may only pursue peace inside of the bounds of the universe that God holds us in.<\/p>\n

Anything else is meaningless.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Don't<\/a>

Don’t let the goal intimidate you, every penny we raise makes a difference. Whether our goal is reached or not!<\/p><\/div>\n