• About
  • Books

memoirandremains

memoirandremains

Tag Archives: remember

Kierkegaard, “The Rotation Method” Part 4 (Either/Or)

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Psychology, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Boredom, Either/Or, Fences, Forget, Forgetfulness, Kierkegaard, marriage, Memory, Philosophy, Psychology, remember, The Rotation Method

The remainder of the essay is how to engage in the “rotation method”: how to live in this world without becoming bored. First, there is the matter of what boredom is. Some just acquire boredom, but he spends more concern about boredom as “the result of a mistake effort to find diversion.”

He then makes this fascinating observation:

Boredom depends on the nothingness which pervades reality; it causes a dizziness like that produced by looking down into a yawning chasm, and this dizziness is absolute.

There is a pointlessness to existence. There is a grinding similarity. The endless emptiness produces boredom.

When I read that I think, Jesus could have not been bored. We see how people seek to invest trivial things which great importance (think of entertainers who often do little else than divert us).

The solution to this endlessly pointless world is treat the world even more pointlessness. I cannot help but read this and think of Oscar Wilde and “all art is useless.” To avoid the endless similarity of existence, we need diversion.

But, to obtain diversion we need two things (1) forgetfulness, and (2) a lack of commitment to anything.

He calls forgetfulness “an art”. It’s first element is how one remembers. We must experience an event as an experience, it is never quite clear, but there cannot be no more or spiritual reflection. An event exists merely as an experience to be enjoyed: “Enjoying an experience to its full intensity to the last minute will make it impossible either to remember or to forget.”

Forgetfulness is more than simply not being able to recall some detail, it is to not be bound by any event. Hence, “”Nature is great because it has forgotten that it was a chaos; but this thought is subject to revival at anytime.”

Hence forgetfulness permits one to obtain “freedom”:

The art of remembering and forgetting will also insure against sticking fast in some relationship of life, and make possible the realization of complete freedom.

Hence one must avoid friendship (“The essential thing is to never stick fast, and for this it is necessary to have oblivion back of one.”), marriage  (“Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.”), official positions.

This of course is a position which has risen to a level of moral permission, even obligation in the contemporary world. Appropriate psychological counsel for one in an unhappy marriage is often to not be bound by custom and tradition, but rather to “forget” vows, obligations and constriction and seek happiness.

I recently saw the truly wonderful movie Fences (it is well worth your time to watch). In that movie, the main character “forgets” his marriage because he desires some happiness from what this essayist would call boredom. But unlike our unattached essayist created by Kierkegaard, the character in Fences brings much suffering upon himself and others (interesting, I imagine this essayist would find that an acceptable cost because at least misery is not necessarily boring).

One must be “arbitrary”: “You go to see the middle of a play, you read the third part of a book….Arbitrariness in oneself corresponds to the accidental in the external world.” This reminds me of Cage’s attempt to make accidental music.

 

Remember Your Creator

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiastes, Thomas Brooks, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creator, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 12:1, Ecclesiastes 1:2, Memory, Preaching, remember, Rhetoric, Thomas Brooks

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”;Ecclesiastes 12:1 (ESV)

‘Remember now thy Creator.’
Remember to know him,
remember to love him,
remember to desire him,
remember to delight in him,
remember to depend upon him,
remember to get an interest in him,
remember to live to him, and
remember to walk with him.

‘Remember now thy Creator;’ the Hebrew is Creators, Father, Son, and Spirit. To the making of man, a council was called in heaven, in the first of Genesis, and 26th verse. ‘Remember thy Creators:’

Remember the Father,
so as to know him,
so as to be inwardly acquainted with him.

Remember the Son,
so as to believe in him,
so as to rest upon him,
so as to embrace him, and
so as to make a complete resignation of thyself to him.

Remember the Spirit, so as to hear his voice,
so as to obey his voice,
so as to feel his presence, and
so as to experience his influence, &c.

‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.’
He doth not say in the time of thy youth, but ‘in the days of thy youth,’ to note,
that our life is but as a few days.
It is but as a vapour,
a span,
a flower,
a shadow,
a dream;
and therefore Seneca saith well, that ‘though death be before the old man’s face, yet he may be as near the young man’s back,’ &c.

Man’s life is the shadow of smoke, the dream of a shadow.
One doubteth whether to call it a dying life, or a living death. (Aug. Confess. lib.i.)

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1, “Apples of Gold”, chapter 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 178–179.

Translation of Psalm 89:48-49

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in Psalms

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Adam, Death, Psalm 89, Psalm 89:48-49, Psalms, remember, Translation

Psalm 89:48–49 (BHS/WHM 4.2)

48זְכָר־אֲנִ֥י מֶה־חָ֑לֶד עַל־מַה־שָּׁ֝֗וְא בָּרָ֥אתָ כָל־בְּנֵי־אָדָֽם׃

 49מִ֤י גֶ֣בֶר יִֽ֭חְיֶה וְלֹ֣א יִרְאֶה־מָּ֑וֶת יְמַלֵּ֨ט נַפְשׁ֖וֹ מִיַּד־שְׁא֣וֹל סֶֽלָה׃

Remember, what is my lifespan —

                For what cheat did you create all the sons of Adam?

What man is strong enough to never see death,

                To rescue his soul from the hand of darkness?

Notes:

The clause “what is my lifespan” could either be a question or an assertion.

The purpose of the second clause of 48 could be translated in several different ways.  The word “translated” cheat means something which is false, worthless, vain.

The word for “man” in v. 49 is a word which connotes strength or youth, hence the translation of the noun as a clause “man is strong enough”. It is literally, what strong/young man will be and not see death?

The final clause translates “Sheol”, place of the dead, as darkness. I chose “darkness” to alliterate with “death” and to connote the fearfulness of the image. The Hebrew has “hand” for what in English is normally translated as “strength”, since “hand” is a Hebrew idiom for strength. However, in this instance, the image of the hand of darkness snatching a strong young man personifies death in a manner more consistent with the poem.  We tend to hear power or strength of Sheol as something more akin to gravity than an enemy with which one contends.

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion with her Savior, Book 1.1.3
  • Weakness
  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion with her Savior Book 1.1.2
  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion with her Savior Book 1.1.1
  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion With Her Savior.1

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion with her Savior, Book 1.1.3
  • Weakness
  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion with her Savior Book 1.1.2
  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion with her Savior Book 1.1.1
  • Thomas Traherne, The Soul’s Communion With Her Savior.1

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • memoirandremains
    • Join 629 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • memoirandremains
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar