On Watching Sports
June 21, 2007 | Filed Under Small Talk | 1 Comment
I’m a sports fan. I’m also acutely aware of the fact that the emotions of sport are built upon an illusion. Despite this, I allow myself the joy of sport as well as the depression of sport.
When I was teaching philosophy, I used sports to highlight the way our emotions can deceive us. I mean, let’s be serious. A grown man shouldn’t get depressed for a whole day, not to mention a whole week, because of a game.
But somehow, it happens. It seems that to achieve the full joy of sport, one must be willing to experience at least a little of the sorrow of sport. As a matter of fact, you just can’t experience the ecstasy of routing for a team unless you take the sport more seriously than, in reality, it deserves to be taken. But in taking it more seriously than it deserves to be taken, it’s easy to carry a disruptive depression back into the real world (which makes it quite different than a piece of fiction or film).
One of those queer little oddities of life.
Corduroy and Abby
June 17, 2007 | Filed Under Pictures, Small Talk | 2 Comments
These are my two cats, Corduroy and Abby. I can count on them both to provide remembrances of order and structure every day. Kittyroy gets upset if we’re not up in bed by 9pm. Abby comes to sit in my lap around 3pm everyday;-) Very reliable animals. I could learn a thing or two from them.
Perceiving God
June 17, 2007 | Filed Under Small Talk | 2 Comments
I’m not trying to make an argument here. I’m not trying to say why other people should believe that God exists. But as of late, many people on the internet have been accusing people of faith of being irrational, delusional, and many other derogatory descriptions.
What I want to make clear is that many people who believe in God do so because they perceive the world as being a God-world. Just like many people perceive a red book as being red, many people perceive this world as being a world that has a God. And just as many “people of reason” will insist that the book *really* isn’t red, many “people of reason” will insist that the world *really* isn’t a God-world. That’s fine. But it’s not delusional to believe the contrary in either case.
That’s not an argument for why *you* should believe in God. But if you are genuinely interested in why *I* believe in God, it is because the predicate in the following sentence is apparent to me: This world has a God. In other words, when I perceive this world, I perceive it as having a God. And this despite my encountering pain, suffering, disappointment, the imperfection of the body and my reading so many of the very good arguments for not believing in the existence of God.
Why do you believe the book is red? Because I perceive it as red. Why do you believe the universe has a god? Because I perceive it as having a god. Again, not an argument. Just a reason for my belief.
Hi. I’m Micah.
June 15, 2007 | Filed Under Micah, Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I know there are lots and lots of blogs on the Internet. But that’s not going to discourage me. There are lots and lots of people, but I keep on living. I learned a long time ago that there are lots and lots of people who fall in love and call their wife “pookie†- that doesn’t keep me from proclaiming “pookie, you’re home!†each day that my wife comes home from work.
So here I am. I refuse to be discouraged by the mass of humanity. Rather, I will be encouraged by it and seek those little pieces of joy, waiting in my neighborhood.