I think there might be some truth to this, and yet I think that some individuals use faith to ENDURE present pain. I’m thinking specifically about those in horrific situations who use faith to keep hope alive despite un-speakable acts of abuse…in a do-to-my-body-what-you-will-because-my-soul-will-live-on kind of way.

I also think faith exists in order to negate the truth of our mortality. It keeps death anxiety at bay if we think something of our essence gets perpetuated beyond the grave, instead of just being reabsorbed into the universe. I don’t bank on that. I simply want to be remembered as long as people I love are alive…and if my writings would persist after that….that would be a bonus, but it’s not essential.

Actually, I don’t have a problem with that (re-absorption)…in fact, I think we should skip the embalming step and burial in boxes and just be laid in dirt where the decomposition would happen faster.

But…would I want to teach my daughters my personal feelings? Not until I think they can handle it. In the interim, we take them to a church that really doesn’t push misguided or downright twisted theology – but “treat others kindly and compassionately”, “help where you can”, “think of others first” – and none of this “you’re going to hell to endure the eternal flames of hell (misinterpreted theological myth if you ask me) if you don’t do as we say” business that I got growing up in the Catholic church.

And all that being said, I still think that perhaps there may be a slight chance my friend Barb’s essence knows I still drink from her coffee cup, and blog about her from time to time, and tell my friends about her, and that she knows she meant a great deal to me while she was alive. I’ve dreamt about her a few times since she’d died in 2002. Speaking of which, I’m over-due for another dream.

Casey

Sadly, as I’m about to see my father for the first time in 29 years this summer, I do know the pain of this first-hand.

Certainly intellectualism can–and does–coexist with “sensualism.” Just like ALL of the other facets and nuances of the human experience. The struggle that I face is recognizing and declaring the “mixture” that is representative of my own Self.

As for Russell, I have read “Marriage and Morals” and “The Conquest of Happiness” and bits and pieces of other of his works. He is definitely a “challenger.” [But probably a bit too logical for most of my contemporaries.]

That’s pretty cool. I actually do find that to be true as well, at least on the days I make the effort.

Ask me a different day, and you’ll get the existential cynic in me.

O, to be one or the other would probably resolve much of my dilemma.

************

But getting back to philosophical thought and relationship, I think I ought to investigate some more of Bertrand Russell’s works. He is considered to be one of the founders of analytical philosophy and he received the Nobel Prize in literature, and co-wrote Prinicipia Mathematica. Unlike Nietzsche, he was married, what…4 times? See what he has to say about the relationship of love in HIS intellectual life:

“At the age of 84, Russell added a five-paragraph prologue to a new publication of his autobiography, giving a summary of the work and his life, titled WHAT I HAVE LIVED FOR.[43]

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”

DAY-um. So perhaps intellectualism CAN co-exist with sensualism. Excellent. Now I don’t have to get a divorce. Who knew????

If you were referring to MY definition of “faith,” I would say that this piece actually makes no attempt to define faith. Nor do I wish to express any conclusion in regards to faith.

Please feel free to share more on the “broader” definition of faith.

Interesting…

i think the definition of ‘faith’ is broader than what you have concluded, but based on your understanding of faith, what you pen is consistent.

Yes…I get the “making sense” part. That’s what I’m talking about. And we all try to the extent of our desire and motivation to do that…to make sense of “it.”