This section is devoted to writing down my random thoughts, musings and occasional insanity. Read at your own risk!
1.
When a man is young he has an appetite for the world. He wants to see and do things. To take the sights and scents into himself. He would hold all the light of the sun in his eyes if he could. He knows deep in his heart that he will win beauty’s heart—that he is young and enamored with danger and cannot die.
Then, as he grows older and feels his mortality come over him. An anger fills him. A need to do and to make and not only to see. He strives to leave his mark on the world. To dig his nails as deep as he can in the rich soil of life until the forests and cities and rivers of Earth are washed in his sweat.
He fails or triumphs by his own art, and will find happiness or lose it in the end. He will leave his mark in ideas or in sculpture or in children. He will find a faith, in something or nothing. And he will love what he has made and found and worshiped.
And at last, coming to his true age he will die, and his life will be behind him unchangeable, and he must accept it. And go to his God boldly, saying I have lived for this or that, and all the time I was living for you. This is my life. Here it is. I am ready.
2.
“I wish there were a cure for loneliness. I wish I had that power. I see it in every creature, in humans the most. I see it in angels and stars. I feel it inside myself. Sometimes I think the most abundant ingredient in the universe is loneliness. Sometimes I know it’s love. I know it like I know my own name, my own body. I know it like I know I am. Love is how things are made and have being. Love turns the planets in their arcs and makes the rain fall. Love keeps people alive.” – Ava “Star Kin”
3.
Does God exist? If so, which God? It is not something that can be known with certainty, nor can it be disproved by microscopes or slide rulers.
But the choice of belief is real. It’s important, perhaps infinitely so, and I choose to take the leap, and not sit forever on the crossroads.
I asked myself,
Do I believe in God? If not, what do I believe in?
Do I live for myself? Or do I live for others? Am I atoms in a void?
I realized that the way I answer these defining questions, if I am devoted to truth, will change the course of my life.
Does God exist.
It’s a big question, and all who face it are tempted to throw up their hands and surrender. But I encourage you to take a stand.
Am I created? Or did I evolve from matter and stardust in a void? Am I intended for some purpose? Do I make my own purpose? Should I pursue pleasure now, or happiness, or a place in the world?
We only have so much time. Eighty years or so. We are brief creatures, momentary carbon stories. Atoms and gravity. Flesh and chemicals. Lucky monkeys.
Or are we filled with Holy Ghost?
Weigh the choices, the arguments of philosophers and saints, prophets and materialists.
Examine miracles and theology, experiments and matter.
Decide what you believe, and be firm, but not blind. Be open to change should logic or spirit move you, but don’t live in indecision for what little time you have. Choose. And live with passion and intentionality.
All choices require faith and reason. It is not a matter of labels. There are selfish people and there are selfless ones of every kind and creed or lack thereof. Saints in lab coats and jumpsuits, cassocks and business suits.
But it is the people who choose a path, however strange or orthodox, who are able to give themselves to it and achieve peace and firmness of purpose.
Is there life and joy after death?
Or is this precious world, the world of all of us, where we find our happiness or not at all?
Brian Toups Writes 