Since I was going to do one week with quotes from The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich, this is the final quote and I just to something on vitality.
Vitality, the power of life, is correlated to the kind of life to which it gives power. The power of a person's life cannot be seen separately from what some medieval philosophers called "intentionality," the relation to meanings. A person's vitality is as great as her/his intentionality; they are interdependent. This makes a person the most vital of all beings.
...Vitality is the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself. The more power of creating beyond itself a being has the more vitality it has....Only humanity has complete vitality because humanity alone has complete intentionality.
I think of acts of justice and mercy and loving kindness. We must be intentional about such acts. Such action takes getting up off of our seats or letting ourselves look into the fullness of life outside of my "own world." In fact, many actions in life make our lives vital. They can be most simple and common marks of the day. Yesterday, I was moving along my street and up ahead cars were parked on both sides of the street. As I approached, there were two cars approaching from the other direction. I'm a real nut about safety and speeding on Berwick Blvd. so I stopped just short of the parked cars and blinked my lights so that the oncoming cars could move though the tight spot. It was a tiny thing...an intentional act. I can have an impact on my world. And yes, I can also have a negative impact as I move into my world and attempt to do something of meaning. Here is where our stories of faithfulness come into the picture. They can provide us with a vision for life from which we step off into the grand and mundane parts of our lives. Jesus' movement toward Jerusalem is more a picture of his intentionality than it is a "prediction of the future." The power of life, the vitality, he exercised made for deliberate encounters along the way. If we are intentional about the welfare of all people - even our enemies - today does become an adventure filled with vitality no matter what comes our way.
Connection: Applaud every act of loving kindness and thank God for the many opportunities we have in this day to actualize the power of life, our vitality, in all that we do. If we are intentional people as we are people whose lives are directed toward meaninful content, then even a note written to someone in our life can be vitally important. Today, let's give ourselves the opportunity to think of the people whose lives we admire - they like each of us start as a person of God in this day. Now, what will be the shape of our vitality.
O God of every new day, you continue to call us forth from ourselves and into relation with the world around us. May we be the caretakers of life who look after the welfare of all and engage our world with your love active in our lives. Amen.
Vitality, the power of life, is correlated to the kind of life to which it gives power. The power of a person's life cannot be seen separately from what some medieval philosophers called "intentionality," the relation to meanings. A person's vitality is as great as her/his intentionality; they are interdependent. This makes a person the most vital of all beings.
...Vitality is the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself. The more power of creating beyond itself a being has the more vitality it has....Only humanity has complete vitality because humanity alone has complete intentionality.
I think of acts of justice and mercy and loving kindness. We must be intentional about such acts. Such action takes getting up off of our seats or letting ourselves look into the fullness of life outside of my "own world." In fact, many actions in life make our lives vital. They can be most simple and common marks of the day. Yesterday, I was moving along my street and up ahead cars were parked on both sides of the street. As I approached, there were two cars approaching from the other direction. I'm a real nut about safety and speeding on Berwick Blvd. so I stopped just short of the parked cars and blinked my lights so that the oncoming cars could move though the tight spot. It was a tiny thing...an intentional act. I can have an impact on my world. And yes, I can also have a negative impact as I move into my world and attempt to do something of meaning. Here is where our stories of faithfulness come into the picture. They can provide us with a vision for life from which we step off into the grand and mundane parts of our lives. Jesus' movement toward Jerusalem is more a picture of his intentionality than it is a "prediction of the future." The power of life, the vitality, he exercised made for deliberate encounters along the way. If we are intentional about the welfare of all people - even our enemies - today does become an adventure filled with vitality no matter what comes our way.
Connection: Applaud every act of loving kindness and thank God for the many opportunities we have in this day to actualize the power of life, our vitality, in all that we do. If we are intentional people as we are people whose lives are directed toward meaninful content, then even a note written to someone in our life can be vitally important. Today, let's give ourselves the opportunity to think of the people whose lives we admire - they like each of us start as a person of God in this day. Now, what will be the shape of our vitality.
O God of every new day, you continue to call us forth from ourselves and into relation with the world around us. May we be the caretakers of life who look after the welfare of all and engage our world with your love active in our lives. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment