Saturday, October 3, 2015

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 2 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.



Take II:

Where were we? Ah, yes. In a nowhere of sorts. To place us somewhere, though I know not which where myself just yet, some preliminary thoughts.

Quick clarification: Art, in referring to your inner conflict as "universal," I by NO means intended to lessen your struggles or impersonalize them for you. On the contrary, I used this word as an affirmation--an acknowledgment that to endure such suffering in prolonged states of hyper-awareness is to see the face of God and live.

Let me elaborate. While I believe there's a universality in existential suffering, the level at which you're able to dissect your internal aches and pinpoint their origins is (to me) symptomatic of a faith so unrelenting it's seeped beyond your existence and into your essence. Saint Anselm has a thing or two to say about this, but more on that later, for what matters most is the here and the now (which I'm slowly falling into as I write this).

Which brings me to my final thought on the universality of suffering: it's my firm belief that the secularization of society yields the quintessential breeding grounds for nausea, bone-aching misery, isolation, and all-encompassing emptiness. How blessed you, and the rest of us in this thread presumptuously are, to have suffered (and continue to suffer) your way into a fullness of soul and spirit. It is a blessing not despite the admission that what you're full with is a throng of inner demons, but rather because of this admission.

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