Liking and Knowing

Vision of Love

1990-- by Mariah Carey

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Treated me kind, sweet destiny

Carried me through desperation to the one
that was waiting for me

You took so long, still I believed

Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually

Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually

I had a vision of love and it was all that you've given to me

I had a vision of love

And it was all that you've given to me

Prayed through the nights, felt so alone

Suffered from alienation, carried the weight on my own

Had to be strong, so I believed

And now I know I've succeeded in finding
the place I conceived
I've realized a dream

And I visualized the love that came to be

Feel so alive, I'm so thankful that I've received

The answer that heaven has sent down to me
You treated me kind, sweet destiny

And I'll be eternally grateful, holding you so close to me

Prayed through the nights, so faithfully

Knowing the one that I needed
would find me eventually...

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good."  --Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II

Liking a person is very closely connected with knowledge, "who you turned out to be...," records the lyrics. The base of attraction is an impression, a disposition to regard the other as a value; it is the developed commitment to think of that person as a certain good. Such commitment can only be enacted by the will.
 'I want,' is implicit in 'I like.' Thus the will is committed by attraction, and attraction commits the will. This may be difficult to grasp intellectually; yet the song Vision of Love  makes this point emotionally, poignantly.

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good," writes theologian Wojtyla. "Man and woman alike are by nature bodily and spiritual beings; they are such a being, seen by one another; in this way, each attracts the other.
All the potential goods or values that a given person may respond to derive from the object of this attraction. Each, then, attracts the other. For example, in y's attraction to x, the value most strongly in evidence is one which y finds in x, and to which y reacts most strongly."This one could say is the visioning, the imaging that the lyrics here speak to.

Also there's fact that y is particularly sensitive to it, particularly quick to perceive and respond to it. The mind, the thinking process, therefore plays a part in attraction, combined together with the emotions, such that a potent guide emerges in the mix as an important feature, strikingly evident in attraction.
"But this fact creates a certain internal difficulty in the sexual lives of persons. This difficulty is inherent in the relationship of experience to truth." Feelings often arise spontaneously. Where feelings are functioning naturally, they are unconcerned about truth. This is lust.
Truth for a man is a task of both his experience and his reason. This is why in any attraction, especially one of a sexual nature, the question of the truth about the person towards whom attraction is felt for, is so important.

Often people "generally believe that love can largely be reduced to a question of genuineness of feelings; although this is impossible to completely deny, we must still insist, if we are concerned about the quality of the attraction and the love of which it is part, that the truth about the person who is its object, play a part at least as important as the truth of the sentiment.'

"These two truths, properly integrated, give to an attraction [wholeness], the elements of a genuinely good, and genuinely cultivated love. Thus the object of attraction is seen whole, as a good, as a thing of beauty.
A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being." Love is a commitment to the good of each other. "For power is made perfect in weakness."
--2 Corinthians12:9-10

A Simple Song, Lent and After

That's What Matters

by Rebecca St. James

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...Don't wish for a better day

Be glad and use the one you're in

Fear God and do exactly what He says

That's what matters

All else fades like the flowers

Well, he'd tried pleasure

There was nothing in that

He built houses, gardens, parks

What good did it do?

Just got him more depressed

Meaningless - Meaningless

He said "Everything's meaningless

But this is what I learned in all my years...

Many of us hear the word religion and all kinds of thoughts and reactions arise. We tend to make it complicated, intellectual, even. We like to think it isn't about politics, it's about god; it isn't about society, it's about spirituality, and so on. Well, it is about all these things, and some more. 

It's simple, really. Religion in another view is about lives, human lives living day to day. We all have thoughts, feelings and relationships. What and how we think about ourselves and the world which we are part of, vastly influences the style and quality of that human existence. So religion need not be icky or avoidable, because it's just about life. And all of us have some experience with that (Currently many are observing the Easter traditions: see Ash Wednesday: Lent in two minutes, a video.).

So a little help from others may just be what makes a community; for some, it sure makes an opening for a spiritual experience, like this song. Do we need to have an organ playing a dirge song to have a religious experience, do bells need to ring or incense waft upward? In my experience, I have discovered that most often I get out of something more or less what I put into it.

If a church, temple or community doesn't move me, then maybe I haven't given much of myself. Maybe my pre-existing notions circumvent me from connecting. Sure, I didn't get anything out of it; I'm just not. But what else did I expect? Nothing gets nothing.

Can our everyday coming and goings be a small part of the whole of life? If so, then this and many other songs may too. They touch us in some meaningful way. A simple song can create an awareness, an appreciation that we had not the sense of before. It's all religion, and like an artist, it's a part of my day. Everyday.

Now the Lenten period has concluded; Easter, the principle observance on the Christian calendar, has come and that leaves us at Pentecost, the Feast of the Weeks.
Pentecost is an ancient observance. At this time we reflect on the wonders of the Holy Spirit who descends upon the disciples, as we read in the Bible and the Faithful bringing his spirit upon them. Exodus 34:22 In Exodus, there is reference to this festival, though it has not yet taken on the character of the later era known by the early Christians.

The Advent

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." Isaiah 9:2

For the Advent

Lord of heaven and earth,you have come to lead the people
out of darkness into the light of Divine love.

Send your Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we may see clearly.

Help us to discover your presence in our world, especially in the needy, in our families and in our communities. Give us graciousness.

May we be evermore certain that our true joy
may be found in you. Amen.

The writer and historian, Frank Prochaska notes that today, "few subjects bring out so well the differences between our selves and our ancestors as [much] as the history of Christian charity.


In an increasingly mobile and materialist world, in which culture has grown more national, indeed global, we no longer relate to the lost world of nineteenth-century parish life.


Today, we hardly imagine a voluntary society that boasted millions of religious associations providing essential services, in which the public rarely saw a government official apart from the post office clerk. Against the backdrop of the [now] welfare state and the collapse of church membership, the very idea of Christian Social Reform has a quaint, Victorian air about it."

And yet the Christ remains to proclaim to all that the people in darkness have seen a great light.
Psalm 104: Send out your spirit, renew the face of the earth.

Really an Everyday Thing, Isn't It?

Silly Love Songs

by Paul McCartney and Wings

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You'd think

that people would have had enough
of silly love songs

I look around me and see it isn't so

some people want to fill the world
with silly love songs

so what's wrong with that?

I need to know b'cause

here I go again

I love you

I love you...

Many of us hear the word religion and all kinds of thoughts and reactions arise. We tend to make it complicated, intellectual, even. We like to think it isn't about politics, it's about god; it isn't about society, it's about spirituality, and so on. Well, it is about all these things and some more.

It's simple, really. Religion in another view is about lives, human lives living day to day. We all have thoughts, feelings and relationships. What and how we think about ourselves and the world which we are part of, vastly influences the style and quality of that human existence. So religion need not be icky or avoidable, because it's just about life. And all of us have some experience with that.

So a little help from others may just be what makes a community; for some, it sure makes an opening for a spiritual experience, like this song. Do we need to have an organ playing a dirge song to have a religious experience, do bells need to ring or incense waft upward? In my experience, I have discovered that most often I get out of something more or less what I put into it. If a church, temple or community doesn't move me, then maybe I haven't given much of myself. Maybe my pre-existing notions circumvent me from connecting. Sure, I didn't get anything out of it. But what else did I expect? Nothing gets nothing.

Can our everyday coming and goings be a small part of the whole of life? If so, then this and many other songs may too. They touch us in some meaningful way. A simple song can create an awareness, an appreciation that we had not the sense of before. It's all religion, and like an artist, it's a part of my day. Everyday.