Kierkegaard's Worst Deciple

Let others complain that our age is evil; my complaint is that it is paltry. For it is without passion. People's thoughts are thin and flimsy as lace, they themselves are as pitiable as lacemakers. The thoughts in their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be considered a sin to harbour such thoughts, but not for the human being shaped in the image of God. Their desires are stodgy and sluggish, their passions are sleepy. They do their duty, these hucksters, but like the Jews, they let themselves clip the coin just a little; they think that however well the good Lord keeps His books, they can still get away with cheating Him a little. Fie upon them! That's why my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin.
~Søren Kierkegaard ("Either/Or")

YC is done for a year, and I've been thinking here at my desk about action, passions and reason.

There was a moment during worship where it felt like God went Day of Pentecost on my pitiful rear. I closed my eyes, and just let myself move. It felt like worship, a level of worship I have been to only a few times. A time or two over the summer I recall having a lot of space to worship in, so I let myself move as I wanted to. It felt like worship. Unrestricted.

At YC I began to yell. Not mindless yelling, but shouting the reasons for my happiness, and praise to my king. It was incredible. I recall shouting several times in a minute "We Have the Ark." I hope nobody was watching, because thinking back, I must have looked like an idiot. Truthfully I felt a little bit the part as well, but after having read 2nd Samuel 6 again, my mind was put to rest.

When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"

David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor."

And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.

2 Samuel 6:20-23

David started taking off clothes! I've joked about it on several occasions, but never even in the context of worship. There's always next Sunday ...

Or even Monday, we should worship with our lives, right?

Anyways, I begin to think about passion, and the passion vs. reason, and whether there really is a vs. in there. I haven't decided on that, but Kierkegaard's work Either/Or (which I quoted above) begins with this ...

Are passions, then, the pagans of the soul?
Reason alone baptized?
~Edward Young

Which makes me think about whether I give my passions credit. Whether I burn them at the stake for being a pagan, and then let reason reign.

It's actually not as simple as that. Reason rarely reigns within me completely, which sometimes I curse, sometimes bless. But I wonder if the minority government within myself needs a shake-up. Should I act passionately? At least if I mess up, it'll be a real screw up, as opposed to letting my lacy self remain paltry.

And besides ...

A warrior poet once said
You're not dead yet so live like you could be
A warrior poet said
Have no regrets when you're old
~ The Classic Crime ("Warrior Poet")

So what's the worst that could happen if I act passionately. I could make an idiot of myself, but I clearly don't mind that. I've bought $200 of groceries to lug through a blizzard at 12 am. I've spent a night homeless for the sake of a day with friends. And a thousand other things I can't remember right now, but am realizing I need to write down.

At least I'd make a real idiot of myself. A passionate idiot. Instead of the fake idiot I've created with my silly facade. Don't get me wrong, that IS me. I am silly. But I'm not passionate about silliness. There are other things worth being passionate about.

Now it's time to get passionate. And it's time to start acting on that passion.

Also, it's time for a midnight sandwich.