Nature

I rethought today, about some of the things we discussed in "English," if you can call it that. I learn much more about the nature of the way things are rather than the ins and outs of British Literature.

We read one of his poems and it sent my mind to the grindstone thinking about questions. Real questions; because everything changes when the questions you pose are real. The one he poses in his poems is, "Little Lamb, who made thee?" and if you look at it as being a rhetorical question then I think all the meaning is lost. Little Lamb, if you really knew that God made you, that he referred to himself as a lamb when he came to earth, that he considered himself a shepherd, how would you act differently? and what does that say about your nature? Are you living up to the full capacity? What are you made of? Questions often seem trite but if you really pause and think I think it pulls the nature of God into the equation and this is a question that people spend lifetimes grappling with. The poem is juxtaposed next to this poem which was printed opposite in its original publication.

What does that say? What does it say about a God who makes a gentle lamb but also collected the fire and dreadful things and framed it in a tiger's symmetry? God made the beauty of the alps, but he also made the fury of hurricanes. The vast yellow fields of rapeseed, and the vast barren plains of famine. The evil and the divine. Does He create evil? How do I reconcile this with my understanding of His loving nature? With the innate acceptance that He is my father? Who made me? Who is He? And if he who made me, made all these things, what am I made of, really?

God expects his creations to live up to their creation. The lamb to be a lamb. The bird to be a bird. It seems like humans are the only ones who fall short of living up to what God expects them to be. What is my nature? If I am to have the nature of God, what is His nature?

It seems like the key lies in experience but experience is mocking by nature. It's beautiful to have experience, but ultimately it will kill you. Without the atonement we would be dead in the water because gaining experience means sin and dispair. Mistakes lead us to the right. But the paradox comes when you think that you learn the right way to overcome the mistake after the mistake has already been made. We are told to be like a child, but we can't understand what innocence is without experiencing the dirtiness. And so you're always too late, but you're becoming more prepared in other ways.

So I am lead to contemplate how I'm living up to my creation; how I'm using my time. If I am truly taking advantage of my potential then it will all be given back to me in the form of eternity. I'll have all the time I can fathom if I make good use of mine in the here and now. Little Lamb, who made thee?

The nature of mankind is to feel uncomfortable. I think each of us has moments of being keenly aware of what aliens we are here. We all have a sense that we don't belong. We become aware of the barnacles growing on our backs, dulling us. We itch for home. We ache for the one who made us. We search for the nature of the "whys."

Maybe this is where all art stems from. You want to find ways of explaining why sleep sometimes doesn't find you, or why you can feel so alone in a mass of others. You want answers for why there is an itch in your soul, or a hole in your heart. Sometimes you just feel awkward but pinpointing why becomes a lifelong game of refinement and searching. My professor said that artists always have a feeling of struggling; struggling for ideas, to contain ideas, to flesh out ideas; to execute ideas. It's just uncomfortable. The difference between him and I is that he has learned to live with the disagreeable feelings better than I have. And so art, in a way, is just finding ways to scratch the itch of life.