Meditations Part I

The purpose of these missals will be entirely personal and whether I have an audience or not is frankly unimportant. Words are the central and consuming pursuit of my life. The Word, the Logos, in all its shades of meaning semantic, christological, philosophical, and so on. These are the private musings of one who finds it easier to write than to speak. Words come bubbling up inside of me and will have an outlet. This will include dialogues, essays, fictions, poetry, and the unthought-out meandering jeremiads of my mind.

I have called this site Mormon Meditations because I am a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My purpose is to explore my experience and my beliefs through my writings. Often I have had the experience that not until my words are cogently written down do my ideas begin to crystallize. I am hoping through these writings to explore and understand my own experience.

However, I will not confine myself to "Mormon" specific targets, but will range upon the whole spectrum of my experience including my diagnosis some years past with Asperger's Syndrome, my personal interests in history, religion, language and linguistics, culture, literature, philosophy, physics, and current events.

I invite readers to comment and challenge my ideas so that I will be forced to reconsider them. Without opposition, there is no growth and with growth, there is slow decay and death. I follow the philosophy of the Muslim scholar Ibn Hanbal who said (and I am paraphrasing) I believe my beliefs are correct, but I am aware they could be wrong. I believe my opponents' beliefs are incorrect, but I am aware they could be correct. Truth, as I once heard it said, is larger than any one man's conception of it and as we grope and fumble in the darkness of this world, we all stumble over the truth occasionally, but fall more frequently into error. I subscribe somewhat resignedly to the Weltanschauung of Alexander Pope:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his mind and body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Whether he thinks to little, or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Still, there is hope -- the final thing that remains to man after he loses everything else. Hope remains when all else flees. It is the basis for faith and charity and the sustainer of the soul. I will write a great deal about hope; a topic that has occupied me lately. Until later...