Finding Hope When Life Doesn't Go As Planned
# Reference
- Source: Atlas/Maps/DLQ 10 MOC
- Keywords: Cards/permanent notes
- #religion #spirituality
- Relevant Notes:
- Cards/Consolation and Cards/Desolation
- Hope and Despair
# Notes
Faust Quotes
“Who are you then?"
“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘> Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.”
- Because what the demon is saying is, that allthings that are come to an end.Everything is finite it.Literally it comes to an end.It falls apart
- If you’re God, hold onto your divinity.You’re not going to share it with anybody else.You’re not going to invite othersinto the experience of your own divine life and divine love.You’re not going to be–you’re not going to do that.You’re going to hold on to it selfishly and notlet anyone else diminish it.You’re not going to let it decrease.You’re going to hold on to it because it’s goodand everything else is junk.That’s the heart of darkness.That’s the heart of despair.
- if I’m not everything,I’m nothing.If I’m not God, I don’t deserve to exist,which is what Mephistopheles is, in fact, saying.That’s the despair that confronts us.
- We bump into it (despair) whenever we’re dealingwith somebody who is terribly–terribly concerned with control, control of her lifeor his life, control of what they’regoing to do with their lives, and areterribly disappointed if they don’t fulfill their own jobdescription.
- LOL IT’S ME; Cards/Perfectionism
- 3 questions to help you discern what your role in life is going to be: (like Ikigai)
- Do you love doing it?
- Are you any good at it?
- Does anybody need you to do it?
- But I think it’s important to noticethat those are questions we ask, not things that we set outto do.We don’t set out to create a world in which I fulfilla role, which is something that makes me happy,or gives me a sense of fulfillment,or even can help others.It’s not something we set out to do.It’s something that we discover we’re called to.
- Related to Fr. Bobby Gev’s Magisterial Lecture (On Slavery and Freedom)
- But that’s exactly what Mephistopheles doesn’t want.He doesn’t want to be called by God to exercise–to affirm his own goodness, the goodness of his being,the rightness of his existence.He wants to say that it’s wrong that he exists.The only thing that’s right that should existis that which is totally complete and perfect in itself,that which is divine, that which is the presence of God.
- counters Sources/Being the Beloved
- So what I am suggesting to you isthat you must not approach your own future with despair or with presumption.==You mustn’t begin by saying, thisis what I really wanted to do with my life, but I know I’m never going to be able to get to that. And so I spend the rest of my life resenting the people who do get to do that,and resenting myself for not being able to do it.== Or I end up thinking I’ve done it,and nobody else can do it any better than I can.
- Damn I’m so called out right now… Cards/Ressentiment
- In either case, you’re missing the point of hope,which is that ==it’s about gifts.== It’s about God giving us the power to do what we want to do, to do what we love.And you notice it I emphasize particularly, it’s to do what we want to do.
- Sources/Expanding the Shrunken Soul and creativity
- Origin of Hope: God wants from you what you want from you.It’s just that God wants it even more than you do.That ==God wants you to be everything that you can be, everything he’s gifted you to be, everything that he’s invited you to be.==
- Hope is manifested in marriages
- The idea that marriage is somethingthat is simply a state alongside other states of life,and you can live it, or choose it, or not,is to miss the point of marriage.
- Marriage is a gift. It’s a way in which two people give themselves to one another.And because of that, it’s rooted in hope.
- Remember, ==hope is what holds faith and love together.== That hope– faith is–that hope, rather,is something that we have to come with–bring with us to a marriage.We all start out in marriage hopingthat this will prove to be fruitful, and rich,and wonderful, and loving, and creative for the couples thatare getting married.Sometimes that works.Sometimes it doesn’t.But it’s something that we approach with hope always because we recognize that itis, as I’ve been saying a gift.
- And as a gift, we cherish it.But we don’t presume it.And we don’t blame anyone if we don’t get it.That what we do is we offer ourselvesthe way in which we can offer ourselves
- Suffering makes us more empathetic and compassionate
- So that I live in hope that someday this will be OK.But that will be in God’s doing, not in mine.
- “I am going to hear in heaven”
- Well, I’d like to think that I’m goingto be able to stop shaking when I’m in heaven.But it will be a gift of God, not an accomplishment of mine.It will be something one lives in hope of.
- Hope is communal
- It’s God has willed, for all of God’s creatures,the fullness of their being.And in our interaction with one another,we sometimes foster that fullness of being.
- We don’t understand hope if we thinkhope is a purely personal choice or a purelypersonal experience.It’s not.It’s an experience that belongs to everyone.And we have to be willing to share it with everyonebecause if we don’t, we’re never going to use–let hope transform our lives and our world as it should.
- Everyone wins
- And I offer you my deep and abiding good wishes as you think about hope for your future. Don’t think of it as your accomplishment.Think of it as your gift. Don’t think of it as something that God demands from you. Think of it as an enormous present that is given to you. ==The whole of the universe is your gift. ==And if at some point in the universe, it’s shaking a little bit, ==that doesn’t take away its grandeur, its beauty, its wonder, and its capacity for love. ==