Thursday, April 7, 2011

What Are We Here For?

" 'What is the world?' [my son asked] What the world is and who we are meant to be within it and how we are to conserve what is good and beautiful and true in the world, and in ourselves; and how we are to forgive and, if we can, redeem what is bad and ugly and false in ourselves and, because of us, in the world--this may be what we're here for."

-- Mark Tredinnick

4 comments:

Helen said...

Lovely.

Susan Tomlinson said...

Amen.

Steve said...

I like the spirit of this--the sense that our lives can have some greater purpose, and that how we interact with our world has a lot to do with the health of our inner lives. It's very hopeful and encouraging. But I don't think we're here to redeem the world (if I'm even understanding that part correctly), and I'm wary of applying a human binary (good/beautiful/true vs. bad/ugly/false) to our understanding of the world. I think our situation is vastly more complicated than that, and more troubling, because, for one, the world is always changing, mutating, swiveling on some invisible thread between ugly and beautiful, good and bad, true and false. What is the world? What isn't it?

Benjamin Vogt said...

Steve--I think the remption if of the self through the world, not redeeming the world. Don't worry, no religion there for you. But I agree on binaries, and yet, we DO--fundamentally--no what is right, good and true, even if the hues are subtle and muted on the edges across cultures. We know. That's the common thread we swivel around but deny, and so we seek vengeance on the planet and each other. I missed his talks last week and feel awful having found this quote. no time. no energy. sad.