Tackmans Pensees #157 (with deepest apologies to Saint Augustine and Blaise Pascal): Fact: I am one of the most gullible and in some ways naive (trusting?) persons on the planet. This is simply undeniable, and has at times resulted in enormous grief due to betrayal or loss or whatever. But I would also emphatically argue that this is a part of my personality that is never going to change, at least on an interpersonal level. Because I cant be otherwise. To love is to make oneself vulnerable, after all. For example, The other night I gave some money to a (presumably homeless) panhandler in downtown Raleigh, (I also whispered to him to spend at least a third of it on food -- Im naive, but not stupid). Throwing my money away? Maybe. Probably. But Im also absolutely convinced that this is the way we reach the lost souls in this world -- through individual (Franciscan?) acts of love and charity, while recognizing that there is also a great role to be played by corporate efforts at charity. To live any other way only is to become steadily colder, I think. I may be completely wrong, of course. But a worldview whose lattice contains a supporting thread declaring each one an angel in disguise is not an albatross, but rather a lifeline to the Divine that is the surest path to real freedom, and perhaps a broken heart mended at last.
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 21:39:40 +0000
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