Blog and Explanation

No Man is an Island… this poem has spoken to me greatly over the past months. As I near the end of seminary, I find I am beginning something completely new, completely terrifying, completely… I don’t even know what! Of all the things I have learned in three years of seminary, the most fascinating and bizarre object of curiosity to me is the human condition and its relation before God.
While training my mind, heart, and soul for the priesthood I have encountered a great many strange people in the same process. The thing about it is (to me anyway) that we are all in the same process and hopefully that means that we are all striving, seeking, laying our lives daily before the Almighty and trying to figure out what we are supposed to be doing with our lives as sinners called to live a life above reproach. The best conclusion I can come up with is that we seem to be called to a life of utter failure sprinkled with moments of glory. Recently it occurs to me that those glimpses of glory which get us from one rough patch to the next is an absolute dependence upon God and the salvation we have in Christ Jesus. In this we are not alone, we have never been abandoned, and we will always have someone standing with us.
If mankind is given grace enough, the gift of friends will be granted. There will be times when we will need to depend on those friends to show us Christ; for us to be seen through another’s eyes outside of ourselves and even possibly through the creator’s eyes himself. In my understanding of friendship it is always a two way street and we therefore hold each other together. Some of these friends are only for an appointed time, some are forever, some will hurt us for any inexplicable reason, and others will love of beyond measure. The point I am trying to make here is that the human condition is the most unstable of all God’s creation because we are susceptible to sin. And yet we are all placed on this earth for such times as we have been given. Even the most reclusive of persons cannot admit to a yearning for something more. Our friends and our enemies; our love, hate, and indifference for one another – we are a part of mankind. Under Christendom we belong to the Father and are unified, justified, and brought into the Light. How we act and react toward one another is the catalyst for which the Holy Spirit can draw us together, or how the demons can tear us apart – individually and collectively. And through that Spirit John Donne informs us that we are not in fact islands entire of ourselves we are one body working and functioning together. At times working together for good, and at times working against one another for schism. But never send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. And this is the beginning…