Posts Tagged ‘faith’

a new religion

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Baby Jesus For Sale, Italy © Jim Korpi

“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embossed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us, by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope amoung the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Introduction to Nature

family at home

Pakistani Crew, Art and Fashion Expo, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia © Jim Korpi

Allah does not like the man who considers himself superior to his companions. – Prophet Mohammad (Zarqani, Vol 4 p. 306)

“How is it that anyone can do a job like this?” Khalid asks after we order soft-serve vanilla ice cream cones from a Bengali who hands our order out of the side of a converted Chevy van where the city of Riyadh meets the desert. It is late, almost midnight. “Saudis can not work these hours. They have families at home.”
The majority of Bengali workers I have questioned about their lives have an average of two children and an extended family they are supporting in their home country.
After nearly an hour of contemplating the lives of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, Khalid proclaims,”The Prophet Mohammad said some people are born to serve others.”

looking up

Dippy, Diplodocus carnegii, Pittsburgh © Jim Korpi

“That’s the first time I’ve seen a bald eagle the whole time I’ve been here,” I realized out loud as I watched an eagle soar over the deconstruction of the Elwha Dam. The bird’s confident flight seemed to approve of what was happening below. It was my last day in a trip to the Pacific Northwest. “Have you been looking up in the sky at all?” Colleen asked. “Actually, I think I’ve been looking down most of the time I’ve been here,” I admitted. To this Colleen replied,“You’ve just been looking in the wrong place.”

She was right. For weeks I had been inside my mind reflecting on inner struggles. Meanwhile the world, complete with natural wonders, makes it’s rotations around a burning star and life continues.

Mahatma Gandhi once said a person is the product of their thoughts, and what they think they become.

hope in hard times

Still Life, Lizard, Saudi Arabia © Jim Korpi

“Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Hope lately feels like a weighted mist surrounding me. A breeze of reality blows through and hope recedes.”Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” or “Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.”
Are hope and faith the same?
The past year of my life has been consumed by this word HOPE. Instead of looking at the troubles of the world I have been instead looking for hope.
Does this mean I have faith? Is hope a non-believer’s version of faith? Is hope also a recognition of having little influence or control over an outcome? Is being hopeful the same as being faithful?
Hope is a trusting in an expectation. Faith is also a trust in someone of something, but leans in the direction of spirituality, something affecting the spirit or soul. Hope up against faith seems watered down.
To say I am hopeful is to expect something to turn out the way I want it to as in “I hope you are well” or “I hope to see you again.”
To have faith is to let go of the expectation but to be convinced by a building of trust in the outcome that is best.

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