Soulful

Jazz music. Sometimes I find life very frustrating, other times it is quite friendly--but it is always difficult to understand. Solomon said that with wisdom comes much sorrow. Sorrow, because there is always another side, and you can never know. Sorrow, because people live in tragic filth because of their ignorance. Sorrow, because the world is content to live in its self-defined structures without regarding the fact they built them.

So, jazz music. Jazz music understands the turmoil of life and takes it in without offering an answer. Answers only become stale. Except Jesus. But Jesus isn't really an answer, although we treat him like one. No, he was a son. A son of the most high God.

He's kind of like jazz music. He took life in. He saw people. He loved them. He helped them. He didn't always fix them, but he pointed them toward a cure for their meaninglessness: love. Not that love was a new idea, but he defined it in a different way. He defined it by undefining it, and just living it.

As for our precious cultural and religious institutions, I can only quote the prophet Isaiah, "He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, 'Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?'"

We have idolized our ways of doing things, but we have too much to lose to rock the boat. Sorry, sorry excuse for rational beings.