newsong (newsong) wrote,

Remember, you die.

I close my eyes
Only for a moment, then the moment's gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Don't hang on
Nothing lasts forever, but the earth and sky
It's there always,
And all your money won't another minute buy
All we are is dust in the wind

There was been a lot of dust in the wind today, as it is a characteristically windy and sunny spring day in Saskatchewan. The cloud puffs are wispy and the day is bright here. I haven't heard any students at our University discussing Virginia Tech. I find myself slightly disgusted at the apathy, but not really surprised by the persistence of exams in the face of distant disaster. I realized one of the reasons this one got me harder than most is that our University is centered around a grass "bowl", has buildings made mostly of flagstone, and has about 25,000 students. It's a homey campus.

Probably there's a lot of dust flying around in the Virginia winds, too.

Also, my heart is very tender towards people. It always has been. My heart hurts for them, it cries out for the justice I know is not found in this moment. It takes a lot of faith to believe without ever seeing justice. Justice is elusive, impossible, the lack of it inspires a rage that threatens to swallow up self. Every fiber of my being demands justice...

Many seek an audience with leaders, but it is from the
Lord that man gets justice.... He has sent me to comfort those who mourn by saying that the time of the Lord's favor has come, and with it, the day of His vengeance.

I'm done the worst of the work for my last final since last night. I had STM's fantastic chili in a bun lunch special after dropping off my outline today. Tomorrow I'm going to campus for a meeting with my drawing prof. I have my fingers crossed for a high 70's. I'm not one of his favourites, so I'm pretty sure I'm not headed for an 80... These are the surface thoughts.

I have lived exactly 7,833 days. Some of them have been wonderful and memorable. Some were horrible. Some were special to others and meant nothing to me. I've recorded all of the surface things that happened on just over a thousand of those days, and some of them go deeper than the surface. Some days, like today, I've spent a lot of time on Wikipedia. Today I was editing and voting, however, as opposed to browsing. I've made a number of contributions to the official page. There's 20-some people involved in this who probably lived less than 10,000 days. Remember that some day, when 24 hours passes and you consider it boring.

The problem with having no more homework for a couple of days is having time to think again.

I mentioned the phrase, "dust in the wind" to my Mom. She had a beautiful reply to that. "But, you can be a gentle wind and gold dust... People feel the warmth and see the sparkle, and are happier for the experience."

Perhaps it's so. I watched TV tonight. Went between Dancing With The Stars and some news show covering the shootings. They said on the show that dancing is glamorous. Death is not. Sometimes, like with that one prof, death is heroic.

It's not like I don't think about death a fair amount, for someone my age. As I've said before, my morning commute takes me past a graveyard. I've lost a good friend and Pastor, about two years ago. And this week I was doing a piece of artwork that I wanted to have a disaster in the background of. An echo of thousands of past memento mori artworks. And an echo of how I've felt for weeks. Some might call the mood morbid, but that would be a poor word to describe the heightened awareness of life's value. I feel as though time is running out. And to be honest, I've lived most of my life feeling the ticking of the clock inside me. I cringe when my peers make a joke about getting old. I look up at the blue sky with the wispy clouds and I feel the dust swirling around me.

Then I thought in my heart,
       "The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
       What then do I gain by being wise?"
       I said in my heart,
       "This too is meaningless."
       in days to come both will be forgotten.
       Like the fool, the wise man too must die!

Death is the destiny of every man, the living should take this to heart. Memento Mori.

Remember, you die.
Tags: bible study, discourses, dwayne, memento mori, virginia tech shootings, wisdom

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