Yesterday, I opened my mailbox to find a letter with my name on it written in blue marker.
Inside was an article titled: Is God Happy? which was written by the Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski in 1998. It was recently republished by the New York Review of Books. On the top of the article, Kołakowski was underlined, and next to it someone had written: "any relation?". -Not that I know of.
Oddly, also inside the envelope was the card of a funeral director for a local funeral home. I don't know the director, and had never visited the funeral home.
I was bit mystified, and just a little freaked out. Funny, while reading this article, a balloon my daughter had been playing with earlier suddenly burst, and I jumped.
My wife later told me that she saw our neighbor drop something in our mailbox. I can only assume that she accidentally included the funeral director's card in the envelope.
At any rate, it's not a bad read. Here is the article.
That is extremely odd. I have not yet read the article but will. The funeral directors card is really strange. How could that "accidentally" get placed in there? Why wouldn't your neighbor sign the letter? Super strange imo. I couldn't just let this be, I would have to know the motivations and go knock on their door. My guess is that it all comes from a place of kindness but was just poorly executed.
Is your neighbor a funeral director?
My first thought was that your neighbor was a funeral director, and I hope that that's the case. Because otherwise this is a dour message indeed! Haven't read the article yet either, will when I'm not "working."
Occasionally we get mail from creditors looking for the prior residents of our house. Maybe we judged the hippies that lived in your house beforehand, and the urine samples they left behind in fridge too quickly. Find them and let them know they have some more mail to pick up.
Jeff
So he says that 'happiness' doesn't really apply to human life because of our ever-present empathy for the suffering of others. Does that mean he's saying divinity is also empathetic? I dunno, whenever I try to think about this sort of thing I default to one of Terry Pratchett's quotes: "If there is a God, it is up to each of us to be his moral superior."
Baruch Spinoza also has something interesting to say on the subject; he believed in Pantheism, that God exists in everything as the physical laws that run the universe and so everything that happens is according to its will. Anyways, good article!
"unhppay Jesus".
Let's see:
Went to parties, drank wine, fair maidens washed his feet with precious oils, gave uplifting talks, walked on water, thoroughly enjoyed the company of children, and utterly defeated his enemies. Sounds like a Happy Son of Man to me. Salaam is ever upon Him.
http://bible.cc/matthew/3-17.htm
http://bible.cc/matthew/26-39.htm
http://bible.cc/matthew/7-9.htm
It is well worth the effort to read with care.
Now as to the matter of "gods" who "decide to enlighten" the Noble One (AS). Was that a quruom of "gods" or what? ..
After it burst? I suppose it dispersed into my living room, my lungs, and elsewhere.
But methinks you poke fun? ;)
I know that you understand that I consider coincidence as just that, and yet know that I accept that there is a threshold at which the rationale mind can no longer do so.
I've only experienced one of those, and it wasn't yesterday.