"Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe....

[BlooInBloo]

... The more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." - KAnt, CPR.

Not actually apropos of anything, just one of my favorite thoughts. It's even better when the Newtonian context within which Kant was speaking is fully understood, but it's still great without that context.

[TomInTib]

1. Waaay to heavy for me, Bloo...

but, then again, anything with more than four chords is always too much for me.

I am more like, "I don't want to sit and talk about Jesus, I just want to see His face".

Something like that.

Tom

[BlooInBloo]

2. Shorter Kant: There's a lot to wonder about...

How's that one fit?

[TomInTib]

3. Perfect, Bloo.

I was at the tip of Baja last week, on a WaveRunner in an almost flat Sea of Cortes, when a whale breached maybe 20 yards in front of me.

All the way out of the water.

WHAM! back in, twisting to the right.

For a brief moment, we made eye contact. It was as real as breathing.

Tonight is clear. I will sit outside, look up. Look at the stars.

For you, Bloo.

And I will wonder where that whale is, tonight.

Tom

[BlooInBloo]

4. That's the spirit!

[TomInTib]

5. And we are the only ones on this thread.

Perfect.

Smart Guy (Bloo) and Flying by the Seat of his Pants (Tom).

[BlooInBloo]

6. That's 2x as many people as I'm used to!

But I'm ok with it. This way, I don't have to outswim the whale, I only have to outswim *you*!

:rofl:

[HillWilliam]

7. That reminded me of a wedding ceremony I wrote

for some friends of mine. I'll share a little piece of it wit' ya.

I have the luckiest and happiest job in the world, for indeed, I am in the business of miracles. Some say that true love is commonplace, but I’ll slightly differ with that and I’ll tell you why. Have you ever lain in soft grass on a warm summer’s night, when there’s one of those wonderfully clear skies? Did you look up and see the entire Milky Way, and did the sheer number of stars above you – just for a moment – take your breath away? It was something so natural and so beautiful, and in a moment of warmth and complete safety, your soul was completely open – and you gave yourself over to a childlike wonder and complete awe. The mighty vastness of the heavens, with its untold billions of stars became something very personal that you could hold in your heart forever.

True love is quite like that. When one person loves another, the vastness of that emotion is so great that it knows no boundaries – and yet, it fits very comfortably inside the heart and soul. When a person is truly loved, the awe that follows, knowing that you are so very wanted, so very loved, rises to meet and equal the vastness of the love that is poured out. And to think: in all that vastness of the universe, of all the billions of stars, some with their attendant planets, we were given this one that is perfect just for us. What in creation would have been the odds?

If that weren’t miraculous enough, consider this: There is a vast sea of humanity this one special planet. There exists now over six and a half billion human beings, yet only one of each of us. It would seem nearly unthinkable that we could find just exactly the right partner, just exactly the right one to love in this great array of diversity. In the same wonderful and mysterious way that out of all the billions and billions of stars, we were given one that was exactly perfect to be our home, out of billions and billions of people on this beautiful home of ours, we can find the one, single person who has the matching half of the soul we were born with. The fact that we do, is indeed a miracle. And when that one, very special, very particular person who actually finds us equally attractive and lovable – and exploding all odds to bits – that one falls in love with us in return, does anyone have a better description for that than “miracle”?

Call it what you will, but I believe that there exists many manifestations of Something Greater. The orders of magnitude are far beyond what mere games of chance or serendipity alone could offer. Just for the moment, we might be willing to accept that it could be none other than the gentle and loving hand of a gentle and loving Creator who loves and trusts us just as completely as we grow to love and trust one another. For certain, attraction is one thing, and a mighty fun and handy thing it is! But soon the fires of passion will burn away, and love and trust are what hopefully will remain after being “in love” has passed or grown into something else. As it was said in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, “Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any fool can do. “ When two souls hear one another’s song in this great frothing sea of souls and somehow magically find one another, then grow to trust and love each other, fully, completely, without reservation – what else could one possibly call it but a miracle, given the seeming impossible odds?

Yet, dear family and friends, here we are today, gathered in celebration of such an everyday miracle. Two such souls have found their perfect mate – each has heard and answered the age-old promise: “I am here. My heart is and will always be with yours. With a love such as ours, there is nothing we can’t conquer and nothing we need fear. “. That which was once half and incomplete has now found itself whole and complete together.

Such a love has brought the two of you together here today.

Just a little something to enjoy. The mention of "starry heavens" always does something to me. The sight of it always leaves me numinous.

[BlooInBloo]

10. Niiice! You should consider doing that for a living!

:P

[HillWilliam]

14. Oh, but I do :)

That's where the "RedLetterRev" handle came from. I'm a professional officiant; weddings, same-gender Holy Unions, the whole shot. It's a great outlet for creative writing and about the only way to get paid for it LOL

[BlooInBloo]

16. I figured as much. :P

[HillWilliam]

19. Hey, you know me by now

the exception to most every rule there is :rofl:

[Condem]

8. The Appalachian State coach said that to his players...

...before they beat Michigan last year, Bloo. I'm not shitting you.

[BlooInBloo]

9. Oooh... I think I know shitting when I hear it!

:rofl:

[Condem]

11. He then went into Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Shit, Bloo. The Wolverines never knew what hit them. Carr started reading Kerouac. His days were numbered.

[BlooInBloo]

12. Why were those books even THERE? Was there a book-burning revival or something?

:rofl:

[Condem]

13. Indeedy, Bloo

Word was, OSU had Palin for their opener. Ah, well. History.

[BlooInBloo]

15. hah!

[KittyWampus]

17. Kant was an Idealist of sorts. I used to waste time trying to explain that Idealism is perfectly

valid as a Philosophy of Science here on DU.

Like spitting in the wind.

[BlooInBloo]

18. You live, you learn. :P

Even though, while K is wonderful for inspiration, and as an intrinsic part of understanding how intellectual thought today actually got to be the way it is, the notion that he has anything to contribute to the details of current-day intellectual problems is silly.

While he was certainly up on the science of his day, science-then and science-now aren't even close to the same subject, to use your example. They were busy doing things like discovering air. Or inventing it, if one thinks that's significantly different.

[kentuck]

20. Interesting...

Does he think "the starry heavens" above him is the cause of the "moral law" within him? Is each person a universe unto himself? Too heavy to contemplate, Bloo..

[BlooInBloo]

21. Nah - not what he's talking about. He's talkin bout the recent Newtonian...

Discoveries/inventions that had the effect of, as they say, "uniting the heavens and the earth". (I.e., that shit up there worked exactly the same way that shit down here does - both according to the law of universal gravitation.)

Said discoveries/inventions really kicked off (or effectively ended - heh) "the science wars", whereby religion had to take a backseat to science-based stuff in the field of intellectual thought.

Kant's acknowledgment of that new lay of the intellectual landscape is implicit in his First Critique, where he tells the reader of one of his prime methodologies:

"I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."

(Kant's emphasis - or at least Kemp Smith the translator's. I forget which - but it doesn't really matter.)

The acknowledgment that faith was something an intellectual has to *make room for* was quite stunning for the day.


EDIT: This is of course only the Reader's Digest of Reader's Digest synopses. The full story is a fair bit more complicated, and longer in the telling. And not 100% understood to boot!