Making the blue sky red....

Do we seek meaning or do we create meaning? Are there pre-existent answers that have always been from the dawn of time which if we look hard enough, are 'holy' enough, enlightened enough etc etc that we can eventually deduce from the ether??

There are whole religious orders and retreat centers and courses and books and so on which are solely dedicated to this very purpose. How much of what we do or think is already there to be found?

The simple yet perplexing answer is probably, everything and nothing, because we all know that we do not create factual truth simply by believing something hard enough. For example, simply because the majority of people understand that the colour the sky on a clear day is blue and I decide that in fact it is red (or anything else for that matter) then no matter how hard I believe that I do not change the actual colour of the sky. To be more complicated off course, just because most people agree that the colour of that sky is blue does not force the sky to be blue, it simply makes the word which people use to describe that colour gives the majority of people a similar mental image of a blue sky.

In a similar way, calling God 'Father' or 'Mother' or anything else for that matter does not and cannot force God to be either gendered or parental. This is a highly complex way of understanding the simple idea that just because something is true for us does not make it THE truth. If we can understand this then we open ourselves up to a fuller and more challenging way of looking at our lives.

You see it is great that we want to find meaning or significance for our lives and yet to a certain extent we must understand that any meaning we do find is constructed and unique to ourselves. For the academically minded (and by that I mean dull with little else to do)...does this form the basis of a universal truth??

On facebook, Philip made a funny and, I think, throwaway comment on the meaning of life and the number '42' and one of the responses was from Laura, and my tongue in cheek sentiments are in red, she said "OK, in brief: if you are an existentialist like Sartre then no, life is meaningless (so why bother even looking for meaning or significance) but he was whacked on speed so his views I can take or leave. Existentialist from Kierkegaard says yes life is meaningless but we must take the leap of faith (So simply believe hard enough and meaning will find you). I like him much more. Or you can be an Aristotelian and say that the meaning in life comes from practising and developing the virtues through the use of reason which I think is even better (so if you think through it hard enough you will find meaning)."

So we are back to the everything and nothing and now I want to try simplify this (in other words I will put it like a pastor in a sermon). When there was first creation of any kind, and I believe that we were created, in that creation there must have been the potential to reach beyond ourselves, to find our own meaning, to strive to be even better than we are. And the reason I believe this to be the case is because I see that yearning and that longing in people - to selflessly better themselves. (Look at your yearning to always learn new things Julie!! and our new social justice group etc...) Because I see this longing to be better, to find meaning I believe that we were designed with that instinct in us.

That is the everything..in other words I believe that God put in us unlimited potential to be better. The nothing is that I believe that God does not limit us to one way of finding meaning, but challenges us to try to find the outer limits of our life's meaning. So do I believe that we create the meaning in our lives or does God? Well ~I believe it is both.. God creates the potential for meaning in our lives, every potential possibility that has ever been thought of, God creates our capacity to become meaningful and our ability to follow it through, BUT, like with many things I believe that this comes with a responsibility for us to seek actively how we can, as an individual, make our lives meaningful and significant. This will be different for each and every person and that is what makes life amazing and beautiful, it is the thing that allows me to make the blue sky red! (Removes tongue from cheek..catch up tomorrow!)