Sunday, January 5, 2020

Holy Lands, Holy Causes, Holiness

Holy Lands, Holy Causes, Holiness

This morning I went to the chapel where I usually play basketball weekly. It was fun, I had a good time. My teams won most of their games. This helps. I also had been away for the holidays, and before that I was ill so it was nice to participate with this group and get some exercise after a while away.

Almost every time that I go to play there, I visit these corner rooms of the church in between games and expel stuff outside on the bushes next to the corner doors. Spit, mucous, maybe blood, some sweat. That is not the point of me writing this, sorry for that. The least intent of this post was meant to be crass or vulgar. I wanted to explain why I go in these corner rooms, and that in order to lead to something more highly thought of, some reflections on holiness.

Today as I was leaving the room of the northwest corner, where I find myself alone and quiet, I noticed a couple things in the little trash can by the exit door. One was a map of the Holy Land. The other was a smaller poster with --

(For some odd reason this erased from this point above; I will try to re-write what I had put. I published it this Sunday afternoon, it was another 5 or so paragraphs with 3 numbered points).

 --scriptures and inspiration for doing what the Savior would have us do. I wanted to put one up in my house for my family to see the Holy land sites and be familiar with those locales, and the other for personal motivation. But, I left them on the stage by the basketball court and forgot that I had retrieved them. Hopefully I will  find them the next time I go back, or someone at church today may take them and use them for their own benefit. The point being, do not let them become trash.

Who would throw such treasures away?

Holy towns, holy places. Sacred history cast aside. It happens too often in my opinion.

Recently I have been accused of hoarding things, but I consider it "collecting". I believe, or have believed, that the large assortment of nick-nacks, magazines, books, tickets, handbills, pamphlets, and other odd assortments from my childhood and adult life would add up to one large treasure trove to become a resource to put together a history of significance, to spur my imagination and memory for a greater good. I still hold on to those fancies.

If nothing else, the items of sentimentality and nostalgia will serve as heirlooms of some sort for my children or grandchildren... But I wish for them to be more. We shall see.

For now, the  questions remain:

1. Are there holy places? Are there holy lands, and places worth venerating and revering?

2. Have there been holy men and women, legacies worth remembering?

3. Is there such thing as holy, sacred, a higher plain or realm to aspire to?

Is there a greater beyond?

Bethlehem, Capernaum, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethsaida, so many other places where the believers see their beloved remains of former legacies and holy prophets and lines of the ancients, from Abraham to Joseph, Moses and Aaron and their Levites, David and peoples of the Israelites through Judah, to the time of Jesus the Anointed and His apostles.

The Jewish inheritors since and the faithful Muslims since, and so many Arab Christians, now politicized and militarized, Palestinians and Israelis and a dozen other nationalities and groups...

Is it worth what the people down below are fighting for, striving for, yearning for, trying to revere and remember.

I was writing, recalling a few more things...

It is worth collecting, remembering, keeping hold to?

Do we cast all of it away, and relegate to the trash what is seemingly of no worth... ?

I will publish this and try to re-capture what I had not successfully published, yet tried to record.

The cause of memory and attempt to achieve the sacred.

Life, death, all of it.

Collected and reflected.

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