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All poems: copyright by
Nicholas Gordon
Free scrapbook poems
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1. Since consciousness cannot imagine its
own demise, we live in eternity even as we recognize that time bears us swiftly
towards death.
2. This moment-to-moment sense of endless possibility
is the basis for hope.
3. From time to time, of course, the fabric of
hope is torn and we see the blackness beyond. But in time the rent is repaired,
and we return, however shaken, to a life of purpose and meaning in which
the future, whether before or after death, retains its eternal
promise.
4. Hope is not faith but the breath that propels
faith up through the larynx to where it may be shaped by the
tongue.
5. There are many faiths--in social progress,
for example, or in the power of reason or prayer or love, or in the extension
of one's existence through tomorrow or beyond death--but one common source,
which is hope.
6. Certainty is the end of hope, both in the
sense of goal and, paradoxically, in the sense of demise. For if one were
certain that all that lay between one and death were unbearable pain, and
that death were an absolute end, there would be nothing to hope for, and
one would no longer wish to live. Similarly, if one were certain of one's
own personal salvation, one would no longer hope to be saved, any more than
one who was tall would hope to be tall, or one who had three children would
hope to have three children.
7. A faith, then, that retains its connection
to the hope that produced it must also embrace doubt, acknowledging that
it is not certain, that it is faith and not knowledge. Otherwise it will
be cut off from its source of energy and become rigid and
lifeless.
8. Since hope comes from a contradictory vision
common to all, all cannot help but hope, though to a greater or lesser degree.
In fact, if one were honest one could deny neither hope nor despair, and
would have to live accordingly.
9. Faith therefore should be seen not as wishful
thinking but as wishful living, something all humans do, though the content
of their faith may vary.
Next: The Principles
of Wisdom: Imagination
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Freedom
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