Joseph Kreydt

Tag: short essay

  • Loneliness and Presence

    This loneliness, in a world awake, is unnecessary affliction. I run circles around this fearfully imagined lonely future — “it will end like this,” “that is a sign about that,” “she will abandon me,” “he will betray me,” “I will starve.”

    And I wonder why I’m lonely.

    It’s because all that’s real, all that exists, all that is in communion, exists in the present, and all the while I’m seeking it in the past or the future.

    Grace, ever remind me to take three slow breaths, sense and notice the world in the moment, feel the gentle scratch of pencil on paper, and reach out to a friend.

  • Poor in Spirit, Rich in Presence

    To live without recognition, without thought, of the past or the future is to be “poor in spirt” because the present is un-ownable, always being lost. Our only riches exist in some future anticipation or some past memory.

    The more fully we live in the present, the more we are blessed. So don’t be afraid to let go of your worries or regrets.

    You’re afraid because you fear poverty, but poverty is where you will find grace.

    To always live like this seems impossible. But to pray like this, and to pray often, is possible, good, meaningful, healthy.

  • Certainty Only Comes After You Take the Leap of Faith

    What is it that you really want in life?
    Focus on that.
    Focus requires sacrifice,
    De-focusing from everything else.
    Focus requires faith,
    Trusting that focus matters
    And that grace will be there
    When you need it.

    Let go of the outcome,
    And at the same time,
    Stay committed to the path.

    Certainty only comes
    After you take the leap of faith,
    Not before.

  • WTF Does “Give It Up to God” Mean?

    First, you must understand attachment and detachment. Desire itself and the thing that is desired are two different things. Detachment is to experience the desire — and all the feelings and thoughts that come with it — separately from the desired thing; to feel desire but not attach it to some outcome.

    Once desire is detached from any object, a strange emptiness is felt. Simone Weil calls this “the void.” Others call it a “God-sized hole.”

    Experiencing the void does not make God come to us, but it opens the door and invites him. With wisdom beyond ours, he decides whether to enter or speak.

    Simply, to give it up to God is to feel the desire but not reason or think about the thing that is desired. In that empty space, wait for God.

    This is difficult to do, even for just a couple minutes. Try. Let it be prayer. You might experience a great deal of peace in letting go of yourself.

    And what of the physical feelings — the trembling hands, the pounding heart, the cramped gut — how do you give those to God? Love in spite of them. It’s not easy, but it is the way.

  • Expect Miracles

    An intuition: I worried terribly about the forthcoming affliction of a beloved. I worried and worried as I walked. When the thought, “have faith that God will work miracles,” realized in my mind, a small, yellow butterfly crossed in front of me and fluttered by to my left. I, then, looked to my right and saw another. At no other point on my hour-long walk did I see another butterfly.

    We must always trust that, in God’s time, our longings will be met, our worries released. Miracles happen.

    No matter how certain our worries feel, even when reason confirms their truth, we must have faith. Miracles happen.

  • Worries and Graces

    You see, these worries are the me of the present — without the graces God can give me in the future — believing I will fail.

    Of course the me of the present will fail at the future task. He lacks the strength God provides, only in the moment, to handle whatever happens — which, by the way, will probably be very different than what I expect.

  • The Pain of a Beloved’s Pain

    A handwritten page from a notebook containing a reflective text about dignity, self-worth, and the implications of treating others as divine.
    When someone sees you as a god — a woman degrades herself because she sees you as the one who gives her value — the loving response always involves some sort of crucifixion. For the undignified woman, your own desires and any potential response which does not aim to restore her dignity must be killed, no matter how painfully, in such a way that her own dignity can be restored without shame.

    The pain Christ feels is not because our sins hurt him. It’s because it hurts to see a beloved one degrade or afflict their self. In the crucifixion, he takes our degradation and affliction upon himself. That is the preferable pain when someone you love is hurting.

  • What Simone Weil Means by “Renunciation of God”

    A beloved being who disappoints me. I wrote to him. It is impossible that he should not reply by saying what I have said to myself in his name.

    Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

    To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.

    I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

    Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

    On page 79 (later on in Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil), she explains the “renunciation of God.” She doesn’t mean a person renouncing God.

    She means this. God creates us so that he is not everything. He renounces being everything.

    So, to accept that someone is more than what we imagine them to be, to accept that they are subject, not object, is to renounce being everything — I am not the center of the universe.

  • Death Without Death

    Handwritten text on a page discussing selflessness and love for others, featuring a question about dying to oneself and a reference to a biblical quote.

    How do we die to ourselves without suicide?

    We live for another. We give up every part of us that says “I.” We forget ourselves with another who forgets their self. We close the eyes that watch out for the self, and open the eyes that watch out for the other. We do everything for the good of that other, and do nothing for the good of the self except in that it is for the good of the other. In doing this, we strip ourselves of the self God gave us as an act of giving, in love, to God.

    “Do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

    To die without death is to defeat death, to take away its power.

  • Matter is a Phase of Consciousness

    A handwritten note discussing philosophical ideas about consciousness and existence, featuring a metaphor of everything created as a flowing river.

    Since the moment it entered my mind, perhaps a year ago now, I’ve been unable or unwilling to let go of the notion that “matter is a phase of consciousness.”

    I imagine it like this. Everything created is a flowing river. Sometimes, something uncreated splashes into the river and creates ripples. Those ripples are our material lives. They are us from dust. And when they even back out, we are still there in the flowing river.

    Is this notion only delightful? Or is it true?