I have finally published my response to all the contributors on my Hays post. Thank you once again, I hope that what I wrote was clear! Due to its enormous length, I've decided to not post something lengthy today, in order for the comments to take their due course.
Instead, a beautiful 1 minute video clip made to celebrate the Jewish New Year. I adore it!
3 comments:
I have belatedly watched the video clip you embedded. How powerful!
For six years, I earned a living by supporting developmentally challenged individuals with the simple tasks of daily life. They didn't write any books, but of course it is my conviction that they are fully human beings, utterly unique. They enriched the diversity of human experience just by being themselves.
The video affirms the value of every human life; thank you for sharing it.
I also find it powerful, though interestingly it hits me in another spot. I'm into paradoxes at the moment, in this case the tension between the man's suffering and inability to experience life to the full, yet his affirmation of life's value nonethless. The video seems to throw into stark relief the paradox between the suffering and transcience of our existence on this planet, and yet its deep value anyway. Why not just die and hope for something better in an 'after life'? What is it about this life that is so precious? Despite all the suffering in the Old Testament, there is also hardly mention of an afterlife. It's this life that is somehow so important. I don't know what to do with that tension, or how to fit it into an eschatological framework.
I think Foucault's statement that the Christian exists in the paradox of living to die and dying to live is somehow relavant to this (the quote is from Timothy's blog here).
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