Lila by marilynne robinson
Religion at its best is the same as existentialism and Buddhism. At the core of all three is the attempt to reconcile the meaninglessness of life with the will to continue living. Religion tries to do it with "God", existentialism with awesome freedom, and Buddhism with acceptance. When robinso talks about God, she seems to be offering up the apparent randomness of the universe as a gift from God, grace if you will.
"Then the reasons that things happen are still hidden, but they are hidden in the mystery of God". Science would say they are hidden not in God but in the u iverse itself.
"Of course misfortunes have opened the way to blessings you would never have thought to hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings if they had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The future always find us changed. So then it is part of the provide c of God as I see it that blessings and happiness can have very different meanings from one time to another. That is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. . . "(P. 223).
We want a pattern, cause and effect, but there is none. Robinson says this isn't random, thesis is God. Existentialism says it is random and that frees us.
"Then the reasons that things happen are still hidden, but they are hidden in the mystery of God". Science would say they are hidden not in God but in the u iverse itself.
"Of course misfortunes have opened the way to blessings you would never have thought to hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings if they had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The future always find us changed. So then it is part of the provide c of God as I see it that blessings and happiness can have very different meanings from one time to another. That is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. . . "(P. 223).
We want a pattern, cause and effect, but there is none. Robinson says this isn't random, thesis is God. Existentialism says it is random and that frees us.
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