Well the themes for me were and remain sex and love and grief and death - the things that make us and undo us, create and destroy, how we breed and disappear and the emotional context that surrounds these events.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the profound impact of fundamental human experiences on our existence.
In this quote, Thomas Lynch reflects on the central themes of life that shape our identities and experiences—sex, love, grief, and death. He suggests that these elements are intertwined, influencing how we live and ultimately how we meet our end, serving as both creators and destroyers of our emotional realities.
In practice
In a eulogy reflecting on a loved one's life.
Whatever's there to feel, feel it—the riddance, the relief, the fright and freedom, the fear of forgetting, the dull ache of your own mortality. Get with someone you can trust with tears, with anger, and wonderment and utter silence.
But the perception of life as an organic unity is a slow achievement, and depends for its growth on a people's entry into the main current of world-events.
And truly it demands something god like in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!
And I think that, at some point, I am, as John Lewis and many others, are a bridge-builder. The goal is to bring America together and Americans. We are a great nation. But we must become a greater nation.
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Every act of disobedience committed due to passion, its forgiveness is hoped for. Every act of disobedience committed due to arrogance, its forgiveness is not hoped for because the root of Satan’s disobedience was arrogance, whereas the root of Adam’s lapse was passion.
The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His.
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