Life and Remembrance
Who brought me into this world? According to whose command do I find myself at this exact place, during this particular time? Life is the remembrance of a very short day we spent visiting this world.
Blaise Pascal Cited in Calendar of Wisdom
As I read these questions of Pascal’s, I am first drawn to the sincerity of them as questions about fate, time, destiny, and purpose… Remembering his worldview, I quickly discard any formal understanding of Eastern concepts such as reincarnation… and yet… I do affirm that such more esoteric ideas did survive in some latent or Gnostic form in the West… I hesitate to speculate whether Pascal was aware of them… that would be for historians and biographers to consider…
They certainly are not ‘empty” questions unless your perspective on life is purely mechanical or limited to strictly biological and limited to our cultural definitions. They are clearly theological in their nature, and metaphysical in their essence: Is there a Deity in charge? Something/Someone who is ultimately in control of my life? How much free will or choice do I truly have over the direction and purpose of my life?
Obviously, tomes of speculative thought have addressed these questions, so I will not succumb to adding to them… Instead, I will choose to earnestly reflect on Life as remembrance, as I could accept that Pascal did believe in some form of continuity of life, and that a soul that remembers… In the Western theological context, what does it mean to say that the soul remembers?
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