Two Letters for 1993 - Softcover

Haas, Edward N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0759612544 ISBN 13: 9780759612549

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2001

Synopsis

If you always follow the voice of your conscience, are you on safe ground? Do some people at least sometimes have motives of the highest and noblest kind, which ever perhaps existed? Do some people at least sometimes try to be the best person they could and ought to know how to be? On the other side of the grave, is it possible most people will find hell is their preferred destination? If so, why?! How could a truly loving God allow either that a hell should exist or that some people should prefer its eternal torment to the eternal bliss of heaven? Do all of us, as children, 'picture' God as the kind of father who comes after you when you do something bad? What is the nature of individuality? Which should one concentrate on the most: not giving offense or not taking offense? What about motives so hidden we ourselves who have them are not aware of either their nature or their presence in us?! Why do some people find it impossible to believe in a God but easy to believe that they themselves are gods from the standpoint of their behavior's merits? Does agnosticism rest on an intellectually sound basis? How does Christianity affect our failure to be the best people we could and ought to be? Is love ever totally unconditional? Which is more important: to avoid hurting other people's feelings or to enlighten them?Those are the kinds of questions considered in the pages of this book. But, why should one be interested in what this book has to say on such issues? I'm quite sure I myself cannot give anyone a truly compelling reason to do so. At best, I can only say this: The answers given herein have done wonders for me. Though, at 64 years of age, I am as alone, lonely, and rejected as anyone I have ever met. (As a child, my parents repeatedly assured me I was nothing to them but the hell they had to endure on Earth in order to escape the hell hereafter. Despite 50 years of heroic effort to keep The Ten Commandments, I'm still so immersed in mortal sin, it strongly suggests

About this title

About the Author

Born April 13, 1936, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the author graduated from Jesuit high school, in New Orleans, in 1953. A single fruitless semester studying music at Loyola University of the South in New Orleans was followed by almost two years of floundering in a sea of confusion, and the author then joined the U. S. Air Force on Dec. 7, 1955. Honorably discharged in April of 1960, the author underwent another two and a half years of floundering so severe, he came extremely close to a mental breakdown. In desperation, he gave away everything he owned and, for thirteen years, took to the life of a wandering hermit. In search of as much time and energy as possible for inner reflection upon self, God, and the nature and purpose of reality, he criss-crossed the United States on foot four times. At first, he lived off of whatever food and clothing he could beg; but, after learning how to live on a dollar a day or less, he turned to working at various monasteries in the winter time in exchange for the two to three hundred dollars required to feed and to clothe himself during the next spring, summer, and fall of walking. The monasteries also provided access to libraries in which he could read, and extract notes from, the great writings of the Catholic Church. In the course of that thirteen-year odyssey, there was a four year period during which he refused to speak to anyone (except on very rare occasions) and communicated only by means of written notes.In August of 1975, the author's father lost his mind, and the author's siblings insisted he was the only one in the family with the time and ability to tend to their father in his hour of need. Thus, after thirteen years, the author's preferred lifestyle came to an end. Dire poverty then gave way to economic independence, and total seclusion gave way to what little privacy can be enjoyed by bachelors who prefer to avoid partying and to stay home and--as much as possible--to bury themselves in as much reading and writing as t

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0759612544
• ISBN 13: 9780759612549
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 404