how long is an era...................?

 

     An Oriental wise man always used to ask the divinity in his prayers to be so kind as to spare him from living in an interesting era.  As we are not wise, the divinity has not spared us and we are living in an interesting era.  In any case, our era forces us to take an interest in it.  The writers of today know this.  If they speak up, they are criticized and attacked.  If they become modest and keep silent, they are vociferously blamed for their silence.

-Albert Camus, from his 1957 lecture at the University of Uppsala

true companionship..............

 

But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God.

-Thomas Merton

Love....................

 

God loved the world so much that he gave his son and he gave him to a virgin, the blessed virgin Mary, and she, the moment he came in her life, went in haste to give him to others. And what did she do then? She did the work of the handmaid, just so. Just spread that joy of loving to service. And Jesus Christ loved you and loved me and he gave his life for us, and as if that was not enough for him, he kept on saying: Love as I have loved you, as I love you now, and how do we have to love, to love in the giving. For he gave his life for us. And he keeps on giving, and he keeps on giving right here everywhere in our own lives and in the lives of others.

It was not enough for him to die for us, he wanted that we loved one another, that we see him in each other, that’s why he said: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.

-Mother Teresa, from her 1979 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

Essence......................

 

The essence of God does NOT include human frailties such as partiality, controllingness, duality, judgmentalism, vindictive retaliation, wrath, righteous anger, resentment, vanity, limitation, arbitrariness, revenge, jealousy, vulnerability, or locality.

-David R. Hawkins, Spiritual Power and Integrity

Sippican.......................

 

Men need a god. Otherwise they get confused and start worshiping themselves. They climb into a booster seat in the back of Beelzebub’s Dodge Caravan and think they’re driving.

Action...................

 

The questions whether society or the individual is to be considered as the ultimate end, and whether the interests of society should be subordinated to those of the individuals or the interests of the individuals to those of society are fruitless.  Action is always action of individual men.  The social or societal element is a certain orientation of the actions of individual men.  The category end makes sense only when applied to action.  Theology and the metaphysics of history may discuss the ends of society and the designs which God wants to realize with regard to society in the same way in which they discuss the purpose of all other parts of the created Universe.  For science, which is inseparable from reason, a tool manifestly unfit for the treatment of such problems, it would be hopeless to embark upon speculation concerning these matters.

-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

Discovery..............

 

"Help us to find God."

"No one can help you there."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that no one can help the fish find the ocean."

-Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

worship....................

 

He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God." This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.

Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

Here's an idea...................

 

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

-attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein

sovereignty.................

 

     The vanity of the ego is endless and vainglorious in its grandiose delusion that it can disprove the existence of God. . . .

     Why does the mind even struggle so valiantly to try to supplant Divinity?  The answer is that it really refutes and secretly hates any sovereignty other than its own.  That is the self-perpetuating core of narcissism.

-David R. Hawkins, Reality, Spirituality, and Modern Man

not ours..................

 

     The problem with "willing what cannot be willed" is that we step into a territory that is not  ours—we stake the claim to be God.  This attempt to wrest control from the uncontrollable has become the keynote characteristic of our "Age of Addiction."  We try to command those aspects of our lives that cannot be commanded, we try to coerce what cannot be coerced, and in doing so, we ironically destroy the very thing we crave.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

Alexander.......................

 

The boy-emperor, barbarian though he remained after all of Aristotle's tutoring, had yet learned to revere the rich culture of Greece, and had dreamed of spreading that culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious armies. . . .But he had underrated the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind, and the mass and depth of Oriental culture.  It was only a youthful fancy, after all, to suppose that so immature and unstable a civilization as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization immeasurable more widespread, and rooted in the most venerable traditions.  The quantity of Asia proved too much for the quality of Greece.  Alexander himself, in the hour of his triumph, was conquered by the soul of the East; he married (among several ladies) the daughter of Darius; he adopted the Persian diadem and robe of state; he introduced into Europe the Oriental notion of the divine right of kings; and at last he astonished a sceptic Greece by announcing, in magnificent Eastern style, that he was a god.  Greece laughed; and Alexander drank himself to death.

-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

Good questions all....................

 

     How long will it be before we discover we cannot dazzle God with our accomplishments?

     When will we acknowledge that we need not and cannot buy God's favor?

     When will we acknowledge that we don't have it all together and happily accept the gift of grace?

-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Freedom—it's not so easy.................

 

A free political order is possible only when the fundamental political act is a mutual promise between governor and governed.  But no human being can be trusted to keep his or her word when he or she has access to power—a power not available to opponents.  Sooner or later, if not in the lifetime of the ruler, then in that of his or her descendants, there is an inescapable risk of tyranny.  Freedom can only be guaranteed in a political system where the constitution sovereign is God himself, where he has sought and obtained the free consent of the governed, and where he has bound himself to respect human freedom.

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

the whole bundle.................

 

     When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes.  I believe and I doubt.  I hope and get discouraged.  I love and I hate.  I feel bad about feeling good.  I feel guilty about not feeling guilty.  I am trusting and suspicious.  I am honest and I still play games.  Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

     To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark.  In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God's grace means.  As Thomas Merton put it, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God."

     The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes.  It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches.  For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is a gift.  All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.

-Brennan Manning,  The Ragamuffin Gospel

a member..........................

 

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.

-Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

More proof (as if we needed any)............

 

.............that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Enjoy your NFL Sunday. Mother nature has cooperated and the leaves are all to wet to rake! Hooray!

Uh-oh................

 

Cultures are built around claims and beliefs about the otherworld: about God or gods, about correct worship, about the nature of reality, about goodness and truth and the meaning of virtue.  These are also, inevitably, claims about what it means to be human.  Knock out the spiritual core of any culture, and however hard people fight, its fate is sealed.

-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine

a name of mystery..........

 

Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution. . . . There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea.

     As a matter of fact, it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea.  Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something.  Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.  It is really far more logical to start by saying "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" even if you only mean "In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process."
For [the name of] God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one.

-G. K. Chesterton, from here

Harder than it sounds.................