it's either a reality or a sham

"How can you cope with the end a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the more devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or it’s a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between..."

- N.T. Wright

a sprinting, shoving age

"Our age is not the age of the meditative man. It's a sprinting, shoving age. Daily, new antidotes for contemplation spring into being and leap out from store counters."  

[Norman Cousins]

but behold, bloodshed

"For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
but behold, an outcry!"

Isaiah 5:7

act as if you are living in a temple

"To be reverent is to act as if you are living in a temple."

good in conversation

"If you want to become brilliant in prayer, you have to become really good in conversation with people. You have to care about people. You have to chat to people. You have to connect with people in the messy place where their life is. And it's in those times when you give yourself to those conversations that compassion can rise up and take hold of you, and your compassion will cause you to pray properly over someone."

[Graham Cooke] 

they've got the right idea, that lot

"Never says no, that Alyoshka [the Baptist], whatever you ask him to do. If everybody in the world was like him, I'd be the same. Help anybody who asked me. Why not? They've got the right idea, that lot." 

[from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]

debate about art in the Gulag

"'Yes, but art isn't what you do, it's how you do it.' 

Kh-123 reared up and chopped at the table with his hand. 

'I don't give a damn how you do it if it doesn't awaken good feelings in me!'"

[from Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]

for I, except you entrall me, never shall be free

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

[John Donne]

like bitter sweets we suck on endlessly

"Most of us have half-a-dozen or so favorite anxieties, like bitter sweets we suck on endlessly. We would be frightened to be deprived of them. Jesus challenges us to go beyond the fear of letting go of anxiety, the fear we have of peace itself." 

[Laurence Freeman]

contagious Christ-focus

"Your goal is always to make your Christ-focus contagious – to just one person."

[Ann Voskamp, from "The Real Truth about Boring Men -- and the Women Who Live with Them: Redefining Boring"]

through what he suffered

"Although [Jesus] was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered." 

Hebrews 5:8

the dark chaos of our inner being

"In the morning I will stand and see my God, who sheds the light of salvation on my face, who will breathe life even into our mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in us and has been mercifully hovering over the dark chaos of our inner being."  

[Augustine, Confessions, Book XIII]

Our true place is where we find rest.

...Why only of [the Holy Spirit] who alone is said to be your Gift? Because, I think, in your Gift we find rest, and there we enjoy you. Our true place is where we find rest. We are borne toward it by love, and it is your good Spirit who lifts up our sunken nature from the gates of death. In goodness of will is our peace. A body gravitates to its proper place by its own weight. This weight does not necessarily drag it downward, but pulls it tot he place proper to it: thus fire tends upward, a stone downward. Drawn by their weight, things seek their rightful places. If oil is poured into water, it will rise to the surface, but if water is poured onto oil it will sink below the oil; drawn by their weight, things seek their rightful places. They are not at rest as long as they are disordered, but once brought to order they find their rest. Now, my weight is my love, and wherever I am carried, it is this weight that carries me. Your Gift sets us afire and we are borne upward; we catch his flame and up we go. In our hearts we climb those upward paths, singing the songs of ascent. By your fire, your beneficent fire, are we inflamed, because we are making our way up to the peace of Jerusalem. For I rejoiced when I was told, 'We are going to the Lord's house.' There shall a good will find us a place, that we may have no other desire but to abide there for ever."  

[Augustine, Confessions]

choice, not chance

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” 

[Aristotle]

I the LORD have created it.

"Shower, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain down righteousness;
let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit;
let the earth cause them both to sprout;
I the LORD have created it."

Isaiah 45:8

what we would prefer not to talk about

 I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.

[Rick Moody]

value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion

they never lose a minute

“Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.”

[V.S. Pritchett]

10 Resolutions for Mental Health

Andy Goldsworthy

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me. 

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing." 

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood. 

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do. 

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work. 

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence. 

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder." 

8. I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music. 

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now. 

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

 [Ten Resolutions from a lecture by Dr. Clyde Kirby, Source: Desiring God]

the huge solace of thinking that...we are not going to be judged

"Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in an afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium for the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murder, we are not going to be judged." 

[Czeslaw Milosz]