He who wishes to learn must believe.
··· Friday, 29 Jan 2010 ···
··· Wednesday, 30 Dec 2009 ···
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
··· Sunday, 27 Dec 2009 ···
He who is contented always has enough.
How to Avoid God
Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.
··· Saturday, 5 Dec 2009 ···
No God, No Meaning
…our reason naturally aspires to encompass the totality of being; and our will for order and our need to make sense of existence lead us instinctively to seek that which is both the root and the keystone of existence, and gives it its meaning. Even atheists, Nietzsche among them, knew this: order and meaning come from God, and if God really is dead, then we delude ourselves in thinking that meaning can be saved. If God is dead, nothing remains but an indifferent void which engulfs and annihilates us. No trace remains of our lives and our labours, there is only the meaningless dance of protons and electrons. The universe wants nothing and cares for nothing; it strives toward no goal; it neither rewards nor punishes. Whoever says that there is no God and all is well deceives himself.
— Leszek Kolakowski, Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal: Essays on Everyday Life (via) <link>
Image and Likeness
Is “image and likeness” a redundant phrase, or does it mark a distinction? Arguably the latter. To be created in God’s image is to be granted the potentiality for sharing in the divine life, a potentiality that may or may not be actualized and is shared in equally by all human beings without their consent. Likeness, however, results from man’s free actualization of that potentiality. Whereas the image of God is imposed on man, likeness to God is not, but requires the free cooperation of the creature.
··· Sunday, 29 Nov 2009 ···
Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think.
We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can’t agree on when it’s necessary to compromise.
··· Sunday, 27 Sep 2009 ···
When you do good, do it quietly, as if you were tossing a pebble into the sea.
··· Monday, 17 Aug 2009 ···
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
··· Tuesday, 4 Aug 2009 ···
A Question of Experience
To me, the God issue is a question of experience. For example, I want people I love not to die; I want friendships that are not betrayed; I want justice—desires that seem to make no sense, that appear in fact to be irrational…. There is, I admit, a certain uselessness to this, in terms of the fact that nothing in the world seems to correspond with or answer these desires. All that I ask of myself, and I think it is reasonable to ask everybody else, is to be faithful to that experience and to explore the implications of it. And if something is found that explains it, so that the question disappears, then fine, that’s the answer, and that’s that.
The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.
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