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- “Faith is not infrarational, meaning ‘below reason.’ That’s credulity, that’s superstition, that’s accepting things on no evidence, that’s childish. God gave us brains, and he wants us to use them. Authentic faith never involves a sacrificium intellectus, as the medievals said, a ‘sacrifice of the intellect.’ In fact, that’s a sign that your faith is inauthentic. If you feel obligated to leave your mind aside to have faith, it’s not real faith. Real faith is not infrarational, it’s suprarational, it’s beyond reason, but inclusive of it…There may be darkness on the far side of reason, but never on the near side. There’s never a suspending of one’s critical faculties. Authentic faith awakens the mind.” (Robert Barron: To Light a Fire on the Earth)
- "The purest form of love, I think, is having someone who wants to learn about you, from you and with you."
- “At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? / And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?” (Ilya Kaminsky, from “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck,” Deaf Republic)
- "Full offense but your writing style is for you and nobody else. Use the words you want to use; play with language, experiment, use said, use adverbs, use “unrealistic” writing patterns, slap words you don’t even know are words on the page. Language is a sandbox and you, as the author, are at liberty to shape it however you wish. Build castles. Build a hovel. Build a mountain on a mountain or make a tiny cottage on a hill. Whatever it is you want to do. Write."
- "If there are flowers in you, send them out, explode with color and grace; waste no sunlight, no time in the hiding. If you’re made to bloom, bloom." (Tyler Knott Gregson)
- "When Jesus rose from the dead He didn’t make a speech, He made breakfast for His friends." (Bob Goff)
- "Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness…" (Kurt Vonnegut)
- "Ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying “God is hard to find” (Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen)
- "My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth." (John Piper, Finally Alive: What Happens When We Are Born Again?)
- "You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)
- "I think people would make much better decisions when it comes to dating if they stopped focusing on things like weddings and babies and instead focused on things like funerals and disappointment. What I mean is when I think about who I want to marry, I can’t just stop at who I want to meet at the altar. Because when you’re thinking about the person you want to spend your natural life with, that means the person who will be by your side when life is hard. When your parents die. When you lose your job. When your child is hurt. When bill can’t get paid. And when all of those painful moments come, you have to think “is this the person i want by my side? Is this the person who will be generous and giving when I’m in need? Is this the person who will find the words to soothe my aching heart? Is this the person that when I look across the room through tearful eyes, I want to, need to see their face?” What I’m saying is when you’re thinking till death do us part, you really have to listen to the whole vow. The commitment is more than just walking down the isle. Its who you want to walk through life with."
- "Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway. So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look" (Pablo Picasso)
- "A poem must burst with a truth-seeking flame and be a small symphony of language, too." (Henri Cole, Orphic Paris)
- “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” (Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan)
- "If all you can do is crawl, start crawling." (Rumi)
- "People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used." (Emmanuel Torres, Shapes of Silence)
- "If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn." (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)
- “How, in [such dark places], gold draws so much light to itself is a mystery to me. But I see why in ancient times statues of the Buddha were gilt with gold and why gold leaf covered the walls of the homes of the nobility. Modern man, in his well-lit house, knows nothing of the beauty of gold; but those who lived in the dark houses of the past were not merely captivated by its beauty, they also knew its practical value; for gold, in these dim rooms, must have served the function of a reflector. Their use of gold leaf and gold dust was not mere extravagance. Its reflective properties were put to use as a source of illumination.” (Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows)
- "Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” (C.S. Lewis)
- "Love is a guess / That deepens" (E.E. Cummings)
- “Recently, my son said to me after seeing a ballet on television: ‘It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it.’ And I thought, Are many grown-ups capable of such a distinction? It’s beautiful, but I don’t like it. Usually, our grown-up thinking is more along the lines of: I don’t like it, so it’s not beautiful. What would it mean to separate those two impressions for art making and for art criticism?” (“59. it’s beautiful, but I don’t like it” from 100 essays I don’t have time to write: on umbrellas and sword fights, parades and dogs, fire alarms, children, and theater, sarah ruhl)
- “You say ‘amateur’ as if it was a dirty word. ‘Amateur’ comes from the Latin word ‘amare’, which means to love. To do things for the love of it.” (Mozart in the Jungle)
- "If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul; you haven’t experienced poetry.” (Edgar Allan Poe)
- “They kept asking me, ‘What does the poem mean? What does the poem mean?’ And it was frustrating me because poems don’t mean. They suggest. They enact. They provoke.” (Richard Siken)
- "Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth. A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper." (Ursula K. Le Guin)
- "Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.” (Steven Pressfield)
- "Coffee feels good because it gives us energy! But it’s a counterfeit energy that’s short-lasting, addictive, and some use it in place of a good night’s sleep/exercise. God gave us the gift of being able to feel renewed and awake through good sleep and exercise, and coffee is a counterfeit replacement. / Casual sex can feel really good in the moment! The physical stimulation, sense of momentary closeness, excitement, etc. hit all the right buttons in our neurological wiring and it’s temporarily a good feeling. But it’s a counterfeit for what God designed sex to be- those benefits enrich a permanent bond between two people, allowing them to become closer to each other, better partners, and a more united family unit. / Is caffeine actually damaging? Sometimes, but not always. Is casual sex actually damaging? Often, but not always. But by partaking in either, we’re getting a watered-down, counterfeit version of what was designed to bless and enrich us in both physical and spiritual senses. / Likewise, immodesty can feel great and empowering! Especially when we work hard to keep our figures strong and healthy, it can feel really great to express ourselves with our hard-earned bodies as the centerpiece. / But, in my opinion, it’s also counterfeit. God made our bodies sensual to enrich our bonds with our husbands. God gave us the ability to obtain health and strength so that we could live happily and go about our lives effectively. / Immodesty is a counterfeit expression of those blessings. By choosing immodesty, we can find ourselves misusing those blessings, which doesn’t put our spiritual well-being at the forefront of our priorities."
nov 14 2019 ∞
nov 26 2019 +
nov 26 2019 +