February 2012
35 posts
2 tags
Need
“What needs could I have,” she said, “now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”
C.S. Lewis. The Great Divorce.
Possibilities
darcyoh:
“Why imagine that specific genes for aggression, dominance, or spite have any importance when we know that the brain’s enormous flexibility permits us to be aggressive or peaceful, dominant or submissive, spiteful or generous? Violence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviors. But peacefulness, equality, and kindness...
2 tags
Identity crisis
“But the dominant fact of the new Democratic majority is that it has begun to overturn the racial dynamics that have governed American politics for five decades. Whatever its abstract intellectual roots, conservatism has since at least the sixties drawn its political strength by appealing to heartland identity politics. In 1985, Stanley Greenberg, then a political scientist, immersed himself...
2 tags
Of the American School
”[…] the distinctive contribution of the United States to the history of liberal education has been to deploy it on behalf of the cardinal American principle that all persons have the right to pursue happiness, and that “getting to know,” in Matthew Arnold’s much-quoted phrase, “the best which has been thought and said in the world” is helpful to that...
1 tag
1 tag
Ash Wednesday
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy...
Let thy servant depart
acheiropoietos:
“Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; The stubborn season has made stand. My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand. Dust in sunlight and memory in corners Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land. Grant us thy peace. I have walked many years in this city, Kept faith and...
How indeed?
acheiropoietos:
Thou hast sealed…the earth…and they are deep. The heavens and the heavens of the heavens, and the abysses and the dark places of the earth…Thou, O my God, hast sealed them all and there is none to open them…Does one measure by the hollow of a human hand the waters of the great ocean? Are the heavens estimated by the span of fingers? In one third of a measure can any contain the...
2 tags
“God became man so men might become gods”
– St. Athanasius
2 tags
2 tags
Eternity considered
Time we may comprehend […] but to retire so farre backe as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forward, as to conceive an end in an essence that wee affirme hath neither the one nor the other; […] God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him, ‘tis the priviledge of his owne nature; I am that I am, was his owne definition unto Moses, and ‘twas...
“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth...”
– Psalm 91:5 (KJV)
To contemplate the mysteries
acheiropoietos:
azorica:
To immerse myself in an air untainted by the human scent. To be cushioned (plushly) by age-old stone… each stalactite, each stalagmite piercing the under-ether. To be the only indentation in purity: the only depression. To be amongst only the still, tacet. To see the wan luminescence of the wingless damsels (a hushed cri de coeur to their airborne compeers). To swathe...
1 tag
Another Mystery
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other...
3 tags
“
no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and...”
–
from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson (via acheiropoietos)
One of my favorite volumes. I bought a copy immediately after discovering it.
3 tags
“The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had...”
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (via invisibleforeigner)
4 tags
Byzantium, 1204 →
If you’re not already aware of this site, Rachel, you should be.
4 tags
"What more should I say?"
Quid plura? Primum domo una coniungimur, postmodum animo. Sub occasione itaque discipline, amori penitus vaccabamus, et secretos recessus, quos amor optabat, studium lectionis offerebat. Apertis itaque libris, plura de amore quam de lectione verba se ingerebant, plura erant oscula quam sententie; sepius ad sinus quam ad libros reducebantur manus, crebrius oculos amor in se reflectebat quam lectio...
3 tags
