January 2011
36 posts
each day
*Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.* Seneca
hard as life
*“You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward.”* **Rocky Balboa (2006) From a research associate
The challenge
*”The challenge for Catholic universities is finding a place for bibles and papal decrees between our telescopes and microscopes.”* * * ***John H. Garvey, president of the Catholic University of America, at a ceremonial inauguration yesterday.* (Washington Post) found on the Sojourners Blog
The Faith of others
*The problem is for us all to learn to live together with our seriously different traditions not only in peace but in some sort of mutual trust and mutual loyalty…The world has little profit from that broadminded relativist who accepts the diversity of men’s loyalties because he feels that no loyalties are ultimately valid, nothing is inherently worth while. Modern relativism is...
Love
*”Love, like death, changes everything”* * *Chekov From a research associate
Reynolds Price died January 20
*Reynolds Price died January 20 at age 77. A revered American writer, Price authored over 20 volumes of novels, poetry, memoirs and translations, as well as the lyrics for two songs with fellow North Carolinian James Taylor. As a teacher at Duke University, Price was unafraid to publicly critique the school’s anti-intellectual ambiance in a 1992 lecture. He was also openly gay, though he preferred...
Justice
*”Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions.”* * * Michel Foucault, (1926-1984) French philosopher
the peace of God ...
*The followers of Christ have been called to peace. … And they must not only have peace but also make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. … * *His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others.* *They maintain fellowship where others would break it off.*...
The Gift
*The Gift* * * *Time wants to show you a different country. It’s the one* *that your life conceals, the one waiting outside* * when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at in her crochet design, the one almost found over at the edge of the music, after the sermon. * * * *It’s the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.* *You get killed now and then, violated* * in...
the sacred call
*The sacred call is transformative. It is an invitation to our souls, a mysterious voice reverberating within, a tug on our hearts that can neither be ignored nor denied. It contains, by definition, the purest message and promise of essential freedom. It touches us at the center of our awareness. When such a call occurs and we hear it - really hear it - our shift to a higher consciousness is...
real work, real journey
*”It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.” **Wendell Berry* *From a research associate*
No more easy street
*To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more of the road that is too hard for us.* Dietrich Bonhoeffer, *The Cost of Discipleship*
Paying it Forward
*“It’s a labor of love, and people eat. Helping feed the hungry in this country is my way of thanking the United States for taking my parents in.’’* * * *Syd Mandelbaum, whose parents survived the Holocaust, founded an antipoverty think tank, Rock and Wrap It Up!, that works with 160 music bands, major hotel chains, and dozens of colleges, universities, and sports franchises to donate leftover...
Survival of Humanity
*”But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house, in which we live, demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools. We must work passionately and...
MLK, Jr. Day
*”A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just. …A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”* From a 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The importance of the past
*“If I didn’t have those people back there, I would never have had anything to write about. That’s where I got all my stories from. My life is from them. … I’m going to do everything to keep up for them, in memory. That is my duty from now until I die.” * *Author Ernest J. Gaines explaining why he takes care of an old cemetery on the former plantation where five generations of his ancestors, going...
if only...
*If one of my personalities were a counselor, perhaps I could figure out what’s wrong with me.* * * From the bottom of a friends email
Do you wonder?
*Heard this on a morning talk show * *”We can’t take a bottle of shampoo on an airplane, but almost anyone can walk into a Walmart and buy 500 rounds of ammunition.”* *Makes me wonder!* from a friend in a recent email.
A longing heart
*Whatever grief longing for him brings* *Whatever blood Love mixes in his wine* *Be grateful; there’s one worse fate –* *Never seeing him once.*** * * Jalal-ud-Din Rumi,1207-1273 (Translated by Andrew Harvey from *A Year of Rumi*)
the meal of kindness
*Since we ourselves are human beings, we must set before others the meal of kindness no matter why they need it – whether because they are widows, orphans, or exiles; or because they are brutalized by masters, crushed by rulers, dehumanized by tax-collectors, bloodied by robbers, or victimized by the insatiate greed of thieves, be it through confiscation of property or ship-wreck. All such people...
How is your light?
*Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.* *Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.* **Albert Schweitzer
One man, several things to ponder
*“We do not refuse to pray; we abstain from it. We ring the hollow bell of selfishness rather than absorb the stillness that surrounds the world, hovering over all the restlessness and fear of life – the secret stillness that precedes our birth and succeeds our death. Futile self-indulgence brings us out of tune with the gentle song of nature’s waiting, of mankind’s striving for salvation. * *Is...
...what I am to do...
*What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. … I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of...
half and half
*“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t. **The other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it”* Robert Frost
You can spin it anyway you like
*…Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. You can spin it anyway you like…but in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen.* Mockingjay (the final book of The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins Shared by research associate.
Epiphany from the Greek phainein to bring to light, to cause to appear, to show; epiphainein to manifest,epiphainea appearance Latin epiphania. Epiphany n: a festival observed on January 6, commemorating the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles; an appearance of manifestation esp.of a divine being, a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential...
Epiphany, Jan 6
*Epiphany from the Greek phainein to bring to light, to cause to appear, to show; epiphainein to manifest,epiphainea appearance Latin epiphania. Epiphany n: a festival observed on January 6, commemorating the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles; an appearance of manifestation esp.of a divine being, a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential...
Much of the current ‘Christian activism’ seems to be a smokescreen for shallowness, for lack of roots, for the activist to hide the fact that he hasn’t the foggiest notion of what he’s about. He is, as he likes to say, ‘the man for others.’ And this is as it should be. But many are the activists today who, when scratched only superficially, reveal only the...
A 'man' for others?
*Much of the current ‘Christian activism’ seems to be a smokescreen for shallowness, for lack of roots, for the activist to hide the fact that he hasn’t the foggiest notion of what he’s about. He is, as he likes to say, ‘the man for others.’ And this is as it should be. But many are the activists today who, when scratched only superficially, reveal only the...
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish author and playwright Permalink | Leave a comment »
Age changes everything
*The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.* Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish author and playwright
those who… “remain pitiful half-men, forgetting (what surely needs to be remembered in every sermon in Christendom) that not only thieves and murderers and whoremongers but also flabby persons cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven - ah, when some day the reckoning shall be made of the countless multitude of the human race, there will be found a greater number under the rubric...
spiritual flabbiness
those who… *”remain pitiful half-men, forgetting (what surely needs to be remembered in every sermon in Christendom) that not only thieves and murderers and whoremongers but also flabby persons cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven - ah, when some day the reckoning shall be made of the countless multitude of the human race, there will be found a greater number under the rubric...
You, O God, are above all that is. These words cannot contain all that could be sung of you. What hymn can ever celebrate your praise?And on what shall the mind rest since you are above the reach of all comprehension? You only are unknowable yet all that we can think comes forth from you.All beings give you praise, those that think and those that have no thought. All that is makes prayer to...
Unknowable
*You, O God, are above all that is. These words cannot contain all that could be sung of you. What hymn can ever celebrate your praise? And on what shall the mind rest since you are above the reach of all comprehension? You only are unknowable yet all that we can think comes forth from you. All beings give you praise, those that think and those that have no thought. All that is makes prayer to...
I am too alone in the world - Rainer Maria Rilke
*I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every hour holy. I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough just to stand before you like a thing, dark and shrewd. I want my will, and I want to be with my will as it moves towards deed; and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times, when something is approaching, I want to be with those who are wise or else alone. I want...