2:03 PM / January 5, 2009
longing for what belongs to us
All will come again into its strength:
The fields undivided, the waters undammed,
The trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong
And varied as the land.
And no churches where God
Is imprisoned and lamented
Like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
And a sense of boundless offering
In all relations, and in you and me.
No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
No belittling of death,
But only longing for what belongs to us
And serving earth, lest we remain unused.
Rilke
1:55 PM / January 5, 2009
the day star
When you suppose that you are as it were lost, our Lord will help you, as Job says: “Life will be brighter than noonday, and darkness will become like morning.” That is to say, when you are brought so low by laboring in temptation that it seems there is no help or comfort for you but as if you were a man destroyed, yet pray to God, and indeed you shall suddenly spring up as the day star in gladness of heart, and have true faith in God as Job says.
Walter Hilton - The Scale of Perfection
1:52 PM / January 5, 2009
water and wine
Knowledge by itself puffs up the heart into pride, but mix it with charity and then it turns into edification. This knowledge by itself is only cold insipid water, and therefore if they were willing to offer it humbly to our Lord and prayed him for his grace, he would with his blessing turn the water into wine. That is to say, he would turn insipid knowledge into wisdom, and the cold naked reason into spiritual light and burning love by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Walter Hilton - The Scale of Perfection
11:00 AM / January 2, 2009
i saw the light
I wandered so aimless life filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear Saviour in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord I saw the light.
I saw the light I saw the light
No more darkness no more night
Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord I saw the light.
Just like a blind man I wandered along
Worries and fears I claimed for my own
Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight
Praise the Lord I saw the light.
I was a fool to wander and astray
Straight is the gate and narrow the way
Now I have traded the wrong for the right
Praise the Lord I saw the light.
Hank Williams - I Saw the Light
12:56 PM / December 25, 2008
In the ancient Persian religion, it is forbidden to petition for blessings to themselves individually; the prayer must extend to the whole Persian nation.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:54 PM / December 25, 2008
Heraclitus was a fool, who wept always for the miseries of human life. or was he blind and deaf to beauty and melody? In his day, was the sky black, and were snakes instead of flowers coiled in his path? Was his mind reversed in its organization;- had he Despair for Hope, and Remorse for Memory? Could his disordered eye discern a savage Power sitting in this Splendid Universe, thwarting the good chances of Fortune and promoting the bad, sowing seeds of sorrow for glory, turning grace and tranquility to desolation, and heaven to hell? Then let him weep on. True philosophy hath a clearer sight, and remarks amid the vast disproportions of human condition a great equalization of happiness; an intimate intermingling of pleasure with every gradation, down to the very lowest of all. Pleasant and joyous are the connections of our sympathy and affection – this is proved by the very tear which marks their dissolution; and even that pang of separation and loss is relieved by its own indulgence…
Happiness lies at our own door. Misery is further away. Until I know by bitter personal experience that the world is the accursed seat of all misfortunes, and as long as I find it a garden of delights – I am bound to adore the Beneficent Author of my life…No representations of foreign misery can liquidate your debt to Heaven. You must join the choral hymn to which the Universe resounds in the ear of Faith, and I think, of Philosophy…
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:52 PM / December 25, 2008
The child who refuses to pollute its little lips with a lie, and the archangel who refuses with indignation to rebel in the armies of heaven against the Most High, act alike in obedience to a law which pervades all intelligent beings. The law is the Moral Sense; a rule coextensive and coeval with Mind. It derives its existence from the eternal character of the Deity, of which we spoke above; and seems of itself to imply, and therefore to prove his Existence…Whence comes this strong universal feeling that approves or abhors actions? Manifestly not from matter, which is altogether unmoved by it, and the connection of which with it is a thing absurd – but from a mind, of which it is the essence. That Mind is God.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:52 PM / December 25, 2008
We have one remarkable evidence to the character, from eternity, of that Being, in the divine determination to make man in the image of God. In all the insignificance and imperfection of our nature, in the guilt to which we are liable, and the calamity which guilt has accumulated, - man triumphs to remember that he bears about him a spark which all beings venerate and acknowledge to be the emblem of God, - which may be violated, but which cannot be extinguished. And we remark with delight the confirmations of this belief in the opening features of human character. And the little joy of the child who plants a seed and sees himself instrumental in the creation of a flower, forcibly reminds us of that beneficence which built the heavens and the earth, and saw that it was good.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:50 PM / December 25, 2008
I think it is pretty well known that more is gained to a man’s business by one half hour’s conversation with his friend, than by very many letters; for, face to face, each can distinctly state his own views; and each chief objection is started and answered; and, moreover, a more definite notion of one’s own sentiments and intentions, with regard to the matter, are gathered from his look and tones, than it is possible to gain from paper. It is therefore a hint borrowed from Nature, when a lesson of morals is conveyed to an audience in the engaging form of a dialogue, instead of the silence of a book, or the cold soliloquy of an orator. When this didactic dialogue is improved by the addition of pathetic or romantic circumstances, and, in the place of indifferent speakers, we are presented with the characters of great and good men, of heroes and demigods, thus adding to the sentiments expressed the vast weight of virtuous life and character – the wit of the invention is doubled.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:48 PM / December 25, 2008
How noble a masterpiece is the tragedy of Hamlet: it can only be spoken of and described by superlatives. There is a deep and subtle wit, with an infinite variety, and every line is golden.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:46 PM / December 25, 2008
I rejoice in the full and unquestionable testimony which certifies the sufferings of the Martyrs; as the most undeniable merit of the human race; it proves the existence of a consistency and force of character which might else to common minds appear chimerical…In those moments when a desperate view of the wrong side of the society will sometimes totally unsettle our convictions, and reason almost leans to doubt and Atheism, because the world is frail or mad, this saving recollection comes up like an angel of light to assure us that man have suffered the fierceness of the torture, have endured, and died for the faith…To keep inviolate the divine law, they have broken over the law of nature and the native fears of man and have dared to immolate this mysterious existence and try to the gulfs of futurity…
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:41 PM / December 20, 2008
It is strange that a world should be so dear which speculatively and seriously we acknowledge to be so unsatisfying and so dark. Not all its most glorious array when Nature is appareled in her best, and when Art toils to gratify, -not the bright sun itself, and the blazing firmament wherein he stands as chief – can prevent a man, at certain moments, from saying to his soul – “It is vanity.” No wild guesses, no elaborate reasoning can surmount this testimony to the familiar truth, that the human spirit has a higher origin than matter, a higher home than the earth; that it is too capacious to be always cheated with trifles, and too long-lived to amalgamate of mortality…
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:39 PM / December 20, 2008
In connection with the remarks on the Drama it should be further said, that this art is the most attractive, naturally, of all. The others speak to man from a distance, through cold and remote associations. The literature of a generation generally addresses but a scanty portion of society; of their contemporaries, history and poetry are confined to a few readers; philosophy and science to still fewer; but the buskined muse comes out impatient from these abstractions, to repeat in a popular and intelligible form the productions of the closet, to copy the manners of high and low life, to act upon the heart; and succeeds, by thus avoiding the haughty port of the Parnassian queens, to draw the multitude by the cords of love. Folly wins where wisdom fails; and the policy of adding to our attractions even at the cost of some wit, is seldom repented. This is the excellence of the drama which pretends to nothing more than to be a true picture of life.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:38 PM / December 20, 2008
Life is the spark which kindles up a soul and opens its capacities to receive the great lessons which it is appointed to learn of the Universe-of Good-of Evil- of accountability – of Eternity; of Beauty, of Happiness. The inestimable moment in which the history of past ages is opened, its own relations to the Universe explained; its dependence and independence shewn; the time to reach itself the affections, and to gratify them, to ally itself in kindly bonds with other beings of like destiny; the time to educate a citizen of unknown spheres; the time to serve the Lord.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:37 PM / December 20, 2008
Superior intellects are only drawn out into society by the action of those inducements which society holds for them. If, therefore, there are any who are above the solicitation of wealth, honor, and influence, and who can laugh ever at the love of Fame, the last infirmity of noble minds, there will be nothing left worth offering them, to attract them from their solitude; they must pass on through their discipline and education of life, unsympathized with, unknown, or perhaps, ignorantly despised. Thus the archangels pass among us unseen, for, if known, they could not be appreciated, and having faculties and energies which our organs can never measure, it is better that we never meet.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:36 PM / December 20, 2008
Never mistake yourself to be great, or designed for greatness, because you have been visited by an indistinct and shadowy hope that something is reserved for you beyond the common lot. It is easier to aspire than to do the deeds. The very idleness which leaves you leisure to dream of honor is the insurmountable obstacle between you and it. Those who are fitly furnished for the weary passage from mediocrity to greatness seldom find time or appetite to indulge that hungry and boisterous importunity for excitement which weaker intellects are prone to display. That which helps them on to eminence is in itself sufficient to engross the attention of all their powers, and to occupy the aching void. Greatness never comes upon a man by surprise, and without his exertions or consent; No, it is another sort of Genii who traverse your path suddenly; it is Poverty which travels like an armed man; it is Contempt which meets you in the corners and highways with a hiss, and Anger which treads you down as with the lighting. Greatness is a property for which no man gets credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged. Nor do I think this to be so absolutely rare and unattainable as it is commonly esteemed. This very Hope, and panting after it, which was alluded to, is, in some sort, and earnest of the possibility of success. God doubtless designed to form minds of different mould, and to create distinctions in intellect; still the extraordinary effects of education attest a capacity of improvement to an indefinite degree…
Emerson - Journals Volume I
5:00 PM / December 18, 2008
…Solitude has but few sacrifices to make, and may be innocent, but can hardly be greatly virtuous like Abraham, like Job, like the Roman Regulus or the Apostle Paul. Great actions, from their nature, are not done in the closet; they are performed in the face of the sun, and in behalf of the world…
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:59 PM / December 18, 2008
A beautiful thought struck me suddenly, without any connection which I could trace with my previous trains of though and feeling. It had no analogy to any notion I ever remembered to have found; it surpassed all others in the energy and purity in which it clothed itself; it put by all others by the novelty it bore, and the grasp it laid upon every fiber; for the time, it absorbed all other thoughts;-all the faculties-each in his cell, bowed down and worshiped before this new Star.-Ye who roam among the living and the dead, over flowers or among the cherubims, in real or ideal universes, do not whisper my thought !
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:58 PM / December 18, 2008
Poetical expression serves to embellish dull thoughts, but we love better to follow the poet, when the muse is so ethereal and the thought so sublime that language sinks beneath it.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
4:57 PM / December 18, 2008
The invisible connection between heaven and earth, the solitary principle which unites intellectual beings to an account and makes of men moral being – religion – is distinct and peculiar, alike in its origin and its end, from all other elations. It is essential to the Universe. You seek in vain to contemplate the order of things apart from its existence. You can no more banish this than you can separate from yourself the notions of Space and Duration. Through all the perverse mazes and shadows of infidelity the Light still makes itself visible, until the reluctant mind shudders to acknowledge the eternal encompassing presence of Deity. If you can abstract it from the Universe, the Soul is bewildered by a system of things of which no account can be given; instances of tremendous power – and no hand found to form them; a thousand creations in a thousand spheres all pointing upward to a single point – and no object there to see and receive – it is all a vast anomaly. Restore Religion and you give to those energies a sublime object…
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:07 PM / December 16, 2008
I am sick – if I should die what would become of me? We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns. I must improve my time better. I must prepare myself for the great profession I have purposed to undertake. I am to give my soul to God and withdraw from sin and the world the idle or vicious time and thoughts I have sacrificed to them; and let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances, and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation, to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:05 PM / December 16, 2008
The human soul, the world, the universe are laboring on to their magnificent consummation. We are not fashioned thus marvelously for naught. Thus straining conceptions of man, the monuments of his reason and the whole furniture of his faculties is adapted to mightier views of things than the mightiest he has yet behold. Roll on, then, thou stupendous Universe, in sublime, incomprehensible solitude, in an unbeheld but sure path. The finger of God is pointing out your way. And when ages shall have elapsed and time is no more, while the stars shall fall from heaven and the Sun become darkness and the moon blood, human intellect, purified and sublimed, shall mount to perfection of unmeasured and ineffable enjoyment of knowledge and glory. Man shall come to the presence of Jehovah. (In the manner of Chateaubriand)
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:21 PM / December 8, 2008
What a great man was Milton! So marked by nature fir the great Epic Poet that was to bear up the name of these latter times. In “Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty”, written while young, his spirit is already communing with itself and stretching out in its colossal proportions and yearning for the destiny he was appointed to fulfill.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:20 PM / December 8, 2008
I find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid and hollow. This is somewhat appalling and, if I do not discipline myself with diligent care, I shall suffer severely from remorse and the sense of the inferiority hereafter. All around me are industrious and will be great, I am indolent and shall be insignificant. Avert it, heaven! Avert it, virtue! I need excitement.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:14 PM / December 8, 2008
When we see an exquisite specimen of painting-whence does the pleasure we experience arise? From the resemblance, it is immediately answered, to the works of nature. It is granted that this is in part the cause, but it can’t explain the whole pleasure we enjoy; for we see more perfect resemblances (as a stone apple or fruit) without this pleasure. No, it arises from the power which we immediately recollect to be necessary to the creation of the painting.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:00 PM / December 8, 2008
Let us suppose a pulpit orator to whom the path of his profession is yet untried, but whose talents are good and feelings strong, and his independence, as a man, in opinion and in action is established; let him ascend the pulpit for the first time, not to please or displease the multitude, but to expound to them the words of the book and to waft their minds and devotions to heaven. Let him come to them in solemnity and strength, and when he speaks he will claim attention with an interesting figure and an interested face. To expand their views of sublime doctrines of the religion, he may embrace the universe and bring down the stars from their courses to do homage to their Creator. Here is a fountain which cannot fail them. Wise Christian orators have often and profitably magnified the inconceivable power of the Creator as manifested in his works, and thus elevated and sobered the mind of the people and gradually drawn them off from the world they have left by the animating ideas of Majesty, Beauty, Wonder, which these considerations bestow. Then when life and its frivolities is fastly flowing away from before them, and the spirit is absorbed in the play of its mightiest energies, and their eyes are on him and their hearts are in heaven, then let him discharge his fearful duty, then let him unfold the stupendous designs of celestial wisdom, and whilst admiration is speechless, let him minister to their unearthly wants, and let the ambassador of the Most High prove himself worthy of his tremendous vocation. Let him gain the tremendous eloquence which stirs men’s souls, which turns the world upside down, but which loses all its filth and retains all its grandeur when consecrated to God. When a congregation are assembled together to hear such an apostle, you may look round and you will see the faces of men bent forward in the earnestness of expectation, and in this desirable frame of mind the preacher may lead them whithersoever he will; they have yielded up their prejudices to the eloquence of the lips which the archangel hath purified and hallowed with fire, and this first sacrifice is the sin-offering which cleanses them.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
12:00 PM / December 4, 2008
holy envy
Those who at this time are going on to perfection proceed very differently and with quite another temper of spirit; for they progress by means of humility and are greatly edified, not only thinking nothing of their own affairs, but having very little satisfaction with themselves; they consider all others as far better, and usually have a holy envy of them, and an eagerness to serve God as they do. For the greater is their fervor, and the more numerous are the works that they perform, and the greater is the pleasure that they take in them, as they progress in humility, the more do they realize how much God deserves of them, and how little is all that they do for His sake; and thus, the more they do, the less are they satisfied. So much would they gladly do from charity and love for Him, that all they do seems to them nothing; and so greatly are they importuned, occupied and absorbed by this loving anxiety that they never notice what others do or do not do; or id they do notice it, they always believe, as I say, that all others are far better than they themselves. Wherefore, holding themselves as of little worth, they are anxious that others too should thus hold them, and should despise and depreciate that which they do. And further, if men should praise and esteem them, they can in no wise believe what the say; it seems to them strange that anyone should say these good things of them.
St John of the Cross - Dark Night of the Soul
11:57 AM / December 4, 2008
upon this road, to go down is to go up
For communications which are indeed of God have this property, that they humble the soul and at the same time exalt it. For, upon this road, to go down is to go up, and to go up, to go down, for he that humbles himself is exalted and he that exalts himself is humbled. And besides the fact that the virtue of humility is greatness, for the exercise of the soul therein, God is wont to make it ascend by this ladder so that it may descend, and to make it descend so that it may ascend, that the words of the Wise Man may thus be fulfilled, namely: ‘Before the soul is exalted, it is humbled; and before it is humbled, it is exalted.’
St John of the Cross - Dark Night of the Soul
11:55 AM / December 4, 2008
thy footsteps shall not be known
Speaking mystically, as we are speaking here, Divine things and perfections are known and understood as they are, not when they are being sought after and practiced, but when they have been found and practiced. To this purpose speaks the prophet Baruch concerning Divine wisdom: ‘There is none that can know her ways nor that can imagine her paths.’ Likewise the royal Prophet speaks in this manner concerning this road of the soul, when he says to God: ‘Thy lightings lighted and illuminated the round earth; the earth was moved and trembled. Thy way is in the sea and Thy paths are in many waters; and Thy footsteps shall not be known.’
St John of the Cross - Dark Night of the Soul
11:53 AM / December 4, 2008
the hands of god
O spiritual soul, when you see your desire obscured, your affections arid and constrained, and your faculties bereft of their capacity for any interior exercise, be not afflicted by this, but rather consider it a great happiness, since God is freeing you from yourself and taking the matter from your hands. For with those hands, howsoever well they may serve you, you would never labor so effectively, so perfectly and so securely (because of their clumsiness and uncleanness) as now, when God takes your hand and guides you in the darkness, as though you were blind, to an end and by a way which you know not. Nor could you ever hope to travel with the aid of your own eyes and feet, howsoever good you be as a walker.
St John of the Cross - Dark Night of the Soul
11:50 AM / December 4, 2008
the soul in purgation
For, although they are able to realize that they have a great love for God, this is no consolation to them, since they cannot think that God loves them or that they are worthy that He should do so; rather, as they see that they are deprived of Him, and left in their own miseries, they think that there is that in themselves which provides a very good reason why they should with perfect justice be abhorred and cats out by God for ever. And thus, although the soul in this purgation is conscious that it has a great love for God and would give a thousand lives for Him (which is the truth, for in these trials such souls love their God very earnestly), yet this is no relief to it, but rather brings it greater affliction. For it loves Him so much that cares about nothing beside; when, therefore, it sees itself to be so wretched that it cannot believe that God loves it, nor that there is or will ever be reason why He should do so, but rather that there is reason why it should be abhorred, not only by Him, but by all creatures for ever, it is grieved to see in itself reasons for deserving to be cast out by Him for Whom it has such great love and desire.
St John of the Cross - Dark Night of the Soul
9:33 PM / December 2, 2008
prayer
O ETERNAL and most gracious God, who art able to make, and dost make, the sick bed of thy servants chapels of ease to them, and the dreams of thy servants prayers and meditations upon thee, let not this continual watchfulness of mine, this inability to sleep, which thou hast laid upon me, be any disquiet or discomfort to me, but rather an argument, that thou wouldst not have me sleep in thy presence.
John Donne
5:22 PM / November 29, 2008
the traveler on the path of god
While the traveler on the path of God is involved in normal activities, he has certain links and connections with God. Endless waves of yearning flow in his heart, and flames of love consume his inner being. The pain and suffering of separation melt his heart. No one except God is aware of his inner ferment. Yet, whoever looks at his countenance will realize that love of God, longing for the Truth, and quest for His Sacred Being has turned him into such a state.
Allamah Tabatabaie – Kernel of the Kernel
5:20 PM / November 29, 2008
sublime love
What is there more systematically architectonic, more reflectively elaborate, than a Beethoven symphony? But all through the labor of arranging, rearranging, selecting, carried out on the intellectual plane, the composer was turning back to a point situated outside the plane, in search of acceptance or refusal, of a lead, an inspiration; at that point there lurked an indivisible emotion which intelligence doubtless helped to unfold into music but which was in itself something more than music and more than intelligence. Just the opposite of infra-intellectual emotion, it depended on the will. To refer to this emotion the artist had to make a constantly repeated effort, such as the eye makes to rediscover a star which, as soon as it is found, vanishes into the dark sky. An emotion of this kind doubtless resembles, though very remotely, the sublime love which is for the mystic the very essence of God.
Bergson - The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
2:52 PM / November 27, 2008
knowledge is the seed of longing
For knowledge is the seed of longing, but only to the extent that it encounters a heart freed from the thorns of the passions, for unless the heart be empty the seed will not bear fruit.
Ghazali - Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God
2:50 PM / November 27, 2008
imposed silence
Now weaning creatures from their habits and familiar belief is difficult, and the threshold of truth is too exalted to be broached by all or to be sought after except by lone individuals. The nobler the thing sought after the less help there is. Whoever mixes with people is right to be cautious; but it is difficult for one who has seen the truth to pretend not to have seen it. For one who does not know God-great and glorious-silence is inevitable, while for one who knows God most high, silence is imposed so it is said: ‘for one who knows God, his tongue is dulled’.
Ghazali - Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God
2:46 PM / November 27, 2008
the tongues of the eloquent fall short of praising him
Praise be to God, alone in His majesty and His might, and unique in His sublimity and His everlastingness, who clips the wings of the intellects well short of the glow of His glory, who makes the way of knowing Him pass through the inability to know Him; who makes the tongues of the eloquent fall short of praising the beauty of His presence unless they use the means by which He praises Himself, and His names and attributes which He has enumerated. And may blessings be upon Muhammad, the best of His creatures, and on his companions and his family.
Ghazali - Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God
9:21 PM / November 24, 2008
love is a cosmic force
Feelings one "has"; love occurs. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love. This is no metaphor but actuality: love does not cling to an I, as if the You were merely its "content" or object; it is between I and You. Whoever does not know this, know this with his being, does not know love, even if he should ascribe to it the feelings that he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love is a cosmic force. For those who stand in it and behold in it, men emerge from their entanglement in busy-ness; and the good and the evil, the clever and the foolish, the beautiful and the ugly, one after another become actual and a You for them; that is, liberated, emerging into a unique confrontation. Exclusiveness comes into being miraculously again and again-and now one can act, help, heal, educate, raise, redeem. Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling-the equality of all lovers, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blissfully secure whose life is circumscribed by the life of one beloved human being to him that is nailed his life long to the cross of the world, capable of what is immense and bold enough to risk it: to love man.
Martin Buber - I And Thou
8:57 PM / November 23, 2008
faith and uncertainty
Faith is certain in so far as it is an experience of the holy. But faith is uncertain in so far as the infinite to which it is related is received by a finite being. This element of uncertainty in faith cannot be removed, it must be accepted. And the element in faith which accepts this is courage. . . . Where there is daring and courage there is the possibility of failure. And in every act of faith this possibility is present. The risk must be taken.
Paul Tillich - Dynamics of Faith
1:18 PM / November 17, 2008
short prayers pierce heaven
If a man or woman is frightened by some sudden occurrence of fire, or of someone's death, or whatever else it may be, then suddenly in the extremity of his spirit he is driven by haste and necessity to shout and beg for help. So how does he do it? Certainly not in many word, or even in one word of two syllables. And why is that? Because it seems too long a delay the urgency and agitation of his spirit. And so he bursts our violently, in great emotion, and shouts just a short word of one syllable, such as the word FIRE! Or the word OUT! Just as this short word FIRE! sooner arouses the ears of listeners, and pierces them more rapidly, so does a short word of one syllable when it is not just spoken or thought but secretly intended in the depth of spirit, which is also the height (for in spiritual things it is all the same, height and depth, length and breadth). And it pierces the ears of almighty God sooner than any long Psalm mindlessly mumbled in the mouth. That is why it is written that short prayers pierce heaven.
The Cloud of Unknowing
1:16 PM / November 17, 2008
spiritual mirror
God's word, either written or spoken, can be compared to a mirror. Spiritually, the eye of your soul is your reason; your conscience is your face in spiritual terms. And just as you can see that, if there is a spot of dirt on your bodily face, your bodily eye cannot perceive that spot or know where it is without a mirror or instruction from outside itself, so it is spiritually. Without reading or hearing God's word, it is impossible to human understanding for a soul that is blinded by sinful habits to see a spot of dirt in its conscience.
The Cloud of Unknowing
8:08 PM / November 15, 2008
beauty will save the world
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three.
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy. After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970
6:29 PM / November 12, 2008
mohammed's summoning
for T.W.
Power stepped into his hiding place:
at once a presence he could not mistake.
He begged the Angel—pure, erect, ablaze—
to leave him as he was. He would forsake
all his ambitions; it was best he stayed
that baffled, over-traveled man of trade.
He'd never learned his letters…and now such
a word! For wise men, even, far too much.
But no, the Angel fiercely showed and showed
the writing on its page. This will that glowed
would not back down, again demanding:—Read.
And then he did. The Angel bowed its head
before him, one from thenceforth who had read:
who knew, and carried out, and who decreed.
Rilke
11:52 AM / November 8, 2008
the light of faith
Indeed, I seek profuse forgiveness from God for having wasted a part of my life studying the opinions of the pseudo-philosophers and polemicists from among the theologians and the intricacies of their discussions, learning their clever tactics of speech and their art of debate, until at last with the light of faith and the assistance of God, the Munificent, it become clear that their syllogisms were sterile and their path not straight. Thereafter, I surrendered my affair to Him and His Messenger, the Warner and the Warned, believed earnestly in all that he had reached us from him, accepting it without making any attempt to find some rational justification or scholarly interpretation for it. Rather, I followed His Prophet’s guidance, refrained from what was forbidden, and submitted to his injunction – as God the Exalted has said: “Take and follow whatever injunctions the Messenger brings you and refrain from what he forbids you” (59:7) – until God opened my heart to what He willed, and by the grace of following His Prophet, I was delivered and saved.
Mulla Sadra - Asfar