“If there is a God, it is not an insignificant fact, but something that requires a radical rethinking of every little thing. Your knowledge of God can’t be considered as one fact among many. You have to bring all other facts into line with the fact of God.”
– Simone Weil, quoted by Sara Miles in City of God, (New York: Jericho Books, 2014) pg. 9
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on conversion…
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on Advent…
“Into this world, this demented inn, where there was absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.”
– Thomas Merton, quoted by Martin Sheen (Ramón Estévez) on the On Being episode “Spirituality of Imagination,” December 16, 2015
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on understanding…
Karl Barth was once asked, “What is the nature of church?” by a young student at a lecture. He responded, “The church is wherever two or more are gathered, and you are understood at your deepest level.”
– Rev. Emily Heath in her UCC “stillspeaking Daily Devotional” on November 17, 2015
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on reason and faith …
“In so far as the intellectual climates of different epochs can be contrasted, the eighteenth century in Europe was the complete antithesis to the Middle Ages. … the Middle Ages were haunted with the desire to rationalize the infinite: the men of the eighteenth century rationalized the social life of modern communities, and based their sociological theories on an appeal to the facts of nature. The earlier period was the age of faith based upon reason. In the later period, they let sleeping dogs lie: it was the age of reason, based upon faith. To illustrate my meaning: – St. Anselm would have been distressed if he had failed to find a convincing argument for the existence of God, and on this argument he based his edifice of faith, whereas Hume based his Dissertation on the Natural History of Religion upon his faith in the order of nature. In comparing these epochs it is well to remember that reason can err, and that faith may be misplaced.”
–– Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 57, NY: The Free Press, 1925, from 1969 edition.
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on the end …
Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright it is not the end.
– Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel), in “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel“ (Blueprint Pictures, 2011)
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on people …
Sometimes the people no one imagines anything of are the ones who do the things no one can imagine.
– Alan Thuring (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Joan Clarke (Kiera Knightley) in “The Imitation Game” (Black Bear Pictures, 2014)
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And I the smallest thing,
made drunk by the great void,
starred,
in the image, likeness
of mystery,
felt myself pure part
of abyss,
turned with the starlight,
my heart broken loose in the wind.
Pablo Neruda, from “Memorial de Isla Negra”
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on becoming …
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.
– Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
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on vision …
We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion.
– Ansel Adams, 1984
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on winning …
Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win
And we drew a circle that took him in!
– Edwin Markham, 19th and 20th-century Disciples poet (Chalice Hymnal #551)
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windshepherd 