Abbe Faria: “When I told them I had no idea where Count Spada hid his treasure, I lied.” Edmond Dantes: “You lied?” Abbe Faria: “I’m a priest, not a saint… …Here now is your final lesson – do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, ‘Vengeance is mine.’” Edmond Dantes: “I don’t believe in God.” Abbe Faria: “I doesn’t matter. He believes in you.” -//- Love’s work is wrought through some strange mixture of…
“Words are futile devices.” -Sufjan Stevens -//- I have a bad habit of using lots of words when I write. If you’ve ever read from this blog, it’s probably the first thing you noticed. I offer my apologies: I do not use a lot of words because I love words. It is probably because I have lots of thoughts, and very few places to safely share the words that those thoughts represent. I suppose the unspoken thoughts have a way…
I don’t know why I’m drawn to philosophy. I’m honestly not very good at it. I tried to write a syllogism this morning, and my eyes glazed over. It seems to me that most people are only ever drawn to what they’re already kinda good at, or intend to become good at, or even used to be good at. Maybe if I can’t manage to write out one simple syllogism, I should probably take the hint, get over myself, put…
-//- As frost and blossoms Signify Spring’s arrival Both So saint and sinner Justified A contradiction’s Hope -//-
For different reasons and in different contexts, whether such judgments are warranted or not, I’ve sometimes been slapped with the label of “Weirdo.” Maybe you have, too? Our culture tends to romanticize its “eccentrics.” Well, kind of. It’s probably more accurate to say that we romanticize those rare innovators, entrepreneurs, artists, leaders, or otherwise significant figures whose various “eccentricities” proved useful to society’s desires and causes (at the time). In the capitalist “West,” at least, we probably only like eccentricity-as-commodity….
-//- An excerpt from Jan Potocki’s “The Manuscript Found in Saragossa” (originally published in 1805): I thought the hermit smilled at my naivety. Then he said to me, ‘I can see, my son, that you still have faith, but I fear that you may lose it … If they offered you a vast fortune to change religion, would you accept it?’ ‘Certainly not!’ I replied. ‘It seems to me that to renounce ones religion is as dishonorable as to desert…
Christian Church finds ‘sacred space between worlds’ on Monroe riverfront At Riverfront Community Church, rituals with ancient roots celebrate the Christian God, the local community, and “the smell of BBQ and sounds of good friends praying and laughing together” by Patty Snorkler (Saturday March 16th 2024 6:30 am) MONROE – You don’t become a child of God. “You just wake up and realize that’s what you’ve always been,” Pastor Francesca Davis said. “And now you have a name for it.”…
Someone left his feathers on the lawn of my backyard I thought that he’d be swifter than these weak and willful arms His plumes are strewn haphazardly His pinions overpreened His crest is bent and flimsy like the tongue between his beak Someone left his feathers spread across my property and, naked as a jaybird, wheels with malice over me
I like birds. – Eels Somehow in the last three or four years, I have fallen in love with birds. I don’t really know anything about them, but I have an app and some binoculars and a North American field guide from the 90’s (or so) that I used to leaf through as a little kid. That’s all to say, I could learn about birds and maybe get to know quite a lot about them. In the digital age especially,…
“Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which was laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has…