Wonder is a state of mind in which we do not look at reality through the latticework of our memorized knowledge; in which nothing is taken for granted. Spiritually we cannot live my merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge. Inquire of your soul what does it know, what does it take for granted. It will tell you only no-thing is taken for granted; each thing is a surprise, being is unbelievable.
Man is Not Alone; p. 12
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The Heschel Series - Radical Amazement
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.
Wonder goes beyond knowledge. We do not doubt that we doubt, but we are amazed at our ability to doubt, amazed at our ability to wonder. He who is sluggish will berate doubt; he who is blind will berate wonder. Doubt may come to an end, wonder lasts forever.
Man is Not Alone; p. 12
Wonder goes beyond knowledge. We do not doubt that we doubt, but we are amazed at our ability to doubt, amazed at our ability to wonder. He who is sluggish will berate doubt; he who is blind will berate wonder. Doubt may come to an end, wonder lasts forever.
Man is Not Alone; p. 12
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
The Heschel Series - The Disparity of Soul and Reason
The awareness of the unknown is earlier than the awareness of the known. The tree of knowledge grows upon the soil of mystery... We should not expect thoughts to give us more than what they contain. Soul and reason are not the same.
Just as the simple-minded equates appearance with reality, so does the overwise equate the expressible with the ineffable, the logical with the metalogical, concepts with things.
The awareness of the ineffable is that with which our search must begin... The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
Man is Not Alone; pp. 7-8
Just as the simple-minded equates appearance with reality, so does the overwise equate the expressible with the ineffable, the logical with the metalogical, concepts with things.
The awareness of the ineffable is that with which our search must begin... The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
Man is Not Alone; pp. 7-8
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Heschel Series - The Ineffable part 2
What smites us with unquenchable amazement is not that which we grasp and are able to convey but that which lies within our reach but beyond our grasp; not the quantitative aspect of nature but something qualitative; not what is beyond our range in time and space but the true meaning, source and end of being, in other words, the ineffable.
Man is Not Alone; pp. 4-5
Man is Not Alone; pp. 4-5
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Heschel Series - The Ineffable
I'm pre-posting since I'm at Cornerstone this week. I'm following Abraham Joshua Heschel's book Man is Not Alone... it's best read in small bites. Can be kind of overwhelming but full of rich quotes.... drs
The attempt to convey what we see and cannot say is the everlasting theme of mankind's unfinished symphony, a venture in which adequacy is never achieved. Only those who live on borrowed words believe in their gift of expression. A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic, the most essential is never expressed.
Man is Not alone; p. 4
The attempt to convey what we see and cannot say is the everlasting theme of mankind's unfinished symphony, a venture in which adequacy is never achieved. Only those who live on borrowed words believe in their gift of expression. A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic, the most essential is never expressed.
Man is Not alone; p. 4
Saturday, June 25, 2011
John Wesley -- you can quote
Strangely I came across this quote in two different books today. It sounds like a famous one but I wasn't familiar with it so here it is:
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
-- John Wesley
Making College Count by Derek Melleby p. 36 and Patches of Godlight by Jan Karon
Make College Count and Patches of Godlight
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
-- John Wesley
Making College Count by Derek Melleby p. 36 and Patches of Godlight by Jan Karon
Make College Count and Patches of Godlight
Friday, June 24, 2011
Friendship and a crazy "coincidence?"
So on Wednesday the 22nd I got up and read my Business of Heaven devotion which included the following quote: "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create)." I had been having some problems with my car that my local mechanic wasn't able to fix so I went online looking for Honda repair shop ratings. In the comments section for Mike's Automobile Repair shop was a very positive review, the shop responded with the above quote. It was an unbelievable coincidence as this isn't exactly one of Lewis' more well known quotes and was posted a few months ago. Needless to say I had to give them a call. They had openings and yesterday I took a 40 mile trip and got my car fixed. Friendship may be unnecessary, but a well running car is kind of a necessity.
-- Thanks Brandon, Mike and other technician guy, yesterday was a really good day. -- drs
-- Thanks Brandon, Mike and other technician guy, yesterday was a really good day. -- drs
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Placarding Christ Crucified
But his preaching of the cross,... is a stumbling block to human pride, for it insists that we cannot achieve our salvation by anything we do. Indeed, we cannot even contribute to it. Salvation is a totally noncontributory gift of God. As Archbishop William Temple put it, "The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed."
Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 349
Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 349
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Something Dimly Seen
This one goes out to my mother-in-law MariLu who I know is a person who would appreciate this particular experience related by Buechner. -- drs
I remember a spring or so walking with a friend through a stand of maple trees at sugaring time. The sap buckets were hung from the trees, and if you were quiet, you could hear the sap dripping into them: all through the woods, if you kept still, you could hear the hushed drip-droppings of the sap into a thousand buckets or more hung out in the early spring woods with the sun coming down in long shafts through the trees. The sap of a maple is like rainwater, very soft, and almost without taste except for the faintest tinge of sweetness to it, and when my friend said he'd never tried it, I offered to give him a taste. I had to unhook the bucket from the tap to hold it for him, and when he bent his head to drink from it, I tipped the bucket down to his lips, and just as he was about to take a sip, he looked up at me and said, "I have a feeling you ought to be saying some words."
Well, my friend is no more or less religious than the next person, and we'd been chattering on about nothing in particular as we walked along until just at that moment as I tipped the bucket to his lips, he said what he said, and said it partly as a joke. He had a feeling I should be saying some words, he said, as I tipped the bucket to his lips so he could taste for the first time the taste of the lifeblood of a tree. And of course for a moment those unsaid words fell through the air of those woods like the shafts of sun, and it was no joke because the whole place became another place or became more deeply the place it truly was; and he and I became different, something happened for a second to the air around us and between us. It was not much and lasted only for a moment before it was gone. Bit it happened -- this glimpse of something dimly seen, dimly heard, this sense of something deeply hidden.
Listening to Your Life; June 21, p-. 163-4
I remember a spring or so walking with a friend through a stand of maple trees at sugaring time. The sap buckets were hung from the trees, and if you were quiet, you could hear the sap dripping into them: all through the woods, if you kept still, you could hear the hushed drip-droppings of the sap into a thousand buckets or more hung out in the early spring woods with the sun coming down in long shafts through the trees. The sap of a maple is like rainwater, very soft, and almost without taste except for the faintest tinge of sweetness to it, and when my friend said he'd never tried it, I offered to give him a taste. I had to unhook the bucket from the tap to hold it for him, and when he bent his head to drink from it, I tipped the bucket down to his lips, and just as he was about to take a sip, he looked up at me and said, "I have a feeling you ought to be saying some words."
Well, my friend is no more or less religious than the next person, and we'd been chattering on about nothing in particular as we walked along until just at that moment as I tipped the bucket to his lips, he said what he said, and said it partly as a joke. He had a feeling I should be saying some words, he said, as I tipped the bucket to his lips so he could taste for the first time the taste of the lifeblood of a tree. And of course for a moment those unsaid words fell through the air of those woods like the shafts of sun, and it was no joke because the whole place became another place or became more deeply the place it truly was; and he and I became different, something happened for a second to the air around us and between us. It was not much and lasted only for a moment before it was gone. Bit it happened -- this glimpse of something dimly seen, dimly heard, this sense of something deeply hidden.
Listening to Your Life; June 21, p-. 163-4
The Fruit of the Spirit
We need to cultivate the things of the Spirit by our wise use of Sundays, our daily disciplined private devotion, our regular public worship and attendance at the Lord's Supper, and our involvement in Christian service. For these are God-given means of grace, that is, channels through which God's grace comes to us, and a major secret of sanctification.
Through the Bible:Through the Year; p.348
Through the Bible:Through the Year; p.348
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Especial Glory of Affection
Affection ... can 'rub along' with the most unpromising people. Yet oddly enough this very fact means that it can in the end make appreciations possible which, but for it, might never have existed. We may say, and not quite untruly, that we have chosen our friends and the woman we love for their various excellences -- for beauty, frankness, goodness of heart, wit, intelligence, or what not. but it had to be the particular kind of wit, the particular kind of beauty, the particular kind of goodness that we like, and we have our personal tastes in these matters. That is why friends and lovers feel that they were 'made for one another'. ...
Growing fond of 'old so-and-so', at first simply because he happens to be there, I presently begin to see that there is 'something in him' after all. The moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not 'my sort of man' he is a very good man 'in his own way' is one of liberation. It does not feel like that; we may feel only tolerant and indulgent. But really we have crossed a frontier. The 'in his own way' means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncrasies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate.
The Business of Heaven; June 15, pp. 154-5
Growing fond of 'old so-and-so', at first simply because he happens to be there, I presently begin to see that there is 'something in him' after all. The moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not 'my sort of man' he is a very good man 'in his own way' is one of liberation. It does not feel like that; we may feel only tolerant and indulgent. But really we have crossed a frontier. The 'in his own way' means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncrasies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate.
The Business of Heaven; June 15, pp. 154-5
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Bible Without Tears
Buechner gives some excellent thoughts about how to read the Bible in today's reading. He gives 7 really good ideas, but I'm only going to share numbers 6 and 7... hey, you really should be getting a copy of this book anyway. --- drs
6. If somebody claims that you have to take the Bible literally, word for word, or not at all, ask him if you have to take John the Baptist literally when he calls Jesus the Lamb of God.
If somebody claims that no rational person can take a book seriously which assumes that the world was created in six days and man in an afternoon, ask him if he can take Shakespeare seriously whose scientific knowledge would have sent a third-grader into peals of laughter.
7. Finally this. If you look at a window, you see fly-specks, dust, the crack where Juniors Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond.
Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore and those who see it as the Word of God which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.
Listening to Your Life; June 14, p.159
6. If somebody claims that you have to take the Bible literally, word for word, or not at all, ask him if you have to take John the Baptist literally when he calls Jesus the Lamb of God.
If somebody claims that no rational person can take a book seriously which assumes that the world was created in six days and man in an afternoon, ask him if he can take Shakespeare seriously whose scientific knowledge would have sent a third-grader into peals of laughter.
7. Finally this. If you look at a window, you see fly-specks, dust, the crack where Juniors Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond.
Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore and those who see it as the Word of God which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.
Listening to Your Life; June 14, p.159
Friday, June 10, 2011
Mockingbird on Friday Night Lights and Glee
This article is an excellent example of comparing and contrasting the Theology of the Cross and the Theology of Glory through current media.
Why don't I have Mockingbird on my list of links???? Soon to be corrected.
Why don't I have Mockingbird on my list of links???? Soon to be corrected.
Heschel on Knowledge by Appreciation
Abraham Joshua Heschel's prose is more poetic to me than most poetry. -- drs
What is extraordinary appears to us as habit, the dawn of a daily routine of nature. But time and again we awake. In the midst of walking in the never-ending procession of days and nights, we are suddenly filled with a solemn terror, with a feeling of our wisdom being inferior to dust. We cannot endure the heartbreaking splendor of sunsets. Of what avail, then, are opinions, words, dogmas? In the confinement of our study rooms, our knowledge seems to us a pillar of light. But when we stand at the door which opens out to the infinite, we realize that all concepts are but glittering motes that populate a sunbeam.
Man is Not Alone; p. 35
I really liked yesterday's Upper Room devotional..
Thursday's Upper Room Devotional
What is extraordinary appears to us as habit, the dawn of a daily routine of nature. But time and again we awake. In the midst of walking in the never-ending procession of days and nights, we are suddenly filled with a solemn terror, with a feeling of our wisdom being inferior to dust. We cannot endure the heartbreaking splendor of sunsets. Of what avail, then, are opinions, words, dogmas? In the confinement of our study rooms, our knowledge seems to us a pillar of light. But when we stand at the door which opens out to the infinite, we realize that all concepts are but glittering motes that populate a sunbeam.
Man is Not Alone; p. 35
I really liked yesterday's Upper Room devotional..
Thursday's Upper Room Devotional
Thursday, June 9, 2011
There are no Ordinary People
This is one of those really famous C.S. Lewis quotes actually from June 7th of The Business of Heaven; p. 147-8
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 can 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... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked with a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
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 can 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... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked with a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
Paul in Athens
It is the comprehensiveness of Paul's message that is impressive. He proclaimed God in his fullness as Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Father, and Judge. All this is part of the gospel, or, at least, the necessary prolegomena to the gospel. Many people are rejecting our gospel today, not because they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be trivial. They are looking for an integrated worldview that makes sense of all their experience. We learn from Paul that we cannot preach the gospel of Jesus without the doctrine of God, or the cross without creation, or salvation without judgement, or vice versa. Today's world needs a bigger gospel, the full gospel of Scripture, what Paul later in Ephesus was to call "the entire plan of God" (Acts 20:27 NAB)
Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 334
Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 334
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Prayer is Life
I like this thought from an Anonymous Russian: in The Way of the Pilgrim particularly because of the practical nature of what is shared.
The truth is: we are aliens to ourselves. We have little desire to know ourselves. We run after many things in this world, and by doing so run away from ourselves...
Prayer is the heart of Christian life. It is essential. Prayer is both the first step and the fulfillment of the devout life. We are directed to pray always. Particular times may be set for other acts of devotion, but for prayer there is no special time. We are to pray constantly.
Sit alone in a quiet place. Take your mind away from every earthy and vain thing. Bow your head to your chest and be attentive, not to your head, but to your heart. Observe your breathing. Let your mind find the place of the heart. At first you will be uncomfortable. If you continue without interruption it will become a joy.
The most wonderful result of this kind of mental silence is that sinful thoughts which come knocking at the door of the mind are turned away. Pray and think what you will. Pray and do what you want. Your thoughts and activity will be purified by prayer.
Near to the Heart of God; June 8
The truth is: we are aliens to ourselves. We have little desire to know ourselves. We run after many things in this world, and by doing so run away from ourselves...
Prayer is the heart of Christian life. It is essential. Prayer is both the first step and the fulfillment of the devout life. We are directed to pray always. Particular times may be set for other acts of devotion, but for prayer there is no special time. We are to pray constantly.
Sit alone in a quiet place. Take your mind away from every earthy and vain thing. Bow your head to your chest and be attentive, not to your head, but to your heart. Observe your breathing. Let your mind find the place of the heart. At first you will be uncomfortable. If you continue without interruption it will become a joy.
The most wonderful result of this kind of mental silence is that sinful thoughts which come knocking at the door of the mind are turned away. Pray and think what you will. Pray and do what you want. Your thoughts and activity will be purified by prayer.
Near to the Heart of God; June 8
Monday, June 6, 2011
Hell
Very sorry for not updating lately... computer problems. Today's June 6th reading from The Business of Heaven continues Lewis' clearly thought out defense of the reality of hell. Apparently there were questions back in the day... there really is nothing new under the sun. -- drs
The demand the God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness...
I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end, that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside... (The ghosts in Hell) enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved; just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell, is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
The demand the God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness...
I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end, that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside... (The ghosts in Hell) enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved; just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell, is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Buechner on Life
Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality -- not as we expect it to be but as it is -- is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily: that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love. This is not just the way things ought to be. Most of the time it is not the way we want things to be. It is the way things are. And not for one instant do I believe that it is by accident that it is the way things are. That would be quite an accident.
Listening to Your Life May 24, p.133
The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else...
There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us.
Listening to Your Life May 27, p.137-8
Listening to Your Life May 24, p.133
The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else...
There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us.
Listening to Your Life May 27, p.137-8
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