#eli

The death of a real deer at my hands was just a vaporous, remote presence that hovered over the figure of the paper deer forty-five yards away at target six of our archery range, as I tried to hit the heart-lung section marked out in heavy black. ↗

— James Dickey

#hunting #wilderness #death

When all that’s left of us is the pure untainted consciousness without form, we’ll know what it means when the last human breath expires. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#buddha #buddhism #death #left-hand-path #religion

Iar gclos báis Mháire i dtuairim cháich má fágbhadh m'ainnir faoi fhód, níor bhuadhaigh bás ar Mháire im mheabhair-se fós. ↗

— Pádraigín Haicéad

#death #gaeilge #gaelic #grá #ireland

Keep at it. Persistence does pay dividends. But there is a catch; you gotta believe it before manifestation will validate conviction as [your] truth. And sacrifice is a required path to fulfillment. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#believe #believing #believing-in-yourself #conviction #dividends

Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#loneliness #loss #love #memories #tessa-gray

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#god #religion #business

God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of His life in us. ↗

— Thomas Keating

#design

It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design. ↗

— Robert J. Sawyer

#chance #coincidenc-e #fine-tuning #id #intelligent-design

...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say 'I believe in gravity," one should not proclaim 'I believe in evolution. ↗

— Michael Shermer

#god #intelligent-design #religion #science #design

At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, 'Jesus is cool, it's just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.' This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force - not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man's comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus? ↗

— Mark Scandrette

#faith #jesus #religion #design