#eli

The Weaver My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me; I cannot choose the colors He worketh steadily. Oft times He weaveth sorrow And I, in foolish pride, Forget He sees the upper, And I the underside. Not til the loom is silent And the shuttles cease to fly, Shall God unroll the canvas And explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful In the Weaver's skillful hand, As the threads of gold and silver In the pattern He has planned. ↗

— Benjamin Malachi Franklin

#poem #poems #poetry #religious #religious-faith

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking. ↗

— Robert Anton Wilson

#people #religion #self-consciousness #faith

It all begins with goodness in the heart. ↗

— Bjorn Street

#faith #high-priest-master-ani #love #love-fellow-man #philosophical

There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence. ↗

— R. Scott Bakker

#god #ignorance #intolerance #religion #faith

A smile flitted across War's mouth, hidden by her helmet. She had little patience for religion (although she approved heartily of the religious fanatics who sought to cleanse the world of heresy), and the only faith War had was in cold steel and hot blood. ↗

— Jackie Morse Kessler

#religion #war #faith

The quintessential emblem of religion — and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core — is the sacrifice of a child by a parent. Almost all religious faiths incorporate the myth of such a sacrifice, and some have actually made it real. Lucretius had in mind the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon, but he may also have been aware of the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac and other comparable Near Eastern stories for which the Romans of his times had a growing taste. Writing around 50 BCE he could not, of course, have anticipated the great sacrifice myth that would come to dominate the Western world, but he would not have been surprised by it or by the endlessly reiterated, prominently displayed images of the bloody, murdered son. ↗

— Stephen Greenblatt

#religion #sacrifice #faith

The greatest joys in life are found not only in what we do and feel, but also in our quiet hopes and labors for others. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#encouragement #faith #hope #joy #prayer

A religion is not contained in a single book; there's something religious in almost any book. ↗

— John A. Buehrens

#religion #faith

I learned that within the confines of God’s story, nothing had been stolen from me, but rather everything was given to me. My life, which felt so out of control, was in reality in complete control – God’s control. ↗

— Wendy Blight

#faith #religion #trust #trusting-god #faith

We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon. ↗

— Gustavo Gutiérrez

#mind #religion #spirit #faith