#owe

You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity…Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning.” I understand the concept. It’s just…there seems to be a contradiction.” Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man’s starvation, war, sickness…” Exactly!” Chartrand knew the camerlengo would understand. “Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn’t He?” The Camerlengo frowned. “Would He?” Chartrand felt uneasy. Had he overstepped his bounds? Was this one of those religious questions you just didn’t ask? “Well…if God loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help.” Do you have children, Lieutenant?” Chartrand flushed. “No, signore.” Imagine you had an eight-year-old son…would you love him?” Of course.” Would you let him skateboard?” Chartrand did a double take. The camerlengo always seemed oddly “in touch” for a clergyman. “Yeah, I guess,” Chartrand said. “Sure, I’d let him skateboard, but I’d tell him to be careful.” So as this child’s father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?” I wouldn’t run behind him and mollycoddle him if that’s what you mean.” But what if he fell and skinned his knee?” He would learn to be more careful.” The camerlengo smiled. “So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?” Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn.” The camerlengo nodded. “Exactly. ↗

— Dan Brown

#change

There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations ↗

— Michel Foucault

#discipline

Annabelle’s eyes stung as she stared at him, while need and inexhaustible tenderness gathered like an ache in her body. “I realized something,” she said huskily, “when I was standing outside the foundry, watching it burn and knowing you were inside.” She swallowed hard against the thickness in her throat. “I would rather have died in your arms, Simon, than face a lifetime without you. All those endless years… all those winters, summers… a hundred seasons of wanting you and never having you. Growing old, while you stayed eternally young in my memories.” She bit her lip and shook her head, while her eyes flooded. “I was wrong when I told you that I didn’t know where I belonged. I do. With you, Simon. Nothing matters except being with you. You’re stuck with me forever, and I’ll never listen when you tell me to go.” She managed a tremulous smile. “So you may as well stop complaining and resign yourself to it. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#hunt #simon #wallflower #winter

In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#budo #do #efficiency #flowers #ikebana

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. ↗

— Gene Roddenberry

#blames #creates #faulty #god #having

Neither heaven nor hell can keep me apart from you, Melanie. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#melanie #heaven

You gain power by pretending to be weak. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#power #weak #weakness

On September 11, the murders of World Trade Center employees and visitors took the lives of numerous nationalities, ethnic groups and religious followers. ↗

— Cliff Stearns

#employees #ethnic #ethnic groups #followers #groups

Our findings with reference to organized crime was that organized crime as an entity didn't participate in the assassination of the president. However, we were unable to preclude the possibility of individual members of organized crime having participated. ↗

— Louis Stokes

#crime #entity #findings #having #however

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. ↗

— Mervyn Peake

#description #gothic #owl #purple #ruin