#ritual

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#funerals #rituals #social-functions #death

When a “runner” runs, they run. But in time the “runner” finds themselves in a no-brain situation. They are faced with the choice of living in pain from the separation from the twin soul, or returning and facing that deep love, working through their fears (often unfounded) of possible rejection and reaching their own personal Eden. ↗

— Chimnese Davids

#feelings #hurt #love #spiritual-love #love

Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#god #love #spiritual-health #love

When a man dies, his wife is burned alive with him, but if the wife dies before her husband, the man does not suffer the same fate. If a man dies before marriage, he is given a posthumous wife. The women passionately want to be burned because they believe they will enter paradise. ↗

— Mas'udi

#ritual #sexism #marriage

The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity. ↗

— Carlos Castaneda

#spiritual #men

These fools who haven't the slightest idea how to live the morals they espouse. These fools who proclaim themselves men of God, yet show not the slightest reverance to His word...Is it any different from a drunkard preaching temperance? A whore preaching modesty? ↗

— Seth Grahame-Smith

#religion #spirituality #men

Man has made remarkable strides in conquering outer space, but how futile have been his efforts in conquering inner space- the space in our hearts and minds of men. ↗

— Thomas S. Monson

#science #spiritual #men

What is truth? What is falsehood? Whatever gives wings to men, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts up a man's height above the earth - that's true. Whatever clips off man's wings - that's false. ↗

— Nikos Kazantzakis

#men

Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers. ↗

— J. Sidlow Baxter

#spiritual-warfare #men

Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and believe it did not exist. She was Joe's perfect mate. ↗

— Judith Spencer

#dissociation #dissociative-identity-disorder #evil #evil-men #mpd