#th

The theological perspective of participation actually saves the appearances by exceeding them. It recognizes that materialism and spiritualism are false alternatives, since if there is only finite matter there is not even that, and that for phenomena really to be there they must be more than there. Hence, by appealing to an eternal source for bodies, their art, language, sexual and political union, one is not ethereally taking leave of their density. On the contrary, one is insisting that behind this density resides an even greater density – beyond all contrasts of density and lightness (as beyond all contrasts of definition and limitlessness). This is to say that all there is only is because it is more than it is. (...) This perspective should in many ways be seen as undercutting some of the contrasts between theological liberals and conservatives. The former tend to validate what they see as the modern embrace of our finitude – as language, and as erotic and aesthetically delighting bodies, and so forth. Conservatives, however, seem still to embrace a sort of nominal ethereal distancing from these realities and a disdain for them. Radical orthodoxy, by contrast, sees the historic root of the celebration of these things in participatory philosophy and incarnational theology, even if it can acknowledge that premodern tradition never took this celebration far enough. The modern apparent embrace of the finite it regards as, on inspection, illusory, since in order to stop the finite vanishing modernity must construe it as a spatial edifice bound by clear laws, rules and lattices. If, on the other hand, following the postmodern options, it embraces the flux of things, this is an empty flux both concealing and revealing an ultimate void. Hence, modernity has oscillated between puritanism (sexual or otherwise) and an entirely perverse eroticism, which is in love with death and therefore wills the death also of the erotic, and does not preserve the erotic as far as an eternal consummation. In a bizarre way, it seems that modernity does not really want what it thinks it wants; but on the other hand, in order to have what it thinks it wants, it would have to recover the theological. Thereby, of course, it would discover also that that which it desires is quite other than it has supposed ↗

— John Milbank

#god #liberalism #philosophy #radical-orthdodoxy #secularism

The men have piled up in my past, have fallen trenchantly through my life, like an avalanche that doesn't mean to kill but is going to bury me alive just the same. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#avalanche #bury #fallen #going #just

You can't know how much a mother loves. ↗

— Jessica Fortunato

#loss #love #mom #mother #love

There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#artists #arts #arts-and-humanities #dignity #dignity-in-the-arts

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril. ↗

— Sun Tzu

#strength-of-spirit #art

Alright. Let's get realistic now. You know and I know that the function of that number was just to provide some sort of warm-up trash before we do something HEAVY. Something a little bit harder to listen to, but which is probably better for you in the LONG RUN. The item in this instance, which will be better for you in the LONG RUN, and if we only had a little more space up here we could make it visual for you, is "Some Ballet Music," which we've played at most of our concert series in Europe. Generally in halls where we had a little bit more space and Motorhead and Kansas could actually fling themselves across the stage, and give you their teenage interpretation of the art of The Ballet. I don't think it's too safe to do it here, maybe they can just hug each other a little bit and do some calisthenics in the middle of the stage. ↗

— Frank Zappa

#good-for-you #the-ark #art

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth. ↗

— Aberjhani

#beauty #famous-poets #life #philosophy #poetry

You were unsure which pain is worse -- the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will. ↗

— Simon Van Booy

#life #love #beauty

I watch as the waves interlace and entwine around one another, free of pattern or routine. They collide and wrestle like oblivious children, naïve to the absence to naïvety. Careless to the absence of carelessness. And I know what I want. I want to play, I want to live, I want to breathe. I want to experience the basic human lust for life itself. I want to bask in the imperfections of nature, bathe in the elaborate simplicity of our tiny world, relish in the beauty of culture, art and love. I know what I want, but the essence of need is another question entirely. ↗

— George MacDonald (The Runaway State)

#gobslapped #inspirational #the-runaway-state #art

Wonderful art can spring from misery,I'm the last person to deny that.I'd go even further:the best works of art of all time are probably stemmed from the deep human sorrow or hellish frustration,the death of a loved one or a divorce and yes:jealousy.Heartache and impotence as the man-spring for making the unverifiable verifiable and for giving it face.How romantic,beautiful and especially useful pain and misery can be. ↗

— Esther Verhoef

#close-up #esther-verhoef #life #pain #art