#theo

I used unexpectedly to experience a consciousness of the presence of God, or such a kind that I could not possibly doubt that He was within me or that I was wholly engulfed in Him. This was in no sense a vision: I believe it is called mystical theology. The soul is suspended in such a way that it seems to be completely outside itself. The will loves; the memory, I think, is almost lost; while the understanding, I believe, thought it is not lost, does not reason—I mean that it does not work, but is amazed at the extent of all it can understand; for God wills it to realize that it understands nothing of what His Majesty represents to it. ↗

— Teresa of Ávila

#mystical-theology #mysticism #prayer #experience

Do you suppose it's so much easier to make conversation with someone you already know well than with someone you don't know at all primarily because of all the previously exchanged information and shared experiences between two people who know each other well, or because maybe it's only with people we already know well and know know us well that we don't go through the awkward mental process of subjecting everything we think of saying or bringing up as a topic of light conversation to a self-conscious critical analysis and evaluation that manages to make anything we think of proposing to say the other person seem dull or stupid or banal or on the other hand maybe overly intimate or tension-producing? ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#experience

What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a given time and place. ↗

— Elif Batuman

#neuro-lit-crit #theory #experience

Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised. ↗

— Joni Eareckson Tada

#faith #suffering #theology #faith

We tend to believe that God's commands are given to us merely for our own sake. But this is not true. As those created in the image of God, our very nature as image bearers explains the reasons behind God's commands. ↗

— Gerald Hiestand

#sin #theology #dating

In AA we don’t come to God through theology but through experience, mostly of the humbling and humiliating variety, often reluctantly, and sometimes even kicking and screaming. – p. 179 ↗

— Ray A.

#theology #experience

Más realidades hay en la experiencia que en la mejor de las teorías. ↗

— Fernando Araya

#reality #theory #experience

We believe that the creation of a woman was the crowning and final and most glorified moment of human creation. That we start with light & dark and land & sea and we move through fish & fowl & beasts of the field and we get to Adam and it's still not good enough. And only when Eve was created -- this is our theology [...] -- that is our theology, that the crowning creation and the glory of the human experience came with the creation of Eve." - see http://youtu.be/eF-JfX85A5s?t=11m53s ↗

— Jeffrey R. Holland

#creation #feminism #lds #mormon #religion

Theology isn't what drove them to their...theology." author writes on dealing with the embittering experience of those who protect a wounded place with abstract arguments. ↗

— Andy Stanley

#bitterness #theology #experience

...childbirth is at best necessary and tolerable. It is not fun. (Like shitting a pumpkin, a friend of mine told me when I inquired about the Great-Experience-You-Are-Missing.) ↗

— Shulamith Firestone

#experience