#y

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. This is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#courage #creation #life #lord #meaning

Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith. Faith?" said the Master. He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?" That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts. ↗

— Anthony de Mello

#religion #spirituality #courage

Praying, we usually ask too much. I know I do. Sometimes we even demand. I think I am learning to ask enough for the moment--not for the whole year, utterly veiled in mystery; not even for the week, the month ahead; but just for today. Jesus said it all when He told us to pray: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' That bread is not only material, it is spiritual; in asking for it, we ask for a sufficiency of strength, courage, hope and light. Enough courage for the step ahead--not for the further miles. Enough strength for the immediate task or ordeal. Enough material gain to enable us to meet our daily obligations. Enough light to see the path--right before our feet. ↗

— Faith Baldwin

#enough #prayer #sufficient #today #courage

Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#courage

High standards generally -- about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else -- far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life. ↗

— Joseph Epstein

#art #life #snobbery #art

The entire partying lifestyle was superficial in my experience, and most of my friendships were as deep as a shot glass and as short-lived as a pack of cigarettes. ↗

— Kate Madison

#friendship #lifestyle #memoir #partying #shot-glass

Admittedly, art is somewhat like spit. It does not repulse or even worry is while it is still inside of us, but once it exits our body, it becomes disgusting. ↗

— Ivan Brunetti

#cartooning #creativity #philosophy #spit #art

Art is not the handmaid of politics. It is its own remedy! And its healing is sacral. ↗

— William Everson

#art

I was asked to be in the last two 'Harry Potter' films and I couldn't do it because I was busy filming 'Grey's Anatomy.' ↗

— Kevin McKidd

#asked #because #busy #filming #films

The homage paid to the fragment and the dismantling of the large narratives had had their spatial counterpart in the lack of integrated and conceptual vision of urban construction, and perhaps also of social construction. ↗

— Sverker Sörlin

#modernism #sweden #art