April 2014

Faith is always supernatural;
other virtues may become so.

Many things I regret, but I never regret my regrets.

The adept becomes silent through humility, and because she must. As she progresses in the spiritual life, her trials multiply and intensify. When she believes herself blessed, she is damned. At every bend in the path, she is thrown. She can no longer trust her own tongue.

There's one choice in life:
You can be a cynic or a fool.
Be a fool!

The romantic visions of idealists,
though they never come to pass,
yet contribute immensely to the larger discourse.
They are forever compromising,
and forever gaining ground.

Fearlessness is sentimental as all hell.
It isn't guarded. It's the furthest thing from "cool".
It's all you wanna do.

You're walking through your life,
and suddenly something wakes you up,
and it's not like anything else.
It's enough. Suddenly enough.
And she's so gorgeous, you can't bluff.

Of flowers, Chamomile is the Christ.

Christ was a bodhisattva, and Buddha was a Christian saint.

We can only see the world when we don't expect it.

We need fresh eyes to see the world;
knowledge is the enemy of sight,
and ignorance is anything but blind.

Truth is the highest wisdom, reality the truest teacher, and that which exists is always the good. This present moment is to be preferred, above all else; if only because anything else is a lie. All we suffer is a coming to terms. Life can tell us of nothing but herself. Let us never be fearful to hear her.

To be entertained by our own creations is a remarkable thing,
but to be content with what the Lord has made is a privilege of the saints.

Every man is a confession or defense of himself.

I am the most severe, and, yet, the most lenient of judges;
from the body, I require the spirit, but I suffer the soul to be flesh.

We are in sin like fish are in water. In sin, we live, move, and have our being. We breathe it, filter it, gobble it up with our food, excrete it in our shit; like filthy thoughts in the ink from our pens. Sin is our element, and we need it to live. Take us out of it, and we'd gulp madly for life, flop around helplessly, and die. We'd become something else.

So long as the poor cannot drink wine,
wine is the blood of the poor.

We accessorize with the flesh of impoverished peoples;
what would put meat on their bones, puts ribbons in our hair
and kerchiefs round our necks.

We should all be beggars. Charity is the privilege of God.

Possessions encourage desire for possessions,
and wants easily turn into needs.

God is born in the manger of a humble heart;
not the mansions of a richly furnished mind.

Camus would argue that a Christian has no greater ethical demand upon him than any other man, but Bloy, like Kierkegaard, would say there is no greater responsibility than the one we assume when we call ourselves Christian. For them, the name is an office, and it must not be disgraced. Camus would call that bullshit, and say that everyone is answerable to his own conscience, whether or not one aspires to be good, or to live up to a title of goodness. What is clear to me, at least, is that the man who regularly compares himself to Christ can have few illusions about himself; his conscience remains sharp, and will cut him unless he takes care.

The most important lessons are always learned too late;
we have the wisdom to appreciate only what is lost.

Greed is the mother of ills.

Mercy is our link to the Divine.

Drugs are the spice of life.

To be born is the ultimate rude awakening.

To be born is to be drafted into someone else's war.

In a corrupt society, procreation is the arresting of souls,
and parenthood is the guarding of prisoners sentenced to death.

Not everyone can be a surgeon, a concert pianist, or a tamer of wild beasts. But most everyone seems to think they'd make a good parent. It's funny how our standards of "good parenting", like everything else, have all but collapsed under the weight of history. We no longer aspire, and are content to consider our present limitations an immutable law of our innermost nature. Our family values, the cornerstones of civilization, are now left shoddy and misplaced. In such a state, the ones who most value the institution of family respect it enough not to enter into it; not without due consideration, at least, and, most importantly, due preparation. Anyone can raise a child, but to raise a man or woman is a rare talent, and a great skill.

Where adoption is an option, procreation is a travesty.

Man is a plague on the earth and on himself.

If you can still tap your feet, you're okay.

With the simplicity of profoundest insight, Marcel Proust writes, "The atheist forgets that what he is affirming is, precisely, a negation." And the case of the mystic is only the reverse; for the true mystic *knows*, with a conviction surpassing all understanding, "that what he is affirming is, precisely, a negation." To him, to whom God is not so much a thing, as a supersensual reality transcending all things, the absence of God in the world is no argument against his existence, but, on the contrary, works entirely in its favor. The world, -- that is, our world; of matter, distinction, and sense, -- could not possibly contain a reality sufficiently transcendent as to be worthy of the name of "God". It is with an eye to perfect simplicity, but, also, to the most impenetrable mystery, that the mystic speaks, when he says, "God is known by his absence; don't we all feel this presence?" So it is that the part of God which makes an appearance in the world comes not in his own name, and asks not that we believe in him, but only in the One who sent him. A messiah is born out of that nothingness, that vacuum, or void, wherein God cannot be seen, but can be known, according to the divine longing we have for him. This is a truth which cannot, and never will, be grasped by the vulgar, but only the subtlest hearts and minds.

God reveals Himself to each man
in the form in which he can see Him,

according to the power and nature of his sight.

Never let truth get in the way of the greatest story ever told.

Never let truth get in the way of a Good Friday.

A proud man cannot suffer to serve, nor give glory to one greater than himself. But he who would lead himself goes nowhere, and he who would be his own sovereign has only a fool for a king. He would make the journey of a thousand miles on foot, rather than place his trust in the river, whose course is swift. He cannot recognize the tremendous current of tradition, which has gathered together so many like-minded souls before him, and will continue long after he is gone, directing all paths into one. He seeks, rather, to map for himself a way he has not traversed. He would shake off the sure and gentle hands that could guide him, as though they were fetters of iron, and wander through dark and uncertain climes. He imagines himself first, who is last, and will heed the exhortations of no man, however sainted by decades of struggle and study. He would cast aside books containing the essence of great souls. Having no knowledge of what is written and done, he would proclaim, as if for the first time, prophecies which have long been fulfilled. He would reinvent, in the crudest form, what has passed through the hands of a million others, and been perfected long before he drew breath. Woe to that man who would be his own master and guide! Lead only by arrogance, he will surely meet a bitter end.