fish food

Nov
15th

Sun

We like lists because we don’t want to die.

— Umberto Eco, via Arts & Letters Daily (via lukescommonplacebook)

Nov
13th

Fri

I shall regret the absence of your keen mind. Unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body.

—

Gary Cooper, as Professor Bertram Potts, in Ball of Fire (via filmosophy2)

I’ve never seen the movie, but this gives me chills.

Nov
10th

Tue

Throw me a kid, God, throw me a knife,
So tell me Lord, am I the Antichrist?

— The Arcade Fire - (Antichrist Television Blues)

Nov
9th

Mon

If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family.

— Ram Dass (via psychotherapy)

Nov
5th

Thu

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

— Mark 15:38 Can we all try to figure out what to do with this? Why would he do this for a bunch of people who actively delude themselves into thinking they don’t need it?

Nov
3rd

Tue

Daylight Savings Mantra

sometimesagreatnotion:

julieklausner:

I need to remember that “darkness” and “sadness” are not the same thing, especially this time of year. As in, “It gets sadder earlier now.”

Oct
30th

Fri

Kierkegaard on the Couch (New York Times)

psychotherapy:

These days, confide to someone that you are in despair and he or she will likely suggest that you seek out professional help for your depression. While despair used to be classified as one of the seven deadly sins, it has now been medicalized and folded into the concept of clinical depression. If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.

There is abundant chatter today about “being spiritual” but scarcely anyone believes that a person can be of troubled mind and healthy spirit. Nor can we fathom the idea that the happy wanderer, who is all smiles and has accomplished everything on his or her self-fulfillment list, is, in fact, a case of despair. But while Kierkegaard would have agreed that happiness and melancholy are mutually exclusive, he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”

Oct
25th

Sun

It may be that we don’t often enough consider conversation as a form of social action, as a ministry, or as a spiritual discipline.

— Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, qtd. here (via wesleyhill)

Oct
19th

Mon

Evil rolls across the ages, but so does good. Good has its own momentum. Corruption never wholly succeeds. (Even blasphemers acknowledge God.) Creation is stronger than sin and grace stronger still. Creation and grace are anvils that have worn out a lot of our hammers. To speak of sin itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way. Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler. Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life. To concentrate on our rebellion, defection, and folly—to say to the world ‘I have some bad news and I have some bad news’—is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior. To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom.

— Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., qtd. here (via wesleyhill)