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Writing
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Scrapbook - Notes from my Bedroom Wall
"The great artists keep us from frozenness, from smugness, from thinking that the truth is in us rather than in God, in Christ our Lord. They help us to know that we are often closer to God in our doubts than in our certainties, that it is all right to be like the small child who constantly asks: Why? Why? Why?"
"Comfort is an experience. If it becomes a core value it becomes dangerous."
"Finally towards spring there was the great glacier run, smooth and straight, forever straight if our legs could hold it, our ankles locked, we running so low, leaning into the speed, dropping forever and forever in the silent hiss of the crisp powder. It was better than flying or anything else, and we built the ability to do it and to have it with the long climbs carrying the heavy rucksacks. We could not buy the trip up nor take the ticket to the top. It was the end we worked for all winter, and all the winter built to make it possible."
"The world of ordinary days affords us that precise association with God that redeems both us and our speck of the world. God entrusts and allots to everyone an area to redeem: this creased and feeble life, 'the world in which you live, just as it is and not otherwise.' A farmer can unfetter souls and free divine sparks in his beasts and his houses, his garden and his meadow, his tools and his food.' Here and now, presumably, an ordinary person would approach with a holy and compassionate intention the bank and the post office, the carpool, the God-help-us television, the retirement account, the car, phone, and keys. 'Insofar as he cultivates and enjoys them in holiness, he frees their souls...He who prays and sings in holiness, eats and speaks in holiness, in holiness performs the appointed ablutions, and in holiness reflects upon his business, through him the sparks which have fallen will be uplifted, and the worlds which have fallen will be delivered and renewed."
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
"When you're traveling, ask a traveler for advice, not someone whose lameness keeps him in one place." "It's right to love your home place but first ask, 'Where is that, really?"
"The opposite of sin can only be faith, and never virtue"
"You can't buy your way in. You can't amuse yourself in. You can't even expect falling in love to deliver you. The most promising way to happiness is, perhaps, through creativity. Through literally creating a fulfilling life for yourself by identifying some unique talent or passion and devoting a good part of your energy to it, forever."
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
"My love is a weight, a gravitational force." "If you think you understand, it isn't God."
"'Ah,' Rieux said, 'a man can't cure and know at the same time. So let's cure as quickly as we can. That's the more urgent job.'"
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