April 22, 2012
"In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from Him for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I’d been, all of my life, missing the entire point.
No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him. The reason? It was magnificently simple: He knew how or why everything happened; He knew the disposition of every single soul.
He wasn’t going to let anything happen by accident! Nobody was going to go to Hell by mistake. This was His world, all this! He had complete control of it; His justice. His mercy—were not our justice or our mercy. What folly to even imagine such a thing.
I didn’t have to know how He was going to save the unlettered and the unbaptized, or how He would redeem the conscientious heathen who had never spoken His name. I didn’t have to know how my gay friends would find their way to Redemption; or how my hardworking secular humanist friends could or would receive the power of His Saving Grace. I didn’t have to know why good people suffered agony or died in pain. He knew.
And it was His knowing that overwhelmed me. His knowing that became completely real to me, His knowing that became the warp and woof of the Universe which He had made.
His was—after all—the Divine Mind which had made the miracle of the Big Bang, and created the DNA only lately discovered in every physical cell. His was the Divine Mind that had created the sound of the violin in the Beethoven concerto; His was the Divine Mind that made snowflakes, idle flames, birds soaring upwards, the unfolding mystery of gender, and the gravity that seemingly held the Universe together—as our planet, our single little planet, hurtled through space.
Of course. If He could do all that, naturally He knew the answer to every conceivable question before it was formulated. He knew the worst suffering that a human soul could feel. Nothing was wasted with Him because He was the author of all of it. He was the Creator of creatures who felt anger, alienation, rage, despair. In this great novel that was action, every voice, every syllable, and every jot of ink.
And why should I remain apart from Him just because I couldn’t grasp all this? He could grasp it. Of course!
It was love that brought me to this awareness, love that brought me into a complete trust in Him, a trust that God who made us could not ever abandon us—that the seeming meaninglessness of our world was the limit of our understanding, but never, never the limit of His."

Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession by Anne Rice
p. 183-185

April 14, 2012

(Source: xdawn)

April 14, 2012
fostering the people love ♥ on We Heart It. http://weheartit.com/entry/25220146

fostering the people love ♥ on We Heart It. http://weheartit.com/entry/25220146

April 8, 2012

brandonschulman:

The theme of Japaneses artist Nobuhiro Nakanishi work is “the physical that permeates into the art piece.” Laser print mounted with plexiglass acrylic and layered in a way that it all come up as some intriguing sculpture installations. ” In a foggy landscape, we no longer see what we are usually able to see – the distance to  the traffic light, the silhouette of the trees, the slope of the ground. Silhouettes, distance and horizontal sense all become vague. When we perceive this vagueness, the water inside the retina and skin dissolve outwardly toward the infinite space of the body surface.

The landscape continues to flow, withholding us from grasping anything solid. By capturing spatial change and the infinite flow of time, I strive to produce art that creates movement between the artwork itself and the viewer’s experience of the artwork.

Photographic Art by: Nobuhiro Nakanishi

Text by: Cyril Foiret

February 15, 2012
"Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived."

— The Dalai Lama when asked what surprised him the most

February 15, 2012
"We need to become habitually open to the way in which the Spirit works within us. We shall not achieve that unless we become habitual in our habits of prayer."

February 8, 2012
"Scriptures about dying to self, finding one’s life by losing it, being crucified with Christ, and living only for Christ make it clear that realizing true fulfillment depends not on preoccupation with fulfillment but on preoccupation with knowing God through absolute surrender"

— Crabb

January 31, 2012
"The ground is level at the foot of the Cross"

— Pastor Todd Mullins

January 19, 2012

Man is a chord
His wife harmony
The timbre found
Strums sweet symphony

January 10, 2012
"Good morning, God, and thank you
For the glory of the sun,
And thank you for the health I have
To get my duty done.
I shall devote the hours
of this golden day to You,
By honoring Your Holy Name
In everything I do.
I shall pursue my daily art,
Without complaint or fear
And spend my every effort
To be friendly and sincere.
I know there have been many days
That I have whiled away,
But this is one that I will try
To make Your special day.
And so, once more,
Good Morning, God!
And please depend on me,
Because I want to honor You
For all eternity."

— James J. Metcalfe

January 7, 2012

December 30, 2011
"It teaches something we must all learn if and when Truth calls us. For what is the lesson of science? What is the lesson of religion? Whenever Truth commands us, we must obey it and utter it aloud whether our friends and neighbors and countrymen like it or not."

Lewis Mumford –  in reference to Jonah at his National Medal for Literature acceptance speech, 1972

December 30, 2011
above and below

above and below

(via pedromourapinheiro-deactivated2)

December 30, 2011

I just need a dash of audacity

December 30, 2011
A walk to antiquity

A walk to antiquity

(Source: orionfalls)

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