“…’I think about religion, most of it is same-same.’
‘Not everybody thinks so, Ketut. Some people like to argue about God.’
‘Not necessary,’ he said. ‘I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make arguement about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, “I agree with you.” Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.’….”
–Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
religion
Morning Trip (83)
Normally, I do not write as myself on the Morning Trip posts. I’ve been feeling a slow-down, which might be a speeding-up, here. I’m working very hard and getting nowhere. I’m doing nothing and making leaps. I do not think in myself, that I can tell. I know that it is all ok. I feel really NOT ok! Many thoughts about what I found this morning, and then even suggestions for music for me, had selections dealing with the same issues. So, I’m going with it, in gratitude for those who post such things, so that I might find them in a moment of ‘need’ for myself.
“The search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
Stopped by Cops in South Carolina Where the Billboards Shift from Jesus to Porn and Back Again, I Understand My Affliction
“Stopped by Cops in South Carolina Where the Billboards Shift from Jesus to Porn and Back Again, I Understand My Affliction
It’s as American as the F.B.I. Hoover in drag, a zealot in silk stockings, careful not to smudge his lipstick as he reads me my rights. The desire to reach the heavens gets mixed up with the pursuit of naked flesh, and the next thing I know, I’m ordering coffee and apple pie a la mode in a topless diner, next to a Bible salesman who can’t get enough of those free refills. Halleluiah! Can I get a waitress? One who was at the scene of the crime? That’s the easy part. It’s as simple as a right hand and a left. I’m guilty of human needs. And here the billboards remind me, like flashcards for a five-year-old, alternating Lust and Love. Moving too fast is what got me here, stopped on the side of the road. The cops wear mirrored shades to keep their own sins hidden. The sign I’m next to features Jesus ascending and a 1-800 number to call if I feel alone. But I’m more hungry than lonely, and once I get my ticket, I’m gone.”
~~Christopher Kennedy
ennui prophet
I read this collection immediately after posting the post about Luxuria. I liked this one and one other in particular, though most of them had something that jumped out at me. Ahhh…the mood of the day!
Thank you Mr. Kennedy!
What creates leaders, followers, and those that are neither?
There are those that lead. There are those called experts. There are those that follow. These follow for many reasons, sometimes because the way feels good to them, sometimes because they have been taught that a person must be educated and an expert so they ignore themselves and search for signs of what another tells them is right and proper. There are those who simply do what feels right to them. Sometimes in doing what feels right a person bumps up against a teaching or a way of behaving that is similar, synchronistic, other times not.
What about the very very poor that have nothing? If one must have a teacher, how does one value their teaching and assess their abilities other than to just take their word for it and be a sheep? Please share your ideas and experiences with this.
Affixing sandal to a stick and running
elisa
Morning Trip (48)
“A person may be very learned in all things, and his philosophical knowledge may be very profound. He has studied all the ancient lore of wisdom, and has even formulated his own system of metaphysics in which he has incorporated all the results of his erudition and speculation. But from the religious point of view he is yet far from enlightenment, for his study is like that of the artist who has painted a dragon and forgot to put the eyes in. His elaborate delineation and coloring in various hues of this huge mystic animal have miserably failed to produce the effect desired and attempted, for the eyes are blank and show no trace of the fiery animation which is possessed by the monster. The scholar has neglected the most important factor that is absolutely necessary in making up the complete knowledge of the universe. He thought that he knew everything under the sun when he exercised his intellectual power to its full extent and considered existence from all the possible standpoints which his understanding could grasp. But, as I stated before, the knowledge of an object is not complete unless its inner life or reason is felt; in other words, unless the duality of a knowing mind and a known object vanishes, and life is comprehended as it is and not in its intellectual mutilation.”
– Soyen Shaku
Elisa's Spot 