“When a man turns away from God, he simply gives himself up to the law of gravity. Then he thinks that he can decide and choose, but he is only a thing, a stone that falls.”
Tag: words
Emmanuel Levinas, The Proximity of the Other, 98
“All encounter begins with a benediction, contained in the word ‘hello’; that ‘hello’ that all cogito, all reflection on oneself already presupposes and that would be a first transcendence. This greeting addressed to the other man is an invocation. I therefore insist on the primacy of the well-intentioned relation toward the other. Even when there may be ill will on the other’s part, the attention, the receiving of the other, like his recognition, mark the priority of good in relation to evil.”
Paul Ricoeur, from”Listening to the Parables of Jesus” (Criterion, 13 [Spring 1974], 1822)
“[Jesus’ parables] are “a language which from beginning to end, thinks through the
Metaphor and never beyond…there is more in the parables taken
together than in any conceptual system about God. We are, in the Parables taken as a whole,
given much more to think through than the coherence of any concept offers…[We can] draw from the Parables nearly all the kinds of theologies which have divided Christianity
through the centuries … and taken all together, they say more than any rational theology…They give rise to thought [but cannot be reduced to] theological simplifications which we attempt to put in their place.”
From Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” (April 30, 1967, Riverside Church, New York)
He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth shall set you free.” Now, I’ve chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we’re always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
From “Subtle Is the Lord” by Mike Puican
The wildness of the heart increases in the dark.
You say, “Subtle is the Lord; my head is tied to a pole.”
You lie in your bed in a bird suit. You sing
a song not so much unsung, as wordless.
Subtle is the Lord; your head is tied to a pole.
You say, “For God to speak, remove your hands from His throat.”
“In Saïs, the statue of Athena, whom they equate with Isis, bore the inscription: ‘I am all that has been, and is, and shall be; no mortal has yet raised my veil.’
—Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, § 9 (354 C).
“Christ did not hide truths in order to prevent them from being communicated, but in order to provoke desire for them by this very concealment.”
—Saint Augustine: Sermons, 51, 4, 5.
“The more these things seem to be obscured by figurative words, the sweeter they become when they are explained.”
—Saint Augustine: On Christian Doctrine, iv, vii, 15.
“But in order that manifest truths should not become tiring, they have been covered with a veil, while remaining unchanged, and thus they become the object of desire; being desired, they are in a way made young again; with their youth restored, they enter the spirit gently.”
—Saint Augustine: Letters, 137, V, 18.
“The plain fact is that not
all facts are plain…’The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi,’ said Heraclitus referring to Apollo the god
and symbol of wisdom, ‘neither speaks nor conceals but gives signs.’… There are
meanings of high, sometimes of very high importance, which cannot be stated in
terms strictly defined….Plain speech may sometimes have conceptual exactitude,
but it will be inaccurate with respect to the new thing that one wants to say, the
freshly imagined experience that one wants to describe and communicate.”
— Philip Wheelwright, The Burning Fountain: A Study in the Language of Symbolism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), p. 86.
“These things are veiled in figures, in garments as it were, in order that they may exercise the mind of the pious inquirer, and not become cheap for being bare and obvious … For being remote, they are more ardently desired, and for being desired they are more joyfully discovered.”
—Saint Augustine: Against Lying, X, 24.
“Vielleicht ist nie etwas Erhabeneres gesagt oder eine Gedanke erhabener ausgedrückt worden als in jener Aufschrift über dem Tempel der Isis (der Mutter Natur): ‘Ich bin alles was da ist, was da war und was da sein wird, und meinen Schleier hat kein Sterblicher aufgedeckt.’”
“[Perhaps nothing more sublime has ever been said or a thought has been expressed more sublimely, than in that inscription on the temple of Isis (Mother Nature): ‘I am all that is, that has been, and that shall be, and no mortal has raised my veil.’]”
—Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790. (§ 49, footnote.)
Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.
Arundhati Roy (via la-femme-terrible)
James Richardson, Vectors: Thirty-six Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays
Those who demand consideration for their sacrifices were making investments, not sacrifices.
Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, 13
“I will never be in a man’s place, never will a man be in mine. Whatever identifications are possible, one will never exactly occupy the place of the other—they are irreducible one to the other.”
from Delirious Hem: DAY 19, FEMINISM AND FITNESS – CARRIE LORIG AND ELISABETH WORKMAN
*THE HANGED WOMAN angel/trickster, tree jewelry, hovercraft/hoverlaugh, light radar “To the outside world, a person with sacred values may seem upside down, backwards, the wrong way around. His or her behavior and concerns are different than those of society…..// Surrender is not solemn or grim.”
When men are oppressed, it’s a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it’s tradition.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin (via yidquotes)
Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it. Other affections have to be severely disciplined.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (via lazz)
Little Bristling Soul 