This Might Be True

Lion before Storm

2009-01-23T14:10:00.000-08:00

NO TWO SNOWFLAKES ARE THE SAME

2008-03-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

How could anyone have checked, or is this
something else to accept on faith, like enough
is enough or what's good for big business
is good for the country and each time I love
you is said it's different? How do you tell
Africans, for whom it's usual

to substitute egret feathers in
translations: no two plumes are a match, and why
does that sound that less dubious? Once you begin
asking there's that icy cold, the six-sided-
symmetry -- too much that's unique to trust
induction. Here the rare returns like dust

you can't brush off and yearnings that go on
to become those persistent selves we resume
each morning as if by magic. The power of reason,
like past and future, could be myth, and Hume,
be right: cause is no more than an habitual
association. Like doubt, but less cruel.

MARK HALPERIN

What does this mean?

2008-01-25T17:11:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated with this illustration. I don't know that I like it, or that it represents anything worthy, but it's interesting enough that it has been my wallpaper for at least a week. You'd think I'd have a profound opinion by now. What do you think?

Synergy?

2007-06-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

I've always been a little put off by the jerky connotations of the word 'synergy' -- I don't know where I picked up the assumption that it's a tired buzzword -- but look at the OED's definition of 'synergism':

Synergism

1. Theol. The doctrine that the human will co-operates with Divine grace in the work of regeneration.

www.oed.com

I think that's interesting.

Sonnet CXVI

2006-12-02T01:21:00.000-08:00

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

2006-11-26T09:47:00.000-08:00

On what logic can do to faith:
"...the voluntary, continuous, and, so to say, enthusiastic striving for a deliberate dichotomy of the human consciousness shatters the spirit's forces at the root. Intelligence is then transformed into cleverness, emotion into blind passion, beauty into illusion, truth into opinion, learning into a syllogism, reality into a springboard for the imagination, virtue into smugness; while theatricality becomes life's inseparable companion, serving as an external cover for falsehood even as idle fancy provides its internal mask." --Ivan Kireevsky

2006-10-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
--Bertrand Russell

2006-10-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

If china, then only the kind
you wouldn't miss under ther movers' shoes or the treads of a tank;
if a chair, then one that's not too comfortable, or
you'll regret getting up and leaving;
if clothes, then only what will fit in one suitcase;
if books, then those you know by heart;
if plans, then the ones you can give up
when it comes time for the next move,
to another street, another continent or epoch
or world:

who told you you could settle in?
who told you this or that would last forever?
didn't anyone tell you you'll never
in the world
feel at home here?

--Stanislaw Baranczak

Thomas Merton on Despair

2006-10-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost...Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of a damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny ourselves. But a person who is truly humble cannot despair, because in a humble person there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

From Lizzy

2006-10-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

"The fortunate man is he to whom the gods have granted the power either to do something worth recording, or write something worth reading. Most fortunate of all is the man who can do both." -Pliny

God does not ask us about our ability, only our availability. If we prove our dependability, He will increase our capability. -Unknown

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people will do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can do something great. -Mark Twain

The Devil's cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do God's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. -C.S. Lewis