In choosing the right over the wrong, the question becomes, how well do you know God? And that boils down to, how deep is your faith?

Paul uses the example of differing opinions about food and days among the believers in Rome to teach that Christians should not despise or judge one another. Note that he does not advise them to find a happy medium between the contending opinions or to average the two extremes into a compromise. On the contrary, he admonished that “every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” He declares that God is able to make both stand, since both of them are serving the Lord in obedience to their individual convictions of His will… Each of us has to find personally what is the will of God for his own life, and let all others meet their responsibility to do the same… For God, by giving different commands to many, and putting them together according to His plan, shall accomplish ultimately His complete will.

notes
there is a song written of forgotten notes
sung by silence, when the trees are still
unmistakably haunting as it slips away
as time drives you on past the moment
to live life as if we never knew the secret
yet holding a hope strange with simplicity
breathing in breezes, a rustling of the trees

If you cannot believe because of all the suffering in the world, your idea of God isn’t great enough.

how can i see you everywhere, where you are not, except every slightest hint
i have wandered following strange paths and i reach only brief strangers
all to the music of the spheres in the autumn night, the cadence of destiny
you are dreams away, and with me inside the lift of the imagining
as like sunlight slipping through a crystal rose, a reverie of your eyes’ delight
as the drop of a pebble down a bottomless void, you are not here with me
waiting as the summer rains freeze midair, to bloom as snowflakes million

Right now, I am going to reassess things. Like if I want to keep writing on this site, at all. For the time being, I will at least take another break from here, to see what happens in other places in my life. I imagine that I will need to keep writing, somewhere, but there is no lack of places for me to do this. It is perhaps that I feel somewhat underappreciated at this particular venue. Also it might be that I am a bit tired, to do this as regularly as I do. I might need something of more of a sporadic nature to do me right. So this might be farewell, (and thanks for all the fish,) but who knows what the future holds? Strange things have been known to happen, though as we know, they don’t tend to (or else they would not be so strange?). Bless you all.

May my desire always be rooted in love.

there are fires no soul has ever seen, nor has felt their heat
that is which burns so with love it cannot be withstood by mortals
to remember that with these fires were our own spirits forged

Last time I talked to you
You were lonely and out of place
You were looking down on me
Lost out in space

Laying underneath the stars
Strung out and feeling great
Watch the red orange glow
Watch it float away

– Our Lady Peace

Max Ernst: My Friend Pierrot

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“When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” If He should now come, would He find it in us? What fruits of faith have we to show? Do we look upon this life only as a short passage to a better? Do we believe that we must suffer with Jesus Christ before we can reign with Him? Do we consider this world as a deceitful appearance, and death as the entrance to true happiness? Do we live by faith? Does it animate us? Do we relish the eternal truths it presents us with? Are we as careful to nourish our souls with those truths as to maintain our bodies with proper diet? Do we accustom ourselves to see all things in the light of faith? Do we correct all our judgments by it? Alas! The greater part of Christians think and act like mere heathens; if we judge (as we justly may) of their faith by their practice, we must conclude they have no faith at all.

Say not, when I have leisure I will study; you may not have leisure.
                – The Mishnah

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
                – Victor Hugo

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
                – Fyodor Dostoevsky

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.
                – Erich Segal

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
                – Alfred North Whitehead

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
                – Sidney J. Harris

Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
                – Italian Proverb

I was a prophet in my dream. Yes, another dream. I felt myself in the hands of Christ Himself, and I was before a demon. And I prophesied, speaking words against that demon. For prophecy is not merely to foretell the future, but to be the mouth of God. When I awoke I did not remember what I said, but the feeling while I was there, in the service of the Most High — that I recall. It’s very much like what is called the “flow experience”, where basically, you are absorbed in what you do, and every action inevitable follows the action before it, where basically, for some moments, you can do no wrong. That was the feeling. It is not being in control, and it is not being out of control. It is being one with what the moment brings. And I awoke, for it was just a dream. Quite the dream, though.

We all are just one family; it’s just a matter of distance.

sometimes with the strength of the furies
presently as frail as a wisp of cloud
to behold the wonder of a world in balance
to glimpse of eternity in one timeless moment
what happens happens unfolding of fate
why go to the edge and not look down?
when you know you can fly, will you not leap?
even as powerless, now, before the moment:
the smoke of your prayer can go up
to find that in the end, you truly believe
and upon the bravery, every answer is yes

[From A Confession, by Leo Tolstoy]

The foregoing was written by me some three years ago, and will be printed.

Now a few days ago, when revising it and returning to the line of thought and to the feelings I had when I was living through it all, I had a dream. This dream expressed in condensed form all that I had experienced and described, and I think therefore that, for those who have understood me, a description of this dream will refresh and elucidate and unify what has been set forth at such length in the foregoing pages. The dream was this:

I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable: I was lying on my back. But I began to consider how, and on what, I was lying — a question which had not till then occurred to me. And observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on one such support, by calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. I seemed to know that those supports were movable, and with a movement of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet — it seemed to me that it would be more comfortable so. But I pushed it away too far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement caused the next support under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once; but the movement caused the other supports under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around and first of all to look down in the direction which my body was hanging and whither I felt I must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at a height such as I could never have imagined.

I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whither I was being drawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither was terrible. If I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip from the last support and perish. And I did not look. But not to look was still worse, for I thought of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last support. And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot be real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself, and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says: “Notice this, this is it!” And I look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear by looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same? And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: “See that you remember.”

And I awoke.

1882.

But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you

– U2

Max Ernst: Petals in the Garden of the Nymph Ancolie

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