Somehow, we must remove the notion from us of our own infallibility. It is a hindrance like no other. Somehow we can discern the faults of everyone but our own selves, because we always have a reason why this thing of ours went foul, so that we seem always to be justified. We must constantly strive to see the right in everyone else, and see the wrong in us, because the balance is always stacked the other way. Our selves will always get in the way of any selfless notion — by definitions, this must be the case. There was only ever one of us who did nothing wrong, and I think on the day of judgement, we will be surprised — shocked — by the amount and number of the ills we have rendered, the injustices we have overlooked, and all the while pointing at the mote in our brothers’ eyes, seeking all that we thought was unfair to us to be redressed, and all that which we did of the dishonorable overlooked. I do not think this will be how the Judge will look at things.

Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night

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Faith is a living, unshakeable confidence in God’s grace; it is so certain, that someone would die a thousand times for it. This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire.

caught in the wind ephemeral
inexplicably balanced
the signs and portents fire
and as quiet as the anticipation
dawn arises from the world’s moat
the day upon the tight wire
about to fall — or fly

I will put all my faith in the hands of the Lord. For whatever I tried to hold onto, I have let slip, from memory or from sight. So much that I have forgotten. But whatever I placed in the care of Him above, these things will I ever have, whether I concern myself about them or not. Sometimes what He promises I will scoff at, like Sarah who He told would have her son Isaac, even while she was in old age. But the Lord’s promises are not those of men, who like a leaf is blown and scattered. His will is surer than the seconds that pass so diligently. God is love: thus is the mystery we contend with. That of the delicate balance of all things between one another, He knows how fate will trace, the single whisper that sets in motion the creation of whole cities. We, not to comprehend a fraction of the myriad connections between triggers and flows, the actions and consequences, the intricate orchestrations and their musics. Just that we trust that the hand from which the miracle comes is sure.

the sign that is not a sign
a muted and ordinary hiccup of fate
(in perfect alignment, the stars begin to fall)
visions just outside my peripheral optics
where destiny builds the instants
(there is no conspiracy, but the madness is real)
a past that tips off the edge of memory
the void holds secrets perfectly
(and here i am at the end, and snow is everywhere)

We all profess that we are bound for heaven, immortality, and glory; but is it any evidence we really design it, if all our thoughts are consumed about the trifles of this world, which we must leave behind us, and if we have only occasional thoughts of things above?

Louis I. Kahn
Salk Institute for Biological Studies

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Modern man has a God-shaped hole in his heart.
– Jean-Paul Sartre

It is that desire for something better, I think, wherein this hole is expressed, the sentence that starts with “in a perfect world…”. The cynic who only sees the faults in the works of man, the half-empty glass: could it be that he secretly seeks a perfection he cannot name, which he has stopped hoping for (except only as a dull pain that he is missing something, something important)? Do these protest too much? For perhaps thus, man was made imperfect for a reason: to find the piece of him that makes him wonder why….

[Book. The previous is at alquemie.com.]

And then there are the other people, people enclosed behind a white counter, framed like a small fortification, and they are dressed in white as like the walls. They must belong here. They must hold the keys. I shouldn’t stare. Down the hall there is a large commons-like space, where there is a large TV and some people dressed like me are sitting, mostly with vague interest to whatever is playing or around them in general. There is a table where someone is drawing something. There is a cabinet with various board games stacked within it. This is the end of the line, I find, for the doors that lead elsewhere besides this is locked, at least on this extremity. Except for the TV, nothing is really making a sound.

Night falls, a test if faith will last the dark, not lose itself in the nothingness.

Night falls, and all the stars show themselves from behind the blue curtain of day.

Night falls, and a hundred candles means romance, while one candle stands for hope.

Night falls, but the moon is sometimes a better companion than the sun.

Night falls, a slow exhale of the inbreath, the accumulations of the daylight hours.

Night falls, a cool blanket of midnight blue that collects in it all who rest from motion.

Night falls, and I discover sometimes I can find myself better in the dark.

All dreams are innocent.

Where, then, does happiness lie? In forgetfulness, not indulgence, of the self. In escape from sensual appetites, not in their satisfaction. We live in a dark, self-enclosed prison, which is all we see or know if our glance is fixed ever downward. To lift it upward, becoming aware of the wide, luminous universe outside — this alone is happiness. At its highest level, such happiness is the ecstasy that mystics have inadequately described. At more humdrum levels, it is human love; the delights and beauties of our dear earth, its colors and shapes and sounds; the enchantment of understanding and laughing, and all other exercise of such faculties as we possess; the marvel of the meaning of everything, fitfully glimpsed, inadequately expounded, but ever present.

there are zero matadors
dancing on zero tables
fighting zero ferocious bulls
zero bloodthirsty spectators
carried by zero flying carpets
yelling zero metaphysical truths
and the zero of the countdown
makes much of such nothings
as zero approaches in secret
the flip of a dread switch
when everything happens
and the crowd goes wild
at the slaying of the bulls
while the matadors dance
while we fly into oblivion

Gino Severini: Armoured Train

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my work has not been in the sunlight hours
instead to dig in the mines, in punctuated darkness
wondering about the fantastic luck of us all
now factored into every of our equations
i look for the rarest rose, that blooms only at night
my collection of flowers have long since withered
as i dream and am frightened of its brilliance
for time is digging me out of the earthly depths
and i must prepare to live again among mortals
wondering about the fantastic luck of us all
the glance of which once made me mad
the thought of which now heals my frailty

He drew on himself, every day: strange symbols, lines leading nowhere, circles with no particular inclination. His pens were continually running dry of ink, and if he took a bath, the water stained a blackish tint, as if he were washing away sins. The patterns he drew were a mystery of asymmetry, an ode to chaos; these markings were a war paint to a battle long over, and he had been on the side of the the defeated. No one ever asked him why he did this — there was a certain unknowable poetry to it, and people… people don’t ask questions when they think they already know the answer: he was a sign that the universe was as odd as they imagined. But if they had asked him, “Why?”, he would have answered, “This is what the whole of the world means — this is the way I see it. Each day the pattern changes, and when the old one washes away, I draw on myself what is new… like a reflection of it all that knows what it reflects, a world rewritten in abbreviations.”

Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.