When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.

– Samuel Rutherford

everyone is a stranger to a varying degree
often, it is ourselves most of all which we have no idea
with no one to ask who is who, for mirrors only echo

Should I fall out of love my fire in the night
To chase a feather in the wind

– Led Zeppelin

Max Ernst: The Fireside Angel

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Dreams have nowhere to go if you do not believe.

Night falls, where strangers live among the shadows.

Night falls, suddenly far from everything become we.

Night falls, and moonlight feels as cool as a breeze.

Night falls, where wondering can become dangerous.

Night falls, and every dream waits behind the curtain.

Night falls, where cowards hide, the brave go unseen.

Night falls, the when the whole world imagines death.

With a thought, I am not me, but a stranger to all that this life holds. I examine the pieces of this existence as one peruses someone else’s dreams: with distance, unaffected. What did this person have to value in their sitting and working, standing and clapping, running and winking? Why did he keep this, and throw that away, buy that, and give this as a casual gift? One cannot truly search into another man’s soul by the things he left behind, but they are still clues as to what kind of matters filled his heart. And then, with a thought, I am me again, forgetting the not-me that I was, and I think back, was that not-me right? Or am I mysterious, even to the most intimate of knowledge, even to myself, pretending, who can see all the secrets, but simply does not care?

He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.

we sing in voices not our own
about sights we have never seen
the strangers in our dreams know us
though we have forgotten ourselves
the feeling of home gone like childhood
as if in darkness, everywhere the same
and we go on without knowing how
and we go on without waiting for why

“Why is there something instead of nothing?”

“Love is simpler than nothing.”

“How can love be simpler than nothing?”

“I don’t know, I just know that it is true.”

“How do you know it is true?”

“Because love is so simple, we’ll never understand it.”

The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone

– Led Zeppelin

Antonio Puri: Resurrection

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[Book.]

The danger is in identifying the archetype within the vision of a solid being. We must simplify experience if we ever hope to comprehend anything that happens to us, but it is a matter of time and chance what parts we whittle away to fit the slots of our own particular logic. We often begin to mistake the model for the reality, for we like to think we understand the world around us. And when what is unexpected happens, the mind tries to match it against known patterns, and failing that, strange things may come into vision — sometimes things we didn’t know were important to us, just what comes loose when shook hard enough. Ultimately, we will never lose the ability to surprise ourselves.

For thoughts in a crisis define the character underneath the casual façade.

[UPDATE: This concludes Chapter 3. The whole of what I have so far is here.]

Everyone’s a sinner — but not everyone knows it.

in the rhythmless dreaming, i was lost in the haze, haze
discovering myself at the beginning of the end, the end
peering over the edge into darkness, and a light far, far

There has been a tendency of late to interpret alienation from faith in intellectual rather than experiential terms. Academically oriented Christians especially tend to think that the barriers to faith should be removed by repackaging the content of the message in a way more congenial to the modern outlook. But it is quite possible that we are dealing not so much with a failure of intellect as with an alienation from the experiential roots of Christianity itself so amply attested in the New Testament.

I heard a voice from on high, “Feel blessed, that the Lord has delayed your success.” Surely, this is a call to remember that what seem as troubles are for our benefit. The house of wisdom is a house of mourning. We rush headlong into the unknown, not understanding the consequences of what we do, and not realizing the mystery behind what happens. Our weakness is the Lord’s strength. Those who are first will be last. Those who lose their lives will save them. We must not forget that lo, even the hairs on our heads are numbered, and even the smallest sparrowfall is heard: our sorrows do not escape the notice of Who is on high. Give not despair one inch, if you can possibly help it. God is love, and think not that the pain of the world can overcome the Infinite.

Those who think that the world through natural forces could not have created such a wondrous creation as a human being underestimates how wonderful a world God has made. On the flipside, those scientists who believe the self-organizing properties of the world preclude a need for a Creator have merely moved the target of the why. I must say that it may be true that science and religion cannot completely reconcile with one another, but that does not mean that they are fundamentally incompatible: one can take the attitudes of either and make them complements of one another, and not fall into contradiction. For what in one says of the other it cannot be — these may merely need insight to see eye to eye. For faith and reason are both essential to the mind politic. We should not starve out one of them to feed the prejudice of the other.