Each of these foregoing states has its time, its variety of workings, its trials, temptations, and purifications, which can only be known by experience in the passage through them. The one only and infallible way to go safely through all the difficulties, trials, temptations, dryness, or opposition, of our own evil tempers, is this: It is to expect nothing from ourselves, to trust to nothing in ourselves, but in every thing expect, and depend upon God for relief. Keep fast hold of this thread, and then let your way be what it will, darkness, temptation, or the rebellion of nature, you will be led through all, to an union with God: for nothing hurts us in any state but an expectation of something in it, and from it, which we should only expect from God.

time sometimes slows to ticks that last for an eternity
a whole life lived while waiting for the second hand to move just once
wondering how it is that the years seem so, so much shorter

The simplest patterns are hardest to find, if no one’s seen them.

I have come to believe in that page God has written in Heaven, where all the best poetry is written, where is scrawled the True Physics. In desiring to delve deep into my own field of study, I have at times glanced where touches the sublime with the tangible, and have seen the possibility of the world of ideals. For sometimes one may breach a vein of truth, and may feel the rush of the coursing of pure idea. It is to understand that the mind of God is as far above us as our own thought is to a stone. To see that there is beyond us, farther than we will ever reach, the direction higher into the music of the spheres. And so thankful that such an ambrosia of imagination can be tasted by mortals such as we, who wonder at the light most high, who dream of walking the upper roads.

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
                – Robertson Davies

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
                – Martin Luther King Jr.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
                – Paul Valery

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
                – Thomas A. Edison

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
                – Abraham Lincoln

I’m singing this note ’cause it fits in well
With the chords I’m playing
I can’t pretend there’s any meaning
Hidden in the things I’m saying

– The Who

Max Ernst: The Equivocal Woman

Click on the pic for a larger version.

do angels regret?
surely, none of them who have turned foul
not the most infinitesimal of wisps
or can it be that never can all light be snuffed?
surely, not any of those in the Presence
for they do the will of love itself
or to turn a city into salt affect the wingèd?

Why believe? Why not believe?

We can none of us go down all the paths that are before us. The most we can do is go down one, go back to the beginning, and down another; but even that is not advised or possible for many things that transpire in our lives. There will always be chances missed, and I think very little that comes our way is not by course of luck. There is only the thinnest veneer of control that we all possess in how and why we go, if we think on it. Thus it must be that if one is truly rational, we must put ourselves in the hands of a higher power if we are to call ourselves wise. If one believes that there is truly an order to the universe — and by what I can tell of how things do work, it seems to me to be so.

[Book. Chapter 4.]

This is the part of the movie where the hand held camera depicts the mad coagulation of chaos in the streets. People trying to run — from what? to what? — unable to get enough footing to stand straight… glass breaking overhead, and at eye level, elsewhere, unable to pinpoint exactly where, because of the great rumble from below throwing low sound in every direction… I expected more screaming, but everyone is just trying in shock to absorb what is suddenly happening to their world at large… the ground shouldn’t feel this unstable, as if it were made all of ions breaking apart all at once… and what do I do, thrown to my knees? My first impulse is to clasp my hands together… and pray. Because this is not something I can do anything about, something this large, except to call on that which is larger. I pray that everything still, and that everyone could be safe.

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?