No Peace With A Devil

"And what Bonhoeffer now knew would make him feel more alone than ever because many in the church and ecumenical world were expending great energies toward ending the war. But Bonhoeffer was not. He now believed that the principal goal was to remove Hitler from power. Only afterward could Germany negotiate for peace. Knowing what he knew, any peace with Hitler was no better than war. But he couldn’t say such things , even in ecumenical circles. This was when he began to realize that he was already part of the conspiracy to remove Hitler."

Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

Coffee

"It is the morning of the first day, still quite early, and I have not yet had those first few cups of coffee that make me charming."

- Moritz Thomsen

Wasted Life Of Sneers and Jeers

"Repudiating my father's values, which were solidly bourgeois to the point of farce, I had repudiated the whole middle class and had wasted a lifetime's energies in sneers and jeers....  The rulers of the world have become, in enslaving the masses of the poor, completely enslave themselves by their sad possessions. "

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers 

The Illusions Of Care About Poverty

"There is no way to live with the illusion of being made happy by the things that one owns, especially in a country like Ecuador where a comparative handful of people own everything, without developing and armor of blindness that makes one not only insensitive but contemptuous of the overwhelming poverty through which one moves. Perhaps worse than the contempt is the hypocrisy of pretending to be outraged while living a life devoted solely to the consumption of things that almost the entire population is on able to enjoy. I am thinking of a recent dinner party in one of the more modestly priced French restaurants where each of us ate sixteen dollars worth of food while talking about the corruptions of the world and the plight of the poor Ecuadorian Indians, most of whom live in the absolute feudal degradation that arrived in the 1540s with the Spanish conquistadors. Talk about engaging in an orgy of unspeakable acts. Our sin was not in enjoying good food but was much more complicated and suggestive the whole disintegration of our moral sensitivities. How could we have left that restaurant stuffed like pigs and half-drunk on Chilean wine and French Brandy and not vomited the whole thing up in self-loathing when we encountered the barefoot citizens of Quito ransacking the garbage cans in deserted nighttime Avenida Amazonas? How strange and awful; we know that living this way is gross and unnatural but we keep on doing it."
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.

Too Simplistic View Of Ancient Life

"Twelve years in the jungle had sharpened my vision and given me my own fanatic interpretation of reality. Deprived of the details that might prove me wrong, namely perhaps, more than anything, just rational or thoughtful men with whom I could speak, I had constructed a disastrous philosophy of nice simplicities in black and white."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers 

Nietzsche Predidce Millions Killed by Socalism

Nietzsche predicted that socialist experiment would cost many millions of lives. He was right.

Socialism ― or the tyranny of the meanest and the most brainless, ―that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith, ―is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of “modern ideas” and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralysed. Men follow―but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists―and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us! ―and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires.


- Nietzsche

The Pedigree of Ideas

Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. 
—Lord Acton

Unworthy Travels

"But let us leave the contemplation of the river for a while, stream into the first class dining saloon, drink coffee with bread and marmalade, and then go back on deck to meet our traveling companions. If we don't find them quite as interesting as we had hope, at least we will have the delight of speaking to them in a common tongue. Except for the three classy passengers, of course, who have found their own language quite good enough since they will be interested only in speaking to themselves

What we will also know is that they are French and that coming from a superior culture, no, coming from the only culture country in the world, there is no reason to accept anything that does not meet their discriminating standards...

"They will have little to do with this trip or at least this trip is I conceived it; in fact they have already made their most dramatic move and have gotten the toilets locked against us. By noon of that first day, appalled by the food, the lack of a decent table wine at meals, and the crudities of river travel, they have offered to pay double passage and have been moved to VIP quarters on the top deck. They will continue to eat the same unfortunate food but alone with the captain after the rest of us..... Everything will be the same for them except that by paying double they have made a social statement and have been isolated above us with the master of the ship in a cabin, which, under the full blast of the sun, by three o'clock will begin to glow incandescently......

They will be an unseen presence on the ship, though we will be constantly aware of their aura. Their cultured vibrations clash discordantly in that emptiness of river and sky through which we are drifting and we feel that they have not earned the right to so easily penetrate this carboniferous world of three hundred million years ago. They are like drunks in church; they are having an experience that will mean little to them and that they will remember only as that week of the barbarous cooking and the badly ventilated stateroom."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.

Suffering Pointlessly

"Because, you can't suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and you can't become bitter without becoming cruel. So you need an aim..... So, then, the question is, "what should your aim be?""

- Jordan Peterson. Conversation with Lewis Howes about Truth As The Antidote To Suffering. 

Stronger Passion Than Evil

"Only by a stronger passion can evil passions be expelled, and .... a soul occupied by a positive devotion is sure to be occupied by spiritual demons. 

- Harry Emerson Fosdick.The Manhood Of The Master. 

A Humble Virtue

"And just as farmers behold with greater pleasure those ears of corn which bend and bow down to the ground, while they look upon those that from their lightness stand straight upright as empty pretenders, so also among those young men who wish to be philosophers those that are most empty and without any solidity show the greatest amount of assurance in their appearance and walk, and a face full of haughtiness and contempt that looks down on everybody, but when they begin to grow full and get some fruit from study they lay aside their proud and vain 277 bearing. And just as in vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard and threadbare cloak, 278 and transfer their training to the mind, and are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in their intercourse with everybody else;.... "

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.

Speak to the Uproar

"Much more then ought those who aim at virtue and what is noble to lose no opportunity of public speaking, paying very little attention to either uproar or applause at their speeches."

-Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher. 

God and Man In The Same Place

"Theism believes there is a God. Christianity believes that God and humanity can coexist in the same place! These are two utterly different proclamations about the nature of the universe. In my experience, most Christians are very good theists who just happen to have named their God Jesus. 

With dualistic minds it is always one or the other - it can never be both. The result is that we still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become "spiritual", when the Christian revelation was precisely that you are already spiritual ("in God"), and your difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human.......

It is in our Humanity that we are still so wounded, so needy, so unloving, so self-hating, and so in need of Enlightenment. We seem to have spawned centuries of people trying to be spiritual and religious, whereas our record on basic humaness is rather pitiful."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now

Meaningless?

The human race isn't worth fighting for, only worth killing. Give the earth back to the Animals. They deserve it infinity more than we do. Nothing means anything anymore." 
- Eric Harris.  Written in Columbine shooter's diary.

Lessen Rules?

"Here's a straightforward initial idea: rules should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Alternatively stated, bad laws drive out respect for good laws."
- Jordan Peterson

Sources of Moral Guidance

"Lets not look for our moral guidance from Corporations. Maybe that is a good idea"
- Gregg Hurwitz

Africa is People Too

"That jungle wasn't just leaves and silent paths and moving sunlight on still pools of water; it was people, too."
- Moritz Thomsen

Time To Play

"There is nothing more serious than play, and those two years were awful and marvelous and ultimately serious as hell, the best and worst days of my life, and when I dream now very often I am once more walking up that stream wet to the waist or standing alone on the hillside.......  What business does an old man have sitting for an hour in a patch of sunlight on that deserted and Silent Hillside watching a great wasp. Insanely active, hunt for, fine, fight, and paralyzed and enormous spider?"

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey On Two Rivers 

Buying Intense Experience?

"I would learn it all again and something else - that the innocence and intensity of childhood comes back only in little unexpected and empirical moments, and that, being a man, I was much too corrupt and superficial, much too enslaved by the safety of stale emotions to be able to remake myself, to submit myself to life. If life has any meaning at all towards the end, it is certainly only in one's ability to draw from the well of memory a satisfying amount of intense experience to contemplate, for the things that are forgotten are only symbols for the parts of us that have already died. 

Part of the middle class tragedy lies in the facility with which intense experience can be synthesized and bought."

- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey On Two Rivers. 

Poverty On The Edge of Perpetual Crisis

Living Poor is like being sentenced to exist in a stormy sea in a  battered canoe, requiring all your strength simply to keep afloat; there  is never any question of reaching a destination. True poverty is a  state of perpetual crisis, and one wave just a little bigger or coming  from an unexpected direction can and usually does wreck things."
 - Moritz Thomsen. Living Poor.

Ideologies Rose Coloured Glasses

" Ideology - that is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the Agents of the Inquisition fortified their wheels by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the Grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. 

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroy these millions? Without evil doers there would have been Archipelago."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.

Virtue Sits In The Corner Silent

"From the most ancient times justice has been a two-part concept: virtue triumphs, and vice is punished. 

We have been fortunate enough to live in a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1

Releasing Laity To Be Ministers

"(Andreas) Karlstadt reflected the anti-clerical attitude of the time. He insisted that the pastor communicate with the laity, and he disregard clerical vestments and titles. Lady were endowed with clerical rights such as reading and Proclamation from scripture and celebration of the Lord's Supper in private homes. For the sake of order, in public assembly the chosen Pastor simply exercised such functions for all."

-J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist. 2nd Edition. 

Rejecting Infant Baptism.

"His (Andreas Karlstadt) understandings of liturgy, the church, baptism, and the Lord's Supper were based upon what he considered the teachings of the Bible alone. He rejected the Lutheran doctrine of predestination. He rejected infant baptism is a Sacrament, refused to baptize infants, and advocated adult baptism as a sign of Faith. His view of church rejected all hierarchy and emphasize the equality of members. The pastor calling was not to a higher status, but to an office performed only for the sake of order."

- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist. 2nd Edition. 

Preaching Sitting Down

Who was it?

First reformer to host communion in Vernacular- German.

First reformer to publish "Theses".

First Catholic Priest to renounce his monastic vows in reformation.

"These future Swiss Anabaptists were immersed in the ideas and outlook of Andreas Karlstadt, absorbing much more of his outlook than did Zwingli....
Karlstadt had published 151 Theses in April 1517, but it was Luther's 95 Theses of October 31st, 1517, that caught the attention of Europe and sparked the Reformation. Karlstadt defended Luther's theses and participated with Luther in the public debate...
Following his appearance and condemnation before the imperial diet of worms in April 1521, Luther for his own safety was removed to the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach. In his absence, Karlstadt pushed reform in Wittenberg. He performed the first reformed communion service on Christmas 1521 - in German, wearing lay clothing. He became the first reformer to repudiate his monastic vows, including celibacy, and married 16 year old Anna von Mochau in January 1522. The Town Council enacted a new welfare system advocated by Luther and Karlstadt, and Karlstadt pushed for removal of images from churches. Unwilling to wait for official permission, and unruly mob acted on its own to destroy number of images. 
The rapid pace of Reform upset both the Elector Frederick as well as Luther.... Luther sided with the conservatives and attack Karlstadt. A writing of Karlstadt was censored and his preaching was curtailed....
Karlstadt  felt betrayed by his colleagues.  Gradually he withdrew from Orlamünde, the source of the churchly stipend that paid his salary. There  Karlstadt became increasingly disillusioned with Academia (He was university professor). He rejected academic titles as contrary to Christ's words to call no man "master" and adopted 
A life quite close to the peasant style.  Called "Brother Andreas" in Orlamünde, he encouraged interpretations and discussion during sermons, which he delivered while sitting in the midst of the congregation. He translated Psalms into German and collaborated with the Town Council in removing the organ and the images from the church building. He abolish the baptism of infants."


- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist. 2nd Edition 

Time Interpretation

"Zwingli came as an admirer and student of the renowned humanist scholar Erasmus. As a general principle humanist rejected the church's claim that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit what was implicit in the teaching of the Apostles was clarified and made explicit overtime, which meant that modern teachers were deemed best and most authoritative. In contrast, Christian humanists believe that the sources closest to Christ were most reliable, beginning with the apostles and with the Bible - rather than modern clarifications as the purest source of Christian truth."

- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist. 2nd Edition

Skid-Mark Christianity

"Tell me that story. I'm only interested  in skid-marks these days."

- Drew Marshall

When Good People Run

"But weren't there also some who rose above the party - who were good in a general, human sense?
Broadly speaking, they should not have been there. The Organs avoided employing such people, eliminating them at the recruitment stage. And such people played their hand shrewdly so as to get out of it. Whoever got in by mistake either adjusted to the milieu or else was thrown out, or eased out, or even fell across the rails himself. Still were there no good people left there?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.

God is At The Bottom of Science

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

~ Werner Karl Heisenburg, Nobel Prize in Physics

Let It Die?

"In the end, I had to bury something dead that I might become something alive.

And so, I did.

Because that’s how resurrection works."

- Jamie Wright

Statistically It Would Have Been Me

Statistics are not in our favour.
Everyone who reads about the history of the Germany and Hitler during WW2, from the outside of Germany comes away thinking, "How could people have been that way?"
The assumption on our part is that "WE" would never have been like that.
Indeed some were not. But enough where to fuel a genocide and a war.
The humbling realization is that if we were in the same conditions and experiencing  the same variables, pressures, culture, words, media, etc, at the time. Statistically, as many of us would have become the same evil, with each little incremental act toward that end.
Our assumption that we would have been better people is naive and simplistic, if not arrogant. We could have risen above, as some did, but most of us are like the majority.
Not as history proves  in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, nor the little discussed Japanese invasion of China. The brutality, the heinous torture and murder in various places when town were captured is blood curdling. The Japanese have a penchant more so for that right?
They were just evil people.
I'm reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's, "The Gulag Archipelago",  and he writes about a humbling  insight he gained in Stalin's Russia, as he understands the requirement  pressure bright or dependable people were under to join the ORGANS (NKVD)

"Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were executioners and we weren't." 

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1, p16

This would apply to Orphanages, church abuse scandals, aboriginal and native boarding schools.
All horrors, we have come to find out after the fact. If we were a politician, or town official, or an educator, at those times and in those situations, statistically, most of us would have went with the flow of our culture, politics, and nation at that time.
You think not?
Humility is the end result. They were not worse people than we are. Like them we are a product of our times. And before you and I put pressure on people to conform to certain ideologies, we better understand that we still don't  know the end game result of most of them. Or we have indicators.
Maybe those playing ball will be the villains, maybe those who don't are setting up a catastrophe.
How do you know without hindsight?
Studying history and noticing human and patterns helps.
But  you and I have it all figured out, eh?
Ya! Right!

The First Dawn of Light Concerning His WIll

Wonderful Prevenient Grace - Arminian Theology explains that it is the kind of Grace that goes before mankind, it does not follow after him.

A friend shared a story of how things seem to fall in place after a huge move across the hemisphere, with no jobs secured before  they departed. Things keep falling into place for them.  It made me think of Prevenient Grace, and I shared that with him. (Not to suggest that all things become rosy all the time, because we all know this is not true, nor is it the point.).

However, Grace is moving and working out front, not reacting from behind. Grace is out working in front of humanity to being them to the Light of Jesus's Will, presence, truth, and love. I loved this idea ever sense I first encountered the theological concept of  Prevenient Grace. It is beautiful, and seems to resonate with the beating heart of the scriptures very well, indeed, in my estimation. 

Let me put it this way; Grace, is "Proactive" in every way, not "Reactionary".  

We often view Grace as that "stuff", that "thing",  God sends along AFTER all the messes, tragedies, brokenness, and failures we have created in life. It's a mess cleaner upper.

God's Grace is certainly all of that, but maybe much more as well. Prevenient Grace  suggests that God goes ahead of us, giving us markers, light, indicators, promptings, possibilities.

Very much in tune with the ministry of the Spirit in John 16:8,  "And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment."


What if Grace is "Pre" and "Post".  Both before us and after us.

Now the clincher. What if the penchant  of Grace is before, is much more before than after?
What if Grace were a noun and a verb?

What if,

Grace is God- and is God at work,

Grace is Jesus- and is Jesus at work,

Grace is the Holy Spirit - and is the Holy Spirit at work.

What if Grace is not a "THING" at all.

?

What if Grace is found looking more ahead, than behind?

"In John Wesley's sermon "On Working Out Our Own Salvation" (sermon #85), Wesley stated that prevenient grace elicits, "...the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning His will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against Him" (Wikipedia)

Sometimes You Are The Evil

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? 

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we describe the whole lot, good and evil."

I Smiled And It Made Them Angry

" ... the most intense patriotism always flourishes in the rear. ...

How was I to answer them? I was forbidden to order a single word, and I would have had to explain my entire life to each and every one of them. What could I do to make them understand that I was not a spy, a saboteur? That I was their friend? That it was because of them that I was here? I smiled. Looking up at them, I smiled at them from a column of prisoners under escort! But my bared teeth seemed to them the worst kind of mockery, and they shook their fists and bellowed insults at me even more violently than before.

I smiled in pride that I had been arrested not for stealing, nor treason, nor desertion, but because I had discover through my power of reasoning the evil secrets of Stalin. I smiled at the thought that I wanted, and might still be able, to affect some small remedies and changes in our Russian way of life."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.

What Shoulder Boards Can Do To Character

"They sewed me a map case out of German hide - not human, but from a car seat. But I didn't have a strap for it, and I was on happy about that. Then all of a sudden they saw some partisan commissar, from The Local District Party Committee, wearing just the right kind of strap -  and they took it away from him: we are the army; we have seniority! (Remember Senchenko, the Security officer, who stole a map case and a dispatch case?) Finally, I coveted that scarlet box, and I remember how they took it away and got it for me. That's what shoulder boards do to a human being."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Betrayed by a Sandal

Empedocles of Akragas

"Empedocles contributed to the growth of medicine proper. The death of the philosopher has been made the subject of several entertaining fables, the best known being that he jumped into the crater Etna in order to make people think that he had gone up to heaven and esteem him as a god. Unfortunately, he left one of his slippers (Or it was tossed up by the volcano) on the brink of the volcano, and, as he used to wear slippers with brazen soles, it was easily recognized. Diogenes,however,who recounts this story, also informs us that "Timaeus contradicts all these stories, saying expressly that he departed into Peloponnesus, and never returned at all."

A history of Philosophy. Frederick Copleston. Volume 1, Greece and Rome

Real Biblical Meekness

Biblical Meekness never meant weakness and cowardice. It derives from a Greek word used to describe a well self controlled horse. He had the potential to run you over, or rein and kill you with his hooves, if he so chooses. But he is in control of his wild impulses. He is the master of those impulses, rather than mastered by them. I love how Jordan Peterson put it in this interview. when asked about "The Meek will inherit the earth." He actually captured the essence of the Greek word in modern language very vividly.

"Meekness.... those who have swords and know how to use them, but choose to keep them sheathed will inherit the earth." - Jordan Peterson Oz Talk: Jordan Peterson.

Sheathing swords, I think we all agree, is always the best option of all.

More Complex Than Empathy

"Feeling sorry for someone is not a moral virtue. You know, morality is much more complex than mere reflexive empathy."

- Jordan Peterson. In OZ talk: Jordan Peterson 

How the Church Is United

"The “Declaration and Address” begins by describing the unity of the church given in Christ:

That the Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures, and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct, and of none else; as none else can be truly and properly called Christians.¹

For Thomas Campbell, unity was not something to be established or even reestablished, but something given in Christ. For, Christ is the guarantor of the unity of the church, and Christians exist within that unity through faith and obedience. Campbell explains that the proof of unity in Christ is manifest by the “tempers and conduct” of Christians. Therefore, unity is not passive existence but a practice. The practice of unity is best characterized by peacemaking; that is, Christians remain in the unity of the church by being at peace with one another."

Jonathan Totty.The Non-Violent Epistemological Premise of the Declaration and Address

Ain't Going To Study War No More

Hymn "Down by the Riverside" - Louis Daniel Armstrong

"I'm gonna lay down my Sword and Shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
I'm gonna study, study, war no more
I ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more
I ain't gonna study war no more."

Easy Violence

"Violence,  after all, is no mystery. It's peace that's the mystery. Violence is the default. It's easy. It's peace that is difficult: learned, inculcated, earned."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules for Life 

Where Did The Corruption Come From? You!

"If society is corrupt, but not the individuals within it, then where did the corruption originate? How is it propagated? It's a one-sided, deeply ideological theory."

- Jordan Peterson 

One Sign Only - No More

"Jesus said in Luke 11:29 that this "sign of Jonah" was the only sign he would ever give; considering all the signs religious people seek, this is quite a remarkable claim!"

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

Willingness More Than Willfulness

"Wisdom...   more to do with long-term willingness than mere willfulness.....

This willingness comes at a price and invariably demands that you pass through some rings of fire, which most of us would rather not do. There are few teachers of the dark path, the journey through the shadowlands, the actual way of the Cross. And most organized religion in the West has emphasized will power (heroic ego affirming virtues) rather than willingness, which seldom affirms the ego..... 

The need for willingness is counterintuitive for almost all Western people, especially the strong and the educated, who think that spiritual things can be achieved by intellect and willpower.

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

A Process Rather Than An Event

"True and full conversion (head, hurt, guy) does not really happen until the new program is in the hard-wiring and becomes a permanent and "natural" trait rather than a one-time emotion. This process takes most of one's life, and is actually the very task of life and of contemplation. This difference partially explains the widespread disillusionment with people today who claimed to be religiously converted. May seem to have some kind of genuine spiritual breakthrough but never get around to the intellectual, lifestyle, and ethical implications that often take years to recognize and integrate."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

Hows Your Seeing?

"But if you examine the accounts of people's great moments of breakthrough, they usually are not referring to what they see as much as how they see."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

When Did God Change His Love Policy?

"Eternity is going on all the time, and spiritual teachers give us a way to dip into that stream now and therefore forever. There assumption is invariably, "If you have it now, you will have it then." They see a perfect continuity between Time and Eternity. This is why they do not fear death or judgement. If God loves me so on conditionally now, why would God change the love policy later?"

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now

Pride Like Lard

Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Trained Like Beasts

"But most of all we were afraid we wouldn't manage to stay in until the time came to graduate and receive our officers Insignia. (They sent those who failed to the Battle of Stalingrad.) And they trained us like young beasts, so as to infuriate us to the point where we would later want to take it out on someone else."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

Not Worthy Of My Obedience

"I did not move in one stride from being a student worn out by mathematics to officers rank. Before becoming an officer I spent a half-year as a downtrodden soldier. And one might think I would have gotten through my thick skull what it was like always to obey people who were perhaps not worthy of your obedience and to do it on a hungry stomach to boot."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

When Morality Was Not Relative

"At that time the provincial University we attended the could not promise us anything more than chance to teach in a rural school in a remote area for miserly wages. The NKVD school dangled before us special rations and double or triple pay..... People can shout at you from all sides: "You must!" And your own head can be saying also: "You must!" But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don't want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want without with me; I want no part of it. 

This came from very far back, ......

at a time when morality was not considered relative and when the distinction between good and evil was very simply perceived by the heart."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 

We Despise Them For It

"Here is a book that is against just about everything we believe in. I say that as a Methodist Bishop who ought to know what we believe in. Method is are those Christians who believe in trying to follow Jesus and attempting to be the church without letting any of that get in the way of our being successful. In other words, we methodists are just about everything that every anabaptist lives in fear of becoming.

I say thank God that the Anabaptists were run out of Europe so that they took up residence in Indiana and elsewhere. God has sent them into the Wilderness that is Contemporary American culture in order to keep the rest of us honest about Jesus, or at least to make us feel guilty. Here, as elsewhere, they have exercised and influence upon the extended Body of Christ far out of proportion to their numbers. They have been salt, light, yeast, and on unassimilatable lump in an otherwise comfortable and accommodated Christendom.  God bless them for their witness, though most of the rest of us despise them for it."

- William H. Willimin. Bishop, The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

Forward written in : Becoming Anabaptist: The Orgin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism

No Longer Playing The Tyrant

"Realization is Dawning. Instead of playing the Tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world. You are negotiating, instead of playing the martyr or the tyrant."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules for Life

There is Evil to Overcome, Suffering to Ameliorate, & Yourself to Better."

"Soon you will find yourself in a different situation. Now you will be asking yourself, habitually, “What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?” You are not dictating to yourself what “better” must be. You are not being a totalitarian, or a utopian, even to yourself, because you have learned from the Nazis and the Soviets and the Maoists and from your own experience that being a totalitarian is a bad thing. Aim high. Set your sights on the betterment of Being. Align yourself, in your soul, with Truth and the Highest Good. There is habitable order to establish and beauty to bring into existence. There is evil to overcome, suffering to ameliorate, and yourself to better."

- Jordan Peterson. 12 Rules for Life 

Here, But Not Really Present

"Presence is the one thing necessary, and in many ways, the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open, you're mine without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Presents is the practical, daily tasks of all mature religion and all the spiritual disciplines.

If you observe wise people, you see that they actually lose a certain interest in gathering more and more information, books, and news. These can clutter what is already at clear field, open site, and simple presence to the moment."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

Where The Wolf-tribe Comes From

"As the folks saying goes;  If you speak for the wolf, speak against him as well. 

Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our people? Does it really stem from my roots? Our own blood? 

It is our own. 

And just so we don't go around flaunting to probably the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself: "If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner?"

It is a dreadful question if one really answers it honestly."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.

Passing From Flattering and Artificial Discourses

"..... so those who go in for philosophy, when they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make genuine and modest progress in virtue.

Furthermore, take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful." 

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher

A Delayed Frozen Mind

"Antiphanes said playfully that in a certain city words were frozen directly they were spoken, owing to the great cold, and were thawed again in the summer, so that one could then hear what had been said in the winter. So he said of the words which were spoken by Plato to young men, that most of them only understood them late in life when they were become old men. And this is the condition people are in in respect to all philosophy, until the judgement gets into a sound and healthy state, and begins to adapt itself to those things which can produce character and greatness of mind, ....."

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher