By closing down monasteries, the West came to rely exclusively on the intellect in its quest for God. But the way to know God, Father Maximos would say repeatedly, is neither through philosophy nor through experimental science but through systematic methods of spiritual practice that could open us up to the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Only then can we have a taste of the Divine, a firsthand, experiential knowledge of the Creator. Otherwise, he continued, ‘we remain stuck on the level of mere beliefs and ideologies.’
(via buffleheadcabin)
“To stop using my brain for thinking and to start using it for reflecting.”
Thank you, nevver.
“That is what the world needs above all else: not people who “say prayers” with greater or lesser regularity, but people who are prayers.”
—Kallistos Ware, The Power of the Name, 19.
Via Faith & Theology, with thanks to dreaminginthedeepsouth.
(Source: allchannels.blogspot.com)
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Wait - what ?: “We do not find our own center...
“We do not find our own center; it finds us. Our own mind will not be able to figure it out.”
—Richard Rohr, from “Everything Belongs”
[In the forward to the book, the author writes, “How do you make attractive that which is not? How do you sell emptiness, vulnerability, and nonsuccess? How do you talk descent when everything is about ascent? How can you possibly market letting-go in a capitalist culture? How do you present Jesus to a Promethean mind? How do you talk about dying to a church trying to appear perfect? This is not going to work. (admitting this might be my first step).]
Thank you, dreaminginthedeepsouth.
Thoreau’s desk and couch, Walden Pond. Thank you, mythologyofblue.
Paul Simon | Homeless (Demo). With thanks to thebronzemedal.
Gustave Le Gray, Un effet de soleil, c.1856. Thank you, billyjane.
“The sense of loneliness is an error. We are and move in a great crowd of those who are now, were, and will be.
In that great river.”
—Anna Kamienska, In that Great River: A Notebook (trans. by Clare Cavanagh). Thank you, awritersruminations.
A. Rutot, “Moonlight on the Sea,” 1896. Beautiful. Thank you, firsttimeuser.
