Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“Listen carefully, then. It is a widespread misunderstanding that Spirit is a thing that is more ‘airy’ than vapor. On the contrary. Spirit is more solid than ice.” “That never occurred to me.” “And now I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a man who didn’t believe in angels. One day,…
“Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you – for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart…don’t listen to the demon, laugh at him, and go without fear to receive the Jesus of peace and love… “Receive Communion often, very often…there you have the sole…
If you stood on Venus, where the atmospheric haze is so thick that it bends light, it theoretically would be possible to stare at the back of your own head. Which would mean you’d never again have the pleasure of helping a beautiful woman fasten the clasp on her necklace. On Jupiter, a beautiful woman…
“Recent research shows that we dream for about 20 percent of our sleeping hours, that is, between one and two hours each night. If we are disturbed during our dream phases we become nervous and irritable. This means nothing less than that everybody has an innate need to give artistic expression to his or her…
Apo-calypso. In its root sense is a dis/closure, an opening that may come as an explosion—for what has been kept sealed under pressure opens with a bang. In Revelation, the seals break open to vision the hideous layers of slaughter, deprivation, the trade of luxury (oil and wine) against need (barley and wheat), drought, flood,…
Jesus contradicts the Mosaic law not to impose an alternative law, but to propose the practice of grace. A life lived by the practice of grace is going to have an unpredictable, nonconforming aspect to it. Many of the central concerns of human society (the rule of law, the sanctity of life, sexual relations, contracts,…
The graphic above comes from the Occupy Design site where graphic designers, in solidarity with the Occupiers, team up to build a visual language for the 99 percent. If you’re a designer, you can get involved here.
The power of Benedict’s Rule was this: in a world that was falling apart, it gave structure to small communities of faith that could experiment in a new kind of community. It did not aim to restore Rome to its former glory or even to reform the church. The Rule simply offered people a way…
Research shows that a more accurate notion of one’s powerlessness can result in a greater feeling of helplessness and is associated with depression. Several classic studies show that moderately depressed people are more critically thinking than those who are not depressed. Researchers Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, studying nondepressed and depressed subjects who played a…
A poet is an unhappy being whose heart it torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music… and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: “Sing for us soon again;” that is as much as…