Invisible Foreigner

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September 2012

St. John of Damascus on the Trinity, in An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith: 

We believe, then, in One God, one beginning, having no beginning, uncreate, unbegotten, imperishable and immortal, everlasting, infinite, uncircumscribed, boundless, of infinite power, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, without flux, passionless, unchangeable, unalterable, unseen, the fountain of goodness andjustice, the light of the mind, inaccessible; a power known by no measure, measurable only by His own will alone (for all things that He wills He can), creator of all created things, seen or unseen, of all the maintainer and preserver, for all the provider, master and lord and king over all, with an endless and immortal kingdom: having no contrary, filling all, by nothing encompassed, but rather Himself the encompasser and maintainer and original possessor of the universe, occupying all essences intact and extending beyond all things, and being separate from all essence as being super-essential and above all things and absolute God, absolute goodness, and absolute fullness: determining all sovereignties and ranks, being placed above all sovereignty and rank, above essence and life and word and thought: being Himself very light and goodness and life and essence, inasmuch as He does not derive His being from another, that is to say, of those things that exist: but being Himself the fountain of being to all that is, of life to the living, of reason to those that have reason; to all the cause of all good: perceiving all things even before they have become: one essence, one divinity, one power, one will, one energy, one beginning, one authority, one dominion, one sovereignty, made known in three perfect subsistences and adored with one adoration, believed in and ministered to by all rational creation, united without confusion and divided without separation (which indeed transcends thought). 

Aug 31, 20127 notes
#st. john of damascus #trinity #christianity #spirituality #history #quotes #theology
Aug 31, 20121,567 notes

August 2012

“God wants to make you god - not by nature, as in the case of the One he gave birth to, but by his gift and adoption. Just as Christ was made a sharer in your mortality through his humanity, so he makes you a sharer in his immortality by way of exaltation.” —

Augustine, Sermon 166.4 

#controversialtheology

Aug 28, 201226 notes
#augustine #sermon #God #nature #adoption #Christ #Jesus #mortality #humanity #immortality #exaltation
“Initial enthusiasm is easy. Afterward, though, it is time to stand firm, even along the monotonous desert paths that we are called upon to traverse in this life - with the patience it takes to tread evenly, a patience in which the romanticism of the initial awakening subsides, so that only the deep, pure Yes of faith remains. This is the way to produce good wine. After the brilliant illuminations of the initial moment of his conversion, Augustine had a profound experience of this toilsome patience, and that is how he learned to love the Lord and to rejoice deeply at having found him.” —

Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth 

It’s Augustine’s feast day today!

Aug 28, 201220 notes
#262 #pope benedict xvi #jesus of nazareth #faith #religion #theology #christianity #catholic #catholicism #augustine
“

To be a writer in this market requires not only money, but a concept of “work” that is most easily gained from privilege. It requires a sense of entitlement, the ability to network and self-promote without seeing yourself as an arrogant, schmoozing blowhard. And it requires you to think of working for free—at an internship, say, or on one of those gratis assignments that seem to be everywhere now—as an opportunity rather than an insult or a scam.

This is no longer an industry that rewards working-class values, in other words, and I underestimated how hard it would be to shuck them. It still seems strange to me that people work, unpaid, without a guaranteed job at the end. And I haven’t reconciled myself with the central irony here: that journalism, ostensibly a populist endeavour, is becoming a rarefied practice best suited, both financially and psychologically, to the well-off.

”
—How to Succeed in Journalism when You Can’t Afford an Internship | Random House of Canada (via ayjay)
Aug 27, 201287 notes
#journalism #internships #writing #lit
“It is a peculiar time, indeed, when a writer doesn’t know who the enemy is, or, even worse, when he can’t stand his friends. I mean, you have to envy a writer like Flannery O’Connor, who saw the enemy clearly, namely a certain sort of triumphant humanist, and who could discern the orthodox virtues of backwoods preachers and of assorted nuts and murderers. She knew where the devils were, but if she were beating the same devils now, she would find herself in some strange company, on the same side as Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart. Of course, just because Jimmy Swaggart believes in God doesn’t mean God does not exist. But it doesn’t make life any easier for the novelist. Indeed, it is probably yet another sign of the general derangement of the times that a writer these days who happens to be a believer is more apt to feel at home with the hardheads, the unbelievers, rakes, drunks, skeptics, Darwinians, than with the Moral Majority. But here again: just because the Moral Majority comes out for morality doesn’t mean that one should be immoral.” —Walker Percy, ” Novel-Writing in an Apocalyptic Time” in Signposts in a Strange Land, pg. 159.
Aug 27, 201213 notes
#walker percy #novel #writing #religion #theology #christianity #spirituality #lit #quotes #moral majority #darwin #jerry falwell #jimmy swaggart
“[T]he novelist today is less like the Tolstoy or Fielding or Jane Austen who set forth and celebrate a still intact society, than he is like a somewhat bemused psychiatrist gazing at a patient who in one sense lives in the best of all possible worlds and yet is suffering from a depression and anxiety which he doesn’t understand.” —Walker Percy, “The State of the Novel: Dying Art or New Science?”
Aug 27, 20128 notes
#walker percy #lit #novels #writing #quotes #quote #jane austen #tolstoy
“We must learn to know and to speak the truth ourselves, and recognize when we are being deceived by others, and it is the duty of the English teacher to begin to train us when we are young.” —W.H Auden, “The Teaching of English”
Aug 26, 201215 notes
#w.h. auden #writing #teaching #education #english
FortyFive Bootstraps

Fortyfive - Bootstraps

Aug 25, 20125 notes
#bootstraps #fortyfive #playlist #music
“Talk can never be anything but futile unless both speaker and listener really understand what is being said, and one has only to open a newspaper or popular magazine, or listen to a sermon or a political speech, to realize that such understanding is extremely rare. Language and understanding are alike vague, and as long as this is the case, talk will remain a hindrance to right action rather than a help.” —W.H. Auden, “The Teaching of English”
Aug 25, 201219 notes
#w.h. auden #education #writing #english
Aug 24, 20123 notes
#Jerusalem #Israel #Old City #Souk #Travel #Wanderlust #Wander
“In short, the creational work of culture - unpacking the stores of potential latent in creation ‘to the praise of his glory’ - is what we’re made for. Since redemption is precisely the renewal and restoration of creation, then good culture-making is also what we’re saved for.” —Jamie Smith, Letters to a Young Calvinist
Aug 24, 201210 notes
#culture #calvin #reformed #calvinism #james k.a. smith #creation
“I have a hard time believing that the denial of limited atonement is the most pressing matter of discipleship right now. We should be more worried about Walmart.” —Jamie Smith, Letters to a Young Calvinist
Aug 23, 20126 notes
#james k.a. smith #calvinism #christianity #religion #theology #limited atonement #spirituality
“When Jesus suggests that God and Caesar each be rendered his due, he does not thereby envision a division of labor between two divine beings. There is no realm of life called ‘politics’ that is only indirectly under God’s providential care. Once one renders to God what is God’s… there is nothing left that properly belongs to Caesar.” —William T. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church
Aug 23, 201253 notes
#migrations of the holy #William Cavanaugh #Jesus #God #Caesar #Christianity #religion #politics #theology #catholic #quotes
“Total placement for a writer would be to live in a place like Charleston or Mobile, where one’s family has lived for two hundred years. A pleasant enough prospect, you might suppose, but not for a writer - or not for this writer. Such places are haunted. Ancestors perch on your shoulder while you write. Faulkner managed to do it but only by drinking a great deal and by playing little charades, like pretending to be a farmer. It is necessary to escape the place of one’s origins and the ghosts of one’s ancestors but not too far. You wouldn’t want to move to Tucumcari.” —

Walker Percy, “Why I Live Where I Live” in Signposts in a Strange Land


I love his sense of humor.

Aug 23, 201211 notes
#walker percy #faulkner #lit #writing
“It was the fifties, after all, that gave the sixties their idealism - and their rage.” —Jonathan Franzen, “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” in Farther Away
Aug 22, 20125 notes
#farther away #jonathan franzen #50s #60s #lit
“Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn’t require his attention.” —Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners
Aug 22, 2012138 notes
#lit #catholic #quotes #flannery o'connor #writing #theology
Play
Aug 22, 201222 notes
#art #getty
Play
Aug 21, 20122 notes
#the tallest man on earth #to just grow away #youtube #playlist
“You do not write the best you can for the sake of art, but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit.” —Flannery O’Connor
Aug 21, 2012112 notes
#flannery o'connor #writing #lit #prose #art #God #religion #theology #christianity #discernment #vocation #ralph c. wood #ralph wood #the comedy of redemption #catholic #catholicism
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