At Once Good and Imperfect

Meditations on contemplative living

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“ Anxiety strives to become fear, because fear can be met by courage. It is impossible for a finite being to stand naked anxiety for more than a flash of time … But ultimately the attempts to transform anxiety into fear are vain. The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the treat of nonbeing, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself. ”

- Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (39).
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“ Courage is self-affirmation “in-spite-of”, that is in spite of that which tends to prevent the self from affirming itself. ”

- Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (32).
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“ Since every day a little of our life is taken from us - since we are dying every day - the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely completes the death process. The horrors connected with it are a matter of imagination. They vanish when the mask is taken from the image of death. ”

- Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (14).
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“ Perfect courage is, according to Thomas, a gift of the Divine Spirit. Through the Spirit natural strength of mind is elevated to its supernatural perfection. This however means that it is united with the specifically Christian virtues, faith, hope and love. Thus a development is visible in which the ontological side of courage is taken into faith (including hope), while the ethical side of courage is taken into love or the principle of ethics. ”

- Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (8).
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“ The best approach is existentialist, and the existentialist approach, in theology, is not through abstract dogmas but through direct personal confrontation, not of a subject with an object but of a person with an inner demand. ”

- Thomas Merton, journal of June 20, 1965.
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“ Being and doing become one, in our life, when our life and being themselves are a “martyrdom” for the truth. ”

- Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island 142 (via aphotographicprotest)
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“ Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. ”

- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
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“ To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely—to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away. ”

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Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (via godthings).

 

(Source: sermonquotes.wordpress.com)
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No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

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- Steve Jobs, 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University (video)
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“ To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. ”

- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving.
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