A Catholic priest from Chicago was credited with these words:
“Have we as a nation become so corrupted that as long as we get what we want, as long as times are good and the money rolls in, that we don’t care what the hell goes on?”
I certainly hope not.
Fight the good fight, children of light. Shine and blaze forth on behalf of life and love and goodness.
My morning reading introduced me to a man named William James. On the topic of “How to Change One’s Habits”, he offered a few great reflections on the power of these tendencies and patterns that we create:
“Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone…
The drunken Rip van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, ‘I won’t count this time!’ Well! He may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it,; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.”
Apparently, I have no quality thoughts of my own today. So allow me to keep posting great things from other minds.
A fellow named Conrad Gempf says this:
“The God of the Jews and Christians is unlike any other god. Dispute with Jupiter and you’ll have one of those yellow-painted wooden lightning bolts shoved down your throat. Talking back to Allah is likely to get you into even more trouble than talking back to my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Davidovitch. Try arguing with Buddha and he’ll laugh at you derisively for treating any conversation as it it referred to something real.
But when you start arguing with Yahweh, he smiles, rolls up his anthropocentric sleeves, and starts to look interested. The strangest thing is that he likes losing the arguments even more than he likes winning them. Jacob, the trickster, is beloved of God. And Abraham didn’t just get away with asking, ‘What about if there are only twenty righteous men in the city?’
The God of the Jews and Christians is the only God that allows his followers to hear him say, ‘Oh, all right, you win.”
That imagery makes me think that life isn’t meant to be lived in the bleachers.
The ring is calling.
That’s a visual kind of word.
And for all the hopeful stories we hear of people overcoming injuries and prevailing through suffering, it’s also a word that rhymes with “limitation”.
When a fearfully and wonderfully made body is broken in this way, it’s tough to watch because of how great that fall is: Can-do-anything-at-all to can’t-do-much-at-all.
That’s why this phrase jumped out of a book at me on the weekend:
“a paralysis of faith and imagination”
Forget wondering about the context. Just roll it around with me.
Faith is one of those do-anything kind of words. It can move mountains, for crying out loud! And imagination… the sky is the limit. That’s what makes imagination… imagination! If it can be conceived, it can be achieved. Translation: Imagination is the first step in every “impossible” achievement. That’s a powerful thing!
So what a tragedy it would be to witness “a paralysis of faith and imagination”.
What a loss it would be to trade those treasures for lesser items like ritual or rule, like system or standard, like habit or ho-hum. That would be… a paralysis.
So let me nudge you today.
From Augustine…
“We want to reach the kingdom of God, but we don’t want to travel by way of death. And yet there stands Necessity saying: ‘This way, please.’ Do you hesitate, man, to go this way, when this is the way that God came to you?”
And from Francis de Sales…
“He prays well who is so absorbed with God that he does not know he is praying.”