Christianity doesn't start by telling people what they must do; it starts by telling people what God has done for them, to save them ... Christianity is a religion of grace.
Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household.
That is so true. It is only once one recognizes God's grace and mercy that you begin to understand, love, and want to please the one who loves you so much.
Do not be shy of the contest, if you truly love the prize. Let knowledge of the reward set the mind on fire to accomplish the work. What we desire, and wish for, and seek, will be hereafter; but what we are ordered to do, for the sake of that which will be hereafter, must be now.St. Augustine, Sermon
I like that idea of being ablaze working for a goal. It happens to me now and again, but probably not as often as it should when I am seeking the kingdom of God.
The Path to Rome is such a wonderful book to idly read here and there in your day. It is the story of the pilgrimage Belloc made on foot to Rome in as straight a line as possible order to fulfill a vow he had made. It is a delightful travel book with all sorts of discoveries and musings, such as above!I would very much like to know what those who have an answer to everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment, we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat noting more till the halt ... Dogs eat the first thing they come across, cats take a little milk, and gentlemen are accustomed to get up at nine and eat eggs, bacon, kidneys, ham, cold pheasant, toast coffee, tea, scones, and honey, after which they will boast that their race is the hardiest in the world and ready to bear every fatigue in the pursuit of Empire. But what rule governs all this? Why is breakfast different from all other things, so that the Greeks called it the best thing in the world, and so that each of us in a vague way knows that he would eat at breakfast nothing but one special kind of food and that he could not imagine breakfast at any other hour in the day?
Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome
Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round trot, to keep it.
Courtesy of Project Gutenberg where
this novella is available free in a variety of formats
Chances are that the Boxers of Dickens' day didn't look precisely like those we have today, but they surely acted like them!
Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.Sometimes I think of this quote when I am cooking. Then I think of how many other things in my life are considered evanescent and how I enjoy them.
Julia Child
Again with a good Murderbot quote. And this one works for all of us most of the time.Overse caught up with me and asked, "Are you all right? ... Just remember you're not alone here."
I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90% of my problems are.
Martha Wells, Network Effect
The Murderbot Diaries have become my relaxation reading during stressful times. Very much like Murderbot always falling back on running episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon during its own times of stress. Lately — Murderbot is my friend for nighttime reading. Plus it is just good reading anytime.Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, its probably not thinking about killing you, its probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.Martha Wells, Network Effect
At every turn, while he was investigating the background for his study of Thomas Nashe, he would encounter the Church — what Chesterton called (another book title) The Thing. It was everywhere. At one point, he later told me (and he was never very specific just when that point occurred), he decided that the thing had to be sorted out or he couldn't rest. Either it ws true, or it wasn't. Either the entire matter was true, all of it, exactly as the Church claimed, or it was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on a gullible mankind. With that choice clearly delineated, he set out to find which was the case. What came next was not more study, but testing.I simply absolutely love this guy's sheer logic. Here's how it's supposed to work. So let's find out.
The matter had to be tested — on its own terms: that is, by prayer. He told me that the principal prayer that he used was not some long or complex formula, but simply, "Lord, please, send me a sign." He reported that, almost immediately, not one but a deluge of signs arrived. And they continued to arrive unabated for a long time. As to just what the signs consisted in and what happened next, well, some things must remain private. The reader may deduce the rest from the fact of his conversion. ...
I feel about Catholicism as G. K. Chesterton did—that it encourages an exuberance, a joy about the gift of life. I think my conversion was a natural growth. Even in the darkest hours of my childhood, I was an irrepressible optimist, always able to find something to fill me with amazement, wonder and delight. When I came to the Catolic faith, it explained to me why I always had—and always should have—felt exuberant and full of hope.Rereading an old quote journal I came across this quote which reminded me of blogging days of old, when it was a new discovery that Dean Koontz is Catholic. This must be why his horror novels, though they may contain some very bad things indeed, have characters who are themselves full of hope and determination.
Dean Koontz
There was a tendency to call upon spirits of terror and compulsion. There is always a sort of dim idea that these darker powers will really do things, with no nonsense about it. In the interior psychology of the Punic peoples this strange sort of pessimistic practicality had grown to great proportions. In the New Town, which the Romans called Carthage, as in the parent cities of Phoenicia, the god who got things done bore the name Moloch, who was perhaps identical with the other deity whom we know as Baal, the Lord. The Romans did not at first know quite what to call him or what to make of him; they had to go back to the grossest myth of Greek or Roman origins and compare him to Saturn devouring his children. But the worshippers of Moloch were not gross or primitive. They were members of a mature and polished civilization, abounding in refinements and luxuries; they were probably far more civilized than the Romans. And Moloch was not a myth. These highly civilized people really met together to invoke the blessing of heaven on their empire by throwing hundreds of their infants into a large furnace. We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimney-pot hats and mutton-chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o’clock to see a baby roasted alive.What is terrible is that today we don't have to imagine Moloch worshippers being civilized the way Chesterton did. We've got abortion clinics all over the country.
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
A colleague, Joe Keogh, wrote in the Ottawa, Ontario G. K. Chesterton Newsletter of a curious exchange between my father [Marshall McLuhan] and Toronto's then Archbishop Pocock. The good Bishop, it is said, once asked that given John's famous prologue to the fourth gospel, did this not indicate that Christ Himself is the archetypal example of the medium as message? He readily assented.Isn't that just the best? I love the way this guy (and that bishop) thought. And the McLuhan book is excellent.
Introduction to The Medium and the Light by Marshall McLuhan
My Jungle Books begat zoos of [imitators]. But the genius of all the genii was one who wrote a series called Tarzan of the Apes. I read it, but regret I never saw it on the films, where it rages ost successfully. He had "jazzed" the motif of the Jungle Books and, I imagine, had thoroughly enjoyed himself. He was reported to have said that he wanted to find out how bad a book he could write and "get away with," which is a legitimate ambition.Rudyard Kipling
This tickles me. And I agree!Edgar Rice Burroughs never would have looked upon himself as a social mover and shaker with social obligations. But as it turns out — and I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly — Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world. ... By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special.Ray Bradbury
In truth there are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.Ain't that the truth!
G.K. Chesterton
A man may be profoundly gifted, have a strong consciousness of self, undergo deep natural-religious experiences — until he has more than these, compared to the inwardness under discussion, he remains superficial. On the other hand, the man of strictly commpnplace natural gifts has that "dimension" in him when he believes in the God of revelation and loves Him. The point is such that interiority is not psychologically deeper, or spiritually nobler, but essentially different from any natural interiority; it is a gift of grace from the Spirit.So true.Romano Guardini, The Conversion of Augustine
“You want something. The gods’ tongues can grow quite honeyed, when they want something. When I wanted something—when I prayed on my face, arms out flung, in tears and abject terror—for years—where were You then? Where were the gods the night Teidez died?” [Ista said.]Am I one of those who turn aside? Or who go the last few steps, even when it is brutally difficult?
“The Son of Autumn dispatched many men in answer to your prayers, sweet Ista. They turned aside upon their roads, and did not arrive. For He could not bend their wills, nor their steps. And so they scattered to the winds as leaves do.”
His lips curved up, in a smile more deathly serious than any scowl Ista had ever seen. “Now another prays, in despair as dark as yours. One as dear to me as Teidez was to my Brother of Autumn. And I have sent—you. Will you turn aside? As Teidez’s deliverance did? At the last, with so few steps left to travel?”
Silence fell between them.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
Having given up God so as to be self-sufficient, man has lost track of his soul. He looks in vain for himself. He finds masks, and behind masks, death.There could hardly be a better summary of the modern condition. This, too, is one that is worthy of meditation during Lent. The path to the Cross is hard, no doubt. But what lies beyond is not death, but life.
Jacques Mauritain
What do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good. Have they never even been to a dentist?
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go 'meandering' about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice.I always forget just how funny Dickens can be and how well he slips his jokes into the main narrative.
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Everything that happens ... shows beyond mistake that you can't shut out the world; that you are in it, to be of it; that you get into a false position the moment you try to sever yourself from it; and that you must mingle with it, and make the best of it, and make the best of yourself into the bargain.Amen. Amen.
Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins,September 6, 1858
