Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body — which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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| Jacob reproaching Laban for giving him Leah in place of Rachel, Hendrick ter Brugghen |
Strengths and accomplishments:
Weaknesses and mistakes:
- Controlled two generations of marriages in the Abrahamic family (Rebekah, Rachel, Leah)
- Quick witted
Lessons from his life:
- Manipulated others for his own benefit
- Unwilling to admit wrongdoing
- Benefited financially by using Jacob, but never fully benefited spiritually by knowing and worshipping Jacob's God
Vital statistics:
- Those who set out to use people will eventually find themselves used
- God's plan cannot be blocked
Key verses:
- Where: Haran
- Occupation: Wealthy sheep breeder
- Relatives: Father - Bethuel. Sister - Rebekah. Brother-in-law - Isaac. Daughters - Rachel and Leah. Son-in-law - Jacob.
"If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you" (Genesis 31:42).
Laban's story is told in Genesis 24:1 - 31:55.
Let us stipulate a distinction between removing someone from life support, as the hospital proposes, and taking active measures to induce death. Put another way, if Connie Yates and Chris Gard —Charlie’s parents—decided to remove their son from his ventilator and allow nature to take its course, it would be a difficult but eminently defensible position.Bill McGurn wrote a really excellent editorial, For the Love of Charlie Gard, for the Wall Street Journal. It is hidden behind the WSJ's paywall but if you click through from his Facebook post then the whole article may be read.
But the claim asserted by the representatives of Britain’s state-run health care system is more sweeping and insidious: This is our call, they say. Such is the Great Ormond Street Hospital’s sense of dominion, says Ms. Yates, that it refused to allow Charlie to come home to die, wrapped in the loving arms of his mom and dad.
"Something's been calling her," he said. "In dreams. Someone that wants to be let out. I'm afraid she's going to get hurt."
"She's not worth it," said Gaspode. "Messin' around with girls who're in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it. You'd never know what you were going to wake up to.
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
“Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?"
"Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.”
Terry Pratchett, Jingo
It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored.
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light
Instead of a vinyl disc, Traubeck's record player uses a cross-section of a log or tree trunk, using light to translate the different colors and textures of the tree's rings into musical notes and instruments. Because every tree has its own unique configuration of rings, every tree has its own unique "song."For details about the technology, read the top comment at YouTube.
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| Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Rachel sitting on the idols |
Jacob's love for Rachel was both patient and practical. Jacob had the patience to wait seven years for her, but he kept busy in the meantime. his commitment to Rachel kindled a strong loyalty within her. In fact, her loyalty to Jacob got out of hand and became self-destructive. She was frustrated by her barrenness and desperate to compete with her sister for Jacob's attention. She was trying to gain from Jacob what he had already given: devoted love.
Strengths and accomplishments:
Weaknesses and mistakes:
- She showed great loyalty to her family
- She mothered Joseph and Benjamin after being barren for many years
Lessons from her life:
- Her envy and competitiveness marred her relationship with her sister, Leah
- She was capable of dishonesty when she took her loyalty too far
- She failed to recognize that Jacob's devotion was not dependent on her ability to have children
Vital statistics:
- Loyalty must be controlled by what is true and right
- Love is accepted, not earned
Key verse:
- Where: Haran
- Occupation: Shepherdess, housewife
- Relatives: Father - Laban. Aunt - Rebekah. Sister - Leah. Husband - Jacob. Sons - Joseph and Benjamin.
"So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her" (Genesis 29:20)
Rachel's story is told in Genesis 29 - 35:20. She also is mentioned in Ruth 4:11.
I never came into the church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying they need truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the Church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the Church: they have quit praying.
Actively relating to the Church's prayer and sacraments is not done through ideas. Any Catholic today who has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church: that's meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution.”
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium and the Light
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| Second Dream of St. Joseph, Daniel Mitsui |
Over fourteen years, from Easter 2017 to Easter 2031, I plan to draw an iconographic summary of the Old and New Testaments, illustrating those events that are most prominent in sacred liturgy and patristic exegesis.Find out more here. Be sure to browse Daniel's website to see his gorgeous art and read his thoughts and inspirations as an artist.
The things that I plan to depict are the very raw stuff of Christian belief and Christian art; no other subjects offer an artist such inexhaustible wealth of beauty and symbolism. Were I never to draw them, I would feel my artistic career incomplete. I hope to undertake this task in the spirit of a medieval encyclopedist, who gathers as much traditional wisdom as he can find and faithfully puts it into order. I want every detail of these pictures, whether great or small, to be thoroughly considered and significant.
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| Venerable Pierre Toussaint |
... reaches out both as an expression of my desire to share my own experiences and an invitation to those of you who want to explore a life of joy. As we share our stories we share the joy of our hearts with one another. We will learn more about each another, more about our true selves and more about how intimately the Lord loves us.
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.
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. ...
Eric McLuhan, introduction toThe Medium and the Light by his father Marshall McLuhan
