Богородица

“‘If you do that, wouldn’t you be good?’

‘No,’ said Cal. ‘I think bad.’

Will had never met anyone who spoke so nakedly.  He was near to embarrassment because of the nakedness, and he knew how safe Cal was in his stripped honesty. ‘Only one more,’ he said, ‘and I won’t mind if you don’t answer it.  I don’t think I would answer it.  Here it is.  Suppose you should get this money and give it to your father—would it cross your mind that you were trying to buy his love?’

‘Yes, sir.  It would.  And it would be true.’”

—John Steinbeck

“The man who imagines he can conquer the demon of fornication by gluttony and by stuffing himself is quite like someone who quenches fire with oil.  And the man who tries to put an end to this struggle by means of chastity only is like someone trying to escape from the sea by swimming with just one hand.”

—John Climacus

We make a grave mistake when we devote ourselves to overcoming just one particular sin and leave the others alone.  Holiness is total.

“Quod potui, feci, veniam da mihi posteritas.”

—Leonardo da Vinci

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Amazing sessions so far from Billy, Matt, and Kate.  The Spirit is here.

Absolutely must read this story.  I was floored:

Mysterious paper sculptures

Isaiah 66

“Thus saith the LORD:
The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my
footstool:
where is the house that ye build unto me?
and where is the place of my rest?
For all those things hath my hand made,
and all those things have been,

saith the LORD:
but to this man will I look,
even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and trembleth at my word.”

Jesus does not come and dwell in temples made with human hands.  He tabernacles inside the man that trembles at his word.  When was the last time the weight of his Word physically shook me?

“The man who wants to be reminded constantly of death and of God’s judgment and who at the same time gives in to material cares and distractions, is like someone trying at the same time to swim and to clap his hands.”

—John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent