a good quote from this N.T. Wright book....
pg148
You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you being to take on something of the character of the object of your worship....
So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has veeb accomplished by the Lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule: because you were made in God's image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.
Conversely, when you give that same total woship to anything or anyone else, you shrink as a human being. It doesn't, of course, feel like that at the time. when you worship part of the creation as though it were the Creator himself- in other words, when you worship an idol- you may well feel a brief "high." But, like a hallucinatory drug, that worship achieves its effect at a cost: when the effect is over, you are less of a human being than you were to being with. That is the price of idolatry...
Perhaps one of the reaons why so much worship, in some churches at least, appears unattractive to so many people is that we have forgotten, or covered up, the truth about the one we are worshipping.
.
.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
A Week at the Airport
by Alain de Botton
{some of my favorite quotes from the book}
(on ANGER and OPTIMISM) Pg 33- We are angry because we are overly optimistic, insufficiently prepared for the frustrations endemic to existence…a recklessly naïve belief in a world in which keys never go astray and our travel plans are invariably assured.
(on a passenger DREADING vacation) Pg 40- There was, of course, no official recourse available to him, whether for assistance or complaint. British Airways did, it was true, maintain a desk manned by some unusually personable employees and adorned with the message: ‘We are here to help’. But the staff shied away from existential issues, seeming to restrict their insights to matters relating to the transit time to adjacent satellites and the location of the nearest toilets.
Yet it was more than a little disingenuous for the airline to deny all knowledge of, and responsibility for, the metaphysical well-being of its customers. Like its many competitors, British Airways... existed in large part to encourage and enable people to go and sit in deckchairs and take up (and usually fail at) the momentous challenge of being content for a few days.
(on advances in TECHNOLOGY but not BEHAVIOUR) pg 41- At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and aeroplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones and apologise for our tantrums?
(on WRITING)pg 42- Objectively good places to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studies have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way- towards a busy street or terminal- before they run out of their burrows.
(on RETAIL and FLYING) pg 57- [the terminal has too many shops]...“it was hard to determine what might be so wrong with this balance, what precise aspect of the building’s essential aeronautical identity had been violated or even what specific pleasure passengers had been robbed of, given that we are inclined to visit malls even when they don’t provide us with the additional pleasure of a gate to Johannesburg.”
….”The issue seemed to centre on an incongruity between shopping and flying, connected in some sense to the desire to maintain dignity in the face of death…It therefore tends to raise questions about how we might best spend the last moments before our disintegration, in what frame of mind we might wish to fall back down to earth- and the extent to which we would like to meet eternity surrounded by an array of duty-free bags.”
(on the SUPERNATURAL and flying) pg 62- Despite its seeming mundanity, the ritual of flying remains indelibly linked, even in secular times, to the momentous themes of existence – and their refractions in the stories of the world’s religions. We have heard about too many ascensions, too many voices from heaven, too many airborne angles and saints to ever be able to regard the business of flight from an entirely pedestrian perspective, as we might, say, the act of travelling by train. Notions of the divine, the eternal and the significant accompany us covertly on to our craft, haunting the reading aloud of the safety instructions, the weather announcements made by our captains and, most particularly, our lofty views of the gentle curvature of the earth.
{some of my favorite quotes from the book}
(on ANGER and OPTIMISM) Pg 33- We are angry because we are overly optimistic, insufficiently prepared for the frustrations endemic to existence…a recklessly naïve belief in a world in which keys never go astray and our travel plans are invariably assured.
(on a passenger DREADING vacation) Pg 40- There was, of course, no official recourse available to him, whether for assistance or complaint. British Airways did, it was true, maintain a desk manned by some unusually personable employees and adorned with the message: ‘We are here to help’. But the staff shied away from existential issues, seeming to restrict their insights to matters relating to the transit time to adjacent satellites and the location of the nearest toilets.
Yet it was more than a little disingenuous for the airline to deny all knowledge of, and responsibility for, the metaphysical well-being of its customers. Like its many competitors, British Airways... existed in large part to encourage and enable people to go and sit in deckchairs and take up (and usually fail at) the momentous challenge of being content for a few days.
(on advances in TECHNOLOGY but not BEHAVIOUR) pg 41- At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and aeroplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones and apologise for our tantrums?
(on WRITING)pg 42- Objectively good places to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studies have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way- towards a busy street or terminal- before they run out of their burrows.
(on RETAIL and FLYING) pg 57- [the terminal has too many shops]...“it was hard to determine what might be so wrong with this balance, what precise aspect of the building’s essential aeronautical identity had been violated or even what specific pleasure passengers had been robbed of, given that we are inclined to visit malls even when they don’t provide us with the additional pleasure of a gate to Johannesburg.”
….”The issue seemed to centre on an incongruity between shopping and flying, connected in some sense to the desire to maintain dignity in the face of death…It therefore tends to raise questions about how we might best spend the last moments before our disintegration, in what frame of mind we might wish to fall back down to earth- and the extent to which we would like to meet eternity surrounded by an array of duty-free bags.”
(on the SUPERNATURAL and flying) pg 62- Despite its seeming mundanity, the ritual of flying remains indelibly linked, even in secular times, to the momentous themes of existence – and their refractions in the stories of the world’s religions. We have heard about too many ascensions, too many voices from heaven, too many airborne angles and saints to ever be able to regard the business of flight from an entirely pedestrian perspective, as we might, say, the act of travelling by train. Notions of the divine, the eternal and the significant accompany us covertly on to our craft, haunting the reading aloud of the safety instructions, the weather announcements made by our captains and, most particularly, our lofty views of the gentle curvature of the earth.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel
So about a year ago I read this ^ book (by Alain de Botton- whom I adore) but I never published the quotes that hit me the most. But the quote from page 22 totally happened to me on Sunday when I was at CedarPoint. I saw a person who looked exactly like another person I know- he was just a different skin color! But his face, body type and mannerisms were spot on. So here are some quotes from Marcel Proust's writings and life, about relationships and reading... Enjoy!
Pg 22 -- “aesthetically, the number of human types is so restricted that we must constantly, wherever we may be, have the pleasure of seeing people we know.”
Any such pleasure is not simply visual: the restricted number of human types also means that we are repeatedly able to read about people we know in places we might have never expected to do so.
Pg 215 -- “To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.”
Pg 25 -- “In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.
Pg 131 -- It is often assumed, usually by people who don’t have many friends, that friendship is a hallowed sphere where what we wish to talk about effortlessly coincides with others’ interests. Proust, less optimistic than this, recognized the likelihood of discrepancy, and concluded that he should always be the one to ask questions, and address himself to what was on your mind rather than risk boring you with what was on his.
Pg 133 -- “I do my intellectual work within myself, and once with other people, it’s more or less irrelevant to me that they’re intelligent, as long as they are kind, sincere, etc."
Pg 137 -- The exaggerated scale of Prous’s social politeness should not blind us to the degree of insincerity every friendship demands, the ever-present requirement to deliver an affable but hollow word to a friend who proudly shows us a volume of their poetry or newborn baby. TO call such politeness hypocrisy is to neglect that we have lied in a local way not in order to conceal fundamentally malevolent intentions but rather to confirm our sense of affection, which might have been doubted if there had been no gasping and praising, because of the unusual intensity of people’s attachemnt to their verse and children. There seems to be a gap between what others need to hear from us in order to trust that we like them, and the extent of the negative thoughts we know we can feel towards them and still like them.We know it is possible to think of someone as both dismal at poetry and perceptive, both inclined to pomposity and charming, both suffering from halitosis and genial. But the susceptibility of others means that the negative part of the equation can rarely be expressed without jeopardizing the union.
Summarized pg 194 -- Letting ourselves be guided by books we admire does not rob our faculty of judgement or part of its independence… “There is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt. In this profound effort it is our thought itself that we bring out into the light, together with his….”We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel, it is our own thoughts we should be develping even if it is another writer’s thoughts which help us do so. A fulfilled academic life would therefore require us to judge that the writers we were studying articulated in their books a sufficient range of our own concerns, and that in the act of understanding them through translation or commentary, we would simultaneously be understanding and developing the spiritually significant parts of ourselves.
Pg 22 -- “aesthetically, the number of human types is so restricted that we must constantly, wherever we may be, have the pleasure of seeing people we know.”
Any such pleasure is not simply visual: the restricted number of human types also means that we are repeatedly able to read about people we know in places we might have never expected to do so.
Pg 215 -- “To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.”
Pg 25 -- “In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.
Pg 131 -- It is often assumed, usually by people who don’t have many friends, that friendship is a hallowed sphere where what we wish to talk about effortlessly coincides with others’ interests. Proust, less optimistic than this, recognized the likelihood of discrepancy, and concluded that he should always be the one to ask questions, and address himself to what was on your mind rather than risk boring you with what was on his.
Pg 133 -- “I do my intellectual work within myself, and once with other people, it’s more or less irrelevant to me that they’re intelligent, as long as they are kind, sincere, etc."
Pg 137 -- The exaggerated scale of Prous’s social politeness should not blind us to the degree of insincerity every friendship demands, the ever-present requirement to deliver an affable but hollow word to a friend who proudly shows us a volume of their poetry or newborn baby. TO call such politeness hypocrisy is to neglect that we have lied in a local way not in order to conceal fundamentally malevolent intentions but rather to confirm our sense of affection, which might have been doubted if there had been no gasping and praising, because of the unusual intensity of people’s attachemnt to their verse and children. There seems to be a gap between what others need to hear from us in order to trust that we like them, and the extent of the negative thoughts we know we can feel towards them and still like them.We know it is possible to think of someone as both dismal at poetry and perceptive, both inclined to pomposity and charming, both suffering from halitosis and genial. But the susceptibility of others means that the negative part of the equation can rarely be expressed without jeopardizing the union.
Summarized pg 194 -- Letting ourselves be guided by books we admire does not rob our faculty of judgement or part of its independence… “There is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt. In this profound effort it is our thought itself that we bring out into the light, together with his….”We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel, it is our own thoughts we should be develping even if it is another writer’s thoughts which help us do so. A fulfilled academic life would therefore require us to judge that the writers we were studying articulated in their books a sufficient range of our own concerns, and that in the act of understanding them through translation or commentary, we would simultaneously be understanding and developing the spiritually significant parts of ourselves.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Gracias by Henri Nouwen
I typed up some quotes from Henri Nouwen's Gracias! A Latin American Journal last week. I read the book months ago, so typing up the quotes was definitely a blessing of revisiting. Some of my favorite passages are far too long to place on here, even though I'd be tempted to do it. This book really impacted me b/c of the living abroad aspect, but in general anything Henri Nouwen writes is quality.
On being loved- and the FREEDOM it gives...
"It seems paradoxical, but the expressions of friendship at Yale of former students and colleagues, and the deep personal conversations, gave me a profound sense of mission. I realized that I was not going just because it seemed, like a good idea, but because those who love me most sent me on my way with affection, support, and prayers. The more I realized that I was truly loved, the more I felt the inner freedom to go in peace and to let all inner debate about motivation subside."
"A true spirituality cannot be constructed, built, or put together; it has to be recognized in the daily life of people who search together to do God’s will in the world."
“There are no silent nights in Bolivia [because of animal noises]. And during the day the voices of playing children join the birds in their chatter. All these sounds come together to form a single unceasing prayer to the Creator, a prayer not of thoughts and words but of sounds and life. How sad it is that thinking often makes prayers cease.”
"One of the most rewarding aspects of living in a strange land is the experience of being loved not for what we can do, but for who we are. When we become aware that our stuttering, failing , vulnerable selves are loved even when we hardly progress, we can let go of our compulsion to prove ourselves and be free to live with others in a fellowship of the weak. That is true healing."
On being loved- and the FREEDOM it gives...
"It seems paradoxical, but the expressions of friendship at Yale of former students and colleagues, and the deep personal conversations, gave me a profound sense of mission. I realized that I was not going just because it seemed, like a good idea, but because those who love me most sent me on my way with affection, support, and prayers. The more I realized that I was truly loved, the more I felt the inner freedom to go in peace and to let all inner debate about motivation subside."
"A true spirituality cannot be constructed, built, or put together; it has to be recognized in the daily life of people who search together to do God’s will in the world."
“There are no silent nights in Bolivia [because of animal noises]. And during the day the voices of playing children join the birds in their chatter. All these sounds come together to form a single unceasing prayer to the Creator, a prayer not of thoughts and words but of sounds and life. How sad it is that thinking often makes prayers cease.”
"One of the most rewarding aspects of living in a strange land is the experience of being loved not for what we can do, but for who we are. When we become aware that our stuttering, failing , vulnerable selves are loved even when we hardly progress, we can let go of our compulsion to prove ourselves and be free to live with others in a fellowship of the weak. That is true healing."
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
the world IS flat...
...thanks to air travel.
I'm so excited to go that I want to write again! haha.
new favorite chocolate: Pocket Coffee by Ferrero. SOOOOO good. Somebody wanna buy me a case of them on Amazon.com? I hear TJs has a comparable product, so I'll try those.
This time tomorrow I'll be in San Diego. I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet, I DO have to go to the store for my Mexi-friends (that rhymes with Mexi-cans :) )
I think I'll go down to the tide pools, hopefully it will be low tide. I might go to an art museum, or I might just sit outside and read and look at the ocean in the 70 degree weather :) :) :)
Maybe the smile-ies are overkill. I'm so excited I can't think straight. I was going to take all the kids gifts, but I think I'll stick with carry-on luggage. I haven't packed yet, so that may change. I am going to print off some old photos for them.
I'm NOT taking my computer. whoa. This'll be the first vacation in a while that I haven't had it with me. But this means planning things now. Printing some maps, charging iPod, etc.
other people will have computers in Mex. so I might be tempted to check ye old email and things. I've done all my classwork that was due next week, so that's not a problem.
Jill pointed out to me that I forgot to mention that when we ate our black soup we called it gruel and made jokes about standing in the bread line and ration stamps and communism. Then we wondered when and why English lost engendered nouns, since English derives from languages that do have engendered nouns. Then we asked each other what do normal people joke/talk about? It was v. amusing.
ok. shower. print photos. buy sudoku calender. bank. laundry detergent. GO.
P.S. The World is Flat is a little outdated, and he says "value added" a lot. He also explained how people use the internet on their phones, really? I had no idea. :)
P.P.S. I just worked ten days in a row. Now I have ten days off in a row. that sounds like a good trade off to me!
P.P.P.S. well, ten days in a row with two snow days in the mix. I was supposed to work ten days in a row. Does that count?
I'm so excited to go that I want to write again! haha.
new favorite chocolate: Pocket Coffee by Ferrero. SOOOOO good. Somebody wanna buy me a case of them on Amazon.com? I hear TJs has a comparable product, so I'll try those.
This time tomorrow I'll be in San Diego. I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet, I DO have to go to the store for my Mexi-friends (that rhymes with Mexi-cans :) )
I think I'll go down to the tide pools, hopefully it will be low tide. I might go to an art museum, or I might just sit outside and read and look at the ocean in the 70 degree weather :) :) :)
Maybe the smile-ies are overkill. I'm so excited I can't think straight. I was going to take all the kids gifts, but I think I'll stick with carry-on luggage. I haven't packed yet, so that may change. I am going to print off some old photos for them.
I'm NOT taking my computer. whoa. This'll be the first vacation in a while that I haven't had it with me. But this means planning things now. Printing some maps, charging iPod, etc.
other people will have computers in Mex. so I might be tempted to check ye old email and things. I've done all my classwork that was due next week, so that's not a problem.
Jill pointed out to me that I forgot to mention that when we ate our black soup we called it gruel and made jokes about standing in the bread line and ration stamps and communism. Then we wondered when and why English lost engendered nouns, since English derives from languages that do have engendered nouns. Then we asked each other what do normal people joke/talk about? It was v. amusing.
ok. shower. print photos. buy sudoku calender. bank. laundry detergent. GO.
P.S. The World is Flat is a little outdated, and he says "value added" a lot. He also explained how people use the internet on their phones, really? I had no idea. :)
P.P.S. I just worked ten days in a row. Now I have ten days off in a row. that sounds like a good trade off to me!
P.P.P.S. well, ten days in a row with two snow days in the mix. I was supposed to work ten days in a row. Does that count?
Thursday, February 11, 2010
stone soup.
Sunday I had to come into work. (This is the day after the nasty snow storm).
At the gate the guard said, “what are you doing here today?”
I said, “I have to come into work.”
He said, “On a day like this, no you don’t.”
I said, “yeah, my boss made me.”
He said, “I highly doubt that” smiled, gave my card back to me and said “Be safe, mam.” I think he genuinely thought I was a workaholic that wanted to come in on the weekend. how amusing :)
My roommate got her car stuck in the snow last night. Just as we were about to give up and call some people to see if they wanted to help (i.e. boys) She looked up and there were two guys! The one said, “you need help?” and we gladly accepted. As soon as her car moved, I shouted thanks. They walked away without a word, handshake or anything. It was so mysterious.
Jill and I spent the day Tuesday making soup. Not necessarily because we wanted to make soup, but because I had bought too many carrots, celery and zucchini. The vegetables needed to be cooked before they went bad. We put everything in it. Potatoes, Garbanzo Beans, Rice, Celery, Carrots, Onion, Zucchini. I really appreciate that I have a roommate that doesn't like to overcook things. We really only heated the vegetables up in a frying pan, keeping them mostly firm and crisp before putting them in the soup. I had cooked a tiny bit of black beans, and dumped the whole pot in without draining them. Opps. Our soup turned a dark shade of gray-ish purple. But it tastes really good!! Now we have no produce in our fridge, but we have a big pot of soup.
On Saturday I finally made Pescado al Crema Chipotle (Fish in Chipotle cream sauce) which I had been talking about and craving for two weeks. Unfortunately, when I went to Kroger they didn't have cans of chipotles, and the little Mexican store near my house didn't have them either. Since the weather was so bad I decided to use Chiles Anchos and barbacue sauce (Salsa Lizano from Costa Rica that I had never opened). It turned out fine!
I had the chance to watch some super cute bilingual children on Saturday night. I was thrilled to talk to them in Spanish. The little girl wasn’t so keen on it though. Several of the times that I said things to her in Spanish she said “You talk too much.” Hahaha. I let her paint my toenails though, so I think she forgave me.
I go to San Diego on Saturday, and then Mexico on Sunday :) I’m pretty excited!
At the gate the guard said, “what are you doing here today?”
I said, “I have to come into work.”
He said, “On a day like this, no you don’t.”
I said, “yeah, my boss made me.”
He said, “I highly doubt that” smiled, gave my card back to me and said “Be safe, mam.” I think he genuinely thought I was a workaholic that wanted to come in on the weekend. how amusing :)
My roommate got her car stuck in the snow last night. Just as we were about to give up and call some people to see if they wanted to help (i.e. boys) She looked up and there were two guys! The one said, “you need help?” and we gladly accepted. As soon as her car moved, I shouted thanks. They walked away without a word, handshake or anything. It was so mysterious.
Jill and I spent the day Tuesday making soup. Not necessarily because we wanted to make soup, but because I had bought too many carrots, celery and zucchini. The vegetables needed to be cooked before they went bad. We put everything in it. Potatoes, Garbanzo Beans, Rice, Celery, Carrots, Onion, Zucchini. I really appreciate that I have a roommate that doesn't like to overcook things. We really only heated the vegetables up in a frying pan, keeping them mostly firm and crisp before putting them in the soup. I had cooked a tiny bit of black beans, and dumped the whole pot in without draining them. Opps. Our soup turned a dark shade of gray-ish purple. But it tastes really good!! Now we have no produce in our fridge, but we have a big pot of soup.
On Saturday I finally made Pescado al Crema Chipotle (Fish in Chipotle cream sauce) which I had been talking about and craving for two weeks. Unfortunately, when I went to Kroger they didn't have cans of chipotles, and the little Mexican store near my house didn't have them either. Since the weather was so bad I decided to use Chiles Anchos and barbacue sauce (Salsa Lizano from Costa Rica that I had never opened). It turned out fine!
I had the chance to watch some super cute bilingual children on Saturday night. I was thrilled to talk to them in Spanish. The little girl wasn’t so keen on it though. Several of the times that I said things to her in Spanish she said “You talk too much.” Hahaha. I let her paint my toenails though, so I think she forgave me.
I go to San Diego on Saturday, and then Mexico on Sunday :) I’m pretty excited!
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