Thrumming in the Mixture

Quote

"It’s sad that hopes and poets die,
but my dear task and fondest care
is to bear softly what’s to bear
and ever to sing the lullabye."

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Anonyma”

Quote 14
Notes

"

So here’s my pitch for Christian faith, in the most succinct and accessible form I can think of. It’s a pitch. It argues some things, and postulates others, and you may not agree with all, or any, of these postulates. But it tries to be clear about what it postulates, and what it postulates, I think, makes sense, both rationally and intuitively.

So here goes. Let’s start here: the greatest thinkers and artists of history have recognized, and we ourselves know deep in our hearts, that human beings are incomplete; that there’s something within us that craves for something bigger. Call it meaning, call it happiness, call it self-actualization, call it the top of Maslow’s Pyramid—whatever. There is this something extra that we all crave and that we can’t quite put our finger on, and we’re all stuck in medium, trying to find it.

I think we can agree that religion, a good chunk of philosophy, art, ideology and so forth is dedicated to exploring that void and/or finding ways to fill it. I think we can also agree that plenty of people find ways to fill that void that are destructive, for themselves and/or others—substance abuse, pride, money, power… As DFW put it, in the day-to-day trenches of life, there are no atheists. We all worship something, we all choose something to fill that void.

I would submit that if there were such a thing that could fill that void, and do it in a non-destructive way, it could only be the following: the infinite love of a human person.

Every word in that phrase matters. The infinite love of a human person.

"

PEG’s case for Christianity is typically thoughtful and interesting. (via wesleyhill)

Photo 292
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“The future is there… looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

Photo 742
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Quote 19
Notes

"Hard sciences are successful because they deal with the soft problems; soft sciences are struggling because they deal with the hard problems."

Heinz von Foerster, via (via lukescommonplacebook)

Photo 315
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.”
― Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir

Photo 131
Notes

writingprompts:

from the archives: writing prompt #102 - reasons to live

Great pairing with “The Man in Bogota” as well…

Photo 605
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“Don’t try to make me grow up before my time…”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Photo 6
Notes

(Source: kristieneff)

Photo 542
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Photo 500
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“It seems to me that someone ought to defend the great tradition of regularhood, of passing hours and days and years drinking and talking and laughing in bars. And it’s time someone advocated for equal regularhood rights for women everywhere.”
—Rosie Schaap, Drinking with Men

Photo 302
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

Quote 21
Notes

"The books I loved best of all took me away through a wardrobe, and a shallow pool in the grass of a sleepy orchard, and a picture in a frame, and a door in a garden wall on a rainy day at boarding school, and always to Narnia. Other imaginary countries interested me, beguiled me, made rich suggestions to me. Narnia made me feel like I’d taken hold of a live wire. The book in my hand sent jolts and shimmers through my nerves. It affected me bodily. In Narnia, C. S. Lewis invented objects for my longing, gave forms to my longing, that I would never have thought of, and yet they seemed exactly right: he had anticipated what would delight me with an almost unearthly intimacy. Immediately I discovered them, they became the inevitable expressions of my longing. So from the moment I first encountered The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to when I was eleven or twelve, the seven Chronicles of Narnia represented essence-of-book to me. They were the Platonic Book of which other books were more or less imperfect shadows. For four or five years, I essentially read other books because I could not always be re-reading the Narnia books. I had a book-a-day habit to support, and there were only seven of them after all. But in other books, I was always seeking for partial or diluted reminders of Narnia, always hoping for a gleam of the sensation of Narnia. Once felt, never forgotten."

This is the beginning of Francis Spufford’s joyous, delightful, clear-eyed, critical appreciation of the Narnia books in his The Child that Books Built. It is simply excellent. Drop what you’re doing right now, if you love Lewis, and go read this! (via wesleyhill)

Photo 1067
Notes

slaughterhouse90210:

“Within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant.”
― Jo Ann Beard, In Zanesville

Quote

"The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates the number of slaves in the world today at around 21 million."

J.J. Gould, Slavery’s Global Comeback