A Quote by E. L. Doctorow
We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
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An Animated Cartoon Theology:
1. People are animals.
2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain.
3. Life is antagonistic to the living.
4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music.
5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart destroyed by their own cunning.
6. The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum.
7. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that has cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.
We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.
Let none, however difficult the circumstances, consider himself as debarred from the way of holiness. Have we but God and the cross of Christ, we have the means for becoming altogether holy in our walk and conversation. What dungeon is there that can shut us out from this? Only let us use the present location and means faithfully and truly, taking them from God's hand, and we shall find him able to free us from all that is really a hindrance. Let us each one desire to be a saint in his own place and calling, instead of building 'castles in the air' of future holiness.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
Let us dig our gardens and not be elsewhere;
Let us take long walks in the open air...
Let us bathe in the rivers and lakes...
Let us indulge in games...
Let us be more simple: simple and true in our gestures, in our words,
and simple and true in our minds above all. Let us be ourselves.
Many of us rely on our own illusion of control. But when God makes it known to you that you're not the one steering the ship, be thankful. He has removed the illusion, and forced you to rely only on Him.
That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable. Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion due to our ignorance. This is encouraging, for, if the world in which we live were as complicated as some of our friends would have us believe we might well despair that biology could ever become an exact science.
Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race. . . Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. Let us love our country, but pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora and fauna and human life that it supports - one planet indivisible, with clean air,... soil and water; with liberty, justice and peace for all.
Gratitude is of the very essence of worship. ... When you walk with gratitude, you do not walk with arrogance and conceit and egotism, you walk with a spirit of thanksgiving that is becoming to you and will bless your lives. Sincerely giving thanks not only helps us recognize our blessings, it also unlocks the doors of heaven and helps us feel God's love.
We are rarely able to interact only with folks like ourselves, who think as we do. No matter how much some of us deny this reality and long for the safety and familiarity of sameness, inclusive ways of knowing and living offer us the only true way to emancipate ourselves from the divisions that limit our minds and imaginations.
I was able to walk at 5. I had to be able to walk in order to be mainstreamed into public school. And my father worked day and night to teach me how to walk. And I think what's so amazing about this is the fact that he was told that I would never walk. And he decided that he was going to try.
As long as we insist on relating to it strictly on our own terms-as strange to us or subject to us-the wilderness is alien, threatening, fearful. We have no choice then but to become its exploiters, and to lose, by consequence, our place in it. It is only when, by humility, openness, generosity, courage, we make ourselves able to relate to it on its terms that it ceases to be alien.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods. They planted groves and walks of Plantanes, where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air. Of course, it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither.
Not only our eternal salvation depends upon our willingness and capacity to forgive wrongs committed against us. Our joy and satisfaction in this life, and our true freedom, depend upon our doing so. When Christ bade us turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, give our cloak to him who takes our coat, was it to be chiefly out of consideration for the bully, the brute, the thief? Or was it to relieve the one aggrieved of the destructive burden that resentment and anger lay upon us?
Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.
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