A Quote by Jane Hirshfield
In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A person who's seen a bit of the world can't help but notice how foolish is the self-centeredness we bring to our tiny slice of existence.
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Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.
Let us face at the outset how many Christians are not victorious, but defeated. Defeated by circumstances, defeated by other peoples? natures and wrong-doings, defeated by the down-drag of the flesh, defeated by loss, by pain, by suffering, by worry. Instead of saying with confidence, ?This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith?, they have to say in honesty, ?This is the defeat that has been caused by the world, even our self-centeredness.? That is the opposite of faith. Unbelief is not the opposite of faith; self-centeredness is ? being centered in self rather than in God.
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen.
The world is... often terrifying, disgusting and tragic, but it is also beautiful. I should like to know how exactly each person would make it a tiny bit less disgusting and a tiny bit more beautiful.
To be politically activated is to dare to care about the happiness of others and that is just about the most important activity anyone can be involved in at this time, because it changes a person - it lifts them from normal self-centeredness to a state of other centeredness. That is a good thing because it expands our perception of self. This expansion of consciousness leads to enlightenment, which is the meaning of yoga.
It is time for humanity to reset our spiritual compass from self-centeredness to other-centeredness.
The business of every art is to bring something into existence, and the practice of an art involves the study of how to bring into existence something which is capable of having such an existence and has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.
We notice the person who is for ever bowing and fussily servile, and perhaps say, How humble he is! But the truly humble person escapes notice: the world does not know him.
The whole story of the Father's Christ-exalting plan of redeeming love, from eternity to eternity, must be told, or the radical reorientation of life for which the gospel calls will not be understood, and the required total shift from man-centeredness to God-centeredness, and more specifically from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, will not take place.
If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.
Self-centeredness will bring on the destruction of our world. National pride separates people. All people need the same thing. When you really get down to it, you'll find that all people need good food, clean water, clean air, and a decent environment, meaning education as to how to relate to one another and to avoid conflict, how to accept the differences where different people draw different conclusions.
The essence of sin is a shift from God centeredness to a self-centeredness. The essence of salvation is a denial of self, not an affirming of self.
Don't wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts within, not from without.
It is precisely our egoism, our self-centeredness and self-love that cause all our difficulties, our lack of freedom in suffering, our disappointments and our anguish of soul and body.
I was a Marvel kid, and I would have to say that Spiderman is my all-time favorite character. As I got older, my tastes developed a little bit more, and I would follow certain writers; like, I really got into Grant Morrison. From the time I was 5, I was into comic books. From the time I learned how to read, it was all about comic books.
So much of the world's suffering results from the sinful action or inaction of ourselves and others. For example, people look at a famine and wonder where God is, but the world produces enough food for each person to have 3,000 calories a day. It's our own irresponsibility and self-centeredness that prevents people from getting fed.
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