• SECT.  VII.  Third Comparison, drawn from a Statue.

    If a man should find in a desert island a fine statue of marble, he would undoubtedly immediately say, “Sure, there have been men here formerly; I perceive the workmanship of a skilful statuary; I admire with what niceness he has proportioned all the limbs of this body, in order to give them so much beauty, gracefulness, majesty, life, tenderness, motion, and action!”

    What would such a man answer if anybody should tell him, “That’s your mistake; a statuary never carved that figure.  It is made, I confess, with an excellent gusto, and according to the rules of perfection; but yet it is chance alone made it. Among so many pieces of marble there was one that formed itself of its own accord in this manner; the rains and winds have loosened it from the mountains; a violent storm has thrown it plumb upright on this pedestal, which had prepared itself to support it in this place. It is a perfect Apollo, like that of Belvedere; a Venus that equals that of the Medicis; an Hercules, like that of Farnese. You would think, it is true, that this figure walks, lives, thinks, and is just going to speak. But, however, it is not in the least beholden to art; and it is only a blind stroke of chance that has thus so well finished and placed it.”

    —François Fénelon, Existence of God

  • God, who created all nature with wisdom and secretly planted in each intelligent being knowledge of Himself as its first power, like a munificent Lord gave also to us men a natural desire and longing for Him, combining it in a natural way with the power of our intelligence. Using our intelligence, we struggle so as to learn with tranquility and without going astray how to realize this natural desire. Impelled by it we are led to search out the truth, wisdom and order manifest harmoniously in all creation, aspiring through them to attain Him by whose grace we received the desire.

    —St. Maximos the Confessor, Philokalia

  • “I don’t know what I’m doing. And if you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you’re doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.”

    – Philip Glass

  • So much of how the world decides who we are depends upon how we hold ourselves.

    —Susan Dominus

  • 7. Comparison can be a guide

    Let comparison point you towards what you want, and then do things in your own way. After all, the more you know what you really want and take steps towards it, the less it tends to matter what everyone else is doing.

    33 things I’ve learned in 33 years

  • We all, as St. Paul put it, “see through a glass darkly.” So we not only need to listen to one another, but we must also accept that we may never quite see things the way a certain holy man or woman sees them; we may never quite get out of certain spiritual disciplines or practices what other people get out of them. We have to accept that we are different and that’s OK. We are all twisted in different ways, all broken at different joints, all struggling with different handicaps. But God in His love knows this about us already. That’s why the contemplations are different: God is giving to each what he or she needs to take the next step, to straighten out one part of his or her pipe. That’s why we have to trust one another, be patient with one another, and give one another the benefit of the doubt. Basically we have to love and be patient, not only with one another, but also with ourselves.

    …

    For St. Isaac, confidence returns. No longer is it a confidence based on a presumptuous understanding of worldly things—no this confidence “breeds contempt and an impetuous way of thought,” according to St. Isaac.  Confidence in or based on anything seen only leads to arrogance, to a further twisting our our souls, making it even harder for us to perceive what is real, to perceive what is behind what is seen. However, humility based on the fear of God has the ability to “bind up” or even “bridle” to some extent impetuous aberration, or changeability, so that we can to some small extent lift our eyes to God who is beyond change. When we do this and we begin to behold in our inner mind “the properties,” what I think the Greek Fathers might call “the energies” of God, then a new kind of confidence is born in us, a confidence in God.

    Two Kinds of Confidence
    Archpriest Michael Gillis

  • It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be “as gods.” We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.

    —Thomas Merton

  • THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BETROTHAL

    “Jesus is God of the Impossible; my powerlessness shows his power; my insignificance as a creature shows his being as the creator.

    There are moments when God makes us feel the extreme limits of our powerlessness; then, and only then, do we understand our nothingness right down to the depths.

    For so many years, for too many years, I have fought against my powerlessness, my weakness. Often I have refused to admit it to myself, preferring to appear in public with a nice mask of self assurance.

    It is pride which will not let us admit this powerlessness; pride which won’t let us accept being inadequate. God has made me understand this, little by little.

    Now I don’t fight any more; I try to accept myself. I try to face up to myself without illusions, dreams or fantasies. . . Now I contrast my powerlessness with the powerfulness of God, the heap of my sins with the completeness of his mercy, and I place the abyss of my smallness beneath the abyss of his greatness.

    I seem now to have reached a means of encountering him in a way I have never known before; a togetherness I had never experienced before, an awareness of his love I had never previously felt. Yes, it is really my misery which attracts his power, my wounds which shout after him, my nothingness which makes him throw himself open to me.

    And meeting between God’s totality and man’s nothingness is the greatest wonder of creation. It is the most beautiful betrothal because its bond is a love which gives itself freely and a love which accepts.”

    —Carlo Carretto

  • “What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”

    The Artist’s Way
    Julia Cameron

  • “I was interested in everything and committed to nothing.”

    —Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram