Category: Notes Anthology

I use Apple Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share in “So Much to Think About”. Many stay hidden. I’m currently up to 1,404 . There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head. Going forward I intend to post “So Much to Think about” on Fridays. I’m letting you so you can mark your calendar :). BTW today is Friday, so enjoy this post.

Slowing down (traveling “off road”)
“I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from here on than I have lived up to now.
 I feel like that child who won a packet of sweets: he ate the first with pleasure, but when he realized that there were few left, he began to enjoy them intensely.
 I no longer have time for endless meetings where statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be achieved.
 I no longer have time to support the absurd people who, despite their chronological age, haven’t grown up.
 My time is too short: I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry.  I don’t have many sweets in the package anymore.
 I want to live next to human people, very human, who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their triumphs and who take on their responsibilities.  Thus human dignity is defended and we move towards truth and honesty.  It is the essential that makes life worth living.
I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch hearts, people who have been taught by the hard blows of life to grow with gentle touches of the soul.
 Yes, I’m in a hurry, I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.
 I don’t intend to waste any of the leftover sweets.  I am sure they will be delicious, much more than what I have eaten so far.
 My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.
 We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one. “
 Mario de Andrade

Difficult subjects
… difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without [any]doubt, what is laid before him.

Mastery of Information
Our culture tends to have a focus on the mastery of information, the management of the facts. I recall a famous television evangelist who touted himself as having memorized the entire Bible. It made him a television evangelist, not a great soul or a deeply wise man. It can indeed be little more than a carnival trick.
The soul is ever so much more about who we are, and the character of who we are than what we are and what we know.
FR Stephen Freeman

Parable of topsoil and wheelbarrow
Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary – over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 
Jim Gordon

Right Affections
I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.
C S Lewis

Virtue as bravery
At root, all virtue is a form of bravery. But bravery is only heroic if there is an objective value at stake, a true good in question. Remove that value and you remove the distinction between virtue and vice, between heroic sacrifice and self-serving cowardice. 
Richard Beck

Fountain Pens
We once wrote with quills from real birds dipped (the quills, that is) in ink, then we wrote with crude hand-made quill pens that were also dipped in ink, then we wrote with fountain pens that had a hidden reservoir that sometimes leaked, and then Mr. Biro invented the discardable ball-point pen, and now you and I have colors and shapes and any kind of pen we want. They are cheap and they are easy. Some see this as clear evidence of progress and improvement. They are not because they are cosmic pollutants.
Unless you prefer a pen that stays with you for life, like a fountain pen. I know that using a ballpoint pen is easy and that it is the end of a line of technological progress, but there is something special and personal about a fountain pen (unless you are hard of heart). It becomes your friend after you’ve filled it for years — and I prefer piston fillers rather than the little plastic cartridges that also clog up the world.
Go ahead, pick up a fountain pen and feel a work of art — Bics are trash. They are cheap; the ink is fake; the pen has no balance; it makes one wonder how humans could do this to themselves. Try on a Pelikan or a Mont Blanc or a Conway Steward or a Waterman or a Schaeffer — I’ve got several and each is a friend.
Scot McKnight

Virtues for today
Fallibilism: we have to admit we may not be right all the time. Which means “No one gets the final say.”
We have to admit that at least some, if not most, of what we claim as knowledge could in some senses be wrong. Nothing is absolute knowledge for any human. A genuine sense that “I might be wrong” permits thinking with others who may help us reach a better position.
Empiricism: what you claim has to be discoverable by others using the same method. Which means “No one has personal authority.”
Jonathan Rausch

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” Jordon Peterson

If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there. Will Rogers

Intolerance
Instead of offering rigorous and compelling arguments in defense of what we understand to be true, some simply take up the other side of the rope in a tug-of-war game of intolerance, making each side no different from the other side.
….some things are clearly and simply wrong. It takes wisdom to discern what should be tolerated and what should not. It also takes wisdom to know when to speak up and when to wait. It takes wisdom to understand when institutions are set up to perpetuate wrong rather than prevent it, to recognize when corruption is a feature, not a bug.
Karen Swallow Prior

Wisdom
The moral logic of creation becomes visible to us in the life of Jesus. Jesus is wisdom incarnate, wisdom in the flesh. To live wisely, to follow the grain of the universe, is to imitate Jesus. This changes how we might think about questions of “right versus wrong.” Is it “wrong” to build a house out of marshmallows? Well, not exactly. But it is foolish. The same goes for how you build your life. As Jesus says at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

Life is full of storms. You might be in a storm right now. Look at the choices you are making. Are you building wisely? Because you will get to where you are going.
Richard Beck

The truth will set you free, …
but first it might break your heart. We need broken-hearted people overflowing with empathy if we want to heal this country.
[Jesus talks about] peacemakers [not] peacekeepers. [Peacekeepers avoid conflict while peacemakers enter into the conflict to make peace.]
Kristen Powers

Doing Good
“We need to make the kind of society where it is easier for people to be good,” said Peter Maurin (1877–1949). [1] That is our difficulty today. We are surrounded by good, well-meaning folks who are swept along in a stream of shallow options. Not only is the good made increasingly difficult to do, it is even difficult to recognize. It seems that affluence takes away the clear awareness of what is life and what is death. I don’t think the rich are any more or less sinful than the poor; they just have many more ways to call their sin virtue. There is a definite deadening of the awareness of true good and true evil.
Richard Rohr

Prayer Life
There is a tendency, I think, to conceive of our prayer life as an effort that somehow gains us something. Like so much in our lives, we imagine prayer to belong to the realm of cause and effect. “If I do this…then this will be the result.” There is no causation in the spiritual life, at least not in any manner we can imagine. God alone is the Cause, and He “causelessly” causes – we can never truly observe His causation: it remains out-of-sight. Self-emptying is an embracing and acknowledging of the complete futility of our efforts. We cannot cause anything in our spiritual life. We cannot add a “single cubit” to our span of life; we cannot make our hair white or dark. God is the cause of our existence and is alone the source of eternal life and blessing.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Lying 
…the Fathers write about three things that are somewhat interchangeable: Goodness, Beauty, Truth.
This sense of the connection between the words we speak and the goodness, beauty and truth of the world find a connection in the simple injunction: “Do not lie.” We generally think of lying as being sinful because it has the potential to cause harm. And we thus describe certain lies as “harmless.” But there is a deeper problem with lying: it attempts to create what does not exist, or, rather, to uncreate what does. It becomes the enemy of Goodness, Beauty and Truth. We should take to heart the fact that our adversary is named the “father of lies” (Jn. 8:44).
Fr Stephen Freeman

We.. must not try to make our own imprint of God by projecting onto him conclusions about what he is like deduced from our own life experiences, conceptions, and expectations.
Greg Boyd

Resistance and Opposition
We must know the difference between resistance and opposition. Resistance to our proposal or plan of attack is most often a good thing. It helps to test, clarify, sharpen, and strengthen a plan. The sign of a mature leader is their ability to welcome resistance from others and receive influence. Opposition is a different matter. Opponents don’t usually want to test, clarify, sharpen, or strengthen. They want to advance their own course and often for their own ends. Resistance should be welcomed. Opposition must be confronted. Knowing the difference is the secret sauce of wise leadership. 
J D Walt

Still on the Journey