God help us. Has it all truly ever been like it is now, the flimsy veneer of something we like to call “civilization”, over all the brute, savage gestures that underlie it? The veneer of which seems at times altogether desiring to collapse, to fail, and then we know not what to become of everything we ever have come to understand? Is it actually a better world now, as if it were the case it has ever been like it is, that these days things are merely more transparent, and so it seems the worse than when things were only done under cover of darkness and ignorance? For this is an evil world, which is why the Devil could offer it to Christ as that greatest temptation. To hope for better — when was it ever not a fool’s errand? Yet it is only in the darkest darks that some lights can be seen, and we must be such candles, through wind and rain, to preserve these fragile fires as we must. The alternative is no alternative, for what profit a man to exchange his soul for anything? Sometimes so tempting to give in, and be done with it… God help us.

a song that is sweet and sad flavors the air in bitter caramel
and i wonder what it would be like to be back among the living
i follow the faintest scents of prophecy, but if i handle the words
they slip slip slip like so many wisps of weary candle smoke
disappearing to the magic of what the mathematics reveal
the voice of God for to unlock in every molecule of space
there are secrets in the strangeness by which destiny deals
where have i been, that thought and flavor are so familiar?
surely down in the waking world, forgetting all that matters
casually bleeding precious time, waiting only for the last zero

What does it cost you to forgive everyone?

We are all God’s children, or nobody is.
– Jonathan Barnes

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
– Robert Brault

When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.
– Ernest Becker

Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.
– William Law

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
– Stephen Levine

a candle forever lit
a heart that does not die
love from nowhere
because it is everywhere
heaven and earth pass away
but where forever dwells
is home to us all

Somehow, we must remove the notion from us of our own infallibility. It is a hindrance like no other. Somehow we can discern the faults of everyone but our own selves, because we always have a reason why this thing of ours went foul, so that we seem always to be justified. We must constantly strive to see the right in everyone else, and see the wrong in us, because the balance is always stacked the other way. Our selves will always get in the way of any selfless notion — by definitions, this must be the case. There was only ever one of us who did nothing wrong, and I think on the day of judgement, we will be surprised — shocked — by the amount and number of the ills we have rendered, the injustices we have overlooked, and all the while pointing at the mote in our brothers’ eyes, seeking all that we thought was unfair to us to be redressed, and all that which we did of the dishonorable overlooked. I do not think this will be how the Judge will look at things.

Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Faith is a living, unshakeable confidence in God’s grace; it is so certain, that someone would die a thousand times for it. This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire.

caught in the wind ephemeral
inexplicably balanced
the signs and portents fire
and as quiet as the anticipation
dawn arises from the world’s moat
the day upon the tight wire
about to fall — or fly

I will put all my faith in the hands of the Lord. For whatever I tried to hold onto, I have let slip, from memory or from sight. So much that I have forgotten. But whatever I placed in the care of Him above, these things will I ever have, whether I concern myself about them or not. Sometimes what He promises I will scoff at, like Sarah who He told would have her son Isaac, even while she was in old age. But the Lord’s promises are not those of men, who like a leaf is blown and scattered. His will is surer than the seconds that pass so diligently. God is love: thus is the mystery we contend with. That of the delicate balance of all things between one another, He knows how fate will trace, the single whisper that sets in motion the creation of whole cities. We, not to comprehend a fraction of the myriad connections between triggers and flows, the actions and consequences, the intricate orchestrations and their musics. Just that we trust that the hand from which the miracle comes is sure.

the sign that is not a sign
a muted and ordinary hiccup of fate
(in perfect alignment, the stars begin to fall)
visions just outside my peripheral optics
where destiny builds the instants
(there is no conspiracy, but the madness is real)
a past that tips off the edge of memory
the void holds secrets perfectly
(and here i am at the end, and snow is everywhere)

We all profess that we are bound for heaven, immortality, and glory; but is it any evidence we really design it, if all our thoughts are consumed about the trifles of this world, which we must leave behind us, and if we have only occasional thoughts of things above?

Louis I. Kahn
Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Click on the pic for a larger version.

Modern man has a God-shaped hole in his heart.
– Jean-Paul Sartre

It is that desire for something better, I think, wherein this hole is expressed, the sentence that starts with “in a perfect world…”. The cynic who only sees the faults in the works of man, the half-empty glass: could it be that he secretly seeks a perfection he cannot name, which he has stopped hoping for (except only as a dull pain that he is missing something, something important)? Do these protest too much? For perhaps thus, man was made imperfect for a reason: to find the piece of him that makes him wonder why….

[Book. The previous is at alquemie.com.]

And then there are the other people, people enclosed behind a white counter, framed like a small fortification, and they are dressed in white as like the walls. They must belong here. They must hold the keys. I shouldn’t stare. Down the hall there is a large commons-like space, where there is a large TV and some people dressed like me are sitting, mostly with vague interest to whatever is playing or around them in general. There is a table where someone is drawing something. There is a cabinet with various board games stacked within it. This is the end of the line, I find, for the doors that lead elsewhere besides this is locked, at least on this extremity. Except for the TV, nothing is really making a sound.

Night falls, a test if faith will last the dark, not lose itself in the nothingness.

Night falls, and all the stars show themselves from behind the blue curtain of day.

Night falls, and a hundred candles means romance, while one candle stands for hope.

Night falls, but the moon is sometimes a better companion than the sun.

Night falls, a slow exhale of the inbreath, the accumulations of the daylight hours.

Night falls, a cool blanket of midnight blue that collects in it all who rest from motion.

Night falls, and I discover sometimes I can find myself better in the dark.

All dreams are innocent.

Where, then, does happiness lie? In forgetfulness, not indulgence, of the self. In escape from sensual appetites, not in their satisfaction. We live in a dark, self-enclosed prison, which is all we see or know if our glance is fixed ever downward. To lift it upward, becoming aware of the wide, luminous universe outside — this alone is happiness. At its highest level, such happiness is the ecstasy that mystics have inadequately described. At more humdrum levels, it is human love; the delights and beauties of our dear earth, its colors and shapes and sounds; the enchantment of understanding and laughing, and all other exercise of such faculties as we possess; the marvel of the meaning of everything, fitfully glimpsed, inadequately expounded, but ever present.