The Curse Of Certainty In Science And Religion : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture. Hide captionMountains rise, mountains fall: change is constant.
Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images Mountains rise, mountains fall: change is constant. The only constant is change. It's the most basic fact of human existence. Nothing lasts, nothing stays the same. We feel it with each breath. It might even be THE problem. Religions are often built around this heartache for certainty. Fate and future can be fixed through promises of freedom from immediate suffering, divine favor or everlasting salvation. It would be symmetrical if I could point to science as the pure antidote to the rigid rejection of uncertainty. But science does not exist alone as practice. My co-blogger Marcelo Gleiser put it beautifully two weeks ago when he wrote, "what is pompous is to think that we can know all the answers. Of course it doesn't have to be this way. Buddhism's First Noble Truth, which focuses specifically on the reality of change and suffering, serves as one example.
What They Don't Tell You at Graduation. Gazing into the Abyss - Christian Wiman. Essays - Summer 2007 Print The sudden appearance of love and the galvanizing prospect of death lead a young poet back to poetry and a “hope toward God” By Christian Wiman Though I was raised in a very religious household, until about a year ago I hadn’t been to church in any serious way in more than 20 years.
It would be inaccurate to say that I have been indifferent to God in all that time. Poetry, for me, has always been bound up with this unease, fueled by contingency toward forms that will transcend it, as involved with silence as it is with sound. There is a passage in the writings of Simone Weil that has long been important to me. It’s probably obvious why this metaphor would appeal to me. It has taken three events, each shattering in its way, for me to recognize both the full beauty, and the final insufficiency, of Weil’s image. First, necessity: four years ago, after making poetry the central purpose of my life for almost two decades, I stopped writing.
Then I fell in love. Americans and God. What Does “Magis” Mean? Possibly Insane Thoughts on Ash Wednesday (Written on the Occasion of a Sleepless Night) A close friend of Mockingbird contributes the following reflection on the meaning of the day, and I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a welcome and considerably more profound alternative to the (admittedly irresistible) irreverence with which we’ve treated (the “public displays of piety” which characterize) Lent in past years.
A touching and personal defense of the season, and today in particular, from an exceptionally sympathetic a point of view: For those of us who came of age in certain fundamentalist or evangelical Protestant churches, life was a strangely disembodied affair. It is true that various sins of the flesh were railed against, but it never was in name of a truer way of actually inhabiting the world, of living joyfully within it. Instead, our bodies and the physical spaces of our existence were essentially temporary confinements, nothing but occasions for temptation, impediments to the spiritual life. Perhaps this is what T.S. I still remember my first Ash Wednesday service. Sh*t Christian Poets Say: The Problems of God-Talk, Sentimentality, and Style. Most contemporary Christian poetry is revolting.
For all I know, there may be piles of finger-lickin’-good poems written for Muslim and Jewish consumption, but I can say with certainty that I would rather be crushed under a load of bricks than read another saccharine poem with the words “precious baby Jesus” in it. And yet, as a teacher and critic of poetry, and as a vowed Jesuit, I can’t pretend I don’t have an interest in poetic expressions of religiosity. The problem is not one of “taste” (preference or liking)—a narrow category of aesthetics whose primary function is to protect even the most boneheaded ideas from serious inquiry. The problem, in a nutshell, is one of style. The contemporary problem of style can be summarized by way of contrast: religious sentiment is all about sincerity, and yet the dominant mode of expression in popular culture is irony.
Is God Answering Tim Tebow's Prayers? The Best 10 Minutes Of Prayer. Förderverein 100 Jahre Schneekirche Mitterfirmiansreut e.V. - „Die Schneekirche für den Winter 2011/2012“ 1 Peter 4:19 So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good. New International VersionSo then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.
New Living TranslationSo if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you. English Standard VersionTherefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. New American Standard Bible Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.
King James BibleWherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. Holman Christian Standard BibleSo those who suffer according to God's will should, while doing what is good, entrust themselves to a faithful Creator.
Pulpit Commentary Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible 19.