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“The genius of Zen is the genius of restored Christianity. Both make the ordinary things of this world the way to salvation. These dō are Zen paths. Each one yields spiritual knowledge by way of physical practice- arranging flowers, serving tea, and so on. For Latter-Day Saints, it is much the same. Our philosophical accomplishments are few, and our practical victories many.”

The chapter on the evolution of heart surgery is thrilling. First they tackled how to get the heart to slow (cold). Then, ways to redirect/ oxygenate blood so they could work on a bloodless, easy-to-see heart (heart and lung machine, which had many wonky and disastrous precedents). The last hurdle: a bloodless heart will still beat. You try stitching a muscle while it’s twitching! (chemicals). Brave souls.

I miss pleasure reading :( #backingradschool #again

"We are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of proceeding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable, which we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.”

"I don't know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it."

Don’t look for proofs. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine. I’m not saying never doubt. I’m saying be sure that the doubts are your own, not the mustache and walking stick that happen to be in fashion.

That’s the strangest thing about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.

“Now that’s a concept that’s always fascinated me: ‘the real world.’ Only a very specific subset of people use the term, ever notice? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world— we all breathe the oxygen, eat real food. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.”

This is the most ty excited for a book I've been in AGES. Waited over two months for just an ILL copy!

Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, grown men and women who’ve been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God. Life has more than enough excitement up it's sleeve, ready to hit you with a soon as you’re not looking, without you adding to the drama.

Read this book when life has wearied you. It's calm, restorative. Feels like stepping into an old photograph, with all its innocence, stillness, and beauty.

I’ve always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over 25 there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and due, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless: he's into women who pout prettily and who will end up keeping his balls in their makeup bags.

With one glance at Margaret Cameron one would have been safe arriving at the conclusion that she would be drawn and quartered before she would renounce her religion, her country, her political opinions, or her family. Her hair was white and her eyes were blue. Her face was beautiful with a severely cut beauty that always indicates an indomitable spirit.

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The French had invented the word ideology, referring to a set of ideals like human perfection or social equality, that philosophers mistakenly believed could be implemented in the world because it existed in their heads. Jefferson thought in this French fashion. Critics like Adams were accused of rejecting ideals themselves, when in fact they were merely exposing their illusory character.

Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not? When I last these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.

Images have their use or they would not be so popular. It makes little difference whether they are pictures outside the mind or constructions within. To me, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images- sacrosanct. My idea of God has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.

The time when there is nothing in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it. Perhaps your reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear. Perhaps your passion temporarily destroys your capacity. All sorts of mistakes are possible when you are dealing with Him.

[On God] His need for you is greater than your need for him because he knows the consequences of not possessing you, whereas you, who know nothing, can throw your cap in the air, paddle in the water, and he never crosses your mind, but he is busy recording the precise force of the flood around your ankles.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy largely because they are not.

I have ground to a halt. This Napoleonic war is lasting FOREVER and I can't be beefed into caring enough about one regiment's movement to the north and one calvalry's encampment here... Blah blah blah..... Don't know if I can finish :/