my heart melts.
life is music // freedom
“I was watching BET one night, and they were interviewing a man about jazz music. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul. It is as if the soul is saying something, something about freedom. I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful.
The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands…”
~ Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
Good quotes (some stolen from fb friends hehe) :D
“The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire— the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale— and that alone can guide.” - Aristotle
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” - Dr. Seuss
“I must be the change I wish to see in the world, and whatever it takes is on my to-do list.” - My friend, Michael Habashi
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
William Jennings Bryan
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (W.B. Yeats)
“I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano
More than ever, we have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, more comfortable cars and more road rage. We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate prosperity but yearn for our purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger. (Myers)
The unexamined life is not worth living - Socrates
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive. -Thich Nhat Hanh
hmm
Idealism is a term with several related meanings. It comes via idea from the Greek idein (ἰδεῖν), meaning “to see”. The term entered the English language by 1796. In ordinary use, as when speaking of Woodrow Wilson’s political idealism, it generally suggests the priority of ideals, principles, values, and goals over concrete realities. Idealists are understood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike pragmatists, who focus on the world as it presently is. In the arts, similarly, idealism affirms imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, a standard of perfection, in opposition to aesthetic naturalism and realism.
Sometimes I wonder if my idealistic assumptions are a bad thing?
Passionate or lukewarm?
“The great divide in the Church is not between Liberal and Conservative, Charismatic and Cessationist, Old and Young, Baptist and Presbyterian, Catholic and Protestant. These differences matter little compared to the great division.
The great division is between the Passionate and the Lukewarm. The growing and the dying. Between the forceful and the passive. There is no theological substitute for passion. It is love manifest. It is living desire. There is no maturity one can have to excuse apathy. Zeal without knowledge is foolish, but knowledge without zeal is a pit from which it is nearly impossible to escape. It is the religion of the dead.
We live in war. We were born into it. To be ignorant is to be dead already. The Kingdom of God is forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it. We must take hold of that for which Christ took hold of us. We have purpose! A Kingdom to be won. There is no peaceful expansion. We take our eternal rewards violently, and from a determined Enemy. There is no final rest this side of death.”
Dennis Cole, Ark Ministries & Full Gospel SF
