“Bach: a scale of tears upon which our desires for God ascend.”
Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay
A Short History of Decay (1949)
The Saviors of God (1923)
“Bach: a scale of tears upon which our desires for God ascend.”
Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay
A Short History of Decay (1949)
Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: What is the essence of our God? The struggle for freedom. In the indestructible darkness a flaming line ascends and emblazons the march of the Invisible. What is our duty? To ascend with this blood-drenched line.
Whatever rushes upward and helps God to ascend is good. Whatever drags downward and impedes God from ascending is evil.
All virtues and all evils take on a new value. They are freed from the moment and from earth, they exist completely within man, before and after man, eternally.
For the essence of our ethic is not the salvation of man, who varies within time and space, but the salvation of God, who within a wide variety of flowing human forms and adventures is always the same, the indestructible rhythm which battles for freedom.
We, as human beings, are all miserable persons, heartless, small, insignificant. But within us a superior essence drives us ruthlessly upward.
From within this human mire divine songs have welled up, great ideas, violent loves, an unsleeping assault full of mystery, without beginning or end, without purpose, beyond every purpose.
T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader
On the blessings in persecution - "Persecution Has Increased My Blessings – TB Joshua https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/1132/persecution-has-increased-my-blessings-tb-joshua.html Modern Ghana (September 17 2009)
Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
2000s
Context: One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced. In a world that has long been terrorized by fratricidal Sky-God religions, the ascendance of Buddhism would surely be a welcome development.
John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 2, opening line
“God is a flowing and ebbing sea which ceaselessly flows out into all his beloved”
John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)
Context: God is a flowing and ebbing sea which ceaselessly flows out into all his beloved according to their needs and merits and which flows back with all those upon whom he has bestowed his gifts in heaven and on earth, together with all they possess or are capable of.
“One human thought alone is worth more than the entire world, hence God alone is worthy of it.”
John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint
The Sayings of Light and Love
“If evils increase, the devotion of the People of God should also increase.”
Pope Paul VI (1897–1978) 262nd Pope of the Catholic Church
CHRISTI MATRI