“God involves continuous awareness of finiteness, supreme capacity to feel grief, the renouncing of divine attributes in order to become pure giving, infinite love, redemption and consolation.”
Hymn
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Aldo Capitini 47
Italian philosopher and political activist 1899–1968Related quotes
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: Not only are we unable to conceive of the full and living God as masculine simply, but we are unable to conceive of Him as individual simply, as the projection of a solitary I, an unsocial I, an I that is in reality an abstract I. My living I is an I that is really a We; my living personal I lives only in other, of other, and by other I's; I am sprung from a multitude of ancestors. I carry them within me in extract, and at the same time I carry within me, potentially, a multitude of descendants, and God, the projection of my I to the infinite — or rather I, the projection of God to the finite — must also be a multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God — that is to say, in order to save the living God — faith's need — the need of the feeling and the imagination — of conceiving Him and feeling Him as possessed of a certain internal multiplicity.
“Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?”
Source: The Other Side of the Story
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity
Source: Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
As of a Trumpet, 1968, p. 43
As of a Trumpet
“It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite.”
Thoughts on Art and Life, by Leonardo da Vinci http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29904, (1906)
“God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him.”
Entry in Tolstoy's Diary http://www.linguadex.com/tolstoy/chapter1.htm (1 November 1910)
Context: God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him.
Or better yet:
God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...
We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition.
Picador 2015 edition ISBN 9781250062581, p. 3
No Place to Hide (2014)