thelibrarianontherun:

Getting in the Habit

“Modest, natural, and snazzy—those were the three directions Mother Mary Magdalene gave artist Julia Sherman for designing the habits for the Community of Compassion, Mother Mary’s new Anglican Catholic order in Forth Worth, Texas. “You can’t just go to the store and buy a habit,” Mother Mary wrote to me. “Every order has to have a distinct one designed by the foundress, and you’re not supposed to copy anyone else.” The difference between two orders can be as simple as a few extra pleats in the skirt or as noticeable as Mother Teresa’s blue-striped, sari-inspired head covering.

But Sherman’s habits are something entirely new. Moreover, the JF & Son store in New York has partnered with Sherman to produce and sell the habits for secular customers. So while Mother Mary is praying in her peach-colored harem pants in Forth Worth, a young New York woman might be traipsing across Fifth Avenue in the very same design.

Bear in mind we consider wearing the habit to be a privilege.” Mother Mary cautioned me. “It says to others when in public, I am open for business. May I pray for you, comfort you, and serve you? It’s a caring symbol in a difficult world.” But her favorite thing about wearing loose, flowy robes? “Dare I say it?” she laughed. “You can gain twenty pounds and nobody notices!” 

You guys - I LOVE THIS STUFF!!!!!

In the hierarchy of spiritual stations potentially attainable by humans, the pinnacle is “the Station of No Station.” From this viewpoint of perfect knowledge, it is clear that to every knot there corresponds a truth, yet no knot is complete:

Having actualized the Station of No Station, perfect human beings recognize that all beliefs are true and lead to God…. They understand the legitimacy of every belief and the wisdom behind every knot tied in the fabric of Reality…. By accepting each knot for what it has to teach, and by not allowing themselves to be limited and defined by it, they allow for the untying of every knot. Only by standing in all stations of human possibility and not being defined by any of them can they acheive the Station of No Station.

Tom Cheetham, The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism, quoting William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-ʻArabī and the Problem of Religious Diversity.

“Christianity as a whole is more likely to be an association, loosely held together, of three Unitarian religions.” — H. Richard Niebuhr, Three Unitarianisms

“In the moral worldview and aesthetic of the eighteen century, to be considered a worthy composition a piece was required to “instruct” as well as “delight” its audience.” — Marian Van Til, George Friderick Handel: A Music Lover’s Guide to His Life, His Faith & the Development of Messiah and His Other Oratorios

Bishop J. S. Spong - 12 Theses

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Fauré, sung by the Cambridge Singers.

babylonfalling:

Ron Cobb’s take on Thomas Cole’s ‘The Course of Empire’. San Francisco Express Times (1968)

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

I’m not entirely sure, but I find Speculative Realism fascinating!