These are acrylic paint and liquid acrylic on paper.
"It is tragic how few people ever ‘possess their souls’ before they die… Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation..."
-Oscar Wilde
“I no longer fear God. I have come to love him,
for perfect love casts out fear.” (see 1 John 4:18)
-Abba Antony
“The great mystics of all religions agree that in the very depths of the unconscious, in every one of us, there is a living presence that is not touched by time, place or circumstance. Life has only one purpose, they add, and that is to discover this presence. The men and women who have done this – Francis of Assisi, for example, Mahatma Gandhi, Teresa of Avila, the Compassionate Buddha – are living proof of the words of Jesus Christ, ‘The kingdom of heaven is within.’
“But they are quick to tell us — everyone of them – that no one can enter that kingdom, and discover the Ruler who lives there, who has not brought the movement of the mind under control. And they do not pretend that our own efforts to tame the mind will suffice in themselves. Grace, they remind us, is all-important. ‘Increase in my my grace,’ Thomas a Kempis prays, ‘that I may be able to fulfill thy words, and to work out mine own salvation.’
“The hallmark of the man or woman of God is gratitude – endless, passionate gratitude for the previous gift of spiritual awareness…. it surrounds us always. Like a wind that is always blowing, said Francis de Sales; like fire, said Catherine of Genoa, that never stops burning..”
-Eknath Easwaran
As the Ruin Falls
by C. S. Lewis
by C. S. Lewis
"All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains."
You give me are more precious than all other gains."
“If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” | |
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| “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” | |
| “Never seek to tell thy love, / Love that never told can be; / For the gentle wind does move / Silently, invisibly.” | |
| Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.” | |
“Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.”
― Tom Robbin
“A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.”
― G.K. Chesterton, William Blake
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment
when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other,
to let their souls blend in a soft whisper,
so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can,
as it were, creep into God.
Soren Kierkegaard
The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion;
and the confusion is infectious and destructive.
It is confusing and destructive to try and explain
anything in terms of anything else,
poetry in terms of psychology.
- Basil Bunting
If you study the writings of the mystics,
you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes,
as in Zen, particularly.
- Alan Watts
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment
when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other,
to let their souls blend in a soft whisper,
so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can,
as it were, creep into God.
- Soren Kierkegaard
“Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Ta ta for now my brothers and sisters. Know that you are loved and pass it on. Your bro Peter
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