Looking-glass

Once more come, see if you can.  You certainly only love what is good, and the earth is good with its lofty mountains and its folded hills and its level plains, and a farm is good when its situation is pleasant and its land fertile, and a house is good with its harmonious symmetry of architecture so spacious and bright, and animals are good with their animated bodies, and the air is good when mild and salubrious, and food is good when tasty and health-giving, and health is good without pains or weariness, and a man's face is good when it has fine proportions and a cheerful expression and a fresh complexion, and the heart of a friend is good with its sweet accord and loving trust, and a just man is good, and riches are good because they are easily put to use, and the sky is good with its sun and moon and stars, and the angels are good with their holy obedience, and speech is good as it pleasantly instructs and suitably moves the hearer, and a song is good with its melodious notes and its noble sentiments.  Why go on and on?  This is good and that is good. Take away this and that and see good itself if you can.

Augustine, De Trinitate

The Calmative

[A]nd it was always from the earth, rather than from the sky, not withstanding its reputation, that my help came in time of trouble.  -Beckett

Watts on Faith

“This attitude is not faith. It is pure idolatry. The more deceptive idols are not images of wood and stone but are constructed of words and ideas and mental images of God. Faith is an openness and trusting attitude to truth and reality, whatever it may turn out to be. This is a risky and adventurous state of mind.” Alan Watts

In my boyhood days -Hölderlin

In my boyhood days
  Often a god would save me
    From the shouts and from the rods of men;
      Safe and good then I played
        With the orchard flowers
          And the breezes of heaven 
            Played with me.

And as you make glad
The hearts of the plants 
When toward you they stretch
Their delicate arms.

So you made glad my heart,
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your darling,
Holy Luna.

O all you loyal,
Kindly gods!
Would that you knew how
My soul loved you then.

True, at that time I did not
Evoke you by name yet, and you
Never named me, as men use names,
As though they knew one another.

Yet I knew you better
Than ever I have known men,
I understood the silence of Aether,
But human words I´ve never understood.

I was reared by the euphony
Of the rustling copse
And learned to love
Amid the flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.

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Poverty is not a measure of relative wealth.  It is, rather, the sense of hopelessness one feels in relation to a survey of one's resources and felt needs.  This is why poverty is a universal phenomenon felt in all world contexts.

Heidegger on Being and Faith

If I were to write a theology - to which I sometimes feel inclined - then the word Being would not occur in it.  Faith does not need the thought of Being.