lots of quote type stuff
May. 24th, 2002 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancingyeli haven't been posting much this past week 'cause of midterms and visitors and all, so i thought i'd post a few things i've read that i've liked. first of, though, cin had a cool entry that i commented on...and the comment turned out almost entry sized, so i don't feel like reposting it. so, just go to this entry, read the entry and my comment, and respond! so yes...now on to my quotes.
so first off, i was skimming through this book called Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey, him of the personality test. i haven't really read the book, but i was just skimming the section on relationships between the temperament types, and guess what? the lovely book has declared that "Champions and Masterminds should match up well." now who are these types they are talking about? why, it's ENFPs and INTJs, of course. now isn't that wonderful to know? who would've thought? sorry, i'm being just a tad bitter...i'll get over it soon. but on the bright side, according to mary ann, cin's an INTJ...so she and i should get along quite well...which, of course, we do.
and now, for some quotes from the same book i've been reading for a while now, The Healer of Shattered Hearts. i'm gonna put these behind an lj-cut tag because there are several of them, and they're rather long...but you should all read them! so
the first quote is from the chapter called "Spiritual Language." it is about ritual and prayer and communicating with God, a subject that i find rather interesting and unclear at times. here's what David J. Wolpe has to say on the subject.
"Ritual has provided the opening through which meeting can take place. A ritual act becomes poignant when done with a consciousness of its meaning. There is drama, even daring, in this human confrontation with God. Every ritual act is a risk: it risks emptiness if the performer is unaware or unwilling to feel its enormity, and it risks -- as does prayer -- the feeling of having offered without return. The paradox of religious action lies here: fullness of response is felt only when the individual has performed the action with trust that response will be forthcoming."
Now, this is exactly what my problem with prayer has been, and still is sometimes. there are times when i pray and wonder to myself, "why am i doing this?" it seems, often times, that to believe in prayer, i need a proof of its power, yet to get proof of its power, i need to believe when i do it. so, it goes in a crazy paradox. i've gotten over this paradox for the most part, and i find it easier now to believe, and thus to understand the answer...but i'm nowhere near complete understanding...i'm getting there...but i relate completely with what the book is saying.
the next quote i really liked is one about relationships with others, and how relating to other people helps us relate to God. this one is pretty self-explanatory...and a really nice thought.
"At certain times, if we are receptive and sensitive enough, we truly encounter other people, see them in the fullness of their humanity, view them not as means by which some need or other of our own in this world can be met, but as ends in themselves. Through this sort of deep encounter with another person we glimpse the ultimate encounter, the encounter with God."
isn't that beautiful? sometimes i get moments like that with my best friends, but in general, i'm hopelessly far from that type of thought....i'm trying...it all takes time.
the next, and last quote, is my exact view on evil and suffering in the world, except put in a way that i'd never be able to approach...this passage in particular makes me marvel at how eloquent this man is. it's a pretty long passage, so beware. basically, the background is the belief in life after death and whether it can provide relief from suffering in this world. the underlined and italicized parts have been underlined and italicized by me for emphasis on the parts that i find the most expressive of my own views.
"As long as there have been promises there have also been disappointments. It is also true that as long as there have been disappointments there have been renewed hopes.
What matters here is not the plausibility of the belief, but whether the existence of life after death can provide the much-sought-after 'answer' to suffering. Is the promise of a reward adequate compensation for the ills of earth?
It cannot be, even for those who have faith that this life is not all. Suffering once felt cannot be erased. Life cut off early is never restored, no mater what other delights may or may not hold in the future. The mathematics of reward and punishment are not convincing. What possible recompense could there be that would permit us to feel that an innocent individual should have been racked by pain in this world?
Belief in life after death is somecompensation, and in the elaborate descriptions of bliss in the future, we may detect an attempt to redress the earthly balance. A sad and revealing example of this is the Midrashic statement that God conducts classes in the heavenly academy for children who died too early to lean His word here on earth (A.Z. 3b). The picture is lovely, but behind it is the inescapable realization that there is no compensation for having been cut off from life in youth.
Dignity is due the sufferers, and we deprive them of this by too-easy equations that validate the necessity of their pain. To say one had to suffer is to take away the legitimacy of the accusation that Judaism supports. You may not deny the right of another to feel wronged, wounded, angered by the hand life has dealt. Some pains are too deep to salve and too inexplicably awful to pretend they have explanation."
so that’s almost exactly what i think, but put a million times better than i ever could. what do you guys think?
so first off, i was skimming through this book called Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey, him of the personality test. i haven't really read the book, but i was just skimming the section on relationships between the temperament types, and guess what? the lovely book has declared that "Champions and Masterminds should match up well." now who are these types they are talking about? why, it's ENFPs and INTJs, of course. now isn't that wonderful to know? who would've thought? sorry, i'm being just a tad bitter...i'll get over it soon. but on the bright side, according to mary ann, cin's an INTJ...so she and i should get along quite well...which, of course, we do.
and now, for some quotes from the same book i've been reading for a while now, The Healer of Shattered Hearts. i'm gonna put these behind an lj-cut tag because there are several of them, and they're rather long...but you should all read them! so
the first quote is from the chapter called "Spiritual Language." it is about ritual and prayer and communicating with God, a subject that i find rather interesting and unclear at times. here's what David J. Wolpe has to say on the subject.
"Ritual has provided the opening through which meeting can take place. A ritual act becomes poignant when done with a consciousness of its meaning. There is drama, even daring, in this human confrontation with God. Every ritual act is a risk: it risks emptiness if the performer is unaware or unwilling to feel its enormity, and it risks -- as does prayer -- the feeling of having offered without return. The paradox of religious action lies here: fullness of response is felt only when the individual has performed the action with trust that response will be forthcoming."
Now, this is exactly what my problem with prayer has been, and still is sometimes. there are times when i pray and wonder to myself, "why am i doing this?" it seems, often times, that to believe in prayer, i need a proof of its power, yet to get proof of its power, i need to believe when i do it. so, it goes in a crazy paradox. i've gotten over this paradox for the most part, and i find it easier now to believe, and thus to understand the answer...but i'm nowhere near complete understanding...i'm getting there...but i relate completely with what the book is saying.
the next quote i really liked is one about relationships with others, and how relating to other people helps us relate to God. this one is pretty self-explanatory...and a really nice thought.
"At certain times, if we are receptive and sensitive enough, we truly encounter other people, see them in the fullness of their humanity, view them not as means by which some need or other of our own in this world can be met, but as ends in themselves. Through this sort of deep encounter with another person we glimpse the ultimate encounter, the encounter with God."
isn't that beautiful? sometimes i get moments like that with my best friends, but in general, i'm hopelessly far from that type of thought....i'm trying...it all takes time.
the next, and last quote, is my exact view on evil and suffering in the world, except put in a way that i'd never be able to approach...this passage in particular makes me marvel at how eloquent this man is. it's a pretty long passage, so beware. basically, the background is the belief in life after death and whether it can provide relief from suffering in this world. the underlined and italicized parts have been underlined and italicized by me for emphasis on the parts that i find the most expressive of my own views.
"As long as there have been promises there have also been disappointments. It is also true that as long as there have been disappointments there have been renewed hopes.
What matters here is not the plausibility of the belief, but whether the existence of life after death can provide the much-sought-after 'answer' to suffering. Is the promise of a reward adequate compensation for the ills of earth?
It cannot be, even for those who have faith that this life is not all. Suffering once felt cannot be erased. Life cut off early is never restored, no mater what other delights may or may not hold in the future. The mathematics of reward and punishment are not convincing. What possible recompense could there be that would permit us to feel that an innocent individual should have been racked by pain in this world?
Belief in life after death is somecompensation, and in the elaborate descriptions of bliss in the future, we may detect an attempt to redress the earthly balance. A sad and revealing example of this is the Midrashic statement that God conducts classes in the heavenly academy for children who died too early to lean His word here on earth (A.Z. 3b). The picture is lovely, but behind it is the inescapable realization that there is no compensation for having been cut off from life in youth.
Dignity is due the sufferers, and we deprive them of this by too-easy equations that validate the necessity of their pain. To say one had to suffer is to take away the legitimacy of the accusation that Judaism supports. You may not deny the right of another to feel wronged, wounded, angered by the hand life has dealt. Some pains are too deep to salve and too inexplicably awful to pretend they have explanation."
so that’s almost exactly what i think, but put a million times better than i ever could. what do you guys think?
